Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 21

I Won a Hugo Award!

You’ll have to wait a bit longer for the 2022 Hugo Winner commentary, because it turns out that I’m one of the winners.

That was a huge surprise, because I honestly didn’t think I’d win this year, considering how strong the Fan Writer ballot was.

I had finished typing up the Dragon Award winner post with about twenty minutes to go. Since I couldn’t attend in person, I was in the virtual finalist Zoom chat in my full Hugo get-up, which you can see below, photographed earlier yesterday in the garden.

We could watch a livestream of the Hugo ceremony in the virtual Zoom green room, but when your category comes up, you are sent to a breakout room, so they can bring you on stage, if necessary. In this breakout room, you don’t get the ceremony livestream, so you don’t hear the winner announcement. This is why Astounding winner Shelley Parker-Chan was so confused, because they hadn’t heard the announcement. After Shelley won, I told the ceremony Zoom moderator, “You should tell us who won, if we can’t hear it.”

The Lodestar and Fan Artist were awarded and then Best Fan Writer was up and fellow finalist Alex Brown and I were sent into the breakout room. The moderator typed into the chat, “The winner is Cora Buhlert,” and that’s how I learned I won, via Zoom chat. So I delivered my speech – with some action figure assistance – and my own Zoom screen was all I could see.

Though according to photos online, this is what it looked like on the big screen in the Hyatt Regency ballroom in Chicago.

The second photo is courtesy of my wonderful fellow finalist Olav Rokne. I don’t know who took the first one. Love the little dog in the front row.

After I’d finished my speech, I was sent back to the regular finalist Zoom green room. By that time, a lady whose name I did not catch was introducing Best Fancast. I waited for Fancast and Fanzine to be announced, because I have friends in both categories, though I switched off the camera to take off my gown and tiara. When Fanzine was announced, I got back to the computer to wish fellow virtual finalist Charley Payseur good luck. Unfortunately, typing into the chat switched the camera back on, so I accidentally managed to flash my fellow finalists. Though I don’t think anybody saw anything, because the camera doesn’t go that far down.

I wished the semiprozine and editor finalists good luck and switched off the camera. My parents had given me permission to wake them up in case I won, so that’s what I did. Because you should know that it was almost 4 AM German time by that point. My parents were very happy for me.

I had champagne in the fridge and some really fancy Belgian chocolate in the cellar, so I got that out to celebrate.

Brand-new Hugo winner celebrating with champagne.

And since He-Man and Man-e-Faces assisted with the speech, they got to celebrate with champagne, too.

Having stopped Skeletor, He-Man and Man-e-Faces celebrate with champagne.

Finally, here is my acceptance speech, complete with stage directions to myself:

Acceptance Speech Best Fan Writer 2022

Thank you very much.

September 4th is “Take Man-e-Faces to Work Day”. And yes, this is a real thing.

Now I happen to have a Man-e-Faces, but since I work from home, I don’t really have a workplace I could take him to. But then I realised that September 4th is actually Hugo Night, so I thought, “Why not take Man-e-Faces to the Hugos?” So here he is:

[Bring Manny on stage]

Say hello to the audience, Manny!

“People of Eternia, I am absolutely thrilled to win the Greatest Actor of the Universe Award…”

“Ahem, Manny, this is actually Chicago and the Hugo Awards.”

“All right then, people of Chicago, I am absolutely thrilled to win…”

“Ahem, Manny, actually I won the award.”

“So what am I doing here then?”

“Well today is “Take Man-e-Faces to Work” day and this is the closest thing to work I could take you to.”

[Bring He-Man on stage]

“Manny, come quick. Skeletor is attacking Castle Grayskull and we need your help!”

“Sorry, got to go!”

[Exit stage right]

Well, looks like Manny and He-Man will be busy for a while, so let’s talk about fandom.

Science fiction fandom was born shortly after the genre itself, in the letter pages of the science fiction magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. Via these letter columns, fans found each other and went on to publish fanzines, found clubs and organise conventions.

From these beginnings, fandom has grown by leaps and bounds into directions the letter writers of the 1930s could never have imagined. Over the past ninety years, thousands of people of all genders and races and from all over the world have written articles and reviews, letters and blogposts, essays and parodies, filk songs, poetry and fanfiction. They published fanzines, created fan art, made fanvids, sewed costumes, started blogs and podcasts, organised cons, all for the love of the genre. And so they all contributed to the great and colourful tapestry we call fandom, a tapestry that is wrapped around the entire world by now.

In the past 83 years, Worldcons have been held on four continents and in ten different countries. Next year, we will add Chengdu in China to the list and in 2024 we are going to Glasgow in Scotland. We also have active bids from Uganda, Egypt, Israel, Australia, Ireland and the US to make it truly a WORLDcon. Cause if there is one thing Worldcon has proven it’s that in spite of our many differences, we all have one thing in common: our love of science fiction, fantasy and horror.

I’m honoured that tonight, the threads I added to the great and glorious tapestry that is fandom have been recognised by you. Thank you very much.

I particularly want to thank Gideon Marcus and the crew at Galactic Journey, Jessica Rydill, my co-conspirator at the Speculative Fiction Showcase, Mike Glyer and everybody at File 770, Jo Van Ekeren, Camestros Felapton, Jason Ray Carney and everybody at the Whetstone Discord, Dr. Ian Watson of the University of Bremen, my parents and of course my wonderful fellow finalists Paul, Jason, Chris, Alex and Bitter. You’re all amazing and as far as I’m concerned, we’re all winners here tonight.

Thank you very much.

[Man-e-Faces and He-Man wave good-bye]

Some Comments on the 2022 Dragon Award Winners

In a feat of terrible scheduling, not only do Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon, and DragonCon, the big media con in Atlanta, Georgia, happen on the exact same weekend, no, both Hugos and the Dragon Awards were also handed out on the same day.

Luckily, the Dragons were awarded earlier than the Hugos, which means that I could get a headstart on this post, before I have to get ready for the Hugos. The full list of winners is here.

So let’s dive right in:

The winner of the 2022 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel is Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey. No big surprise here, because it is a popular novel and the final volume of the hugely popular series.

The 2022 Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel goes to Book of Night by Holly Black. This one surprised me a little, because Book of Night was the finalist in this category I was least familiar with. That said, Holly Black is a very popular writer, though better known for her YA work.

The winner of the 2022 Dragon Award for Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel is A Dark and Starless Forest by Sarah Hollowell. This one is another surprise to me, because this was the only book in  this category I hadn’t heard of. But then, I’m not much of a YA reader.

The 2022 Dragon Award for Best Military SFF novel goes to A Call to Insurrection by David Weber, Timothy Zahn and Thomas Pope. Once again, this isn’t much of a surprise, because David Weber and Timothy Zahn are hugely popular, plus this novel is apparently tied in to Weber’s Honor Harrington series. Though I do wish that the voters in this category would look beyond David Weber and Honor Harrington once in a while.

The winner of the 2022 Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel is The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley by Mercedes Lackey. The Alternate History category was uncommonly strong this year, so pretty much any of the finalists would have been a credible winner. That said, Mercedes Lackey is very popular, though I haven’t read this particular novel. Alas, Vondy McIntyre did not get to take home a posthumous Dragon Award three years after her death for a twenty-five-year-old novel.

The 2022 Dragon Award for Best Media Tie-In Novel goes to Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy: Lesser Evil by Timothy Zahn. Again, there is no real surprise here. I mean, the winner is a Star Wars novel by Timothy Zahn, most popular of the Star Wars tie-in writers, and the novel is about Grand Admiral Thrawn, one of the most popular characters in two continuities of Star Wars novels.

The winner of the 2022 Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel is The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig. I have to admit that this win surprised me a little, because I assumed Stephen Grahma Jones and Grady Hendrix would take it. That said, Chuck Wendig is a fine writer and his win will piss off the puppies so very much.

The 2022 Dragon Award for Best Comic Book goes to Immortal X-Men by Kieron Gillen and Mark Brooks. I’m surprised that the X-Men are still/again so popular, because it was my impression that their popularity had faded while Marvel focussed more on the Avengers and related heroes. Besides, I have to admit that I don’t care for this new Krakoa era of the X-Men at all. I preferred the X-Men when they were still underdogs, hated and feared by the very world they’re trying to protect.

The winner of the 2022 Dragon Award for Best Graphic Novel is Dune: House Atreides Volume 2 by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson and Dev Pramanik. This very much wouldn’t have been my choice – I voted for Saga – but I guess it got a boost from the Dune movie.

The 2022 Dragon Award for Best SFF TV series goes to Stranger Things, which is not only very popular, but also got a boost from airing fairly close to the nomination deadline.

The winner of the 2022 Dragon Award for Best SFF movie is Dune. Again, no real surprise here. I also strongly suspect that Dune will take the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation Long this year.

I still can’t offer any comment on the four game categories except that I have heard of the winners, which means they must be popular.

Furthermore, the 2022 Julie Award was awarded to Jim Starlin, creator of Thanos, Adam Warlock and many other memorable Marvel characters. The Hank Reinhardt Fandom Award went to John Carrol.

In general, the Dragon Awards continue the trend we have observed in recent years and now finally do what they were designed to do, namely award broadly popular works in a variety of genres and subgenres. There is no truly unexpected  winner here nor is there a single winner this year that will make future historians of the Dragon Awards go WTF?

So in short, after six years the Dragons are finally where they wanted to be.

The Hugo commentary will come tomorrow, because the ceremony starts at 3 AM my time.

 

First Monday Free Fiction: Old Mommark’s Tale

Welcome to the September 2022 edition of First Monday Free Fiction.

To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on the first Monday of every month. At the end of the month, I’ll take the story down and post another.

“Talk Like a Pirate Day” is September 19, so why not have a pirate story. Therefore, I give you Old Mommark’s Tale, the story of a pirate, a treasure and a mysterious island with a secret.

So take a seat in the most disreputable tavern in Tortuga and listen to…

Old Mommark’s Tale

 

Arr, my luvvies, let me tell you a tale. A tale that’s one hundred and ten percent true, honest to God, cross my heart and hope to die. And if my tale be just sailor’s yarn, then may I swing upon the gallows ere the week is through.

So buy me a cup of rum and I’ll tell you my tale. The true tale of how I escaped the island of horror.

***

’twas thirty years ago, when I was still a young whippersnapper, a cabin boy sailing under Captain Scarlet on the Bloody Skull and hoping for better things.

As ye may know, Captain Scarlet was the most feared pirate in all of the Caribbean in those days. He’d gotten that name both for the colour of his beard and the colour of the deck of a captured ship after he was done with her. Battle-hardened men shuddered and trembled when the Captain entered a room, while women fainted straight away. And when the Skull appeared on the horizon with its sails the colour of blood, many a sailor jumped over board rather than face Captain Scarlet. The Captain spread terror wherever he went, and that included us, his own crew.

The Bloody Skull was once again prowling the Caribbean, looking for booty, when the lookout suddenly yelled from the crow’s nest, “Ahoy, land ahead.”

Now that was very odd, cause there wasn’t supposed to be no land in that part of the Caribbean. Just sea and waves and sharks as far as the eye could see. Besides, the lookout was known to have indulged a bit much in the good old Jamaica rum the night before. So no one paid much heed to what he’d said and seen.

But then he yelled again, “Land ahead,” and again and again. And finally, the first mate Mr. Bones reached for his spyglass and peered through. He frowned and then handed the spyglass to Captain Scarlet, who peered through as well. For lo and behold, the lookout had been right. There really was land on the horizon. A small island, uncharted and not found on any map.

Now it just happened that Captain Scarlet was looking for a good spot to hide some treasure. And an island that’s not found on any map… well, there is no better place to hide a treasure on the Lord’s great big Earth.

So Captain Scarlet ordered the Bloody Skull to set course for the island. We anchored just off the coast. I still remember the jolt as the anchor hit the bottom of the sea. It was bad enough to knock several pirates off their feet and throw me down the staircase back below deck.

“Captain, something’s wrong,” Mr. Bones said, “I don’t like this.”

But the Captain would have none of it. He ordered a boat let into the water, a boat that carried Mr. Bones, Mr. Scrabbles, Captain Scarlet, the treasure chest and mine own self, Jakob Mommark. Mr. Scrabbles and my own self were rowing, Mr. Bones watched over the chest and Captain Scarlet stood at the bow, arms crossed, glowering at nothing in particular, as he was wont to do. The plume of his hat fluttered in the wind.

The sea was smooth that day, almost unnaturally calm. That should’ve warned us… but it didn’t. And so Mr. Scrabbles and me strained our muscles to row over to the island, for the treasure chest was very heavy indeed and Captain Scarlet not exactly light either.

