Some Comments on the 2026 Dragon Award Winners

Posted on September 9, 2026 by Cora

It’s the first September weekend, which means that Dragon Con, a huge multimedia convention, took place in Atlanta, Georgia. This also means that the winners of the 2026 Dragon Awards were announced this weekend.

But before we get to the Dragons, I want to link to my latest article at Galactic Journey, where I discuss the protests against paragraph 218 of the (West) German Criminal Code, which restricts abortion. The debate erupted in the summer of 1971, when (West) German or Austrian 374 women told the magazine Stern that they had had an abortion – even though abortions were almost entirely illegal at the time in West Germany. This led to widespread protests and is considered the birth of second wave feminism in (West) Germany. Fifty-five years later, Paragraph 218 is still on the books and Germany still has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in all of Europe, though somewhat liberalised in comparison to 1971, and the demands of the women protesting in 1971 still haven’t been fulfilled.

Back to Dragon Con and the various awards handed out at that convention.

For starters, the winner of the 2026 Eugie Foster Memorial Award is “Wolf Moon, Antler Moon” by A. C. Wise, originally published in Reactor. “Wolf Moon, Antler Moon” also won the Bram Stoker Award and was a Locus Award finalist.

The winner of the 2026 Mike Resnick Memorial Award for the best unpublished science fiction story was announced at Dragon Con as well. I can’t say anything about the winning story itself, since it is unpublished, but that’s a lovely trophy.

The 2026 Julie Award, named after Julius Schwartz, went to video game developer Richard “Lord British” Garriott.

The recipient of the 2026 Hank Reinhart Georgia Fandom Award is Dan Carroll.

The winners of the 2026 Emmy Awards were also announced last weekend, though not at Dragon Con. Widow’s Bay, something called DTF St. Louis and Spider-Noir got lots of love – ironically on the same weekend that Spider-Noir was cancelled. I remember when winning an Emmy was enough to save a show from cancellation – that’s how we got seven seasons of Hill Street Blues. But it seems those days are past, which is a pity, because I’d much rather have more Spider-Noir and Wonder Man than seven seasons of bloody Hill Street Blues, a show that was so disliked that it was pulled from German TV after a handful of episodes and replaced with reruns of The Persuaders.

Finally, let’s get to the 2026 Dragon Awards. The full list of winners may be found here, my comments on the 2026 finalists may be found here and for my coverage of the past ten years of Dragon Awards, go here.

Best Science Fiction Novel 

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel is Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman.

This isn’t exact a surprising win, since Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl books are hugely popular, even though I can’t for the life of me understand why. LitRPG just really isn’t my thing. Though Dinniman won this category last year as well.

I have to admit that of the the finalists in this category, I find Operation Bounce House probably the least interesting, though there was one finalist I wasn’t familiar with at all.  Clearly, many others feel differently. My own vote was for Radiant Star by Ann Leckie BTW.

That said, Matt Dinniman is exactly the sort of author the Dragon Awards are intended, hugely popular, but not really recognised by more literary SFF awards. And indeed, Matt Dinniman winning a Dragon Award is less of a surprise than the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book being shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award of all things.

Best Fantasy Novel

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel goes to Twelve Days by Jim Butcher.

Once again, this isn’t a huge surprise, because Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, in which Twelve Days is the latest instalment, is hugely popular. Plus, Jim Butcher is a Dragon Con regular.

Unlike with Operation Bounce House, I do understand why the Dresden Files books are so popular, because I read them, too, though I am a few books behind.

Besides, like Matt Dinniman Jim Butcher is exactly the sort of author that the Dragon Awards were made for, hugely popular but overlooked by other genre awards. I’m actually surprised that Jim Butcher never got a Best Series Hugo nomination for the Dresden Files, but I guess Hugo voters just don’t read Jim Butcher in sufficient quantities. Plus, being used as Puppy hostage, when the Puppies pushed one of the weaker Harry Dresden books onto the ballot in 2015, might have harmed him.

Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel

The winners of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel is Ride or Die by Delilah S. Dawson.

This is Delilah S. Dawson’s second Dragon win in this category, so she’s clearly popular with the Dragon Awards crowd. Plus, Ride or Die sounds like a lot of fun.

Delilah S. Dawson was also in Atlanta to pick up her Dragon Award trophy in person and posted a picture on BlueSky.

