(1) YOU CAN’T FIRE ME, I QUIT! “Amazon pulls sponsorship from Paris book festival after booksellers’ association boycott” reports the Guardian.

Amazon has withdrawn from the Paris book festival after a boycott by France’s booksellers’ association prompted a row over the company’s sponsorship of the event.

The festival, due to take place from 17 to 19 April, will now go ahead without the backing of the US retail company, after a mutual decision by organisers and Amazon to end their partnership.

The dispute started after the French booksellers’ association Syndicat de la Librairie Française (SLF) announced it would boycott the festival in protest at Amazon’s involvement.

The SLF has been sharply critical of Amazon, arguing that it destabilises the book trade. In a statement reported by the Bookseller, it accused the company of seeking “to flood the market with fake AI-generated books, [which are] promoted by fake reviews, written by fake readers [and rise] to the top of fake rankings”. It also criticised the publishers’ association and the festival organisers for what it described as an “irresponsible” decision to collaborate with Amazon, taken in the name of short-term financial interests….

(2) LOSING THE NUMBERS GAME. Marissa Levien tells her Literary Hub audience “What We Lose When We Gamify Reading”.

At the dawn of 2026, I spent an irresponsible amount of time cataloguing what I did in 2025. There are so many ways to aggregate a personality these days: Letterboxd kept track of how many movies you watched this year, Fitbit tallied the number of steps I took, the New York Times has the data on how many times I beat Wordle in three. According to Spotify Unwrapped, I spent most of last year listening to Talking Heads (and I did briefly hang my whole identity on this statistic). Even Discord chimed in to tell me my Top 5 Emojis used in 2025—my #1 was “ROFL Face”. However, as a writer and fiction professor, the biggest statistic that floods my algorithm every January is books: how many books did I read this year? What was your reading goal? Fifty books? One hundred? Let’s compare, and by that I mean: let’s compete.

One the surface, there’s nothing really wrong with this behavior. If I compare myself to other readers on social media (again, by “compare” I mean “compete”) and it gets me to read more, isn’t that a net positive? And isn’t it also positive that I can share my reading tastes with my fellow humans and find community? It’s true that Goodreads apps, social media, and end-of-year reading goals have encouraged us to read more. But, to our detriment, it is also affecting how we are reading.

Reading goals aren’t a new phenomenon—there’s a whole generation of us who grew up with the promise that, if we read a certain number of books in a summer, our local library would be obligated to throw us a pizza party. It’s not necessarily bad to count your books or to aim for a certain number. I think about my students, some of whom barely completed one novel in the entirety of their high school career, and the voice in my head says: anything to get people reading is a good thing.

If we’re gamifying our reading, we stop reading widely: we pick different versions of a story that we are guaranteed to like, and with that we lose a sense of well-roundedness, a sense of discovery and surprise.

But even if we’re reading more, all this quantifying is forcing readers into harmful patterns. First and most obvious, when we read to hit a goal rather than simply for pleasure, everybody reads as fast as possible to hike up their numbers. It’s like the entire reading public is a high school freshman trying to cram To Kill a Mockingbird at midnight the day before the assignment is due. We technically finish the book, but we retain nothing. Ask someone what they thought of A Guardian and a Thief, they’ll say, “Who knows? That was ten books ago.” More worrisome, when we read fast, we experience nothing. The book does not have a chance to burrow into our heart.

The second problem is: it’s less and less likely that A Guardian and a Thief is even on a person’s list if they’re shooting for a tally of, say, one hundred books a year. If we’re trying to read fast, the best strategy is to pick books that read easy. Generally this means books that are prose-light, plot-forward, and propulsive. It means we’ll forego a Moby Dick or a Middlemarch in favor of five declensions of A Court of Thorns and Roses. (Before the pitchforks and torches emerge, I should mention that I adore fun, propulsive books. We need these kinds of stories in our life, for the joyous escape of it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t read A Court of Thorns and Roses. I’m saying you shouldn’t only read it.)…

(3) AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAD COME. Chris Barkley assures us, “Just for the record, I consider the 13 episodes of The Lone Gunmen as my favorite spinoff sff series of all time”: “The Lone Gunmen turn 25: Vince Gilligan reveals how his X-Files spinoff accidentally predicted 9/11” at Polygon.

Having predicted everything from the Trump presidency to Disney’s purchase of Fox, The Simpsons has gained a reputation for prognosticating the future. Yet 25 years ago, another Fox series featured a plotline that foretold one of the most significant moments in American history just six months before it actually happened.

That series was The Lone Gunmen, a spinoff of The X-Files which focused on the adventures of Byers (Bruce Harwood), Langly (Dean Haglund), and Frohike (Tom Braidwood), the three publishers of a conspiracy-centric supermarket tabloid named The Lone Gunman. In the show’s pilot episode, which aired on Mar. 4, 2001, the trio investigates a plot where evildoers within the government plan to hijack a passenger plane via remote control and fly it into the World Trade Center. The script even contains the haunting line, “They’re going to crash the plane into the World Trade Center.”

“Except in our version, the good guys won,” showrunner Vince Gilligan tells Polygon.

