Today would’ve been the birthday of Leslie Fish, folk musician and filker. She passed away at the end of November 2025.
Decades ago when I first discovered filk, Fish was one of the names I started to soon recognize. Some of the songs I still remember include “Carmen Miranda’s Ghost”, “Signy Mallory” with Mercedes Lackey, “Space Hero” and “One Last Battle” with Vic Tyler (I believe), and “Wind’s Four Quarters” with Mercedes Lackey and Heather Alexander.
“Hope Eyrie” is the only one of hers I’ve sung in a crowd, the last time at a filk worshop at Ropecon 2024 or 2025 (or maybe both), which is an indication of her enduring influence.
RIP, Ms. Fish.
An occasional feature on music and sound-related notions.
Odysseus was a well-received Finnish-style larp (or live-action role-playing game) for 104 players organized first in 2019 and again in 2024 by Illusia ry and a team of dozens of volunteers. It was set in an original world drawing heavily from Battlestar Galactica, but also inspired by Star Trek and The Expanse.
Three runs of the game were held each year, and large space ship sets were built in a rented school building, where the game area provided a 24/7 immersive experience for the players over 48 hours, followed by a debrief / end party.
Now a number of the crew are attempting to create a commercially viable version of the game. They’re setting up a business entity, Ellarion Tales, and are prepping an improved version to be known as Odysseus – First Light.
To provide a background to the project, Laura Kröger, the lead producer and narrative designer, talks with Adrian Hon at MSSV about the thought process and challenges, including what commercial game running in Finland requires.
At this writing, their goal is 10 runs, starting from October 2026 and continuing until summer 2027, with the possibility of more if stretch goals for the crowdfunding are reached. Two of these 10 initial runs will be so-called local runs (materials will still be in English but the spoken language will be either Finnish or Swedish).
The Odysseus – First Light Indiegogo page prelaunched in late January. (Meaning, you can read about the project but cannot back it yet.) The campaign proper will start on March 6 and end on April 12th, 2026.
(Note that they are still finalizing the project; details might change before the campaign actually launches.)
I haven’t played in Odysseus myself, but I know several people who have—some more than once, in fact—and everyone has been bursting with praise. (And some thought-out criticism as well, sure, but overwhelmingly the comments have been good things.) In addition, Erik and I were able to tour the set during their July 2024 visiting hours, and can testify first hand to the quality of the propping and environments, including soundscapes. It was truly extraordinary! If the folks at Ellarion Tales are indeed able to improve on Odysseus, their larp(s) should continue to provide legitimately memorable gaming experiences.
For fiction to work, it has to balance a certain amount of realism with the fictional. A shared experience between the writer and reader is needed to make sense of the invented. Too much of the latter, and the text becomes gibberish; too much of the mundane, and the spark goes out.
Most published writers manage it well, but now and then you find a detail that practically smacks you in the face with suspension of disbelief, but not necessarily through any fault of the author.
Take this section of a sci-fi novel, for instance:
“Everyone remembered firsts. Your first love, first kiss, the birth of your first child, or the sight of your first snowfall. A life was built on the back of firsts. Shining moments, pins in the timeline, holding who you were together.”
–Acaelus Mercator in The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O’Keefe
I have to confess that the first snowfall had me laughing out loud, and long and heartily, too! Not because it’s an unreasonable first to remember per se. (I gather there are a lot of people for whom it was indeed a remarkable moment to witness!) I laughed because this is a case of inadvertent but nevertheless a complete and a total case of nooope.
My first snow would be extremely unlikely for me to remember, having grown up two hours south of the Arctic Circle. As unusual as remembering your first rain for the Irish, maybe, or your first mountain for someone who grew up in the Rockies.
Sometimes, despite your best efforts, your audience just completely bounces off your writing. And that’s fine, because at best it’s how we discover the remarkable in our everyday.
