Cora Buhlert

Robot Hallucinations

Posted on May 8, 2025 by Cora

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will be aware that the 2025 Worldcon in Seattle, Washington, is embroiled in a massive scandal. Turns out the programming team used ChatGPT to vet people who’d applied to be on programming for potential issues.

This was received about as well as you can imagine. File 770 shares a round-up of reactions and responses here and Jason Sanford shares several reactions and responses in his Genre Grapevine column. There is also a not very good summary of the controversy at io9, courtesy of Cheryl Eddy.

ETA: Locus also offers a summary of the ChatGPT controversy.

The fall-out is continuing to reverberate around fandom. People are cancelling or downgrading their Worldcon memberships, pulling out of programming, one finalist declined his Lodestar nomination and the Hugo administrators and WSFS division heads resigned, though I’ve been privately told that this is only tangentially related to the ChatGPT issue.

ETA 05-08-2025: I have since been informed by one of the people who resigned that the resignation was indeed due to the use of ChatGPT and the bad way the con handled the fallout.

Initially, I wasn’t going to write about this at all. I don’t need to write about every fandom controversy and ever Worldcon drama and I’m also working on a long post with lots of photos about a Steampunk festival I visited last weekend.

Besides, I know people who are on the Seattle Worldcon team, so I’d been privately told about one and a half weeks before all hell broke loose that there was some kind of Worldcon-related scandal incoming and – after some prompting – I was told what had happened and asked to keep it quiet, because Seattle Worldcon chair Kathy Bond was preparing a statement and should be given the chance to apologise. So by the time the news became public, I’d already known about this for a few days and my “What the everloving hell were they thinking?” reaction had time to cool down.

There was another brief apology from the chair posted on May 2 and then last night my time a more detailed statement/apology from chair Kathy Bond and program division head SunnyJim Morgan dropped, which also included the prompt they fed into ChatGPT.

Now I have been accepted for programming – though I can only attend virtually, because I don’t fancy getting thrown into an ICE jail, because some immigration officer decides being on Worldcon programming is work or just doesn’t like the way my face looks – but I was still curious and so I put the Seattle prompt with my name attached into ChatGPT. And yes, this is the first and only time I’ve ever used that resource-guzzling plagiarism machine, because I detest generative AI.

This is the reply I got from the plagiarism robot:

Based on available information, there are no known scandals or allegations involving Cora Buhlert related to homophobia, transphobia, racism, harassment, sexual misconduct, sexism, or fraud. She is a respected figure in the science fiction and fantasy communities, particularly within German-language fandoms.
File 770+2File 770+2File 770+2

Background and Contributions:

Writing and Editing: Cora Buhlert is an author and editor known for her work in science fiction and fantasy. She has contributed to various publications and anthologies, including the Kurd Laßwitz Preis and the Deutscher Science Fiction Preis.
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Fandom Engagement: She is an active participant in science fiction conventions and fan events, such as the Los Amigos Masters of the Universe Convention in Germany, where she has shared her experiences and insights.
File 770

Media Appearances: Buhlert has been involved in podcasting, co-hosting The Dickheads Podcast and producing her own show, Postcards from a Dying World, where she discusses various topics related to science fiction.
File 770

Reputation:

There are no public records or credible sources indicating any inappropriate behavior or controversies associated with Cora Buhlert. Her contributions to the science fiction and fantasy communities have been well-received, and she maintains a positive reputation among peers and fans alike.

Conclusion:

Based on the available information, Cora Buhlert appears to be a suitable and respected individual for participation as a panelist at science fiction and fantasy events.

Beyond the fact that there have been no scandals and inappropriate behaviour associated with me, most everything in this response is wrong.

Even though I’m German, I’m not that deeply involved in German fandom, because I mostly read and write in English. I have certainly never been nominated for or won either the Kurd Laßwitz Preis or the Deutscher Science Fiction Preis. My closest association with either award is that I’m on the mailing list that gets the press release with the finalists and winners and that I have translated the titles of nominated and winning novels and stories for File 770’s posts about the awards on occasion.

