Pluribus: 48.729%.

When I was watching the first episode of Pluribus, the new science fiction series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, my first reaction was, "This feels familiar." 

I realize that this might not be everyone's reaction, but I've been a science fiction fan for my entire life, and as such I have a substantial database of references to draw upon for things like this.  There's a bit of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain to it; a lot of Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 novel The Puppet Masters*; and a hint of Darwin's Radio, by Greg Bear.  It's not really The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing (From Outer Space), although they're both close cousins, there's maybe just a dab of Blood Music in there someplace, also a Greg Bear novel (based on a short story), and, when you think about it, a suggestion of I Am Legend, Richard Matheson’s three-time movie adapted novel, but with more smiling.

But none of those were the first thing that crossed my mind.  That honour goes to My Little Golden Book About Zogg, an obscure parody by cartoonist Jason Yungbluth, who chose the same method of transmitting the viral code as in Pluribus: encoding it into an interstellar message carried by a modulating wave carrier.

And, as in the page above, you do have to wonder how much of the known Universe has decoded a mysterious message from the stars...

- Sid

* The Puppet Masters details exactly the same kind of extraterrestrial takeover and amalgamation, except the aliens are macroscopic rather than microscopic, about the size and shape of a starfish.

2026 Hugo Award Nominees: This Download Could Have Been A Link.

Voting for this year's Hugo Awards opened this week - for anyone interested, the full list of finalists can be found at:

https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2026-hugo-awards/ 

Along with the list of nominees, the Hugo Awards Packet was also made available to voting members.  It's an impressive 17.7 GB download, a surprisingly large number considering that none of the Long or Short Form Dramatic Presentation nominees have included full copies of their selections, although Frankenstein has been generous enough to include a screener link and password.  Sadly, Best Novel nominees Robert Jackson Bennett for A Drop of Corruption, and Adrian Tchaikovsky for Shroud, also chose not to include full copies of their novels, as did Naomi Novik for her Best Novella entry, The Summer War*.  However, it's gratifying to see that, in addition to the ePub versions of their work, many of the other nominees have elected to add audio versions as well.

Looking over the nominees, I was a bit surprised by the Long Form selections - or rather, by the options that didn't make the list. The Long Form nominees are: 

• Andor (Season 2)
• Frankenstein 
• KPop Demon Hunters 
• Mickey 17 
• Sinners
• Superman 

I thought Bugonia might get a nod - and doesn't Weapons have a supernatural element?.  None of the Marvel options of Thunderbolts*, Fantastic Four, or Captain America: Brave New World made the cut, and the latest chapter in the Avatar series was also shut out. And, if the door is opened to entire seasons by the inclusion of the second season of Andor, it's surprising that the Season One of Murderbot didn't receive a nomination, given its popularity - especially considering that two Murderbot episodes are nominated in the Short Form category, and a third episode was withdrawn by the showrunners to comply with the episode limit for the category.**  Why not just put the whole season in for Long Form?  Or Pluribus, which is also structured as a single long narrative but only represented by a single entry in the Short Form list, as is Severance?  

In contrast, I'm fine with Doctor Who only having one nominated episode rather than the whole season, given its episodic nature and the varying list of writers, but Pluribus is very much Vince Gilligan's baby and could logically be treated as a single body of work.  (Interestingly, Andor is the product of four writers, which would seem to make it a better candidate for single episode consideration.)

All of this fails to answer the question of why the download is so large?  As it turns out, the Related Work category, which cover non-fiction work related to the genre, contains an epic 4.66 GB episode from The History of Westeros podcast - slightly ironically, given that unlike the Long Form entries, the episode is also available for free on YouTube.   

- Sid

* I appreciate that authors are concerned with uncontrolled distribution of their work, but honestly, that ship has already sailed - if any of these pieces are available in digital form, I guarantee you that they're already being downloaded for free. 

** There's also a nominated Murderbot novelette from Martha Wells, which I'm looking forward to reading, regardless of whether it gets my vote.

"And so it begins..."

Happy New Year, Revolutionaries!  January 1st is traditionally a day in which people take a moment to evaluate their lives and consider areas of improvement as they recover from New Year's Eve, and I thought I'd take a moment and look at the last year.