Finally, we set the boat onto the beach. The Captain was the first to jump ashore, then Mr. Bones, then Mr. Scrabbles and finally my own self. As my boots hit the ground, I got the strangest sensation. For this was no ordinary beach. There was no sand, no pebbles, not even rock. Instead, the ground was smooth and springy like I’d never seen before and have never seen since.

The others noticed it, too. For Mr. Scrabbles had trouble keeping his footing, while Mr. Bones frowned and poked the ground with the tip of his boot. And in response, the ground — I swear to God that it’s true — the ground itself flinched and shuddered, as if it really did not like to be poked.

“I really don’t like this, Captain,” Mr. Bones said, “I think we should leave. Now.”

But Captain Scarlet paid him no heed. He just strutted ahead and his stride was so intimidating that even the ground itself shrank from his tread. Mr. Bones followed, one hand on the hilt of his cutlass, the other on the grip of his pistol. His eyes darted warily to and fro. Mr. Scrabbles and my own self brought up the rear, lugging the treasure chest between us over the strange, springy ground.

The island was small, barely five hundred yards across. Yet the land rose steeply, almost from the beach on. Soon Mr. Scrabbles and I were lugging the chest up a hill, careful not to slip on the strange, smooth ground.

The barren beach gave way to vegetation. First grassland, then shrubs and finally a cluster of trees at the very top of the hill. The leaves and vines and blades of grass were of blueish green and looked like no plants I’d ever seen. The leaves were thick and succulent like those of spurges or agaves or the tree the Spaniards call palo de hule or the shrub known as guayule. When you reached out to touch them, they would shrink back, and when you weren’t looking, they would brush against your arms and legs and attempt to wind themselves round your ankles. It was almost as if the plants of this uncharted island were living breathing things.

It wasn’t just me either, but our entire party. For branches and vines also grabbed for Mr. Scrabbles and Mr. Bones and soon we were hacking our way through the undergrowth with cutlasses and machetes. And where our blades hit the plants, a red sap spurted from the cuts that looked just like blood. Only the Captain was left strictly alone. Apparently, the plants were as afraid of him as we were.

Captain Scarlet led us further into the jungle, oblivious to our struggle.

“Hurry up, ye scurvy dogs,” he yelled back at us, “Or I swear, I’ll have the lot of you flogged and keelhauled.”

Since I neither wanted to be flogged nor keelhauled, I indeed hurried up, at least as best as I could. For the jungle was getting denser, the plants more aggressive. And through it all, there was that uncanny feeling that we were being watched.

The others noticed it, too. For Mr. Bones cut through a particularly amorous vine and quickened his step to catch up with Captain Scarlet.

“Captain,” he whispered, “Someone’s watching us.”

“Balderdash,” the Captain thundered, “You’re a fraidy cat, Bones. Who should be watching us — on a deserted island?”

Mr. Bones had no real answer to that. But unlike Mr. Scrabbles and my own self, he was not afraid of the Captain. “I got a really bad feeling ’bout this place,” he insisted, “We shouldn’t be here. This island, it feels wrong. And it does not want us here.”

And then Mr. Bones did something I’ve never seen no man do before or since. He reached for the Captain’s arm and grabbed him right by the sleeve of his splendid velvet coat.

“We should leave while we still can,” Mr. Bones urged.

Captain Scarlet spun around, slaughter and bloodshed in his eyes. “I could…” he said, “…easily maroon you on this island and find myself a new first mate in Tortuga. And now unhand me or face the consequences.”

My heart all but stopped, while my mind furiously debated what to do in case it came to a mutiny. Would I back the Captain, cruel tyrant that he was, or Mr. Bones, who’d always treated me with kindness? And once I chose a side, what would I do if the other won?

By now, Mr. Scrabbles and I had set down the chest. The sausage fingers of Mr. Scrabbles tightened on the hilt of his cutlass, while I drew the little dagger I carried. We both watched warily, wondering whose side to take.

The Captain stood with his back to me, so that I could have easily crept up to him and jabbed the point of my dagger against his back or put the blade against his throat. Yet I did not move, for the Captain’s threats were still ringing in my ears. And while I really did not want to be flogged or keelhauled, I liked the idea of being marooned on this horror of an island even less. So I remained frozen in place, while a branch entangled itself in my hair and a vine wrapped itself around my ankle and began slithering up my leg.

Mr. Bones’ thoughts must’ve been similar to mine. At any rate, he lowered his hand and even brushed some dust from the Captain’s coat.

“Apologies for speaking out of turn, Captain,” he said with a bow, “I was merely concerned for your welfare and that of the crew. And this place…” He cast a glance over his shoulder as if expecting to catch someone in the act of watching us. “…gives me the creeps.”

I brushed an adventurous branch from my hair and absentmindedly stabbed at the vine that was slithering up my leg, waiting with bated breath for Captain Scarlet’s reaction.

“Apology accepted.” The Captain gave Mr. Bones a brisk nod.

His eyes, black and bloodshot like the deepest pits of hell, now focussed on Mr. Scrabbles and mine own self. I thought, feared that he’d say something, yell at us, order us flogged or keelhauled or — worst of all — marooned on this island of terrors. My hand tightened on the dagger in my hand.

But the Captain never said anything. Instead, he poked the ground with the heel of his boot. And once again the ground, that unnaturally smooth ground that did not look like no soil at all, shrank back and shuddered. As if it really did not like to be poked at all.

“This place will do as good as any other,” Captain Scarlet said, “And now get to digging, ye scurvy dogs.”

So Mr. Bones, Mr. Scrabbles and my own self all reached for our shovels and began to dig. With worry in my heart, I watched as Mr. Bones thrust his shovel into the ground and made the first cut. For if this island did not like to be poked with heels and boot tips, then how much less would it like to be stabbed with spades and shovels?

But nothing could’ve prepared me for what happened next. For as soon as the spade cut into the ground, a disembodied scream echoed through the jungle. The whole island started to heave and shudder, until we were all thrown off our feet, even Captain Scarlet. The treasure chest was knocked over as well and sprang open, spilling jewels and pearls and gemstones and doubloons all over the jungle floor.

Once the shuddering ground calmed down enough that we could all sit up again, I saw Mr. Bones freeze in horror. I followed his gaze and fell right onto my arse again. For there, seeping out of the ground where Mr. Bones’ spade had struck, was a thick, burbling liquid, red as blood.

Mr. Bones’ eyes met mine. “We should really leave now,” he said.

I nodded and so did Mr. Scrabbles.

Only the Captain was completely oblivious to the bleeding ground and the danger we were all in. Instead, he was focussed entirely on his treasure. He stomped his foot, not even noticing the tremors that rippled across the ground and the blood that stuck to his boots.

“Pick that up!”

“But, Captain…”

Captain Scarlet drew his pistol, cocked it and aimed it right at the scrawny chest of Mr. Bones.

“I said, pick that up.”

So all three of us, Mr. Bones, Mr. Scrabbles and my own self, bent down to pick up the doubloons and the jewels and the gemstones and the pearls. For though we were all terrified of the island, we were even more terrified of Captain Scarlet and his legendary foul moods.

The chest was not even half full, when Mr. Scrabbles’ eyes suddenly went wide. He poked Mr. Bones and said, “You were right, boss. We are being watched.”

Mr. Bones looked into the direction indicated and blanched. So did I once I saw what Mr. Bones and Mr. Scrabbles has seen. For there, right behind us, was one of the ever-present vines, poised like a snake ready to strike. But at the tip of this vine was no leaf nor no blossom, no sprout nor no seed pod. It was an eye. A very humanlike eye, blue and bloodshot and watching our every move.

Nor was it alone. For a second vine was snaking its way through the jungle, topped by another eye. This one even blinked.

I screamed. So did Mr. Scrabbles. The Captain aimed his pistol at the eye and fired.

The shot was impossibly loud and the acrid stench of powder tingled in my nose. However, it did no good at all. For the eye was not only still there, it had brought friends. And all of a sudden, dozens of eyes were staring at us from the jungle.

“Run, lads! Run like hell,” Mr. Bones yelled.

Captain Scarlet aimed his pistol at Mr. Bones before remembering that he had just fired his load. Undaunted, he drew his cutlass. And then a vine snaked around his waist from behind, while another grabbed his leg and yet another wrapped itself around his throat.

The Captain screamed and cursed until the vine around his throat cut off his breath. He hacked at the vines with his cutlass, but it was to no avail. More and more vines wrapped themselves around his writhing body, dragging him relentlessly towards the jungle.

“Run,” Mr. Bones cried again.

My hand was full of doubloons and jewels and pearls that I was just about to throw into the chest. I stuffed them into the pocket of my jacket, jumped to my feet and ran, ran as if the devil himself were after me. And in a way, he was.

Behind me, I heard footsteps pounding. Mr. Bones and Mr. Scrabbles, or so I assumed, for I never turned around, never looked back. And above it all, there was that unearthly scream, the scream of the jungle and the island, a scream of pure rage.

Branches and vines still reached for me. But I was too fleet, so they never caught more of me than a few strands of hair or a scrap of my clothes. And still the scream rose in pitch and volume. The ground was heaving and shuddering all around me now and it was increasingly difficult to keep my footing.

I dashed down the hill, towards the beach and the boat and salvation. Mr. Bones was suddenly there beside me and together we pushed the boat into the water, away from the island of horror.

I never saw Mr. Scrabbles again. The jungle must have got him.

Once the water was deep enough, Mr. Bones and my own self jumped into the boat, grabbed the oars and strained our muscles, rowing as hard and as fast as we could, headed for the Bloody Skull that was still anchored off the island. Waves crushed against the hull, rocking our little boat and threatening to tear the oars from our hands. Calm no longer, the sea seemed as furious as the island.

It was only when we’d reached deep water and the waves had settled down from stormy to stiff that we dared to turn around. The sight that greeted us made our blood freeze in our veins.

For the island had risen from the waters. No longer a small hill, it now towered like a mountain above us and our tiny boat and even the Bloody Skull. The jungle that covered its peak, the same jungle through which we had trudged mere minutes ago, was writhing like a living, pulsing thing. More eyes appeared, not just the tiny, human-sized eyes on stalks of vines that we had seen in the jungle, but also a massive pair of eyes that opened in the side of the mountain itself, right where the beach where we had landed had once been. The eyes were gigantic, the colour of a festering wound, very ancient and very angry.

Still the island rose from the waters, higher and ever higher. Below the eyes, two holes appeared. They seemed to expand and dilate at a regular rhythm. Whenever they were at their smallest, the undertow dragged us back towards the island, while whenever they were at their largest, a stiff breeze hit our back, driving our little boat onwards. And still the island screamed.

Mr. Bones yelled at the crew left aboard the Bloody Skull. He yelled orders to set the sails and load the cannons and stand by to raise the anchor as soon as we were aboard. He never took his hands from the oars, but the wind carried his voice over to the ship and soon we could see sailors swarming up the rigging to set the sails.

Behind us, the island rose yet further from the waters, until it eclipsed most of the sky. A grotto appeared where the water met the land, a grotto framed by a row of enormous jagged stalactites. Stalagmites, sharp-edged and pointed and taller than a man, rose from the sea.

Mr. Bones and my own self rowed even harder. The Bloody Skull was forty yards away, then thirty, then twenty, then ten. On board, they were getting the rope ladder ready. It fell over the railing and down the hull. Salvation beckoned.

The sea got rougher again, beating not just our little boat but also the Bloody Skull to and fro. Aligning our boat with the hull of the Skull proved unexpectedly difficult, much more difficult than it should be. Mr. Bones tried to grab the end of the rope ladder, but it slipped from his grasp time and again.

I glanced over my shoulder. Not only had the island completely eclipsed the sky by now, it was also no longer alone. Smaller islands rose from the water, writhing and curling like monstrous snakes. They were covered in suckers the size of a rum barrel. And still the island screamed.

Mr. Bones had finally succeeded in grabbing the rope ladder. He scrambled up the side of the Skull, still yelling orders at the crew. I held on to the rope ladder, both to steady it and so I could climb up as soon as Mr. Bones was aboard.

Tentacles rose from the water all around us. They grabbed for the figurehead and attempted to slither up the sides of the vessel and they reached for the anchor chain as well.

“Raise the anchor,” Mr. Bones yelled, as he clambered over the railing. He looked down at me. “Jake, climb up now.”

I heard the anchor winch screeching, saw the anchor chain pull taunt. But then the whole ship jolted, while the anchor chain ground to a halt.

“It’s stuck,” someone yelled.

My hands were on the rope ladder, ready to haul myself up. But before I could, a tentacle beat against the side of the Skull, knocking her away from me and tearing the rope ladder from my grasp.

My palms burned, but I bit my tongue against the pain and reached for the oars, so I could bring the boat into position alongside the Skull again.

But it was too late. The tentacles had grabbed the Bloody Skull from all sides. Some wrapped themselves around her bow, strangling her figurehead, while others slithered up her anchor chain and reached up to the deck from both sides. Men fell from the rigging or were snatched right from the deck and pulled beneath the churning waves.