The plagiarism machine is correct that I am an active participant in science fiction conventions and fan events. It is also correct that I attended last year’s Los Amigos Masters of the Universe convention and will attend this year’s as well. However, I attended Los Amigos purely as a fan/guest. I was not on programming or involved with the organisation in any way.

The plagiarism machine is also correct that I have been on several podcasts, including The Dickheads podcast and Postcards from a Dying World. However, I’m not the host or co-host or producer of either podcast and I suspect David Agranoff, who actually hosts/produces both podcasts would be very surprised about this.

So in short, the plagiarism bot attributes awards, podcasts and conventions to me that I haven’t been involved with, but fails to mention that awards I actually won, the books, stories and essays I’ve actually written and the conventions where I was on programming.

That said, I got off lightly, because it could have been much worse. Several 2025 Hugo finalists put their names into ChatGPT together with the Seattle prompt and got much worse results. One person got mixed up with a sexual abuser from Romania, because they share the same surname, and also had books attributed to them they did not write. Another person, who shares a name with a popular actor, promptly got mixed with that actor (a mistake a human could also make, but that’s usually quickly cleared up) and ChatGPT proceeded to list several controversies associated with the actor, only to conclude that the actor would be a suitable panelist anyway. Someone also put Neil Gaiman’s name into ChatGPT, which promptly decided that he would be a most excellent panelist, in spite of the widely reported sexual abuse scandal.

I guess I should count myself lucky that my internet footprint under my full name is big enough that the plagiarism bot did not get me mixed up with other people who share my last name such as my cousin, who’s a local politician and disability advocate, an audio book narrator who’s from a different branch of the family, a car dealer, also from a different branch of the family, a rancher in California, also from a different branch of the family, or a bunker on the Westwall (we have no idea why we share a name with a bunker).

Beyond the fact that ChatGPT and similar Large Language Models are known to just make up things and that people with common names or even uncommon names can easily get mixed up with other who share their name as well as the massive privacy violations involved, there are also issues with the prompt itself. File 770 is a good resource, but it’s not the only SFF news site nor is it free of bias. So privileging File 770 as a source means that any bias it has is reproduced.

ETA 05-08-2025: On Bluesky, Simon Bisson gives a detailed explanation why Seattle’s approach to using ChatGPT to vet potential program participants and their prompt was a bad idea.

The Seattle Worldcon using ChatGPT to vet program applicants was a terrible idea and the response was completely predictable. This is really a drama of their own making that could have been easily avoided by just reading the fucking room and realising that 99 percent of Worldcon members are vehemently opposed to generative AI, not least because these Large Language Model stole our work as training data, flood magazines with crap and are poised to take many of our jobs and they’re using massive amounts of energy and water to do it, too.

ETA 05-08-2025: Erin Underwood discusses the challenges of selecting program participants for a large SFF convention, especially if volunteers are not familiar with many of the applicants or people don’t fill out the programming survey in a way that’s useful.

I do sympathise with the volunteers and the hours of work that go into creating programming, vetting and assigning panelists, etc… However, using ChatGPT isn’t just a short-cut, it literally spits out false information, which will not make programming better.

Finally, for something much more pleasant involving the Seattle Worldcon, I have been contributing to the Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow Blog, writing about the SFF of the early 1960s, when both the World Fair and Worldcon were last in Seattle. And yes, I write these posts myself, no robots involved.

My latest article, posted a few days before all hell broke loose, was about Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné. The article was well received and got comments from both Michael Moorcock and Micheal Whelan, the artist who painted the iconic Elric covers of the 1970s, who not only enjoyed what I wrote, but also settled once and for all the question whether Elric has pointed ears.

ETA: The title of the post is a reference to Robot Dreams and Robot Visions, two Isaac Asimov collections which came out in 1986 and 1990 respectively. LLMs don’t really hallucinate, because they are not actually self-aware, they just spit out vaguely plausible sounding nonsense.

