(1) NO GODS, NO MASTERS. [Item by N.] For The Ringer, Helena Hunt wrestles with the gods—or rather, Christopher Nolan’s decision to mostly excise them from his adaptation of The Odyssey: “Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Casts Out the Gods”.

…And while there were plenty of doubters who questioned [Christopher Nolan’s] fealty to the finer Bronze Age details or the aptness of his dialogue, the only nagging question for the mythology heads among us was whether he’d do justice to the pantheon of conniving, vying gods up on Mount Olympus. From the first pages of The Odyssey, those very human-seeming gods initiate and incite the action; there would be no legend of Odysseus without them. And fears that Nolan would leave out the gods did feel justified: Even when he’s dabbled in superheroes or borderline divine feats of engineering, his protagonists have always been able to chalk up the unknown to some algorithm or explanation they just didn’t have all the variables for yet. In Homer, the gods are those variables, somewhere out past the edges of our understanding: They explain the natural world but also expand it, and it’s hard to wrap your head around a version of The Odyssey that omits them. 

As it turns out, Nolan does pay tribute to the gods in his Odyssey, lest Zeus strike him down, but the straight-faced director excises the carnivalesque lineup of Zeus, Athena, Hera, Aphrodite, Ares, Apollo, et al. and replaces them with a distant deity who manages to show up only in sea storms and thunderbolts and comes with a distinctly modern set of virtues. (Plus, there’s ghost Zendaya.) Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey have their share of woe and divine retribution, sure, but they’re also filled with the bawdy, shifting moods of the gods, who bestow their favor unevenly and pursue their lust and vengeance to extremes. Nolan sands those gods down into a more moral, quasi-Judeo-Christian idea of monolithic power and then puts their divine weight behind some of his chosen themes. The effect is to re-create the gods after our own (or Nolan’s) ideas of remote and irreproachable moral authority, as if we couldn’t believe Odysseus would worship these gods if they didn’t measure up to our standards … 

(2) BORIS VALLEJO RETIRES. Julie Bell told Facebook readers yesterday:

I have an announcement to make and feel now is the time as we’ve received so many kind comments on our recently shared painting “Inferno”. Boris and I worked together on this piece for the past three years and we deeply appreciate all the notes from people who enjoy our collaborative paintings.

Boris is now 85 and has Parkinsons. He has been creating magical worlds for others to enjoy for over five decades and is now officially retired from commercial or commissioned work. “Inferno” is his last piece of this type. This decision has taken quite some time to arrive at and even more time to feel ready to announce. He’s still signing prints and cards, he still does some painting for himself, and he still plans to be at Illuxcon in October in Reading, PA because he loves seeing all of you and chatting about art!

We thank everyone for all of the love and support you’ve shown all these years!

(3) SNUBBING ‘THE BOYS’. The New York Times’ David Colman says “The Emmy Awards Are Afraid of This Vulgar, Gory, Brilliant Show”. (Behind a paywall.)

Last week, a raft of intelligent, watchable, enjoyable shows were nominated for the Emmy Award for outstanding drama series, the TV version of the best picture Oscar. Each of these prestige TV shows made tart references to our current moment. “The Pitt” dealt with ICE in the E.R. “Slow Horses” and “The Diplomat” dramatized the dangers of cynical political expedience. “The Gilded Age” and “Paradise” produced two very different takes on oligarch-itecture. “Your Friends & Neighbors” wallowed in larcenous suburban finance dads in midlife crisis, while “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” jousted with how to transcend one’s “low birth.” The only show to truly depart from dramatic realism was “Pluribus,” a sci-fi show about a space virus that made virtually all humans highly agreeable zombies, making you wonder if this is what life will be like living in a world ruled by A.I. agents.

But in the end, none of them actually tried to capture the grand farce of a moment we’re in. They didn’t even come close. Each of them is too polite, too nuanced, too, in the end, moderate — centrist, even.

I expect more from my high-end pop culture than this.

Centrism, in all its norm-respecting, common-ground-finding glory, is having a rough go of it lately. Our president does what he wants, where and when and to whomever he wants, and the cowed and craven set of politicians who make up his flock just go along for the ride. It seems more and more as if we’re living in a burn-it-all-down age of greed, mayhem and corruption.

You might never know this from watching prestige TV.