O’Keefe, Megan E. The Blighted Stars. London: Orbit, 2023, p. 180.
Image by Eppu Jensen
Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.
So, the first season of Murderbot tv adaptation ended. I have thoughts and feelings! But: more importantly, the announcement was already made via multiple channels that the series has been renewed for season two!
Yaaaaay!
I will want to binge the whole series through one more time at least and ruminate on some of the changes before I can say anything sensible.
Alexander Skarsgård and cast of Murderbot TEASE what to expect from All Systems Red adaptation by Radio Times on YouTube
I haven’t yet seen the latter; I’m saving it for just the right time. (It’s Eurovision week, and as Finland entirely and utterly unofficially has two representatives this year, I have more incentive to stay up wayyy past my usual bedtime three nights this week. I’m almost too old for this shit, but not yet!)
Despite digging, I haven’t been able to find exactly when the episodes become available. keydekyie on Tumblr very kindly reminded the world that Apple lists the next day as the air date to avoid confusion due to different time zones, so the first episodes actually dropped on Thursday at 9 p.m. EST.
Woot! Although in Finnish time, that’s 4 a.m., which is definitely not the easiest of viewing times. (It’s been a long while since being 7 hours ahead of EST felt this hard.) OTOH, it means we could see each new episode over breakfast… That’s an intriguing thought…! Anyway, we *still* need to decide whether we want to see one episode a week, or whether we’ll wait till the end to binge it all at once.
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The article is definitely worth a look, especially since (at this writing) it has more photos than IMDB. Way more. And they look great! I mashed up some of them into a collage, below, mostly for my own enjoyment:
We still don’t see much of the company or Corporation Rim even in these first look photos, but it looks dark and imposing (top left in my mashup). I assume the other spaces with orange accents are either the Preservation Aux habitat down on the planet or their hopper, or (less likely) the DeltFall survey habitat.
Readers of Murderbot books know that Preservation is everything Corporation Rim isn’t when it comes to human rights and comfort, and it’s fantastic how the set design has implied that with a paler, more cheerful color scheme and with plants (bottom right in my mashup). Looks like some of them are edible, but some look decidedly decorative.
A tidbit that’s definitely not from the first Murderbot book is revealed by the first look article: “One of the funniest sequences in the series involves […] a human indentured servant who has been alone too long in the reaches of space and makes the mistake of trying to seduce the uninterested security unit.”
Err. Hm. I could see why they’d want to include the scene (as a further hint of how SecUnits in general work), but mostly I can’t see how it could add more than confuse. We’ll have to wait for the series to dissect it further.
The clip doesn’t reveal much, just that Murderbot doesn’t have a bellybutton or nipples.
But the trailer!
(Confession: My very first thought was ‘Murderbot has a stupid voice’—sorry, Alexander—followed by ‘but I’m sure I’ll get over it’.)
The writing team has included Murderbot’s favorite show The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. For real: we’ll actually get to see some of the show, and it looks fabulous! And what a cast—according to Vanity Fair, Sanctuary Moon stars John Cho, Jack McBrayer, Clark Gregg, and DeWanda Wise.
Also, they’ve kept Murderbot’s inner dialogue—woot!—and the Preservation team looks and feels absolutely bang on. They even have colorful rugs on their mission! Plants and rugs lugged along on a planetary survey—if that doesn’t tell you anything about Preservation’s attitude towards life in general, I don’t know what will.
I’m ridiculously excited about the Murderbot series. (I had to force myself to go back and delete a whole bunch of exclamation marks from this post, if you can believe it!) I really, truly hope it’ll be good, and no-one’s marketing-directored it to death. So far it’s looking promising!
The first two installments of the 10-episode series will be streamed on Friday, May 16. This double feature will be followed by new episodes every Friday through July 11, 2025.
They also released the first two photos of actor and executive producer Alexander Skarsgård as Murderbot, one with helmet on and the other with helmet off.