Those who have been following the Dragon Awards for a while will immediately notice that this year’s trophy looks different than it did in past years. Yup, the Dragon Award trophy is blue now, whereas it used to be red. But then, the Dragon Awards trophies are hand-blown glass, so they always look slightly different, though a complete colour change is new. At any rate, the Dragons have always had gorgeous trophies.

Best Alternate History Novel 

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel goes to The Winds of Fate by S.M. Stirling.

S.M. Stirling is an author who has been writing for a long time and who’s very popular, but with whose works I am completely unfamiliar for some reason. Coincidentally, this is also the only Dragon win for Baen Books this year. Baen Books has traditionally been doing well at the Dragons, because they have a strong presence at Dragon Con and they actively campaign for the award.

That said, The Winds of Fate is the only finalist in this category that’s not twentieth century (WWI, WWII or Cold War) alternate history, but set during Roman times, which has to count for something.

Because honestly, I’m so tired of WWII alternate history. It’s so overdone (and WWI and Cold War alternate history aren’t far behind) and there’s very little new to say. If there’s a universe or a dozen out there, where the Nazis really won WWII, are they as inundated with alternate history books about the Allies winning as we were with the opposite? Okay, so Philip K. Dick kind of answered that question all the way back in 1965.

It’s not that you can’t write interesting alternate history set during the twentieth century (I have a long simmering idea for an alternate history tale set in the early 1980s), but why must writers always mine the same three periods?

Best Horror Novel

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel is King Sorrow by Joe Hill.

The Best Horror Novel category of the Dragon Awards was extremely strong this year and indeed, the horror category at the Dragons has always been one of the strongest categories with very good winners throughout – except for the very first year, where a Catholic space opera won the horror category for some reason.

So in short, there were no bad choices in Best Horror Novelo category this year, though my personal vote was for The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Best Illustrative Book Cover

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best Illustrative Book Cover goes to Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher. The Dragon Awards credit the cover to T. Kingfisher as well, but according to ISFDB, the cover artist is Christina Mrozik .

But whoever created it, it’s definitely a good cover and probably the strongest finalist in this category. This was also my personal choice.

Best Comic Book/Graphic Novel

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Comic Book/Graphic Novel is Something is Killing the Children by James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera.

This is certainly an interesting choice, because Something is Killing the Children was the only finalist in this category that’s not a mainstream DC or Marvel superhero comic. Unfortunately, I haven’t read it – I don’t read a lot of comics anymore – though it sounds interesting.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV or Streaming Series

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best SFF TV or Streaming Series goes to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

This is a highly deserved win, because A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is an incredibly enjoyable and well made series – unlike the other Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon, which is just a mess. This was also my choice. And yes, I voted for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms over Foundation, if only because A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms actually sticks to the book it adapts.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie is Project Hail Mary. The novel by Andy Weir that the movie was based upon won the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2021.

I have to admit that I never much cared for Project Hail Mary or any other of Andy Weir’s novels, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie. I guess it’s largely because of Ryan Gosling’s performance.

So in short, it’s a worthy winner and also a very popular movie. Though my personal vote was for The Sheep Detectives.

Best Digital Game

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best Digital Game goes to Hollow Knight: Silksong.

I’m not a gamer, so I can’t say anything about this one, except that it looks cute.

Best Tabletop Game

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Tabletop Game is Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerûn.

Wizards of the Coast winning this category is nothing new – they have won eight times in this category. However, this is the first Dragon win forn Forgotten Realms. All other wins were for Magic the Gathering.

***

And that’s it for the 2026 Dragon Awards. The winners are not all to my taste, but overall this year’s winners confirm the trend that ten years into the award, the Dragons are doing what they were supposed to do all along, namely honour highly popular SFF works that are overlooked by other awards.

My good pal and fellow Dragon Award chronicler Camestros Felapton also weighs in on the 2026 Dragon Award winners and notes that even though the Dragons don’t release detailed nomination and voting data, participation in the Dragon Awards seems to have gone down from a height of more than 11000 votes cast in 2018 to nearly 6000 votes cast in 2025 and 2026. I wonder whether this drop in participation is due to various groups of authors campaigning for the Dragon Awards losing interest. On the other hand, the Dragons also fixed the issue of earlier years where one person could vote with multiple e-mail addresses, which would account for a drop in votes.