There was one show, however, that hit this head-on — and it’s not “Industry,” HBO’s finance-and-cocaine drama that was also snubbed by the Emmys this year. It’s Amazon Prime’s “The Boys.” The superhero spoof, which ended its five-season run this May, received not a single Emmy nomination in a major award category. Despite the fact that it dared to land savage, serious and entertaining punches about everything warped in American culture — corporate greed, celebrity worship, moral hypocrisy and how they all fit together.

It did get nominated for best dramatic series once, for its second season, in 2020. It didn’t win, and hasn’t been nominated since. What are the Emmy voters afraid of?

For those unfamiliar, “The Boys” is set in an alt-present-day United States, where superheroes (“supes”) are real and abundant. But instead of renegades valiantly saving the world from doomsday plots, they’re more like substance-abusing superinfluencers: entitled, narcissistic pursuers of fame whose high-profile “saves” are frequently stage-managed photo ops. They often offhandedly end up killing bystanders. The supes — especially the elite supe group known as “The Seven,” a parody of DC’s Justice League — are controlled, weaponized and monetized by the company that came up with the chemical to create them: Vought International, a corporate octopus whose business interests range from Disney-style entertainment to pharmaceuticals to military contracts.

The gullible public laps up all the supe mythology — especially that of Homelander, the all-American, charismatic leader of the Seven whose authoritarian megalomania drives him to take over the Oval Office, having naysayers locked up in detention camps (or just laser-visioning them in half) along the way.,,,

(4) WSJ GETS US. [Item by Jeffrey Smith.] Who expected a Pixel Scroll title from the Wall Street Journal? “Disney Is the Happiest Place on Earth, Unless You’re the Designated Scroller”. “To avoid endless lines, one person in every party has to manically book and revise ride reservations on their phone.” (Behind a paywall.)

(5) JOHN CARPENTER PROFILE. [Item by Steven French.] A nicely reflective interview with the inimitable John Carpenter in the Guardian:“’Everything I know about evil I learned in that small town’: John Carpenter on terrifying the world with Halloween, The Thing and The Fog”.

…Halloween was an assault on cosy smalltown domesticity: the horror wasn’t confined to a haunted house or a gothic castle; it was in your neighbourhood, in your home, preying on you and your children. “That’s the whole opening,” Carpenter says, “when it pulls back with this little kid with a knife in his hand [young Michael Myers, the future slasher] and it reveals we’re in the suburbs. That’s the whole idea.”

Inevitably, the studio wanted Carpenter to repeat the trick with a sequel, especially since Halloween left the fate of its anti-hero open-ended. “I didn’t think there was any story left,” he says. “But they – meaning Universal Pictures and the producers – were gonna do it whether I wanted to or not. So what are you gonna do?” Carpenter wrote, but did not direct, Halloween 2, and after that: “They took it out of my hands, but they had to pay me every time they made a movie. I sit on the couch and a cheque arrives in my hand. What’s wrong with that? I have to admit, with all the rebellion in the world, I am a happy capitalist.”

Nevertheless, Carpenter continued to stick it to the man, puncturing his era’s cheery certainties and self-congratulation, ridiculing authority figures, standing up for the underclass. It’s there in Assault on Precinct 13, where racial, gender and law-enforcement hierarchies are upended during a relentless night-time siege. It’s there in Escape from New York, where Kurt Russell’s snarling anti-hero is forced to rescue Donald Pleasence’s feeble American president, but has zero respect for him. It’s even there in his goofy action comedy Big Trouble In Little China – a movie where the ostensible leading man (Russell again) is actually a klutzy sidekick and the Asian cast are the real action heroes….

(6) THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW. “’Avengers: Doomsday’ Trailer: Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom Revealed” – The Hollywood Reporter introduces the Official Trailer. The film comes to theaters on December 18.

… “He’s not simply a villain — he’s one of the most complex Marvel characters,” Joe Russo had teased from the CinemaCon stage. “He’s always three moves ahead.”

At the event, Downey told the crowd, “I couldn’t have imagined reuniting with this amazing team — let alone as a new character.”…

(7) JEOPARDY! [Item by Andrew Porter.] Here’s a Jeopardy! clue that no one got right.