The crew fought valiantly. They hacked and stabbed and fired at the tentacles. They even managed to fire one of the starboard-side cannons. But it was to no avail. The monster had them in its grasp now and it would not let go.

With a much bigger prey in reach, the monster had forgotten all about me and my little boat. I was still buffeted to and fro by the waves, but the tentacles no longer reached for me, now that they had the bigger prize, the Bloody Skull itself.

I rowed as hard as I could, away from the island and away from the Skull. I watched as my former ship and its crew were dragged to a watery grave beneath the waves, as the monster gradually lowered itself into the depths of the ocean again, until it was once more naught but an island, a seemingly harmless island.

And then the sea was calm again and me and my little boat were all that was left of the Bloody Skull and her once mighty crew.

***

The Black Lazarus picked me up two days later. I didn’t tell the crew what had happened and blamed the loss of the Skull on those bastards of the Royal Navy instead. It was a story that always worked and no one would have believed the truth anyway.

I was hungry and thirsty and feverish, when the Black Lazarus found me, so they took me back to Tortuga, where I found myself a new ship and a new crew. I still had the jewels and doubloons I’d stuffed into my pocket, so I bought myself clothes and boots, a fine cutlass and a good pistol, a few cups of rum and the company of a lady of light morals.

But I kept one of the doubloons from the lost treasure of the Bloody Skull as a talisman and a reminder of the dangers that lurk beneath the sea.

Here it is, me laddies. Ye may look at it, but not touch.

And that’s the story, the story of the Bloody Skull and the monster that masqueraded as an island. And if it not be true, if Old Mommark’s been telling you a tall tale, then may the Lord strike me dead on the spot, amen.

The End

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new free story will be posted.

Cora goes virtually to Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon

For a variety of reasons, I can’t attend Chicon 8, the 2022 Worldcon in Chicago, Illinois, in person, but I will be participating virtually.

If you’re a member of Chicon 8, you can see me on the following panels:

If It’s Not Love, Then It’s The Bomb That Will Bring Us Together

Thursday, September 1, 1 PM CDT, Airmeet 1

A huge swath of SF from the 50s through the 70s was written in direct response to the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and disastrous and inhumane proxy wars. It all feels terribly relevant again! What are some gems and must-reads in the genre of “cautionary tales, pacificist, and anti-war SF”? Who are some more recent writers taking up these trends and what changes in approach have they made?

Cora Buhlert, Gloria McMillan, Julia Meitov Hersey, PJ Manney (moderator)

Virtual Table Talk – Cora Buhlert

Friday, September 2, 1 PM, Airmeet tables

This is what used to be called Kaffeeklatsch, but because there won’t be any food or drinks on site, they’ve renamed them. Anyway, sign up if you want to virtually chat with me.

To sign up for this Table Talk, visit https://chicon.org/tabletalks All sign up are available starting WednesdayAugust 31st at Noon central, and you will be notified at least 12 hours before the Table Talk time if you were chosen for a spot. More details available at https://chicon.org/tabletalks

1946: A Vintage Season For SFF

Saturday, September 3, 8:30 AM CDT, Airmeet 5

As the world began to recover from the trauma of the Second World War, SFF authors grappled with atomic futures. From Chan Davis to C.L. Moore, what works have withstood the test of time, and how are these works continuing to influence the genre today? How did they reflect, respond to, or ignore social and technological challenges of the day? (This panel is part of the 1946 project, a look back at the year in lieu of awarding Retro Hugo Awards.)

Cora Buhlert (moderator), Valentin D. Ivanov, Farah Mendlesohn, Terry Franklin

How Horror and SFF Blend

Saturday, September 3, 5:30 PM CDT, Airmeet 1

Horror has often overlapped with SFF—hello, Frankenstein! Lately it seems like we’re seeing a rise in horror elements in popular SFF, including many recent Hugo winners and nominees. What makes horror blend well with science fiction or fantasy? Are there challenges or problems with mixing the genres? And how do cosmic horror, the Weird, and New Weird fit into this discussion? Come find out whether or not anyone can hear you scream . . . in space!

Bob J. Koester, Cora Buhlert (moderator), Emma Osborne, Jennifer Brozek, L. Marie Wood

The Culinary Delights of Speculative Fiction

Monday, September 5, 8:30 CDT, Airmeet 3

Why do the fellowship/party have to eat the same stew every day on their trek into the dark lands? Why do the space farers enjoy reconstituted cubes/pellets on their way to Alpha Centauri? Food is the way we as a species come together, bond, and connect with each other. What are some examples of stories with rich descriptions of culinary traditions, as opposed to “astronaut fare” or “epic fantasy stews”? How does the inclusion—or exclusion—of eating and cooking practices impact the story?

Cora Buhlert, Gillian Polack, Jennifer Rhorer (moderator), Jo Miles, Thiago Ambrósio Lage

Finally, as regular readers of this blog will know, I’m a Hugo finalist for Best Fan Writer this year,  so of course you’ll find me (virtually) at the Hugo ceremony.

Hugo Awards Ceremony

Sunday, September 4, 8 PM, Grand Ballroom

Join your hosts Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz — and a bevvy of guest presenters — for the most prestigious awards in science fiction and fantasy. Come for the glitz and glamour, stay for the laughs and surprises!

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law Experiences “A Normal Amount of Rage”

I haven’t been able to keep up with watching, let alone reviewing the latest Marvel TV series, because there are a lot of them and I don’t have a lot of time these days. So I still haven’t caught up with Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel, though I did like what little I saw of them.

However, there’s no way I was not going to watch She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, because She-Hulk or rather a version of her is a long-time favourite of mine.

Back in the 1980s, a company called Comics Spain made amazing PVC figures of various comic and pop culture characters, both American and European characters. Comics Spain had hardly any distribution in Germany, but at the time my Dad worked in the Netherlands and Belgium, where you could get the figures. And since I collect PVC figures and love comics, I bought a lot of their offerings.

Comics Spain‘s product range included a selection of Marvel and DC superheroes and a few supervillains (plus the Phantom and Flash Gordon, who are King’s Features Syndicate characters, but matched the Marvel and DC line in scale and style). Of course, I wanted to buy all of the characters – and I did eventually acquire most of them – but my pocket money was limited, so I could only afford a single figure first. I wanted a female character and as so often with toys supposedly aimed at boys, there were only two available, the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman and She-Hulk (they later added two DC heroines, Wonder Woman and Starfire, to the line). I never much liked the blank-eyes 1980s Spider-Woman costume, so I picked She-Hulk.

Except that I had no idea that this character was called She-Hulk at the time. To me, she was just an awesome green superheroine. Browsing some of the American comics on offer at the comic and book stores of Rotterdam and Antwerp eventually revealed that the character was called She-Hulk a.k.a. Jennifer Walters and that she was a female counterpart of the Hulk.

However, at this point I had already come up with a name, code name and origin story for the character, so I took the Marvel version as “Well, that’s their version of the story, but I prefer mine.” So here’s my version of her story:

Her name is Maud Daniels* and she used to be an investigative reporter. One day, while investigating a series of mysterious disappearances and deaths, she stumbles upon a mad scientist, is captured and experimented upon. Unlike the scientist’s previous test subjects, Maud survives, but she is now tall, muscular, super-strong and green. Maud takes out the mad scientist and escapes his lab, only to find that her old life is gone. No one will believe her, she loses her job, because she’s green and way too noticeable now and her boyfriend dumps her, because she’s green, taller and stronger than him and he thinks she’s ugly.

So Maud takes to wandering the world, looking for a cure, a purpose and a home. She finds the latter two, when she stumbles upon the Kirchenkistenheinis, an underground civilisation of gnomes, fairies, anthropomorphic animals and humans who have nowhere else to go. This underground civilisation of the Kirchenkistenheinis (the name means “church box guys” and refers to the fact that I originally kept my PVC figurine collection in a cookie tin embossed with a picture of the Cologne cathedral) is one of my oldest imaginary worlds and everybody, whether my own characters or characters borrowed from somewhere else, eventually washes up there. This stuff rarely finds its way into my published fiction, because it’s just too weird, but trust me, there are Kirchenkistenheinis everywhere and they’ve met everybody.

Anyway, the Kirchenkistenheinis and their leader Stella aren’t afraid of Maud, but think she’s absolutely awesome. Plus, her super-strength is really useful to help build their ever expanding underground civilisation (they have a space port, laser guns, highway, tunnels and everything). So Maud stays, find friends and is encouraged to become a superheroine, starts calling herself the Green Lady (yeah, not very imaginative, but then neither is She-Hulk) and joins a Justice League/Avengers type superhero organisation, because more Comics Spain superhero figures had by now joined my collection.

After a lot of misunderstandings, Maud eventually falls in love with and marries the Phantom, the second Comics Spain superhero figure I ever bought, because I liked the character. Plus, the version of the Phantom I was most familiar with was the one from the Defenders of the Earth cartoon who’s a widower living in a single dad superhero house share**. Together, Maud and Phantom raise Phantom’s teenage daughter Jedda from the Defenders of the Earth cartoon (who sadly never had a figure of any kind) adopt Suske and Wiske (there was no Aunt Sidonie figure and Suske and Wiske needed parent figures) and even have a baby boy.

You can see Maud and her family (sans Jedda, who has snuck off to make out with Flash Gordon’s son Rick – and yes, this is actually implied in Defenders of the Earth) below:

The extended Daniels-Walker family with Maud, Phantom, Suske, Wiske, Baby Kit, Jedda’s pet panther Kisa and the skull of the first Phantom.

Summing up Maud’s story, I still think it’s pretty good and no more absurd than what Marvel has come up with over the years.

Anyway, I absolutely loved this figure and took her everywhere. She was my absolute favourite for many years and I still love her and have her on display.

I did buy the John Byrne Sensational She-Hulk comics of the 1980s/1990s and generally enjoyed them, even if that story was not Maud’s story. Though Jennifer and Maud have a lot in common. They’re both green and both snarky and both kick arse.

There were rumours of a She-Hulk movie starring Brigitte Nielsen in the early 1990s, but it never happened and I never thought I’d ever see a version of this character on screen. Except that we now live in the golden age of superhero movies and every character, no matter how strange or obscure, will eventually wind up on screen. And if it’s a Marvel character, the chances of it being good are pretty high. If it’s a DC character, the chances are very hit and miss.

And so we have a She-Hulk TV series on Disney+ now and I of course had to watch it, because my teen self and Maud would never forgive me, if I didn’t. And yes, I had Maud and Phantom next to me, as I was watching.

Warning: Spoilers after this point!

When we first meet Jennifer Walters, she is practicing the closing statement for a trial and basically offers a variation of the famous “with great power comes great responsibility” motto. An annoying male colleague tries to mansplain her job to Jennifer and clearly wants to be the one who gives the statement, but Jennifer won’t have any of that. Her friend, paralegal Nikki, supports her and tells her that she’s got it. And if not, she can always hulk out. This causes Jennifer to turn to the camera and say that she’s better explain that “hulking out” comment, because otherwise no one will focus on the lawyer show.

There have been some comments about the fourth wall breaking and comparisons to Deadpool and – weirdly enough – the British comedy show Fleabag (Is that what Fleabag does? Cause all I know is that it’s about a woman and a sexy priest). However, She-Hulk has been breaking the fourth wall since the The Sensational She-Hulk debuted in 1989, well before Deadpool, let alone Fleabag. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I experienced fourth wall breaking, though John Byrne sure as hell did not invent it either.

The episode then launches into Jennifer’s origin story with bonus appearance by Jen’s cousin Bruce Banner a.k.a. the Hulk. When we first see them, he’s in Bruce form with a device attached to his arm that keeps him from changing into Hulk. We get some nice banter, including Jen musing about whether Captain America was a virgin, and then their car almost collides with a random space ship, swerves off the road and overturns. Jen is injured, but manages to free herself and pull out Bruce. Bruce warns her to stay away, but it’s too late. Bruce’s blood accidentally gets into Jen’s wound and she hulks out, as does Bruce.

Jen’s origin story has been slightly tweaked from the one in the original 1980 Savage She-Hulk comic, where Jen is nigh fatally injured in a mob hit and Bruce has to give her a blood transfusion to save her life. But then, superhero origin stories are frequently tweaked to keep up with changing times and scientific knowledge. Iron Man’s origin story was fairly easy to adapt – Marvel kept the basic story, just changed the setting from the Vietnam to the Afghanistan War. Hulk’s origin story, however, was changed from “Was stupid enough to run into a nuclear explosion and survived, only green” to a lab accident as early as the 1970s. But while a mob hit wouldn’t have been implausible, it would still have required more story set-up than a random car crash. Also, regardless of how much movie and TV executives love them, origin stories rarely matter all that much.