Cam also points out that even though the finalists had pretty gender parity, the winners are still eighty percent male (and all white Americans), which means that the Dragons are still a very male and very white award. However, SFF books by male authors still get more promotion outside maybe YA – and note that the winner in the YA category was written by a woman. Of course, there are SFF subgenres where the bestselling authors are mostly woman such as romantasy. However, the Dragons don’t have a dedicated romantasy category and there isn’t that much overlap between con-going SFF fans and romantasy readers.

I haven’t seen any reactions from the right side of the genre spectrum yet, though Brian Niemeier, whose misclassified religious space opera Souldancer won the Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel in its first year, is currently using his Dragon win to promote a Kickstarter campaign for a tenth anniversary special deluxe edition of Souldancer. Which is fair, he did win the award after all and the fact that the Dragon Award has become a respectable part of the annual SFF awards circuit rather than the puppy participation trophy it was in its early years also helps to raise the profile of early winners like Brian Niemeier.

At any rate, the Dragons continue to chug along after ten years, which I suspect most of us who have been following the Dragon saga since the beginning would never have expected.

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Some Comments on the 2026 Hugo Winners

Posted on September 3, 2026 by Cora

The winners of the 2026 Hugo Awards were announced last night or rather very early in the morning at LACon V, the 2026 Worldcon in Anaheim, California. My thoughts on the finalists may be found here and the full voting and nomination statistics and some comments by the administrator may be found here.

I didn’t attend Worldcon this year, because the US government has unfortunately gone even more mad and the risk of being refused entry to the US or – worse – getting thrown into some ICE jail is too big, especially since Worldcon already falls into the gray area between business and leisure travel for me. What is more, travelling to Anaheim would likely also have been very expensive, considering people talked about Uber (i.e. not even a proper taxi) rides from Los Angeles airport to Anaheim costing more than a hundred dollars, horrendous parking fees, etc…  Though I participated virtually and will eventually write a con report about my virtual LACon experience.

Before we get to the Hugos, let’s take a look at the other important election the results of which were announced at Worldcon, namely the results of the site selection vote for the 2028 Worldcon. There’s also a video of the 2026 site selection business meeting here, complete with site selection administrator Tim Szczesuil trying and in at least one case failing to read out the write-in votes. The bid for Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, won and has now been rebranded as Aussiecon 5. This was not exactly a surprise, since the competing bids for Kigali in Rwanda and Nuremberg in Germany both dropped out some time ago. Nonetheless, this result makes me happy, since I am part of the Brisbane bid committee and promoted the bid at the 2026 Eastercon and Eurocon.

Since the Hugo ceremony was so very late at night or rather very early in the morning, I did not watch it live. A recording of the 2026 Hugo ceremony may be found here and I will probably watch it eventually, though it is three hours and fifteen minutes long. However, the people who did watch the whole ceremony, whether online or on site in Anaheim, generally were full of praise for the ceremony, toastmaster Ursula Vernon, who entertained the audience with fabulous hats and fascinating biological facts and for the acceptance speeches.

There were some issues, because no Hugo ceremony is without issues. One issue was that the autocaptioning software used throughout the con is still pretty terrible and turned Hugo finalist Effie Seiberg into “Every Cyborg”, which Effie actually found quite funny. Though I suspect the moderator who introduced their “fellow panelists”, only for the autocaptioning software to claim they introduced for “fallow penis” probably found the whole thing less funny.

A more serious issue was that some of the slides listing the finalists contained mistakes. This was most notable in the Best Fan Writer category, where the slide somehow mashed finalists James Davis Nicoll and Roseanna Pendlebury together, creating Frankenstein’s Hugo finalists James Davis, Nicoll Roseanna (who became her own character and a joke in the Hugo finalist Discord as an annoying and bitchy person) and Pendlebury, while finalist Örjan Westin was reduced to Örjan Wes. There really is no excuse for this sort of thing happening, especially since “Someone screwed up the names of Hugo finalists – again” keeps happening over and over.

Finally, Best Poem finalist Mari Ness, who happens to be a wheelchair user, reported that a volunteer at the Hugo ceremony told her that “backstage is only for walking participants”. We all know that the world, including convention centers and hotels, is not always as accessible as it should be. However, such remarks are completely inacceptable and LACon owed Mari an apology.

So let’s get to the individual categories.