(8) WRITE FROM MIDDLE-EARTH. [Item by John King Tarpinian.] Somewhere in the packaging you will see the quote, “one pencil to rule them all.” “Blackwing x The Lord of the Rings Gift Set”.

Special-edition The Lord of the Rings collaboration Gift Set that includes 20 pencils inspired by the 19 rings forged by Celebrimbor and the One Ring forged secretly by Sauron, and a gold Sharpener and Point Guard.

(9) TIME FOR A MOON PIE.

(10) RAY BRADBURY ON THE APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

July 20, 1938 – Dame Diana Rigg. (Died 2020.)

By Paul Weimer: I was introduced to Diana Rigg thanks to Roger Zelazny’s Amber.

It’ll make sense, trust me.

As you know, I am and have been an enthusiastic player of the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game, set in the endless multiverse of the novels.  Lots of players and GMs like to import ideas from other books, shows and series. (I am no exception in that regard, mind you).

One of these GMs I played with was a big enthusiast of the Steed and Peel Avengers series from the 1960’s. I was not yet familiar with the series, but after playing a session where Steed turned out to be a secret Amberite, I had to know more! Who was Steed and who was the mysterious Mrs. Peel he was looking for (as part of the plot)?  (She did not actually appear on screen). The GM encouraged me to seek out the The Avengers.

And thus, I discovered the original The Avengers TV series, and thus, Diana Rigg. I was enchanted immediately, of course, by a beautiful kick-arse actress with skill, verve, and action. I avidly watched all the episodes of The Avengers, finding Rigg the best of the partners for Macnee by a long way. The DNA of some notable action heroines with skill, verve, intelligence and independence definitely can be traced back to Rigg’s Mrs. Peel.

Later on, she was proven delightful in things such as Game of Thrones (Olenna Tyrell was a great major character for her late in her career) and, when I discovered, the weird and wonderful steampunk movie The Assassination Bureau.

But in the end, yes, for me Diana Rigg IS Mrs. Peel.  Now, if only Moorcock could confirm that Peel is actually an aspect of the Eternal Champion…

(12) COMICS SECTION.

• xkcd brings up an old connection.
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has a similar connection.
• Crankshaft knows comfort.
• F Minus is forgotten.
• Mallard Fillmore tries to be reassuring.
• Non Sequitur now thinks it’s a good idea.

(13) CRYSTAL PALACE THUNDER LIZARDS. “Crystal Palace Dinosaurs Saved: A Historic Restoration Triumph” reports Downthetubes, with a Doctor Who spin. (The Wikipedia tells the complete story of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs at the link.)

The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs in London have been saved, thanks to a partnership between Bromley Council and Crystal Palace Park Trust.

Doctor Who fans may recognise one of them made a memorable if impromptu appearance on a cover of Doctor Who Magazine back when in 1990, when Sophie Aldred, known as companion Ace, cheekily scurried up one of them during a photo shoot by DWM designer Steve Cook….

…It wasn’t the first time a Doctor Who companion encountered the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. Back in the 1970s, Carol Ann Ford, who played the First Doctor’s grand-daughter Susan, dressed up in furs for a photo shot at the park, dinosaurs in the background, for a feature that ran in the Doctor Who Tenth Anniversary Special….

… The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs have been carefully restored and painted in line with their original colours, so their appearance is as close as possible to what the public would have seen 172 years ago.

The 30 sculptures were the world’s first life-sized models of extinct creatures, intended to communicate ground-breaking fossil discoveries being made by palaeontologists of the time.

They were added to Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register in 2020 due to large cracks appearing in some of their bodies and limbs, putting them in danger of losing toes, teeth and tails.

Now their restoration, co-delivered by Bromley Council and Crystal Palace Park Trust as part of the wider regeneration of the park, means they are no longer at risk and can be removed from the Register….

(14) HOWDY, STRANGER! [Item by Bill.] Scientists have discovered a new species of blind cave fish and have named it after the monster from Stranger Things. “Demon Cavefish species discovered in Redstone waters” in the Redstone Rocket.

A new species of cavefish has been swimming beneath Redstone Arsenal unbeknownst to the scientific community and the world at large, and it would’ve stayed that way had it not been for a fortuitous misstep.

In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, UAH associate professor of biological sciences Matthew Niemiller and his colleagues describe what they named the Demogorgonichthys arcanus or the Demon Cavefish.