Jen initially comes to somewhere in the woods, still injured and with damages clothes. She stumbles upon a roadside bar – one of these log cabin type roadside bars with neon signs that seem to be all over the place in the US, at least in movies and TV shows – and heads for the bathroom to clean herself up. A gaggle of woman come on and promptly offer help to Jen in a show of female solidarity. They help Jen clean herself up, one of the women gives Jen her jacket and another lends her her phone to call Bruce.

Next, we see Jen waiting outside the bar for Bruce to pick her up, when a bunch of drunken dudes stagger out and do what drunken dudes do, when confronted with a lone woman – they begin to harass and catcall her. Considering that Jen is a Hulk, this turns out to be a very bad idea.

Jen passes out again and the next time she comes to, she finds herself in a strange bed. This is of course highly alarming to her, but it turns out that she is in a hidden lab cum holiday cabin on a beach in Mexico that Tony Stark built for Bruce (or rather Tony and Bruce built it together). Bruce is there as well in his smart Hulk form. He explains to Jen what happened and that she was infected with his Hulk powers due to her contact with his blood.

Jen wants to leave and return to her job and her life, but Bruce tells her she can’t until she learns to control her newfound Hulk powers, because otherwise she’d be a danger to everybody around her. Jen is understandably not happy about this.

The bulk of the episode is given over to Bruce testing Jen’s powers – quite brutally at times, such as using a noisemaker on the sleeping Jen or locking her in a chamber with chainsaw studded walls closing in to make her transform. Hereby, it turns out that Jen is a very different kind of Hulk than Bruce. For starters, she retains her normal persona and intelligence even in Hulk form, something that took Bruce years to achieve.

Jen is also apparently stronger than Bruce – something she wasn’t in the comics – though it’s quite possible that Bruce is holding back at first. Though a full smackdown fight between two Hulks still trashes the entire environment, including the tiki bar that Bruce and Tony Stark built together.

BTW, one thing I really liked about this episode is that Bruce’s grief for Tony is acknowledged – after all, they were close friends in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, something that grew out of the real life friendship between Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo, since the characters were never that close in the comics. In general, it’s fascinating how much Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Tony Stark influenced the portrayal of the character in the comics. Because before approx. 2012, Tony Stark was a C-list character, something of a jerk, not very close to Bruce Banner, not in a committed relationship with Pepper, does not banter with Doctor Strange and he didn’t adopt and mentor teenage superheroes either.  In fact, I suspect that if Robert Downey Jr. hadn’t delivered such a great portrayal of Iron Man, the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it would likely have never come to exist.

As for why Jen is a different kind of Hulk than Bruce – and this comes straight from the comics, where Jen is never a mindless “Hulk Smash” type either – Jen herself delivery an interesting theory, namely that being a woman, she has a lot more experience suppressing anger than Bruce ever had. Gavia Baker-Whitelaw quotes the relevant bit of dialogue and also reactions to that scene at The Daily Dot.

Now it has always been quite obvious to me that She-Hulk is very much an avatar of female rage just as Hulk is an avatar of (male) nerd rage. She-Hulk was created in 1980 at the tail-end of a flurry of superheroines, often female versions of male heroes, that Marvel introduced in the 1970s as a response to second wave feminism. Carol Danvers in her Ms. Marvel incarnation is probably the most famous example, the Shanna the She-Devil, Tigra a.k.a. the Cat, Night Nurse and the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman all date from this era. And yes, Marvel obviously created these woman-centered comics to sell more comics to the underserved female demographic, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a genuine desire to tackle hot button issues of the day behind these comics, similar to how Marvel introduced several superheroes of colour in the late 1960s and 1970s in response to the Civil Rights movement. Of course, the results were quite often embarassingly clumsy, the 1970s Ms. Marvel comics (which coincidentally are some of the oldest original comics in my collection) are almost painful in their very earnest attempt to create a feminist superheroine, but at least they were trying. Also, anybody who complains that Marvel has gone “woke” should just shut the hell up, because Marvel (or rather its predecessor Timely Comics) has been “woke” at least since Captain America punched Hitler on the cover of Captain America No. 1 back in 1941.

If the original Ms. Marvel comic of the 1970s was about second wave feminism and issues such as equal pay, women’s rights, etc…, She-Hulk was about female rage at mansplainers, catcallers and other shitty men. Even my young self who bought a toy figurine of a superheroine she did not know or recognise back in the 1980s, instinctively understood this, because the story of Maud Daniels is as much a story about shitty men (the scientist who transforms her, the boss who fires her and the boyfriend who dumps her are all male) as it is a story about being accepted for who you are.

Another source of conflict between Bruce and Jen is that Bruce wants Jen to become a superheroine and protect the Earth, just as Bruce did/does with the Avengers. And interestingly, the “protecting the Earth” angle is another thing Bruce borrowed from Tony and to a lesser degree Natasha, because the Bruce we meet at the beginning of The Avengers just wants to be left alone.

Like Bruce pre-Avengers, Jen also just wants to be left alone. Saving the world isn’t her job, because she already has a job, thank you very much. And so Jen leaves Bruce’s Mexican hideaway to return to her life as a lawyer. She also doesn’t keep her powers secret from her family and best friend Nikki. But then, no one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe really keeps their powers a secret, which I for one like a lot, because not telling your loved ones that you are secretly a superhero is not only a recipe for disaster, it also never really made sense and I’m glad to see that trope either discarded or interrogated.

The episode now comes full circle to the opening scene with Jen about to deliver her final statement in a trial against what appears to be an unscrupulous businessman type. However, just before Jen can get going, the trial is rudely interrupted by the arrival of the super-villainess Titania, who proceeds to smash up the courtroom, dressed up like an escapee from a 1970s disco. Honestly, Titania looks more 1970s in this episode than she looks in the actual comics from the era.

Like everybody else, Jen’s hide under the table, when Nikki tells her that now might be a good time to hulk out. As Titania proceeds to take apart the courtroom, Jen finally agrees, while lamenting that she really likes the suit she’s about to wreck. Jen also first takes off her shoes before hulking out, because there’s no reason to ruin a nice pair of shoes. Then she hulks out, saves the jurors from Titania and proceeds to whack Titania with the jury bench. Then she transforms back into Jen and dusts off her ruined suit and says, “I’m ready to deliver my statement now” to the judge. Cue credits.

There is a post-credits or rather mid credits scene, where a very drunk Jen laments that Steve Rogers, though extremely hot, very likely was a virgin until he want back in time at the end of Avengers: Endgame. Whereupon Bruce tells Jen that Steve lost his virginity back in 1943 to one of his back-up chorus girls from his “Star-Sprangled Man” tour. Which makes Jen very happy, happy enough to exclaim, “Yes, Captain America fucked!” Okay, she only says “fu”, because this is family-friendly Disney, but we all know what she was going to say.

Now I have to admit that I also assumed Steve Rogers was probably the last adult virgin of the Marvel Universe, now that Rogue can control her powers – unless Natasha took pity on him. But hurray for Steve actually getting to have sex with a pretty chorus girl.

The great strength of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and something that none of the other cinematic universe attempts have ever really managed to replicate is that it tells a great variety of different stories and tackles a lot of different genres in the same universe, even if all of these stories feature superheroes. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law introduces a new genre into the mix, because here we have a humorous lawyer show a la Ally McBeal, Boston Legal or Danni Lowinsky combined with a superhero story about female anger. And as with most Marvel attempts, the mix somehow works.

I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Tatiana Maslany, though she is a great actress and clearly deserved that Emmy. But I never liked Orphan Black and stopped watching after one and a half episodes. Maslany was good in last year’s Perry Mason show, though I didn’t quite get what the point of her weird radio preacher character was in the whole story, since that weird and very American church stuff distracted from the actual plot. And Tatiana Maslany wasn’t the first person who came to mind to play Jennifer Walters, but then Mark Ruffalo also wasn’t the first or even tenth person who came to mind to play Bruce Banner either. But Tatiana Maslany is really good here and after a few minutes I stopped seeing her as “that woman from Orphan Black” and began to see her as Jennifer Walters. She also nails the humorous aspects of the show, something she really didn’t get to do in Orphan Black or Perry Mason.

This episode is very much a Jen and Bruce two-hander, so the rest of the cast doesn’t get much to do, but I guess we’ll see more of Nikki and Titania in future episodes. Besides, more Mark Ruffalo as Hulk is always good.

The first episode is very much set-up and origin story and the actual plot doesn’t kick in until the last few minutes, but I did enjoy it and I will certainly watch (and try to review) the rest of the show.

If only because Maud would not forgive me, if I didn’t watch this.

*I remember picking the name Maud from a handwritten list of names I liked, but I have no idea where I got it from. Probably the movie Harold and Maude.

**1980s cartoons not only had a lot of single dads, they also had a lot of examples of men banding together to raise kids. Which is why I always find those complaints about LGBTQ content supposedly indoctrinating kids hilarious, because dudes, we already had this in the 1980s and we all survived and became better people for it.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Heads Into the Grand Finale

Here are my much belated thoughts on the final episode of the Disney Plus Obi-Wan Kenobi series. For my thoughts on previous episodes, go here.

Meanwhile, my latest article at Galactic Journey just went up two days ago. The subject is the rise of the shipping container, which may not be as flashy as space travel news, but which will profoundly transform global trade from the late 1960s on.

I’m also not sure if I linked to my previous Galactic Journey article, which was a review of two 1967 SFF novels, Chthon by Piers Anthony, which was still as terrible as it was when I first tried to read it at age 16, and The Flame of Iridar by Lin Carter, which was actually decent.

Warning! Spoilers under the cut!

The final episode of Obi-Wan Kenobi starts off where the previous episode ended, with Roken, Obi-Wan, Leia and the other refugees making a narrow escape from Jabiim, a Star Destroyer in hot pursuit. The refugee ship can’t make the jump to hyperspace either, because the hyperdrive is not working. Honestly, does any hyperdrive ever work in Star Wars or does only the Empire have hyperdrives that actually do what they’re supposed to do?

Roken is confident that he can get the hyperdrive to work, but that will take time and right now, time is one thing the refugees don’t have. So Obi-Wan does the heroic thing and offers to draw the Empire away, allowing the refugees to escape. After all, Obi-Wan is the one Darth Vader is really after. The refugees are just a bonus.

Absolutely no one is happy with this plan. The proto-rebels and their leader Roken do not want to lose their biggest gun and potential leader figure, while little Leia does not want to lose her protector. So Obi-Wan does what he does best and tries to reassure everybody. He tells Roken that yes, the proto-rebels of The Path need a leader, but that they have a pretty good one in Roken.

Then he calms down Leia, tells her that he’ll be fine and that they’ll see each other again and gives her the holster of the late Tala with notches for the people she saved. “It’s empty”, little Leia says, clearly disappointed. “I’m not giving you a blaster”, Obi-Wan replies, “You’re ten years old. But you won’t always be.” And there we have the birth of Leia Organa, rebel leader. Leia, meanwhile, gives Obi-Wan her little droid Lola for company.

Finally, Obi-Wan asks Haja Estree to promise him to take Leia home to Alderaan. Haja gives Obi-Wan his word with the caveat that he is a con-man and fake Jedi, after all, so he’s not sure how much his word is worth. “I believe in you”, Obi-Wan replies and thus inspires another person who will probably be a great asset to the nascent Rebellion. Haja Estree is a great character BTW and I wish we had seen more of him.

The scenes in Revenge of the Sith featuring Padme, Bail Organa and Mon Mothma (many of which ended up on the cutting room floor) seemed to imply that the seeds for the Rebellion were sown around the time the Empire was established. Obi-Wan Kenobi, however, is set ten years later and shows the Rebellion as basically one or more small groups instead of the organised force they will become. We have no idea what Mon Mothma is doing at this point and Bail Organa seems to be exactly the Senator he claims to be, albeit one with secrets. And the Path is a network of people helping Force sensitives and former Jedi to escape to safety.

So did Obi-Wan actually help to establish the Rebellion as we know it? As retcons go, this one is small, but it is notable.

After he has given the nascent Rebellion a pep talk, Obi-Wan gets into a shuttle and heads for a planet that just happens to be nearby. On the bridge of the pursuing Star Destroyer, Darth Vader and the Grand Inquisitor observe the shuttle leaving. Darth Vader of course senses that Obi-Wan is on board and promptly directs the Star Destroyer to pursue the shuttle with Obi-Wan rather than the refugees. The Grand Inquisitor is clearly not pleased to let all of those juicy Force-sensitives escape, but one does not argue with Darth Vader and expect to survive. So Obi-Wan’s plan worked and the refugees are safe.

Both Obi-Wan and Darth Vader land on the planet that conveniently just happens to be in the neighbourhood. Come to think of it, I wonder why Darth Vader didn’t just take a shuttle and go after Obi-Wan, while sending the Star Destroyer under the command of the Grand Inquisitor after the refugees. But of course, that would have ruined the plot.