I also broke down and ran the Seattle prompt on Isaac Asimov. It correctly identified him as an unsuitable panelist due to being a serial sexual harasser, but failed to note that he has been dead for 33 years, which would also disqualify him as a program participant.

Posted in Books, Con Reports | Tagged artificial intelligence, Elric of Melniboné, fandom wank, genre wank, Seattle, Seattle 2025, WorldCon | 18 Comments

Easter 2025

Posted on April 22, 2025 by Cora

This year, the long Easter holiday weekend began with my birthday on Good Friday.

The fact that there are so many birthdays and wedding anniversaries in March and April in my family is also why Easter was never that big of a deal for us. It was simply one more holiday in a time already full of holidays – but one that you had to navigate around, because the shops are closed on Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Easter Monday and super crowded on Holy Thursday and Easter Saturday.

Easter Saturday is also the day of the traditional Easter bonfire. These Easter fires are most likely a pre-Christian tradition adoptedby Christianity. They’re also a handy way of getting rid of unwanted garden waste.

Easter fires have come under fire in recent times, because animals would nest in the pile of garden waste and get burned to death. Plus, some people threw what was very definitely not garden waste into the fires. So nowadays, the waste is collected by the fire brigade and the pile is only set up on the day of the Easter fire itself to prevent unauthorised waste disposal and animals from nesting in the pile.

In past few years, you also started getting vaguely Green folks who have a nigh pathological hatred for burning wood. They even have their own hashtag #holzofengate. Their main target are wood-fired furnaces and fireplaces (even though wood-fired furnaces were still publicly supported as an alternative to oil and gas until fairly recently and pretty much everybody in rural areas has a back-up fireplace or wood or coal-fired oven somewhere to keep warm and cook when the power goes out), but they also hate outdoor barbecues, fireworks and Easter fires. They do have a point, because air pollution is a genuine problem, but their behaviour – such as posting photos of smoke rising from random chimneys – is completely unhinged. People like these are the reason why the Green Party is widely hated.

But people won’t give up traditions so easily and so the Easter Fires continue to burn. And because Saturday was clear and slightly windy, the smoke was also blown away and didn’t harass the entire neighbourhood, even though the Easter fire was pretty close by. Though I kept the windows closed, while the Easter fire was burning.

Because Easter was fairly late this year, the sun set around half past eight PM, whereas the Easter fire was lit at half past six PM – in beautiful bright sunshine, which somewhat spoils the effect.

The 2025 Seckenhausen Easter fire seen from a distance. Note the crowd gathered around the fire and the many bikes left by the roadside.

Of course, I went to see the Easter fire. Pretty much the entire village gathers to see a pile of garden waste burn, while eating sausages and drinking beer, and you always meet someone you know. This year, I met my former neighbour Eike and his six-year-old son Linus who like six-year-olds everywhere was very fascinated by the many vehicles of the local volunteer fire brigade that had turned out for the Easter fire. The volunteer fire brigade organises the fire and also makes sure everything is safe.

A closer look at the 2025 Seckenhausen Easter fire. Note the two members of the local volunteer fire brigade. The one on the left is the local fire chief.

I also met an elderly couple I did not recognise, though they clearly recognised me. The husband’s name was Erwin. I did not catch her name. The lady told me that she read about my Hugo nominations in the local paper, whereupon I told her that there would be another interview with me in the paper soon, because I’m nominated again. Cue congratulations.

The lady also noted that she never sees parents out and about anymore, whereupon I replied, “Well, that’s difficult because they’re both dead.” – “Oh no”, the lady replied, “We thought they might have moved away – to a care home or something like that.”

The crows gathered around the 2025 Seckenhausen Easter fire. Note the goth girl,

A closer look at the 2025 Seckenhausen Easter fire. Note the couple with their kid (and drinks) in a handcart.

This is as close as I went to the Easter fire. At this distance, you start to feel the heat.

Since an Easter fire is a social occasion, there’s always a drinks stall and a sausage stall as well as a truck to supply music.

The grounds around the Easter fire with drinks stall, sausage stall and music truck as well as poles and string lights.