Warning: I will discuss the voting and nomination statistics, so if you don’t want to know this (cause I know that quite a few finalists don’t), then consider yourself warned. Continue reading →

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Three Icons Lost in Three Days: In Memoriam Dolly Parton, Tim Curry and Peter Cullen

Posted on August 29, 2026 by Cora

Everyone who lived through it still remembers the annus horribilis that was 2016, when not the UK narrowly voted in favour of Brexit and Donald Trump was elected for the first time, but also when we experienced an uncommon wave of much beloved famous people dying, culminating in George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds dying in the space of four days over Christmas. At the time, I wrote a post about George Michael, Carrie Fisher and the many other deaths of 2016.

2026 is shaping up to be another annus horribilis with an uncommon wave of much beloved celebrities. Indeed, someone said on Discord “I thought 2016 was the rapture, but it seems we’re having another one.” Continue reading →

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Cora Goes Virtually to LACon V, the 2026 Worldcon

Posted on August 27, 2026 by Cora

LACon V bannerLike the title says, I will be virtually participating in LACon V, the 2026 Worldcon, this weekend.

Here is my schedule and where you can find me:

The Fan Hugo Categories

Thursday, August 27, 12:00 PDT, Virtual 2

Fannish Hugo Award categories are as old as the Award itself. Over the years their number and scope have changed, and currently we are voting on four fannish statuettes: Best Fanzine, Best Fancast, Best Fan Writer, and Best Fan Artist. What is the meaning and importance of those categories for both the winners and fandom as a whole? Why do we need them? Let’s discuss the importance of Hugo Awards for fans.

Panelists: Jason Sanford, Cora Buhlert, Randy Smith, Trish Matson

A Long Time Ago: Oral Traditions

Thursday, August 27, 13:30 PDT, Virtual 1

Before writing existed, we spoke our truths. How has oral storytelling influenced the written word, and how has the resurgence of oral storytelling and bards impacted the way we are recording history?

Panelists: Ada Palmer, Andrea Hairston, Cora Buhlert, Sean Mead, Sonia Sulaiman

Is Worldcon Finally Becoming a World SF Convention?

Friday, August 28, 09:00 PDT, Virtual 2

As Worldcon becomes more global, expanding to new areas of the world’s genre community, what does the current landscape look like? What have been some of the challenges in expanding? And what do we have to look forward to?

Panelists: Tammy Coxen, Brian Nisbet, Carl Fink, Cora Buhlert, Kat Kouberti

Foundational Fantasy You Should Read

Saturday, August 29, 15:00 PDT, Virtual 1

As fantasy has shifted over time, we still refer to some staples of the genre. If you’re entering the fantasy genre for the first time, what old-school fantasy books should you read? Panelists explore ways to find foundational fantasy that holds up to a modern lens.

Panelists: Cora Buhlert, Dave Hook, David Bratman, Heather Fawcett, Ronald W. Kaiser

Virtual Table Talk: Cora Buhlert

Sunday, August 20, 06:00 PDT, Virtual Table Talks

Cora Buhlert is a writer and translator from Bremen in North Germany and also the winner of the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. Come and virtually chat with her about science fiction and fantasy from the 1930s to today, self-publishing, blogging, translation, renewable energy, the Brisbane in 2028 Worldcon bid, toy collecting, Masters of the Universe and anything else that catches your fancy. There will be (virtual) coffee and cookies.

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If you’re a virtual member of LACon V, drop by at the panels and the my table talk. I will also be hanging out at the LACon Discord server at least part of the time.

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Wherein Cora Gets Into a Car Accident

Posted on August 27, 2026 by Cora

So I was in a car accident yesterday. But don’t worry, I’m fine. I wasn’t even in the car, when it was hit. And the other people involved in the accident are okay as well – thankfully, no one has any major injuries. However, my car is trashed and so are two other cars.

In other news, I have a new article at Galactic Journey about two botched police operations in the summer of 1971 in West Germany, which left three people, including two young women of nineteen and twenty respectively, dead. This was initially supposed to be a movie review with the shooting of Red Army Fraction member Petra Schelm as an intro, but it turned into a true crime piece, when I came across contemporary news articles with amazing details and also stumbled upon that bank robbery in Munich, the first ever bank robbery with hostages taken in postwar West Germany, and the complete and utter police incompetence.

LACon V also starts today and while I’m only participating virtually, I am on the program, so all this happened at a really bad time as well.