By Sep. 11, 2001 however, The Lone Gunmen was already a distant memory for most. After a 13-episode run, the series had been canceled due to low ratings, and its cliffhanger ending wouldn’t be resolved until April 2002, in an episode of The X-Files which killed off the trio. …

Do you have any thoughts on why The Lone Gunmen didn’t last?

[Vince Gilligan] If The Lone Gunmen was on the air now and it had the same number of viewers it did then, it’d be the biggest show on TV. For the pilot, we had more viewers than we ever had on Breaking Bad. The TV world has changed so fundamentally, but I guess it was low viewership, or so Fox thought, and it probably was. And every week it was declining a bit, and that’s not what you want to see. The weird thing is, I was so bummed out when Lone Gunmen was canceled, but if we had been renewed, I don’t know how the hell we would’ve done it because we’re still doing The X-Files. I think we would’ve all died.

(4) OMEGA MAN. “Is Nus Braka’s weapon in the latest ‘Starfleet Academy’ a ‘Galaxy Quest’ in-joke?” asks Space.com. “There’s something refreshingly familiar about the Omega 47 weapon in ‘300th Night’”.

…But it surely can’t be a coincidence that the top-secret variant “Starfleet Academy” Big Bad Nus Braka stole from Starbase J19 Alpha in “Come, Let’s Away” is called Omega 47, just a stone’s throw away (34, to be precise) from Omega 13.

In fact, while this Omega’s functionality is very different from the “Galaxy Quest” iteration — it shreds subspace, rendering warp travel impossible within its blast radius — it feels like the “Trek” writers’ room is taking the opportunity to unleash a great big NSEA Protector in-joke on an unsuspecting 32nd century….

(5) LOST CAUSE FOUND. The Guardian’s Ben Childs raises some concerns (and an eyebrow or two) about the forthcoming Game of Thrones movie in the latest “Week in Geek” column: “The Game of Thrones movie is coming – but how are they going to make audiences root for the baddies?”

There must be a few Game of Thrones fans out there who have rather mixed feelings about the news that Warner Bros is to bring George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire “universe” to the big screen. On the one hand, the prospect of a properly enormous fantasy epic featuring dragons the size of commuter trains is undeniably appealing; on the other, have they really thought this thing through?

Reports suggest that the feature film will take as its source material Aegon Targaryen’s conquest, which brought the purple-eyed, dragon-riding clan to continental Westeros (and united six of its seven kingdoms) about 300 years before the events of HBO’s Game of Thrones itself. There’s also a TV series happening, which will presumably cover much of the same ground in greater detail. At first glance, this ought to make even the most reluctant fantasy acolyte want to punch the air. After all, Aegon’s conquest is the sort of story cinema was invented for: dragons blotting out the sky, castles melting like cheese toasties under a blowtorch; an entire continent being thrillingly upended by a bunch of platinum-haired dragonlords….

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

March 6, 1957 — Ann VanderMeer, 59.

Ann VanderMeer was the fiction editor for Weird Tales magazine until Marvin Kaye purchased it. While she and Stephen H. Segal were editing it, they won a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. It was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. 

Ann VanderMeer accepting Hugo in 2009. Photo by Stu Segal.

She edited as Ann Kennedy The Sterling Web which would become The Silver Web zine from the late Eighties to the beginning of this century.  

Her latest major ongoing editing endeavor is what is now Reactor, formerly Tor.com. She’s been there for a decade now. She and the other Senior Editors have put together The Best of Tor.com anthology series.

Steampunk and Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded, edited with her husband of over 20 years, Jeff VanderMeer, and published by Tachyon, are simply excellent. There are writers that I know with a sprinkling of not so recognizable writers. The third, Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution, I’ve not yet read.

I am going to single out just one more work she edited, again with her husband, as it’s just awesome — The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. 

Lambshead was a man who enjoyed lending out his acquisitions but it is suspected by many that he held the strangest pieces of his collection in an underground lair only he could enter. And these pieces are now written about by such writers as Holly Black, Neil Gaimain, Mike Mignola (there are many illustrated pieces here) and China Mieville to name but a very few.

And here’s a sample from one of those entries.

1929: The Singular Taffy Puller

As Told to N. K. Jemisin

I had traveled far—along the bustling coast by rail, then across the Atlantic by steamship, at great expense, I might add—on a matter of pride. Or, more specifically, dessert. You see, the cobbled and sweaty streets of my city would reek but for the exquisite aromas that offer relief from horse manure and overindulgence. Wrinkle your nose and you might miss the scent of the most delicate amaretto fondant, or creamy divinities solidifying to tooth-tenderness. And when the pecan harvest is brought—ah, me! You never tasted pralines like mine.

But those selfsame streets are crowded with eateries these days, and an old octoroon spinster looking to make a name for herself must employ more than the braggadocio that paler, maler chefs may indulge. Especially given that, of late, my business had suffered by its proximity to a flashy new restaurant next door. It was for this reason that I traveled to the house of the esteemed doctor, and was ushered into the renowned cabinet, so that I could at last behold the item that might—I hoped— save my business.