This is what it looks like from the rear. Note the young people of the fire brigade grilling sausages and makeing fries for the crowd.

The “Roter Hahn” (Red Rooster) drinks stall is operated by the fire brigade (note the logo on top) to help finance the fun and is a big draw for the crowd.

All that drinking leads to pressure on the bladder, so of course there is a toilet cart as well. And for once, the line on the male side is longer than on the female side.

After doing my round at the Easter fire, I walked home and since it was still fairly early, I grabbed my shopping basket and drove to the nearest grocery store for some last minute shopping. On my way, I saw the smoke from another Easter fire rising into the clear sky. From the direction where I saw the smoke, I suspect it might have been Silbersee (silver lake), a popular bathing spot.

I didn’t really need to go grocery shopping, since I was well supplied with groceries to last me the rest of the Easter weekend. However, my Aunt Marlene invited me over for coffee on Easter Sunday and I didn’t yet have a gift for her.

In the end, I did not buy a gift for Aunt Marlene at the grocery store after all, because it turned out that they had jacked up the prices for the seasonal sweets and chocolate to ridiculous amounts. No, a small box of Lindt Easter Eggs is not worth eight Euros, no matter how good they taste. Instead, I decided I’d buy some cake before heading to Aunt Marlene’s.

On the parking lot of the grocery store, I saw a couple eating ice cream, so I asked them if the ice cream parlour across the road was still open and they said yes. So I thought, “Screw it, I really want an ice cream now. And besides, yesterday was my birthday, so I damn well deserve one.”

So I walked over to the ice cream parlour, which indeed was still open and busy, and ordered a Martini sundae.

Martini sundae, i.e. lemon ice cream, blueberries, cream and a shot of vermouth.

On Easter Sunday, I made egg vindaloo for lunch, because it’s just the perfect Easter lunch. It also looks amazing and tastes just as good.

Egg vindaloo

After lunch, I took a nap and then I set out to visit Aunt Marlene. On the way, I stopped at Bakery Helmers to buy some cake. Helmers is one of the few remaining independent bakeries (most bakeries these days are regional chains) and they have amazing cake, which is safe for me to eat without triggering allergies. I got three slices of cherry crumble cake for my Aunt Marlene, my cousin Ulrike and myself. I also got a marzipan chocolate bunny as a gift for Aunt Marlene.

This is an older photo of cherry crumble cake by Bakery Helmers, but it’s the same cake.

Getting to Aunt Marlene’s was a bit of a challenge, because they are laying tram tracks in her neighbourhood, so the main road is closed and all traffic passes through the narrow residential street where Aunt Marlene lives. A lot of the traffic was speeding to – in a narrow 30 km/h speed limit residential street. I finally found a parking place, grabbed my cake and went to Aunt Marlene’s.

Aunt Marlene was the wife of my Dad’s older brother. She’s 93 and the only surviving member of that generation on my Dad’s side – Dad was considerably younger than everybody else on that side of the family – though some of my Mom’s cousins are still alive as well. Aunt Marlene is still sharp and active for her age and still lives in the same semi-detached house where she’s lived for the past sixty years or so.

My cousin Ulrike was also supposed to visit for Easter, which is why Aunt Marlene had invited me. Ulrike was supposed to come around four, but she hadn’t yet arrived. So Aunt Marlene and I settled down on her balcony overlooking her garden and enjoyed the sunshine. When Ulrike still hadn’t arrived by five o’clock, Aunt Marlene put the coffee on and we enjoyed the cherry cake.

In the end, it was past six when Ulrike finally showed. Turned out she had messaged her Mom that she would be late, but Aunt Marlene hadn’t yet seen the message. Ulrike had just returned from a bike trip along the river Aller, so she had stories to tell and photos to show. At one point, she said, “And then I came to this strange place near the Autobahn.” I look at the photo: “That’s Autohof Schwarmstedt. I occasionally stop there, because they’ve got a very good bakery.”