But back to the accident. So let’s start in the beginning: Continue reading →

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The 2026 Partial Solar Eclipse

Posted on August 15, 2026 by Cora

On August 12, 2026, about an hour before sunset, Germany experienced a partial solar eclipse, while Northern Spain and Iceland experienced a total solar eclipse.

In my part of Germany, the coverage was about 84 percent, i.e. as solar eclipses go, this one is pretty impressive. Almost as impressive as the 1999 solar eclipse (total in southern Germany, but only partial in northern Germany) would have been, had I actually been able to see it. Alas, I wasn’t able to see it, for while that day started off clear, dense clouds decided to gather just at the crucial moment, so all I saw was the sky getting darker than usual in the middle of the day, as if a really nasty storm was rolling in. I even wrote a poem about it at the time and sold it to a long defunct magazine of speculative poetry.

Unlike the massive excitement accompanying the 1999 solar eclipse, the response to this one was initially muted. There was very little in the way of media coverage ahead of time and when someone started talking about a solar eclipse on the radio some time ago, I initially thought they were talking about the 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia, which we’d been using as a selling point for the Brisbane Worldcon bid. But then I realised that they were talking about a solar eclipse happening here in Germany in a few weeks time and I thought, “We’re having a solar eclipse this year? Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

Continue reading →

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Some Comments on the 2026 Dragon Award Finalists

Posted on August 5, 2026 by Cora

It’s that time of the year again, when the Dragon Awards randomly decide to drop their finalists with no fanfare whatsoever.

For those who are new here, what are the Dragon Awards? They are a popular vote SFF award handed out at Dragon Con, a large SFF media con in Atlanta, Georgia. They are in their tenth year now and have a chequered history, moving from participation trophy for puppies and Kindle Unlimited writers in the early years to to award honouring broadly popular SFF works in more recent years, which is what they were intended to be in the first place.

The 2026 Dragon Award finalists may be found here. And for my analyses of the past ten years of Dragon Awards, go here.  In other awards new, the finalists for the 2026 World Fantasy Awards have also been announced and may be found here.

The World Fantasy finalists look good, but I have never done detailed analyses of the World Fantasy Award finalists and I won’t start now, if only because these posts are a lot of work.

However, Camestros Felapton, Doris V. Sutherland and I have been covering the saga of the Dragon Awards since their inception and are seemingly cursed to analyse them for as long as they exist, so let’s delve into the individual categories:

Continue reading →

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So what does Cora think of the new Masters of the Universe toys revealed at the 2026 San Diego Comic Con? – plus Marvel Musings and Battlestar Galactica

Posted on August 1, 2026 by Cora

San Diego Comic Con happened last weekend, which means that this was the weekend where we get a look at what will entertain us in the year to come, namely sneak peaks at new movies, TV shows and toys. And among many other things, this includes new Masters of the Universe toys

So do you want to know what I think of the new Masters of the Universe toys revealed at San Diego Comic Con – illustrated with photos of my toys from my own collection which were not revealed at San Diego Comic Con, at least not this year? If yes, then you’re in luck. And if no – well, then I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to skip this post.

Here’s a nice round-up of all the newly revealed toys at Planet Eternia. There’s also a video by Pixel Dan of the Mattel booth on preview night (i.e. Wednesday) as well as a video walk-through of the Mattel booth with closer looks at the various figures here.

Finally, here is a video of the Mattel Masters of the Universe design panel, where even more upcoming toys were revealed and several members of the Mattel design team talked about the plans for 2027. I’ve heard some folks complain that the Mattel panel felt badly prepared and to be honest, it was something of a mess. There was no information when and where many of the toys shown off would be available, which is actually crucial, since you’d assume Mattel wants us to buy them. At one point, the moderator even got two characters mixed up, which honestly shouldn’t happen. I guess the lesson here is that people who are great at designing toys aren’t necessarily good at presenting them to a live audience (and a lot of people find speaking in public difficult) and that Mattel needs to put someone on that panel who is good at presenting and selling the figures to a live audience.

In fact, at the German Masters of the Universe podcast Das He-Manische Quartett, one person said that the messy 2026 San Diego Comic Con panel made them wish for the days of the Classics toyline, when then-brand manager Scott Neitlich used to do these presentations at San Diego Comic Con. Considering what a controversial figure Neitlich is in Masters of the Universe fandom, people wanting him back is really something. And just in case you’re wondering what Scott Neitlich is up to these days, he’s gloating that the movie underperformed, complains about the meagre Masters of the Universe toy selection at his local Target and is predicting the imminent end of all Masters of the Universe toylines… again. It’s really sad, considering that he actually did good work with the Classics line.