“I wish I could say it was some dramatic new expedition, but it was really due to a mishap in the cave and a bit of luck,” Niemiller said. “During routine surveys of Bobcat Cave in early 2025, part of our ongoing monitoring at the cave, I slipped in the mud at the back of the Shrimp Room and fell into a deeper pool. During my graceful plummet, I disturbed a cavefish and crayfish underneath a rock ledge.”…

… As the water started to cloud from the disturbed silt, Niemiller snapped a couple photos of the scurrying wildlife with his underwater camera. Five or six days later, when he looked at the photos, he noticed the cavefish looked different than the Southern Cavefish, a well-documented inhabitant of Bobcat Cave, or any other species Niemiller had expected to find.

“The new cavefish had a pronounced hump behind the head, a longer, flatter snout and unbranched fin rays,” Niemiller, who is also co-owner of Niemiller Nature, an ecological and environmental consulting company, said. “We returned a few days later, before a storm system forecasted to dump several inches of rain moved into the area. On the next trip, we confirmed that nearly half of the cavefish we observed were this new species.”

The researchers took samples and genetic testing confirmed the fish was “a deeply divergent lineage that had never been named,” he said.

What’s in a name

Fans of the hit Netflix series “Stranger Things” or passionate players of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons might recognize the first part of the Demon Cavefish’s scientific name, Demogorgon….

(15) RELEARNING LIFE ON EARTH. According to SpaceDaily, “Astronauts returning from long stays in orbit say the smell of rain is almost too much to bear and a familiar street feels like something they are piloting rather than driving”.

… The ISS has a smell — a mix of ozone, machine oil, sweat, and the faint burnt-metal tang that astronauts say clings to spacewalk suits when they cycle back through the airlock. Astronauts have described it in vivid terms — comparisons to seared steak, or a metallic, almost sweet sensation. What the station does not have is weather, wet soil, cut grass, ocean salt, pine, or any of the tens of thousands of volatile organic compounds a human nose calibrates itself against on the ground.

Six months of that, and the olfactory bulb resets its baseline. When a returning crew member steps into a Kazakh field or a Houston backyard, the input floods a system that has been listening to a whisper for half a year.

Chris Hadfield has said that fresh food after landing — the taste of an apple, sweet and acidic and floral all at once — felt almost overwhelming….

… In microgravity, the vestibular system — the fluid-filled canals in the inner ear that tell the brain which way is down — stops receiving the gravitational cue it has used since birth. The brain adapts. It leans harder on vision and on the pressure signals from the soles of the feet. It rewires how it fuses those inputs into a sense of self-in-space. And when the astronaut returns, that rewired system does not snap back. It has to relearn Earth….

… Layered on top of the sensory recalibration is something crews find harder to name. Many describe a feeling of watching themselves from just outside their own bodies for weeks after return — driving the car, hugging the child, sitting at the dinner table, but doing it all from a half-step behind their own eyes. This persistent observer sensation — the feeling of watching their own lives from a half-step outside the frame — is part of the re-adaptation experience.

It fades. Most crews report feeling largely themselves again within a month or two. But the residue lingers longer than the medical timeline suggests it should. Astronauts returning from extended missions have described taking months to stop reaching for handholds that were not there….

(16) DID WE FIND LIFE ON MARS 50 YEARS AGO? – THE VIKING CONTROVERSY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Half a century ago I was working at a government agricultural research station – not studying the Andromeda Strain but I was using the same antimicrobial solutions that were sprayed over the Apollo 11 capsule as it bobbed after splashdown and the astronauts were retrieved… The worry was that Apollo 11 may have brought back alien life… Relatedly, what the big news for space fans – and that includes a large number of SF types – 50 years ago this month was the results from the Viking landers on Mars…

50 years ago July this summer, one of the experiments on NASA’s Viking lander that was designed to search for signs of life returned a positive result. It’s just that other experiments on Viking returned a negative result. The next few years saw arguments go back and forth in the scientific research papers, could the results be explained by biology or just chemistry, all asking the same question: is there life on Mars?

Dr Becky has a 20-minute video that hlooks at the Viking lander result and the debate.

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, N., Paul Weimer, Jeffrey Smith, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Barkley, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]