The bulk of the episode of given over to Obi-Wan and Darth Vader having a lightsabre duel on a nameless planet full of dark spiky rocks that seems designed to serve as a duelling place for Jedi Knights and Sith Lords. As lightsabre fights go, this one is great to look at and excellently choreographed. The flashing lightsabres lighting up the spiky rocks make for great visuals, while the rocks themselves also make for great improvised missiles for Darth and Obi-Wan to Force-throw at each other.

Since their last encounter in episode 3 of the series, Obi-Wan had gotten his groove back, so he and Darth Vader are a lot more evenly matched. The climax comes when Obi-Wan slashes Darth Vader’s helmet open – a scene apparently borrowed from the Star Wars Rebels cartoon, where Ahsoka does the same – only to reveal the scarred and ravaged face beneath. Ewan McGregor does a great job conveying the shock Obi-Wan experiences at seeing what Darth Vader looks like under the mask, though I can’t help but wonder why he is so shocked, considering the last time he saw Anakin, Obi-Wan left him lying at the edge of a lava pit. After all, people normally don’t look very pretty after they have been thrown into a lava pit.

Anakin clearly relishes Obi-Wan’s shock and tells him, “I am what you made me” (which is technically true). Then he tells Obi-Wan that Anakin Skywalker is dead, that Darth Vader killed him and that Vader is all that’s left. This is apparently the closure Obi-Wan needs (and coincidentally also explains the “Darth Vader killed your father” line in A New Hope). He finally realises that the Anakin he knew is truly gone and not coming back – until Luke proves him wrong in Return of the Jedi, that is.  So Obi-Wan says “Good-bye, Darth” and turns around and leaves, leaving Darth Vader standing among the jagged rocks in his damaged armour.

Now the duel obviously couldn’t have ended any other way. After all, we know that neither Obi-Wan nor Darth Vader died on this nameless planet, because they will still be around ten years later in time for A New Hope. However, psychologically Obi-Wan just walking away makes no sense at all. Obi-Wan walking away on Mustafar in Revenge of the Sith made a bit of sense, because Obi-Wan likely assumed Anakin was going to die anyway and didn’t want to be the one to strike a killing blow at someone he once cared for. Though even back then, I remember people in the theatre yelling, “Either help him or kill him and be done with it.”

But Obi-Wan letting Darth Vader live here makes no fucking sense at all, because he just accepted that Darth Vader is no longer Anakin Skywalker, that Anakin is gone for good. So any lingering feelings Obi-Wan might have for Anakin should not have stopped him from killing Darth Vader. And even if killing Darth Vader would not stop the Empire, it would be a significant blow, because it would deprive the Emperor of his right-hand man. So there really is no reason not to kill him except that the overall plot dictates that Darth Vader cannot die here.

While Obi-Wan is duelling Darth Vader on the planet of the spiky rocks, Reva a.k.a. the former Inquisitor Third Sister, who is very much not dead in spite of getting gutted with a lightsabre last episode, is on a mission of her own. Because as we saw last episode, Reva found the communicator with Bail Organa’s message to Obi-Wan that Haja Estree dropped in the confusion. And the message tells her exactly where to go, namely to Tatooine to find someone named Owen and the kid he is taking care of.

Reva is clearly smarter than 99% of people in the Star Wars universe, because she understands exactly who this kid to whom Bail Organa is referring is.  Just as she also seems to have figured out the connection between Leia and Darth Vader. The question of course is, how does Reva know. True, in her time as a padawan at the Jedi Temple, she may have seen Anakin with Padme and may have noticed Padme’s notable baby bump, which still puts her ahead of 99% of the adult Jedi we see, all of whom politely ignore Padme’s baby bump. As for how she figured out, a) that the child(ren) lived, even though Padme died, and b) what happened to one of them, that remains a mystery. Of course, as an Inquisitor, she has access to all sorts of information and databases and may have pierced at least Leia’s origin together.

However, Reva now knows that there was not one child but two. And she knows where to find the second kid, Luke. So we next see Reva on Tatooine, using her patented Force-powered interrogation techniques on a random local and asking for a farmer named Owen.

Now a lot of science fiction, including Star Wars, tends to forget that planets are very big. And while Tatooine’s human population may not be very dense due to the inhospitable climate, Tatooine still has at least three bigger cities, Mos Eisley, Mos Espa and Mos Pelgo, and plenty of smaller settlements such as Anchorhead. I’d estimate that there are at least a million humans living on Tatooine, maybe more. So Reva walking up to a random person in a random town on Tatooine is like walking up to a random person in a random city on Earth and asking for a farmer named John. She’s literally looking for the needle in the haystack or rather in the sand dune.

Of course, we have no idea for how long Reva has been doing this by the time we see her. After all, Reva is nothing if not persistent and she may well have force-choked half of Tatooine by now. Though her best bet would probably partnering with the local underworld and Jabba the Hutt who would have the manpower and connections to locate Owen.

At any rate, Reva hits paydirt and finds someone who knows Owen. Though he does not talk, but instead warns Owen of the impending danger, when he and Luke come to town to pick up a spare part for their landspeeder.

Owen of course knows exactly who Reva is after and wants to make a run for it, but Beru convinces him that their chances are better, if they make a stand at their farm. They tell Luke that the Tuskens are about to attack (yeah, blame the poor Tuskens) and tell him to hide in a fortified room with a single escape route and make a run for it, when necessary. Then Owen and Beru ready their home for an attack, while Reva descends upon them.

Considering that Owen and Beru are farmers with no formal combat training, even though they live in an area that experiences occasional attacks by Tuskens, they manage to hold their own against Reva – a trained Sith Inquisitor with Force powers – remarkably well. Reva, meanwhile, is surprised at the lengths to which Owen and Beru will go to protect Luke. “You love him as if he were your own son”, she marvels in a moment that is both chilling and heartbreaking, because it shows us very clearly that no one ever loved Reva. Like all Jedi, she was taken from her family at a very young age and never saw them again, then saw the Jedi Temple destroyed and her friends and teachers killed and then survived on the streets, plotting her revenge, until the Inquisitors found her. If you needed any more proof that Jedi training is institutionalised child abuse, here it is. In fact, considering how the Jedi treat their padawans, it’s a miracle that not more of them go to the Dark Side.

“He is my son”, Owen replies to Reva, while tussling with her.

Now the entire Star Wars canon has always focussed on the biological paentage of Luke and Leia, but paid very little attention to the people who actually raised them, Owen and Beru Lars and Bail and Breha Organa respectively. Owen and Beru get a bit of screentime in A New Hope, where Owen is portrayed as the grumpy uncle who wants to keep his nephew on the farm, while Beru pours blue milk and tells Owen that he can’t keep Luke on the farm forever, because there is too much of his father in him. They are both killed unceremoniously off-screen. Bail and Breha never get any screentime at all in A New Hope and are blown up by the Death Star from orbit, though Bail at least gets a bit of screentime in the prequels.

Owen and Beru Lars and Bail and Breha Organa also never get any credit for raising the Jedi wonder twins to adulthood. In two separate continuities, Luke and Leia name their children after Ben Kenobi (who is not the worst choice) and even Anakin, but never after the people who actually raised them. This is a pity, especially since Luke and Leia lucked out in the adoptive parent department and had largely happy childhoods and were clearly loved. And considering that the Star Wars universe not just has a huge problem with orphaned children, but that most of those kids are treated badly and often turned into child soldiers. In the Star Wars universe, ending up with the Mandalorians, a nutty warrior cult with a weapon and helmet fixation, is actually one of the better fates that can happen to a child. So Luke and Leia both got really lucky, compared to pretty much every other character we see except maybe Grogu. Furthermore, considering their parentage, the mental health issues that clearly run in the Skywalker family and the fact that they both have massive Force abilities, it’s largely due to Owen and Beru’s and Bail and Breha’s parenting skills that Luke and Leia do not turn to the Dark Side, but become the heroic people that they are. Okay, so Luke turns out to be pretty much a failure in the end, but he’s merely a failed Jedi who spends the last twenty years of his life sulking on an island, not a Sith Lord.

In the light of all this, it is good to actually see Owen and Beru as well as Bail and Breha being loving parents who will do everything for their adopted kids. Especially since Star Wars has always glossed over Luke and Leia’s childhood.

During the fight at the Lars farm, Luke escapes from the fortified room, as his parents has instructed him to, and runs for the hills, Reva hot in pursuit. The scenes of Reva relentlessly chasing down a ten-year-old boy are genuinely thrilling, even though we already know how it will end.

Luke is knocked unconscious in a rock slide and Reva is looming over him, lightsabre in hand. However, just before she lands the killing blow, Reva sees herself as a terrified child, hiding from assassins, and can’t bring herself to kill Luke.

By the time Obi-Wan arrives and helps Owen and Beru to pick themselves up, Reva comes out of the desert, carrying Luke in her arms, unconscious but alive. Owen and Beru immediately attend to their son, while Reva sinks to her knees in the desert, horrified both that she was willing to kill a ten-year-old boy and do the exact same thing that was done to her as a child and that she failed to avenge her friends. Obi-Wan tells Reva that she did the honourable thing and that she is free now to become whoever she wants to be. Reva buries her lightsabre in the sand (the deserts of Tatooine must be full of discarded lightsabres by now) and leaves.

Now Reva was probably the most interesting character in the entire series and Moses Ingram’s performance as this very deeply disturbed woman was fantastic. Though considering the actress fell afoul of the same toxic fanboys who fling abuse anytime a woman or person of colour dares to do anything in a legacy franchise, even if said franchise always had women and people of colour in prominent roles, I doubt we’ll see more of Reva, which is a pity.

And while on the subject of racist Star Wars fans,  I recently came across this video by someone who worked in the toy industry about why Lando Calrissian figures don’t sell and tend to clog store shelves in the US. “Let me guess, the answer is because some Star Wars fans and some toy-buying parents are racist shitheads”, I thought and that’s exactly what the answer was, though phrased much more nicely. And this is Lando, a character from the original trilogy a.k.a. the films the toxic fanboys claim to love.

That said, I still have a hard time forgiving Reva that she was willing to murder a ten-year-old kid for revenge, even if she did not do it in the end. Never mind that killing Luke – or Leia for that matter – wouldn’t have been much of a revenge on Anakin, because at this point Anakin has no idea that Padme had twins, let alone that the children survived. As far as he knows, Padme and her unborn child both died on Mustafar. Would Reva murdering a child he did not even know he had affect Anakin? Well, it would affect most people, but this Anakin we are talking about and he is a psychopath.

The episode ends with an extended coda of Obi-Wan first visiting Alderaan to make sure that Leia – who has taken to wearing Tala’s holster wherever she goes – is okay and return Lola. He gets a big hug from Leia, who has finally decided what she is going to do with her life and her position. Obi-Wan tells Leia that she is very like both her parents and promises Bail and Breha that he’ll be there for them whenever they need him again. We all know how that story ends and that Obi-Wan arrives too late to save anybody on Alderaan.

Next, Obi-Wan is back on Tatooine. He visits Owen Lars once more and gives him the shuttle toy for Luke (the same one Luke still has ten years later at the beginning of A New Hope) and promises Owen that he will not bother them again, because Luke deserves to grow up like a normal kid. Ever since the standoff at the farm, Owen has softened towards Obi-Wan and asks him if he wants to meet Luke. So Obi-Wan finally gets to meet Luke face to face. Luke looks up at him and looks so much like Anakin did back in The Phantom Menace that you can see Obi-Wan’s heart breaking. Because let’s not forget that Obi-Wan was the one who basically raised Anakin, even if he was barely out of his teens himself.

Finally, Obi-Wan relocates to the home in the mountains where he is living when we meet him in A New Hope. However, someone is waiting there for him. It’s none other than the Force ghost of Qui-Gon Jinn, still portrayed by Liam Neeson. Obi-Wan asks Qui-Gon why he never came, no matter how often Obi-Wan called for him. Qui-Gon replies that he was always there, only that Obi-Wan could not see him. But now Obi-Wan has come to terms with his massive PTSD, he can finally see Qui-Gon’s ghost. So PTSD affects Force abilities? That’s an interesting idea, only that the show never really follows up on it.

So what’s the verdict on Obi-Wan Kenobi as a whole? The show was enjoyable enough, less disjointed than The Book of Boba Fett and boasted some fine performances with a particular shout-out to Ewan McGregor (whose performance in the prequels actually made me like Obi-Wan, a character I did not like very much in the original trilogy) and Moses Ingram. Plus, it was nice to get a glimpse of Luke’s and Leia’s childhood and see them growing into the people they will become, but then I am a sucker for childhood flashbacks for beloved character.

However, Obi-Wan Kenobi was also completely superfluous, because we already know what happens to these characters. We know that Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, Luke, Leia, Owen and Beru and Bail and Breha won’t die here, because we know exactly where and when they will die. So there’s never any real tension regarding their fate, because we know they’re not in danger.