There are currently several different lines of Masters of the Universe toys available, so let’s go through them one by one, starting with… Continue reading →

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He-Man Goes Heidelberg: Cora’s Adventures at the 2026 Los Amigos Masters of the Universe Convention in Heidelberg, Prologue: A Night Time Trip to Bremerhaven

Posted on June 23, 2026 by Cora

On June 13, 2026, I attended the 2026 Los Amigos Masters of the Universe convention. Now the last two Los Amigos conventions took place in Neuss about 300 kilometers from where I live. It’s a long drive, but perfectly doable and in 2024, I even drove there and back in a single day, though in 2025, I booked a hotel for one night.

However, Stadthalle Neuss, the venue of the 2024 and 2025 Los Amigos con, is currently undergoing renovations, so the organisers had to find a different venue. And the venue they found, the Luxor Film Palace, is located in Heidelberg, which is a lot further away than Neuss, 536 kilometers to be exact. That’s further than my trip to Hanau in December 2024 and further than my trip to Antwerp last year and in fact it would be the longest road trip I have ever done on my own.

Nonetheless, I decided to go, because I always enjoy the Los Amigos con. And besides, I have an aunt in Heidelberg who always asks me to visit and this was the perfect excuse. Besides, I several long road trips, I have become much more confident. That said, because the trip was so long, I would stay at a hotel for two nights. Basically, I was planning to drive to Heidelberg on Friday, go to the con and visit Aunt Irmtraud and Uncle Gerd on Saturday and drive back on Sunday. And because it’s such a long trip and I wanted to have some time to explore Heidelberg, a city I have no memory of ever visiting, I was planning to leave very early, at four AM or so. That way, I could also make my way through the three construction zones between Bremen and Hannover (at the Weser bridge in Bremen, at exit Langwedel and junction Walsrode) and hopefully even through the construction zones at Hildesheim before the rush hour traffic and the related traffic jams. Of course, there would probably be construction zones and traffic jams further down the line, but at least I could get the ones I knew would be a problem out of the way before rush hour traffic starts. And since Germans start work almost ridiculously early, rush hour traffic can start as early as six or six thirty AM.

So the plan was made. On Thursday afternoon, I packed my overnight bag, a box of action figures for my pal and fellow toy collector David from Cork in Ireland as well as some chocolate for Aunt Irmtraud, put my water bottle in the fridge and went to bed very early (late afternoon rather than early evening) so I could get enough sleep. I was planning to get up at 3 AM, take a shower and wash my hair and then set off towards Heidelberg.

An Urgent Call

But like all good plans, this one didn’t survive contact with reality. For after about two and a half hours, I was woken by my mobile phone ringing. I decided to ignore it – whoever it was could wait. But then the landline phone started ringing as well, so I reluctantly got up to answer it.

Continue reading →

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He-Man and Teela’s Movie Date or Cora’s Adventures at the Masters of the Universe Movie Preview

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Cora

On June 3, 2026, I attended a preview showing of Masters of the Universe at the Savoy Movie Theater in the Hamburg St. Georg.

As for why I chose this particular theatre rather than one closer to home, for starters, it has one of the largest screens in North Germany. But the main reason was that the Savoy specialises in showing international movies in their original version rather than dubbed, as is the norm in Germany. And since I have only ever watched Masters of the Universe in English – West German audio dramas of the 1980s notwithstanding and they were occasionally marred by mispronunciations – the German dub would have irritated me to no end and pulled me out of the film. So the Savoy it was.

My mostly spoiler-free review is here at File 770 and I was also on the MarkWho42 podcast, where I discussed the movie (with some spoilers) with Juan Sanmiguel and Vicky Jakubowski. There will also be a more detailed, spoilerish dissection of the movie on this blog later on, when more people had the chance to watch the movie.

I did want to get this post finished, before leaving for the 2026 Los Amigos Masters of the Universe convention in Heidelberg. However, because of circumstances beyond my control, I didn’t get it done on time, so it goes up now. Stay tuned for my adventures at Los Amigos and the long trip to Heidelberg. And yes, I will eventually blog about something other than Masters of the Universe again, too.

Continue reading →

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