There really isn’t much detail in these photos; I wish there was a little more. Stylistically they’re not too far off of what I imagined on the basis of the books, except that Murderbot’s armor looks too flimsy. (Maybe they’ve written in a reason for that?)
This February’s press release also describes the series as a comedic thriller, which is interesting in itself. Yes, there are comedic elements, and yes, there is suspense and combat—in fact, I remember being flabbergasted when Murderbot exploded into action literally on page two of All Systems Red. I mean, it wasn’t a surprise that some fighting would be involved, but that quickly? It was an unusual attention-grabbing move to barely introduce your main character, never mind the world, before sweeping your readers into a fray with large hostile life forms with big teeth. Not to mention the trouble at the DeltFall survey site and the threat of EvilSurvey that steadily mounts through the book. Makes me wonder exactly which aspect, the comedy or the thrill, has Apple TV decided to focus on, or if both feature equally, whether they’ll be able to pull off a nice balance.
The IMDB entry for Murderbot reveals another two tiny tidbits: there will be a spaceship named Twodor and a named side character Venenek, neither of which appear in Martha Wells’s original writings. I’m sure IMDB will fill in more info as the release draws nearer.
One thing is sure: this spring will be a great time to re-read Murderbot. Not that there’s ever a bad time. 🙂
We’ve probably all seen endless examples of stereotypical fantasy Elves: those slim, tall, tranquil, ethereal, Art Nouveau-esque figures that glide effortlessly through a major convocation or battle field carnage alike. The type that for example various Weta artists immortalized for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies.
I’ve been hankering for something slightly different for a while. (At least in depictions of taller Elves; ElfQuest Elves and other Elves smaller in stature already start with some variety.) Here’s what I’ve come across.
Some illustrators make their Elves with non-stereotypical weaponry or gear. Pavel Hristov’s Steppe Elf carries a whopper of an axe and chews on a stalk of grain. There are also tassels hanging from the piece of cloth on his waist; those don’t seem to go with the Elf stereotype.
This Elven marksman explorer by L3monJuic3 has more typical weaponry—bow and arrow—but unlike her, stereotypical Elves are rarely seen carrying backpacks loaded with mundane items like shovels and cauldrons. Elves do typically eat and presumably have other bodily needs, right, even in the more highfalutin high fantasy worlds?
I cannot think off the top of my head any tinkerer nor wanderer type Elves (except for Drizzt Do’Urden in Forgotten Realms), but I don’t consider myself terribly well-read as far as fantasy goes. Anyway, for me these alternative takes were delightful.
Closest to my heart, however, are illustrations of Elves in non-stereotypical environments, especially among birches, in addition to ones showing different body shapes and happy demeanors.
This birchwood Elf by Andrius Matijosius may be a little scruffy-looking, but I love how his cape mimicks birch bark and arrows resemble leaf-topped trunks.
The Gate of Forest Elf Castle by ZAHD&ART also features fall colors. I love this birch-lined alley. A forest of birches with their white trunks lined up always looks so striking.
Moving to physical characteristics. Un Lee’s illustration of an Elf company is marvellous! Lee wanted to create a varied group much like the Dwarves in the Hobbit but with Elves instead.
Besides uniform body shapes, stereotypical Elves come in a fairly narrow range of moods. This portrait of an ancient Elf by eccentric_bee is serene on the surface, yes, but it looks to me that there’s joy underneath that’s often missing in depictions of Elves. Love it!
In Making Stuff we share fun arts and crafts done by us and our fellow geeks and nerds.
Based on director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movies, the spin-off series Dune: Prophecy premieres in a few days on HBO (also to stream on Max). Here is the official trailer:
Dune: Prophecy | Official Teaser – Influence | Max by Max on YouTube
Dune: Prophecy | Official Teaser 2 – Control | Max by Max on YouTube
Ok, wow. Not sure how to unpack it all.