Considering that I'm retired, I have to confess that I had a slow year in terms of fandom.  If anything, it was sub-par in terms of things like catching up on reading, making inroads into my TV viewing backlog, or continuing with book cataloguing.  Instead, my first year of retirement was pleasantly restful: naps, daily walks, leisurely cups of tea, and a lot of time watching YouTube™ - as well as a brief flirtation with Duolingo, which ended after three months when I finally accepted that the free version wasn't teaching me anything I hadn't learned from Mrs. Wood in high school French class. 

That being said, I also attended Worldcon in 2025, which stands out as the peak of my life as a science fiction fan.  I had a great Space Marine VR experience, we paid an enjoyable pre-boycott visit to Disneyland (and by extension Galaxy's Edge, which I love), I saw some good SF movies, like Thunderbolts, Mickey 17, Fantastic Four, Superman*, and Tron: Ares*, and made a casual start on Season Two of Andor and Season One of Pluribus, both of which are excellent.

And now it's 2026, and I feel that it's time to get back in the groove.  As such, my New Year's resolution is to read a book a week, watch an hour of TV a day, and do one blog posting a week, as well as finally finishing up my long-running book catalogue project, which is currently dead in the water at "Rowley".  As with any resolution, I can't promise that I'll stay the course for the entire year, but at least it gives me a place to start.

A happy New Year to anyone reading this, and I wish you good luck with whatever resolutions you may choose to undertake for 2026! 

- Sid

* To be honest, I went against the current on these two.  I didn't really love Superman, and I quite enjoyed Tron: Ares. 

With apologies to James Cameron.

Hello, Mr. Cameron. I hope you don’t mind if I call you James?

Congratulations, it looks like Avatar: Fire and Ash is off to a good start, that’s a nice little Christmas gift - first weekend pulled in $88M USD in the US, and $345M globally. Admittedly, that's against a $400M budget, so a few more people need to head out to the theatres over the holiday before there's a profit, but it's still pretty good.  The film builds on the look of epic grandeur that the first two installments have taught us to expect, and also brings some new perspectives of Pandora to the screen.

All that being said - James, I’m very sorry, but I probably won’t be seeing it.

Again, it looks spectacular, but I don’t know if that’s enough for me these days. I’m enjoying Pluribus right now, but even with things like mocking up Air Force One* and the occasional grenade explosion, I suspect their special effects budget is lower than the bill for their crafts services.  

Which is significant, because it demonstrates that it’s possible to tell a thoughtful and intriguing science fiction story without spending $400M on world building or a 3D IMAX screen.  In saying that, I feel I’m doing Avatar and Pandora an injustice: there's no denying that it's an astonishing feat of creativity, but after seeing the trailer, I somehow felt that it had told me everything I needed to know about the latest entry in the franchise without having to invest three hours and $22 for all the details.

So, once again, my apologies. As a long time science fiction fan, I do feel a bit guilty that I’m not representing, but I honestly don’t think that my minor defection will stop Fire and Ash from being a success.

However, it’s not over ‘til it’s over.  I wasn’t going to see James Gunn’s Superman** movie and that ended up happening after all, so there’s still a chance - I’ll keep you posted.

All the best for the holidays, 
- Sid 

* I assume that wasn’t the actual Air Force One, but who knows, it’s not difficult to imagine that the current administration would be happy to make a buck by renting it out.

** It’s interesting that DC has done so many reboots of both Superman and Batman without being able to hit the groove that the MCU seemed to find so effortlessly, hopefully Mr. Gunn will be able to establish a firm foundation for the new DCU.

As a change from captions on cat photos.

In a Beautiful Mind moment of schizophrenic clarity I saw the book for what it was: not a gentle introduction to life's most profound curiosity, but a primer for the parasitic offspring of an invisible invasion!

Jason Yungbluth, Deep Fried Comics

The Internet has spawned a legion of webcomics, blogs, commentaries and forums, and I'm sure that there are people out there who fill every waking moment by subjecting other people to a barrage of links to their favourite net memes. I've done my best to avoid that here, although now and then a link to something will sneak in.

In this case, however, I couldn't resist. There's just something about the Zogg invasion manual ...

- Sid

UPDATE: December 1, 2025  

Many years later...

My wife and I watched the first episode of Pluribus last night, and I thought to myself, "Wait, didn't that invasion guide by what's-his-name have something about an encoded virus?"  I checked my saved links and Jason Yungbluth's site rang a bell.  Sadly, for whatever reason the posting was no longer live, but fortunately there's a backup on web.archive.org (to which I redirected the link above), as well as a narrated YouTube™version.