I did like many of the supporting characters introduced – Reva, Tala, Roken, Haja Estree. They were all interesting characters and unlike the main characters, their fate is not a foregone conclusion. All of these characters could have – and Tala did – die.

In fact, Obi-Wan Kenobi would have been a better show, if the focus had been on one of the supporting characters and how their story intersects with Obi-Wan’s. Reva’s dogged quest to avenge herself on Anakin or the proto-rebels of The Path smuggling Force-sensitives to safety or the adventures of Haja Estree, fake Jedi and real hero would all have made for a more compelling story than the one that we got. However, Disney would not greenlight a Star Wars show focussing on a new, never-before-seen character. Yes, there is The Mandalorian – and there is a reason why it is the best of the Disney Star Wars shows by a mile – but the selling point of The Mandalorian was basically “Mandalorians are badarses and you think they’re cool, don’t you?” That was enough to get people to watch the first episode and then Grogu showed up and hooked everybody.

Considering how well Disney is doing by Marvel, where even the duds at least fail in interesting ways, it’s a mystery why they are mishandling Star Wars so badly. True, The Mandalorian was good, but The Book of Boba Fett was an unholy mess and Obi-Wan Kenobi was okay, but predictable, added very little to the overall storyline and mostly retread familiar ground.

Maybe the Cassian Andor show, which premieres next month, will be better. At least, it will be largely divorced from the Jedi and the Skywalker family.

The 2022 Dragon Award Finalists Look Really Good… With One Odd Exception

As always this time of year, when you’re way too busy with other things, the Dragon Awards decided to drop their 2022 ballot. I sometimes swear they do this on purpose.The Dragon Awards are a fan award given out by Dragon Con, a massive SFF media con in Atlanta, Georgia.

This is only the seventh year of the Dragon Awards, but they have gone through quite a bit of history since then, as recounted here by Camestros Felapton. You can also find my previous posts about the Dragon Awards and their tangled history here.

Anyway, the finalists for the 2022 Dragon Awards were announced today and the ballot looks really good with only a single WTF? finalist (more on that later) and a lot of popular and well regarded works on the ballot. This confirms a trend that we’ve seen in the past three years, namely that the Dragon Awards are steadily moving towards the award for widely popular SFF works that they were initially conceived to be, as the voter base broadens and more people become aware of the award, nominate and vote for their favourites. It’s a far cry from the early years of the Dragon Awards, where the finalists were dominated by Sad and Rabid Puppies, avid self-promoters and Kindle Unlimited content mills with a few broadly popular books mixed in.

So let’s take a look at the individual categories:

Best Science Fiction Novel

This category not only looks very good, it could easily be a Hugo or Nebula ballot. The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi and Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky all could (and well may) be on the Hugo or Nebula ballot. Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey probably wouldn’t make the Hugo or Nebula ballot, because later entries in long series rarely get nominated in the Best Novel category. But given how popular The Expanse series is, I’m not at all surprised to see it here. Finally, we have You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo, which makes me very happy, because it’s a great novel that deserves more recognition.

Diversity count: 5 men (James S.A. Corey is two people), 1 woman, 2 authors of colour, 1 international author

Best Fantasy Novel

This category also looks very good and none of the finalists would feel out of place on a Hugo or Nebula ballot. Indeed, the excellent Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki is a Hugo finalist this year (though personally, I would have put it in science fiction rather than fantasy) and the also excellent Green Bone Saga, of which Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee is the final instalment, is a Best Series Finalist. The first book in the series, Jade War, was also a Dragon Award finalist. Ursula Vernon a.k.a. T. Kingfisher is both a Hugo and Dragon favourite and I would not be surprised to see Nettle and Bone on the Hugo ballot next year. Besides, it’s a great book. Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James is one of those books that sit on the borderline between genre and literary fiction and Marlon James did win the Booker Prize in 2015. It’s also a fine fantasy novel and I’m glad to see it on the ballot. Daniel Abraham’s solo work tends to get less attention than his collaborative work as James S.A. Corey, so I’m happy to see him nominated for Age of Ash. I was a bit surprised to see Book of Night by Holly Black nominated in this category, not because Holly Black isn’t a fine and highly popular writer, but because she is best known as a YA writer. However, Book of Night is apparently aimed at adult readers and therefore absolutely appropriate here.

What’s a bit surprising in this category is the absence of Larry Correia, either alone or together with co-author Steve Diamond, since Correia is a Dragon Awards favourite and had at least two eligible books.

Diversity count: 2 men, 4 women, 3 writers of colour, 1 international writer

Best YA/Middle Grade Novel

This category not only looks like an Andre Norton or Lodestar Award ballot, it actually is half of the 2022 Lodestar ballot, because A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger, Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko and Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao are all Lodestar finalists this year and very fine choices they are, too. Nnedi Okorafor and V.E. Schwab are always worth reading and so I’m not surprised to see Akata Witch and Gallant on the ballot. A Dark and Starless Forest by Sarah Hollowell is the only Dragon finalist in this category that’s unknown to me, but then I am not much of a YA reader. Judging by the number of Goodreads and Amazon reviews, it’s definitely a popular book.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 non-binary, 4 writers of colour

Best Military SFF Novel

Once again, this category looks most like the early years of the Dragon Awards with several indie books and Baen books on the ballot. But then, military SF is dominated by Baen and indie writers, so that’s no surprise. The Shattered Skies by John Birmingham also got quite a bit of attention among people who are not hardcore military SF readers and is probably the finalist I will end up voting for. Former countryman Marko Kloos is popular with Dragon Award nominators, so I’m not surprised to see his latest Citadel here. Resolute by Jack Campbell is a book in his popular Lost Fleet series. Unless I’m mistaken, this is the first Dragon nomination for Jack Campbell, which is surprising, considering how popular he is. A Call to Insurrection by David Weber, Timothy Zahn and Thomas Pope is connected to Weber’s hugely popular Honor Harrington series. J.N. Chaney is a popular and prolific indie author. He is nominated for Backyard Starship along with co-author Terry Maggert. Against All Odds by Jeffery H. Haskell is the first book in a series published by indie small press Aethon Books.

Diversity count: 9 men

Best Alternate History Novel

This category is a big surprise this year, because it does not resemble the early years of the Dragon Awards at all. There is not a single indie author on the ballot, instead all finalists are popular traditionally published books. She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan is also a Hugo finalist this year and a fine choice. Charles Stross has been nominated in this category for the Dragon Awards before and of course also has multiple Hugo nominations and even wins. Invisible Sun is the third book in his Empire Games alternate history series. When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill got quite a bit of buzz, though I wasn’t aware it was alternate history. The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley by Mercedes Lackey passed me by completely, though I usually like her work and Mercedes Lackey is of course a hugely popular writer. I’m a bit surprised to see no nomination for the late Eric Flint, though a book in the 1632 series he originated, 1637: Dr. Gribbleflotz and the Soul of Stoner by Kerryn Offord and Rick Boatright, is nominated. Apparently, Rick Boatright died last year, so it’s nice that he get s posthumous nod for his work.

Which brings me to this year’s WTF? finalist, namely The King’s Daughter by Vonda N. McIntyre. Not that The King’s Daughter is a bad book, in fact it’s excellent. But it also isn’t eligible. Now Vonda N. McIntyre died in 2019. Posthumous award nominations are a thing, of course, but The King’s Daughter is not a new novel, but was published in 1997, i.e. 25 years ago, and even won the Nebula Award under the title The Moon and the Sun. A movie based on the book was released earlier this year after many years in development hell and on the shelf. As a result, The Moon and the Sun was re-released as The King’s Daughter, but it’s still the same novel that won the Nebula in 1997. Honestly, does no one at the Dragon Awards check this stuff?

Diversity count: 3 men, 4 women, 1 author of colour, 2 international writers, 2 deceased writers

Best Media Tie-in Novel

There are no surprises in this category. We have two Star Wars tie-in novels written by fan favourites Timothy Zahn and Claudia Gray, two Star Trek tie-in novels by David Mack and John Jackson Miller and a Halo tie-in novel by Troy Denning.

Diversity count: 4 men, 1 woman

Best Horror Novel

This is another really good ballot full of fine and popular horror novels. Stephen Graham Jones is probably the best horror author currently writing. He is nominated for My Heart Is a Chainsaw. Grady Hendrix is not just a great horror historian, but also a very good horror writer and is nominated for The Final Girl Support Group.  Chuck Wendig is another Dragon Award favourite and is nominated for The Book of Accidents. Daryl Gregory is a frequent presence on Hugo and Nebula ballots. I haven’t heard of his Dragon finalist Revelatory before, but it sounds like something I should like. I enjoyed Caitlin Starling’s 2019 SF horror novel The Luminous Dead a whole lot. Her Dragon finalist The Death of Jane Lawrence is billed as gothic horror and should be right up my alley. Hide by Kiersten White got a lot of buzz, when it came out earlier this year and I’m not surprised to see it on the ballot.

Diversity count: 4 men, 2 women, 1 writer of colour

Best Comic Book

This is another very good ballot. We’ve got three mainstream superhero comics in Immortal X-Men, Nightwing and Devil’s Reign, a Marvel mini-series about Wilson Fisk a.k.a. Kingpin becoming mayor of New York City. Marvel is also represented by their (very good) King Conan comic, which I’m very happy to see here. Step by Bloody Step and Twig are two newish SFF comics by Image that I hadn’t heard of before, but that sound really good.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make comics.

Best Graphic Novel

This is another mix of old and new favourites. Both Monstress and Saga are perennial Hugo and Dragon favourites and also excellent comics. Though I’m surprised that Saga is nominated in Graphic Novel rather than Comic Book, because Saga was on an extended hiatus and only started up again recently and the next collection won’t be out until October. There’s also a Wonder Woman and a Dune graphic novel. Geiger is a post-apocalyptic graphic novel by Geoff Jones and Gary Frank, who was one of my favourite artists, back when I was still reading comics. Bitter Root is an Eisner Award winning series about a family of monster hunters in Harlem.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make graphic novels.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series

We have a whole lot of very popular series here. The Expanse and Stranger Things are long-time favourites and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is the best of the three live action Star Trek series currently running. I have zero interest in either For All Mankind or Wheel of Time, but both are popular, both were Hugo finalists and Wheel of Time is based on a very popular novel series, too. The Boys is another popular and well regarded series. The only finalist in this category that surprises me a bit is Halo, for even though the TV show was based on a series of extremely popular videogames, neither fans of the games nor regular viewers seem to have liked it very much. I’m a bit surprised to see neither Moon Knight nor Ms. Marvel nor Obi-Wan Kenobi on the ballot, considering how perennially popular Marvel and Star Wars are.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make TV series.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Film

This category is a mix of expected and somewhat unexpected favourites. Marvel is represented by Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, its two most fan servicy films of recent times. The also eligible Marvel movies Eternals and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings did not make the ballot. In the case of Eternals, this isn’t surprising, because Eternals was as close to a dud as Marvel can get (though it’s getting a sequel), but Shang-Chi was generally popular and IMO better than either No Way Home or Multiverse of Madness. Dune is pretty much a no-brainer, because a) it’s Dune and b) it’s actually a good adaptation. Ghostbusters: Afterlife surprises me a little, because not even the fanboys who hated the 2016 Ghostbusters (which at least tried to do something new and was a lot of fun) seem to have liked this one very much and everybody else felt it was overly nostalgic and fan servicy. Free Guy was a lot of fun and I’m glad to see it nominated. And while I had heard of The Adam Project, I had to look up what it even was about (time travel), because it largely passed under my radar. Interestingly, both Free Guy and The Adam Project share the same director (Shawn Levy) and star (Ryan Reynolds), so are we maybe seeing the impact of eager Ryan Reynolds or Shawn Levy fans here?

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies.

The Gaming Categories

I’m still not a gamer, so all I can say is that I have heard of some of those games, so they must be popular. And something called Thirsty Sword Lesbians must be good based on the title alone. Apparently, two of the boardgames are not SFF, but then that’s nothing new for the boardgame category at the Dragons. One year, a (very good) game about tile-making won.

All in all, this is a very good ballot and shows that by now the Dragon Awards have gone beyond their initial niche of puppies and indie writers. Coincidentally, the Dragon Award ballot also proves that the Hugos and Nebulas are not in fact out of step with the tastes of “real fans(TM)”, because the same books and authors get nominated for the Hugos, Nebulas and Dragons these days, even if the Dragons tend to have more male finalists than the other two awards. Also, I find it amusing that authors like John Scalzi, Cat Rambo or Chuck Wendig, who are vehemently disliked by the Puppies, are all on the ballot as are a lot of women and writers of colour.