On entry to the doctor’s home, I was momentarily stunned by the profusion of wonders within. These included the cabinet itself: a room of what had been handsome walnut wainscott and elaborately worked moulding (French rosettes and Egyptian cartouches, of all the mad combinations), though the lingering evidence of half-finished reorganization obscured the best of it. What remained of the chamber’s treasures had been tossed, with no apparent regard for further cataloguing or even convenience, onto bookshelves, plinths, and racks, which quite crowded the space…. 

(7) COMICS SECTION.

• Dinosaur Comics is all about bums. 
• Glasbergen updates a Shakespeare play. 
• Nancy wants to work around the library borrowing limit.
• Strange Brew delivers a time travel lecture.
• xkcd brings us Bazookasaurus.
• Frazz doubts this is the end.

(8) BIRD IS THE WORD. At 13th Dimension, Jim Beard fondly remembers “1963’s ROBIN DIES AT DAWN: One of the Greatest Boy Wonder Stories Ever”.

Batman’s always been my most favorite fictional character of all time, but I’m not sorry to say Robin has given him a run for his millions more than once along the way.

Many things influenced that opinion while I was a kid. Burt Ward is chief among them; you don’t get a more comics-accurate Boy Wonder than the 1966 Batman show. After that is the fact that the very first Mego World’s Greatest Super-Heroes action figure I ever owned was Robin, even before Batman. It just happened that way. Go figure. Then, and I don’t diminish it by listing it third, was a battered, well-loved copy of Batman #185 that was lying around the house. That 80-Page Giant was “A Prize Collection Starring Robin the Boy Wonder,” and its stories have stuck with me for nearly 60 years now.

One of them, probably the most memorable of them, is “Robin Dies at Dawn!”

As the kids say, if you know, you know. If you don’t, here’s why I’m celebrating the story here on the anniversary of Robin’s debut in March 6, 1940’s Detective Comics #38: It’s a one-two punch knockout.

Back in 1963 when Jack Schiff was the ringleader of the Batman line of titles, they were goofy. I’m not ashamed to admit that, just as I’m equally not ashamed to admit I loved them and still do. The “science fiction” era was what it was, an attempt to sell comics based on what was in the air at the time, and what the editor believed kids wanted to read. That said, in the middle of all the aliens and mutations and other-dimensional imps came a story that, to put it mildly, stood way, way out from the pack. That was “Robin Dies at Dawn!” in Batman #156, written by Bill Finger and illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff and Charles Paris….

… Moody? Oh, yeah. Moldoff and Paris soak the tale in shadows, throwing one grim panel after another at you. Sure, there’s all the alien planets and whatnot in the first half, but for some strange reason it hits differently than the SF-filled Batman stories that came right before and right after it. There are some shots here that are actually chilling, and leave you with no questions about why writer Grant Morrison glommed onto this one decades later — and turned the weird, unnamed doctor in the story into one of the most heinous Bat-Villains of all, Doctor Hurt….

(9) A TOPICAL GIFT. [Item by Sandra Miesel.] Here’s something to address the anti-AI issue: “Kill Your Chatbot (Thomas Aquinas) by Daniel Mitsui” at Redbubble.

There have been some inventions also which have been able for the utterance of articulate sounds, as the speaking of certain words… Such was the brazen head made by Fryer Bacon, and that statue in the framing of which Albertus Magnus bestowed thirty years, broken by Aquinas, who came to see it, purposely that he might boast, how in one minute he had ruined the labour of so many years. —John Wilkins, Mathematical Magick, 1680

(10) ISS GETS NEW LEASE ON LIFE. “Congress extends ISS and tells NASA to get moving on private space stations” reports Ars Technica.

Two months ago, a key staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz said in a public meeting that she was “begging” NASA to release a document that would kick off the second round of a competition among private companies to develop replacements for the International Space Station.

There has been no movement since then, as NASA has yet to release this “request for proposals.” So this week, Cruz stepped up the pressure on the space agency with a NASA Authorization bill that passed his committee on Wednesday.

Regarding NASA’s support for the development of commercial space stations, the bill mandates the following, within specified periods, of passage of the law:

• Within 60 days, publicly release the requirements for commercial space stations in low-Earth orbit
• Within 90 days, release the final “request for proposals” to solicit industry responses
• Within 180 days, enter into contracts with “two or more” commercial providers for such stations

Cruz is trying to inject urgency into NASA as several private companies—including Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Vast, and Voyager—are finalizing designs for space stations. All have expressed a desire for clarity from NASA on how long the space agency would like its astronauts to stay on board, the types of scientific equipment needed, and much more. These are known as “requirements” in NASA parlance….

…[The] legislation extends the International Space Station’s lifespan from 2030 to 2032 (an extension must still be approved by international partners, including Russia). Moreover, the authorization bill states, “The Administrator shall not initiate the de-orbit of the ISS until the date on which a commercial low-Earth orbit destination has reached an initial operational capability.”…

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Tom Wayling remembers when “George RR Martin NEARLY MISSED This Deadline”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Sandra Miesel, Jim Janney, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l.]