Neuromancer Trailer, Hugh Howey Cries About AI, Spider-Man Box Office Insanity - Fandom Pulse Daily Briefing
Huge amount of stories over the weekend. I try not to work weekends and schedule one or two in advance, but it seems like there’s just too much going on. I can’t stop! I hope it’s appreciated. Still making a push for my Valiant Frontiers. I really am so proud of this series, and we had huge sales over the weekend. Let’s keep it going because I’d love to get to a point where I can say yes I’ll start book 4!
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William Gibson Signs Off On Neuromancer’s Trailer, But Adapting The “Unfilmable” Novel Was Never Going To Be Simple
Apple TV’s Neuromancer dropped its first real trailer at San Diego Comic-Con this year, and the reaction split almost immediately into what social media was calling “cooking” versus “cooked.” William Gibson, who published the novel in 1984, came down firmly on one side. He shared the trailer on Bluesky and wrote: “Anyone who doesn’t see how very satisfi…
Silo Author Hugh Howey Admits His Own Success Story Couldn’t Happen Today, And His Essay Proves It Point By Point
Hugh Howey, the self-published author behind Silo, posted a long essay this week titled “The End of an Era,” mourning what he frames as the death of a specific window in publishing history. Going through his argument section by section, in his own words, shows something he doesn’t quite say outright: his career was a product of timing far more than of exceptional craft, and the platform he built that career on has already changed in ways that matter more than the AI concerns he’s actually writing about.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Just Had The Second-Biggest Opening Weekend In Box Office History, By Refusing To Play The Multiverse Game
Spider-Man: Brand New Day pulled in an estimated $355 million domestically this weekend, just $2 million shy of Avengers: Endgame’s all-time domestic opening record from 2019. Worldwide, it hit $927 million, the second-biggest global debut ever, again trailing only Endgame. It’s the biggest opening in Sony’s entire history as a studio, and it now gives …
WisCon’s 2010 Purge of Elizabeth Moon Was Cancel Culture Before Anyone Had the Word for It
Elizabeth Moon was announced as a guest of honor for WisCon 2011, then had that invitation stripped weeks later by the convention’s parent organization, SF3, over a blog post about citizenship and immigration. That happened in October 2010, five years before “cancel culture” became a phrase anyone used, and it remains one of the cleanest examples of the pattern that would go on to define the next fifteen years of genre fandom: say something a mob doesn’t like, watch the institution fold within days.
Bronze, Brown, and Blue: The Sociosexual Hierarchy of Pern
Anne McCaffrey built her dragon-color system decades before Vox Day gave a name to the taxonomy of the sociosexual hierarchy it accidentally dramatizes. Bronze riders compete directly for command. Brown riders hold the middle as competent seconds. Blue riders make up the ordinary mass of the fighting wings. Green riders carry a coding McCaffrey herself …
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Delivers Tom Holland’s Strongest Peter Parker Yet
Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened July 31 and immediately started rewriting box office record books. The film pulled in $355 million from 4,487 North American theaters, the second-biggest domestic debut in history behind Avengers: Endgame’s $357 million, and China alone delivered over $71 million in its first day there. Critics and audiences lined up beh…
J. Michael Straczynski Takes Babylon 5 To The Podcast Arena After Years Of False Starts
J. Michael Straczynski has a new home for Babylon 5, and this time it isn’t a network. The creator of the 1990s space opera announced this week that he has taken control of the official Babylon 5 YouTube channel, framing it as a podcast style gathering spot for the cast and the fandom.
Trek Shorts Releases New TNG Era Fan Film Featuring Romulans
Samuel Cocking, the purveyor of Trek Shorts, recently raised 20,000 pounds for his most ambitious productions of fan films yet. This latest features an ensign in The Next Generation era who faces off in a shuttle against a Romulan warbird. It can be watched here:
The AI Witch Hunt Just Claimed a $2.4 Million Publishing Deal
Minotaur/Macmillan has pulled the unpublished crime novel Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body after a reported $2.4 million deal collapsed over unproven suspicions the manuscript was written with AI assistance. The book, about a cleaner from Nigeria who relocates to Houston to pursue a chemistry PhD and gets pulled into a cartel operation through his talent for…
Clover Press Is Reviving Marvel Masterworks, and Collectors Are Finally Getting Their Unfinished Runs Closed Out
Clover Press is bringing Marvel Masterworks back from the dead, and the first four announced volumes go straight at the exact runs Marvel left hanging when it pulled the plug. Publisher Hank Kanalz confirmed the deal at the ComicsPRO Retailer Day during San Diego Comic-Con, with Uncanny X-Men Vol. 18, Super-Villain Team-Up Vol. 1, the final Walter Simon…
Can Dungeons & Dragons Save Itself? Inside The Brand’s Two-Year Fight To Win Back Its Own Fans
Dungeons & Dragons spent the last several years alienating a huge share of the people who built it, and this week’s Dark Sun reveal is either the clearest sign yet that Wizards of the Coast finally understands the damage, or the latest marketing gesture in a company still unwilling to say plainly what went wrong. To understand which one it actually is, you have to look at how bad things got first.