Of course, it would still help if the Dragon Awards administrators would at least do a cursory check to avoid things like a 25-year-old novel being nominated due to a re-edition. Nonetheless, the Dragons seem to have reached full mainstream respectability by now and are another addition to the spectrum of SFF Awards with a few unique quirks such as their odd category breakdown and eligibility period.

But of course the question is: How do the Puppies react to a Dragon Award ballot they’re pretty much guaranteed to hate? Oddly enough, the reactions in Puppyland are fairly muted. Everybody seems to be way too upset about the FBI searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to worry about the Dragons. Even Declan Finn is oddly silent.

Below, you’ll find a few puppy-adjacent reactions I found:

dragoncon ballet got in. I assume under 1k submitted because Scalzi and Cat Rambo are up for a science fiction novel against James Corey’s latest.

I guess no one from Baen participated. The award is now boring.

— Pinkerton’s Ghosts (@PinkertonsGhost) August 12, 2022

Just looked at mine. I only voted in 1 category.

This is a wasteland.

I only knew of 2 selections. Weber and the Backyard Starship option. They were in the same category. https://t.co/TgEd0hQicT

— Fiannawolf, Questing for the Superversive. (@Fiannawolf2) August 12, 2022

Isn’t this the putz that shit all over the @DragonCon awards? He went on at length about how it was irrelevant and he wouldn’t accept the award because…skreeee “only the same white guys are nominated!’ BTW, there were POC, women etc. Scalzi was just being his douchenozzle self” https://t.co/1TQoWirXWD

— Conservative Biker (@RightSideBiker) August 12, 2022

So in short, it’s the usual “I have never heard of any of these books” along with the also usual “We hates John Scalzi” stuff.

For more Dragon Awards discussion, see also Camestros Felapton’s post.

Non-Fiction Spotlight: Cosplay: A History by Andrew Liptak

After the Hugos is before the next Hugos, so I’m continuing my Non-Fiction Spotlight project, where I interview the authors/editors of SFF-related non-fiction books that come out in 2022 and are eligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards. For more about the Non-Fiction Spotlight project, go here. To check out the spotlights I already posted, go here.

For more recommendations for SFF-related non-fiction, also check out this Facebook group set up by the always excellent Farah Mendlesohn, who is a champion (and author) of SFF-related non-fiction.

Today’s featured non-fiction book is the definitive history of a phenomenon born out of SFF fandom. Therefore, I am happy to welcome Andrew Liptak, author of Cosplay: A History, to my blog today.

Tell us about your book.

The book is a big overview of how and when cosplay came about! Cosplay as we understand it today has undergone some considerable changes over the decades, and as a historian and cosplay, I was interested in how and why we ended up dressing up at cons.

There’s the conventional history: that Forest Ackerman dressed up for the 1939 World Science Fiction convention, but there’s precedence to that: there were people dressing up well before he and his then-partner, Myrtle Douglas (who made his costume, along with one for herself) suited up in New York: Jules Verne had a costume party where guests showed up as his characters, there was an early convention at the Royal Albert Hall to commemorate a popular science fiction novel, Vril, and some other scattered examples throughout the 19th and early 20th century.

But you can also go back a bit further, and I wanted to also explore the broad story of how costumes became a tool for storytellers and how their use evolved with time.

In many ways, this is one of the core stories in the book: how we use costuming to relate to stories, and when you look at it through that lense, you see other, similar examples: people using costumes for political purposes, like protests (all the way up to the modern day), or education (living history and reenacting), and for one’s own personal journey to understand their identity, their fandom, or just for their own entertainment.

The other core part of the book is that it’s a story of fandom and community: it’s about how fans come together to share in their common interest, whether it’s to show off their work at a convention or to help one another build their costumes. I’ve been a member of the 501st Legion, a Star Wars costuming group for nearly 20 years, and that group takes a bit of the forefront of the book, because it’s a big part of my upbringing and identity, but also because I felt that it serves as a solid, representative microcosm for the growth and mainstream profile that the activity has experienced in the last couple of decades.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m a historian and journalist who’s written pretty extensively about science fiction and fandom for a long time. I fell in love with Star Wars when the special editions hit theaters, and after burning my way through the various tie-in books in high school, I jumped over to everything else I could get my hands on, from Redwall to Lord of the Rings to Foundation to Dune, and quite a bit more.

I studied history and then military history (BA and then MA), and found myself writing for a bunch of places like SF Signal, io9, and Kirkus Reviews about SF/F stuff. One of those projects was a history of SF/F at Kirkus, which gave me a broad understanding of how the genre evolved over time, and introduced me to some of that earlier history.

From there, I jumped over to The Verge, a tech / culture site run by Vox Media, and wrote extensively about SF/F stuff. But more importantly, I worked with two editors, Bryan Bishop and Laura Hudson, who really transformed how I thought about storytelling and how we relate it it: how does fan culture impact the things we consume, and what do those various books, comics, TV shows, games, and movies shape our view of the world? And of course, there’s the technology stuff, like how social media and the internet helps those things.

Above all, I’m also a cosplayer. I was a Star Wars fan from ‘97, and acquired my own set of stormtrooper armor in 2003: I’ve been with the group ever since in various roles, from regular trooper to holding leadership roles in my local garrison, and I’ve branched out to various other costumes over the years.

What prompted you to write/edit this book?

Saga Press’s Joe Monti did! He met some members of the 501st Legion at San Diego Comic Con back in 2015 or 2016, and reached out to me to see if there was a story there. The project went through a bunch of iterations until 2019 when we sold it. It went from a bit of a more specific history of the 501st to a much wider focus of cosplay in general, which I’m pretty thrilled at: the more I developed the project, the more I recognized how much bigger this story was.

Joe ended up setting me up with fellow Saga / Gallery editor Amara Hoshijo, who picked up the project and really helped me hammer it into shape from a manuscript into an actual book.

But I’ve always been interested in history, and how the past connects to the present that we currently exist in, and learning about the past helps to bring about some understanding as to why the institutions and traditions that surround us are here.

Why should SFF fans in general and Hugo voters in particular read this book?

In short, it’s a history of fandom as a community — not just the capital F literary traditions/community, but of the wider history of fandom and how it’s evolved and changed over the decades.

This was a particularly fascinating thing to watch as I interviewed folks or pored over documents from Fanac.org: how did the act of costuming become an institution within the worldcon scene, and how did it grow out and fracture as fandom expanded and Balkanized as science fiction and fantasy entertainment began to take over movie theaters, television sets, and video game consoles? It’s a really fascinating evolution, and one that I think is well worth paying attention to, culturally.

It’s a high-level overview of the larger fan world, one that touches on a bunch of these various tribes. I wanted to make sure that it was approachable to folks who have been fans for decades, long-time costumers/cosplayers/makers, and to folks who were just casual fans or who wanted to learn a little more. Hopefully, it’s a good entry point to understand the larger cosplay — and fan — world.

Do you have any cool facts or tidbits that you unearthed during your research, but that did not make it into the final book?

Hm. There were some things that I just didn’t have time or space to include: I wanted to write a chapter about furries, but just ran out of time to really do the topic justice. I also came across some interesting tidbits about the impact of laws designed to curb KKK members from masking up around the US and how that’s impacted costuming in various places. (Didn’t quite fit with the topic of the book, but it’s something I’d like to delve into a bit more.)

Those are things that I’m hoping to do a bit more research into in the coming months for what I’m thinking of as “lost chapters”, which I’m thinking I’ll release in the newsletter I write.

But with any history, there are things you learn after the fact that you just didn’t come across during the initial research. Arthur Conan Doyle dressed up as his character Professor Challenger, and apparently there was a Roman Emperor, Commodus, who apparently dressed up as the hero Hercules. And, literally while writing this, someone just told me about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic, who apparently commissioned a Jannissary uniform for a costume ball he attended. There’s undoubtedly plenty of other examples of this that I’ll be reading / researching!

SFF-related non-fiction is somewhat sidelined by the big genre awards, since the Nebulas have no non-fiction category and the Best Related Work Hugo category has become something of a grab bag of anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere. So why do you think SFF-related non-fiction is important?

I think the awards are an excellent way to highlight the scholarship that takes place about science fiction and fantasy. As a historian (I might be a bit biased here), I think it’s important to research and understand the past, because the fans, authors, editors, the works they produced and the events they participated in help to form the foundation of the community that we’re part of now. Those actions and works have a profound, lasting effect on everything that follows: look at how we’re still grappling with issues of equality and equity with fan circles. So, understanding and deconstructing the road that brought us here helps us conceptualize the environment we’re in today.

There’s been a lot of good work towards this end, and I think that an award nomination is useful to encourage people to seek out these works and these histories.

That said, I don’t think that something like “Best Related Work” necessarily needs to be limited to just book-length projects, but I do think that there’s value in specifically promoting long-form scholarship, because of the work that goes into it, and what such works yield for the reader and community at whole. I think it’s worth pointing out that the works that have ended up on the Hugo ballot have largely been well worth the inclusion on those lists.

The primary issue that I see is that “Best Related Work” is something of a catch-all, and I think that if we want to make sure that we’re putting attention to these things, and if we really value this as a category Hugo members need to draw up some more specific boundaries for that (maybe even something as simple as BRW Long / Short form). But then again, the Hugo ceremony is already pretty long and mission creep is a thing.

Are there any other great SFF-related non-fiction works or indeed anything else (books, stories, essays, writers, magazines, films, TV shows, etc…) you’d like to recommend?

There are a couple of books that I’ve picked up in recent weeks/months. The first is Ben Rigg’s Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, which is a voice-y nerd history but which essentially boils down to an interesting business book about TSR and a bunch of the product, business and organizational mistakes they made over the course of theri run. Riggs is essentially asking a question: why did Wizards of the Coast buy TSR in the 1990s, and lays out the case for that. It’s less about the making of D&D (there are lots of histories of this), which I found intriguing.

The other is Phasers On Stun! How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World by Ryan Britt, which I’m reading now, and which is proving to be an interesting history of that particular franchise.

Where can people buy your book?

It’s published by Simon & Schuster’s Saga Press, so anywhere you buy books! If you’re interested in a signed copy, some of the stores near me, like Bear Pond Books, Yankee Bookshop, and Phoenix Books should have some that they can mail to you if you’re not in the area.

Where can people find you?

My main home online is a newsletter I write, Transfer Orbit, which I write on a somewhat regular (weeklyish) basis. You can also find me on my website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Thank you, Andrew, for stopping by and answering my questions. Do check out Cosplay: A History, if you’re at all interested in the history of fandom and cosplay.

About Cosplay: A History:

A history of the colorful and complex kingdom of cosplay and fandom fashion by Andrew Liptak, journalist, historian, and member of the legendary fan-based Star Wars organization the 501st Legion.

In recent years, cosplay—the practice of dressing up in costume as a character—has exploded, becoming a mainstream cultural phenomenon. But what are the circumstances that made its rise possible?

Andrew Liptak—a member of the legendary 501st Legion, an international fan-based organization dedicated to the dark side of Star Wars—delves into the origins and culture of cosplay to answer this question. Cosplay: A History looks at the practice’s ever-growing fandom and conventions, its roots in 15th-century costuming, the relationship between franchises and the cosplayers they inspire, and the technology that brings even the most intricate details in these costumes to life.

Cosplay veterans and newcomers alike will find much to relish in this rich and comprehensive history.

About Andrew Liptak:

Andrew Liptak is a writer and historian based in Vermont. He graduated from Norwich University with a master’s degree in military history and writes about history, technology, and science fiction in his newsletter Transfer Orbit. His work has appeared in Armchair General Magazine, Clarkesworld Magazine, Gizmodo, io9, Slate, The Verge, and other publications. He coedited the anthology War Stories: New Military Science Fiction, and his short fiction has appeared in Galaxy’s Edge Magazine and Curious Fictions.

***

Are you publishing a work of SFF-related longform non-fiction in 2022 and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Non-Fiction Spotlight: Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-Lee

After the Hugos is before the next Hugos, so I’m continuing my Non-Fiction Spotlight project, where I interview the authors/editors of SFF-related non-fiction books that come out in 2022 and are eligible for the 2023 Hugo Awards. For more about the Non-Fiction Spotlight project, go here. To check out the spotlights I already posted, go here.

For more recommendations for SFF-related non-fiction, also check out this Facebook group set up by the always excellent Farah Mendlesohn, who is a champion (and author) of SFF-related non-fiction.

Biographies of prominent SFF and SFF-adjacent people are quite common on the Hugo ballot and today’s featured non-fiction book is just such a biography.

Therefore, I am pleased to welcome Alec Nevala-Lee, author of Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller to my blog today.

Tell us about your book.