I read the original Dune trilogy at an impressionable age, so I have fond memories of the world, even if I wasn’t then able to grasp all the bleaker implications. I’m also in general of the opinion that published stories including—if not especially—the SFFnal ones need more women who are active in their own right.
On one hand, D:P is specifically a creation story for Bene Gesserit, i.e., it should be full of active women. As Bene Gesserit can use their training for impressive physical feats as well as truthsaying, it should also have potential for women being awesome, which is always, well, awesome. 🙂
On the other hand, while I find their training conceptually intriguing, the major goal of Bene Gesserit is a breeding program. Women used as broodmares turns me off (as does considering men little else than sperm donors or cannon fodder), and the fact that the perps here are women makes it only very slightly better.
Furthermore, these clips have numerous unsavory-to-me details: e.g. the imperative “Sisterhood above all” sounds incredibly obnoxious, dancing around a fire pseudo-mystic claptrap, screaming with messy hair and scribbling edgy art projects in black borders on unhinged. (Then again, trailers always lie, so who knows.) Nor do I care for brutalist concrete architecture, nor an arid planet after a desolate one—there just doesn’t seem to be enough variety in this supposedly interstellar empire’s culture or environments.
The main foil seems to be this scruffy dude. He generates no interest at all in me, just a fleeting bafflement of how can someone apparently lacking merit of any kind have the gall to appear before the emperor looking so scruffy. (Harrison Ford’s Han Solo at least had the charisma and skills, even if he supposedly was scruffy-looking. He was well cast; the young Solo wasn’t. On the basis of these clips, this dude isn’t either.) What is this great power he’s supposedly gifted with, anyway? Being able to bore others to death?
Olivia Williams and Emily Watson (playing the founding sisters of Bene Gesserit, Tula and Valya Harkonnen, respectively) plus Mark Strong (as the emperor) are the only actors I remember seeing elsewhere. In addition, I have previously seen the work of only one of the named series writers.
Also, while in general I want my entertainment to involve brainy plots, at the moment I’m not too keen on stories about power acquisition, political intrigues, or backstabbing.
All of the above put together (plus my lukewarmness towards Villeneuve’s adaptation) means I will nope out of D:P. I really would’ve wanted to like the movies more, and consequently this series, especially since it tells us more about Bene Gesserit.
Anyone here planning to see D:P?
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I have to say that I’m not wowed. It’s very pretty to look at, beautifully cinematic, even breathtaking at times. However, it really doesn’t seem to be a movie for me.
We’re not in the 80s or 90s anymore, when just about any SFFnal movie was sure to get my eyeballs simply by existing. Then, for a while during and after the aughts, handsome effects and CGI often got me to see a movie I wouldn’t necessarily have seen at the theater otherwise. Now we have reached a saturation point. For a good long while I have just not been able to be bothered about seeing a new release at the theater unless there’s something special about it, or a movie hits a very particular interest of mine.
(I will certainly not take the trouble, if trailers merely make a movie look like a whole bunch of men doing man-things and relegates women to the sidelines. It’s one thing to place your story in a society where minorities aren’t formally given recognition by the society, but there’s a huge difference between writing or filming those minorities in a dismissive way and a respectful way. I found Oppenheimer, for example, a wonderful example of the latter.)
Even reading that Megalopolis is loosely based on Roman history (the Catilinarian Conspiracy in 63 BCE involving an aristocrat attempting to overthrow the Republic) didn’t make it more interesting to me. Granted, the time stop gimmick is slightly interesting, but I confess that it, too, lost its appeal by the end of the trailer.
It is a shame I won’t see more of Nathalie Emmanuel, whose work in the Fast & Furious franchise and in Game of Thrones I’ve liked. Perhaps I’ll find Megalopolis in the library, if it’s ever imported to Finland. At this writing it doesn’t look like it, but we’ll see.
Megalopolis opens on September 27, 2024.
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Co-Geeking 
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