Inventor of the Future is the first comprehensive biography of Buckminster Fuller, the architectural designer best known for the geodesic dome and the concept of Spaceship Earth. During his lifetime, Fuller was the most famous futurist in the world, and he had a particularly strong influence on the founders of Silicon Valley.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

My book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction was a Hugo and Locus Awards finalist in 2019. On the fiction side, I’ve published three suspense novels with Penguin and many hard SF stories in Analog, which will be releasing my latest novella, “The Elephant Maker,” sometime next year. I studied classics at Harvard University. My favorite writer is Jorge Luis Borges, and my other big influences include the movies of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, The X-Files, and the Pet Shop Boys. I’m half Chinese and half Finnish/Estonian, I identify as bisexual, and I live with my wife and daughter in Oak Park, Illinois.

What prompted you to write/edit this book?

I’ve been interested since high school in Fuller, whom I first encountered in the pages of the Whole Earth Catalog. After Astounding, I was looking to expand the range of subjects that I could cover as a writer, and Fuller was an obvious choice—his life expresses many of the themes that I’ve explored in my earlier work, and until now, there’s never been a reliable biography that covered his entire career using the best available sources. I hoped that writing it would be a real intellectual adventure, and it was.

Why should SFF fans in general and Hugo voters in particular read this book?

Norman Spinrad once referred to Fuller as “a science fiction hero in the real world,” and his career offers a case study in how a certain kind of technologist might attempt to realize these ideals in practice. Fuller believed in solving social problems through design and engineering rather than politics or activism, which was part of the reason that he had such an impact on so many key players in the personal computer revolution. His approach didn’t always work as intended, and I see him as both a role model and a cautionary tale for enacting the values of science fiction in real life. (The book also features cameo appearances from numerous science fiction writers, including H.G. Wells, L. Ron Hubbard, and Arthur C. Clarke.)

Do you have any cool facts or tidbits that you unearthed during your research, but that did not make it into the final book?

One fact that I discovered too late to include in the book is that the director George Miller—of Max Max fame—is a huge Fuller fan. According to a recent profile in the New York Times, a lecture by Fuller that Miller attended in medical school inspired him to pursue filmmaking as well as medicine: “He synthesized so much that was rumbling around loosely [in] my mind.”

SFF-related non-fiction is somewhat sidelined by the big genre awards, since the Nebulas have no non-fiction category and the Best Related Work Hugo category has become something of a grab bag of anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere. So why do you think SFF-related non-fiction is important?

There are dozens of books that ought to be written about the history of science fiction, both because it’s inherently fascinating and for the insights that it can provide for authors and fans who are trying to make sense of the genre for themselves. (I’ve learned a lot about how to survive as a writer—and as a human being—from the lives that I’ve studied.) Since the financial rewards for this kind of work aren’t always great, a Hugo Award that was expressly designed to honor serious nonfiction would encourage a wider range of scholars, which is why I’m in favor of establishing a separate category for Best Nonfiction Book, while keeping Best Related Work as it is.

Are there any other great SFF-related non-fiction works or indeed anything else (books, stories, essays, writers, magazines, films, TV shows, etc…) you’d like to recommend?

The best works of SF nonfiction that I’ve ever read—aside from Astounding, of course—are probably Isaac Asimov’s memoirs In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt, as long as you remember that there are less attractive aspects of his personality, particularly his harassment of women, that aren’t reflected there.

Where can people buy your book?

Inventor of The Future will be available everywhere on August 2, although I’d prefer that people support their independent bookstores, e.g. by searching for the book on Indiebound.

Where can people find you?

I have a blog at www.nevalalee.com, which isn’t particularly active these days, although the “Science Fiction Studies” page includes hundreds of thousands of words of history and criticism that I wasn’t able to fit into Astounding. If you want to see what I’m currently doing, you can follow me on Twitter at @nevalalee.

Thank you, Alec, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, which just came out yesterday. And if you haven’t read it already, also check out Alec’s other SFF-related non-fiction book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, which is probably my favourite non-fiction book of recent years.

About Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller:

From Alec Nevala-Lee, the author of the Hugo and Locus Award finalist Astounding, comes a revelatory biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of startup culture and shaped America’s idea of the future. 

During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. To his admirers, he exemplified what one man could accomplish by approaching urgent design problems using a radically unconventional set of strategies, which he based on a mystical conception of the universe’s geometry. His views on sustainability, as embodied in the image of Spaceship Earth, convinced him that it was possible to provide for all humanity through the efficient use of planetary resources. From Epcot Center to the molecule named in his honor as the buckyball, Fuller’s legacy endures to this day, and his belief in the transformative potential of technology profoundly influenced the founders of Silicon Valley.

Inventor of the Future is the first authoritative biography to cover all aspects of Fuller’s career. Drawing on meticulous research, dozens of interviews, and thousands of unpublished documents, Nevala-Lee has produced a riveting portrait that transcends the myth of Fuller as an otherworldly generalist. It reconstructs the true origins of his most famous inventions, including the Dymaxion Car, the Wichita House, and the dome itself; his fraught relationships with his students and collaborators; his interactions with Frank Lloyd Wright, Isamu Noguchi, Clare Boothe Luce, John Cage, Steve Jobs, and many others; and his tumultuous private life, in which his determination to succeed on his own terms came at an immense personal cost. In an era of accelerating change, Fuller’s example remains enormously relevant, and his lessons for designers, activists, and innovators are as powerful and essential as ever.

About Alec Nevala-Lee:

Alec Nevala-Lee was a 2019 Hugo and Locus Awards finalist for Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, which was named one of the best books of the year by The Economist. His latest book is Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller (Dey Street Books / HarperCollins), which will be released on August 2. He is the author of three novels, including The Icon Thief, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, and The Daily Beast. His short stories have been published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Lightspeed, and two editions of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, as well as the audio collection Syndromes.

Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre: “Holiday on Orkas Island”

It’s time for another Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre photo story, featuring the latest addition to my collection. The name “Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre” was coined by Kevin Beckett at the Whetstone Discord server.

The small toy aisle at the German drugstore chain Rossmann has turned out to be an unlikely source of Masters of the Universe Origins toys, because they tend to have even hard-to-find figures at regular prices. And during my last visit to the local Rossmann store, I hit paydirt and found Clawful, the lobster-like Evil Warrior who is almost impossible to find in Germany. I got even luckier at the shoe shop next door and walked out with a pair of half-price Dockers.

Clawful is ready to wreak havoc with his claws and his club.

In the 1980s Filmation cartoon, Clawful looks quite different from his toy counterpart, probably because the cartoon was based on an early prototype. He also seems to be one of a kind. However, the 2002 He-Man cartoon reveals that there is a whole species of lobster people out there and that they hail from a place called Orkas Island, which also happens to be the retirement home of an aged warrior called Dekker, Duncan’s former mentor and predecessor at Man-at-Arms.

So I decided to send Prince Adam, Teela and Man-at-Arms on a well-deserved holiday and have Clawful and his fellow aquatic Evil Warrior Mer-Man cause some trouble. I also got out a bunch of maritime themed objects to serve as props.

On Orkas Island in the Ocean of Gnarl (yes, I looked up the names):

“I was a bit skeptical about leaving the palace unguarded at first, but this beach holiday was a great idea, Adam.”

“The palace will be fine, Teela. After all, your guards are there to watch over it. And I think we all needed a break from fighting the Evil Forces of Skeletor. Plus, you and I finally get to spend some time alone.”

“Yes, luckily my father decided to go fishing in that secluded cove that only he and Dekker know about.”

“Come to think of it, it is a bit strange that your father left so quickly.”

“By Zoar, you don’t think he knows, do you? I mean, we’ve been so careful.”

“Well, I still have all my body parts, so I don’t think he knows.”

“Don’t be silly! My Dad loves you. You’re the son he never had.”

“That doesn’t mean he thinks I’m good enough for his daughter.”

“You’re the Crown Prince of Eternia and Champion of Grayskull. If you’re not good enough for me, then who is?”

In a secluded cove nearby:

“I wonder how long I have to stay here and pretend to be fishing, so Adam and Teela can have some privacy. Sigh, I just wish they’d make it official, so we can all stop pretending we don’t know what they’re doing when they sneak off to be alone. Not that I never snuck off to meet my lover. Though I do hope I was a bit less obvious about it. Sigh, I just hope they’re careful. Not sure I’m ready for grandchildren yet. Yeah right, because I was so careful that I managed to get the Sorceress of Grayskull pregnant…”

Also nearby:

“Well, Skeletor is the Lord of Destruction, Beast-Man is the Master of Beasts, Evil-Lyn is the Mistress of Dark Magic and I shall be King of the Ocean.”

“No, I’m King of the Ocean.”

“And what about me?”

“You can be Lord of the Lobsters.”

“I’m not a lobster. Hey, check that out!”

“Yeah, it’s Prince Adam making out with Captain Teela. Again.”

“Right. Prince Adam and Teela.”

“Oh, and if we capture them, Skeletor will be so pleased that he’ll promote me to his right-fin man.”

“No, he’ll promote me to his right-claw man.”

Back on the beach:

“You’re wearing too many clothes, Adam.”

“Ahem, if you want He-Man, I told you that’s too dangerous. I could hurt you.”

“I don’t want He-Man, stupid, I want Adam… naked.”

“In that case, I think I can oblige.”

“Why is it that whenever I see Prince Adam, he’s either chained up in the dungeons of Snake Mountain or boning the Captain of the Royal Guard?”

“Well, I’ve also seen him standing next to the King at a public audience.”

“What were you doing at one of King Randor’s public audiences?”

“I was using the opportunity to scout out the palace and look for weaknesses, okay? Anyway, let’s go and get them!”

“Oh crap, it’s Mer-Man and Clawful. Is it too much to hope for some privacy around here? Is it too much to ask for a quiet day on the beach just once.”

“Let’s just kick their arses and get back to business.”

“Do you want to change? I can hold them off, while you run behind those rocks over there.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone. And besides, Prince Adam is enough for those guys.”

“What’s the matter, Your Highness? Are you waiting for He-Man to come and save your arse?”

“I don’t need He-Man to deal with the likes of you, Mer-Man.”

“Then bring it on, puny Prince!”

“Feel the power of my claws, Captain.”

“Feel the power of my staff, lobster face.”

“For the last time, I’m not a lobster.”

“Who’s puny now? Yield, Mer-Man!”

“That silly little shield won’t protect you from my club, Captain.”

“That’s a buckler, fish-face.”

“I’m not a fish either.”

“Now I’ve got you, my pretty. Skeletor will be very pleased about this catch.”

“Ah, let go off me!”

“Teela, no!”

Meanwhile, in a secluded cove nearby:

“Dekker was right, fishing can be very meditative. I think I’ve finally figured out how to fix that pesky induction coupling on the Road Ripper. Though if I don’t catch something soon, we’ll go hungry tonight, because I’m pretty sure Adam and Teela are way too busy with each other to catch any fish…”

“Aaahhh!”

“What’s that? Screams? By Zoar, what now? I’d better go investigate.”

“Oww, this hurts.”

“Let go off her, Clawful, and take on someone your own size.”

“Leave my daughter alone, you lobster-faced fiend!”

“For the last time, I’m not a lobster.”

“Touch my daughter again and I’ll make crab cakes out of you.”

“I’m not a crab either, I’m Karikoni. Is that so difficult to understand?”

“Teela, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Adam. Just a little bruised, that’s all.”

“Uhm, I’d better make my escape. Let Clawful go to prison for this. After all, it was his idea.”

“Wait for me, Mer-Man!”

“Are you hurt, my daughter?”

“I’m fine, Dad. Just a few bruises.”

“Let me see. I just want to check if anything’s broken.”

“Thanks for the help, Duncan. Though I could have handled him.”

“Oh, I have no doubt of that, Adam.”

Later, on the beach:

“Well, after all that excitement, I’m certainly hungry. Good thing you caught that lobster, Duncan.”

“Well, I guess the two of you were much too busy to catch anything.”

“Busy with Clawful and Mer-Man, you mean?”

“Of course, what else would I mean?”

Meanwhile, back at Snake Mountain, Skeletor is having a shrimp boil of his own:

“You had Prince Adam and Teela in your claws and let them go? You’ll pay for that, you incompetent seafood platter.”

“No, Skeletor, I beg you, have mercy! Not the Old Bay!”

***

The Old Bay gag was inspired by my friend and fellow Hugo finalist Paul Weimer, who remarked that the Twitter version of this story was missing an Old Bay joke. And since I had a container of Old Bay seasoning in the pantry, I let Skeletor have a shrimp boil of his own.

I hope you enjoyed this Masters-of-the-Universe-Piece Theatre Photo Story. There will be more stories soon. Meanwhile, here is a preview of Coming Attractions:

Yes, I got myself a Castle Grayskull. Though it’s still in the box for now, because the space where I’m planning to set it up is not ready yet, because the carpenter is on holiday.

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just bought some toys, took photos of them and wrote little scenes to go with those photos. All characters are copyright and trademark their respective owners.