In return, I also told Aunt Marlene and Ulrike about my side trip to Offensen to visit our relatives and that they apparently no longer live there.

At around half past seven, I left to go home. Aunt Marlene also gave me two photos that belonged to my grandmother. One shows my grandfather, the other my great-grandmother:

Historical photos of my grandfather and great-grandmother.

My grandfather Adolf Buhlert (my Dad was named after him) was born in 1901 and died in 1967, well before I was born. I’m not entirely sure what killed him. What I heard is that he had heart problems and that what really killed him was being forced to retire from his job as a gas station operator, when his gas station was closed and torn down to built a supermarket. The photo isn’t dated, but I suspect that it was taken a few years before his death. In his face, I can see the resemblance to my Dad and my Uncle.

My great-grandmother Magdalene Freese né Schier was born in 1871 and died in 1940. She was married to a sea captain with the North German Lloyd shipping company, lived in Bangkok for a few years with her husband and had three kids. Nikolaus a.k.a. my Uncle Nick was the oldest. He was born on Christmas Eve 1897 and was a sailor like his father. He took part in the Kiel sailors mutiny at the end of WWI and the Bremen Soviet Republic and ran off to America to avoid arrest where he lived in Miami until he died sometime in the early 1980s. I actually met him once, when I was five and he was seventy-one. There was an older daughter named Josefine a.k.a. Aunt Josie, of whom I have very faint memories. She died when I was three or four years old. My grandmother, finally, was the youngest, born April 18, 1903. Yes, I share a birthday with my grandma.

As for my great-grandmother, I have obviously never met her and even my Dad had no memory of her, since she died when he was two. Until today, I don’t think I ever saw a photo of her. I have vague memories of seeing a photo of my great-grandfather Reinhard Freese. At any rate, I think I know what he looked like, but then I might also just imagine what he looked like based on what sea captains looked like in the early twentieth century.

I got a family rumour about his death yesterday BTW, namely that he came home late and couldn’t get into the sailors housing community where he lived, because the gate was already locked. So he tried to climb over the fence and died from exhaustion. It’s suitably weird story, but I’m pretty sure it’s not true, because the details don’t add up. I know that my great-parents lived at the sailors housing of Haus Seefahrt in the Walle neighbourhood of Bremen. However, this housing community was destroyed along with most of the neighbourhood in an air raid on August 18/19, 1944. The neighbourhood was bombed so thoroughly that the street where my great-grandparents lived no longer exists – yes, I tried to find it. My Dad actually remembers sifting through the rubble of the burned out house with my grandmother from where she rescued two bronze buddha statues which my great-grandfather had brought back from his travels. These buddha statues now stand in my living room. The Haus Seefahrt and its sailors housing was eventually rebuilt elsewhere, but not until the early 1950s. Meanwhile, my great-grandfather died in 1946. So whatever happened to him, he clearly couldn’t have died trying to climb a fence at Haus Seefahrt.

Now I have a photo of my paternal great-grandmother as well (I have a few photos of one of my maternal great-grandmothers – the other died in childbirth while having my grandpa). Again the photo is not dated, though she’s clearly not young. I suspect it might have been taken in the 1910s or even 1920s. If you look closely at the photo, it is actually retouched. The eyebrows, hair and details on the dress were added by hand. It’s notable that one of her eyes is drooping and her face is uneven. Evidence of a stroke or did she just look like that?

I will put the photo up on the wall, probably next to a photo of my two uncles as little boys that my Dad put up in his office/the basement bar. Because it is a lovely vintage photo and besides, she is my great-grandmother. I’m considering putting up some other old family photos as well. My parents’ wedding photo, since it’s really lovely. Maybe some childhood pictures of my parents, my grandparents’ wedding picture and the few photos I have of my maternal great-grandparents.

Posted in Personal | Tagged Easter, Easter fire, family, food, photos, wacky German customs | Leave a comment

The Obligatory Birthday Post 2025

Posted on April 19, 2025 by Cora

April 18 was my birthday and also Good Friday. So my initial plan to go out and have lunch at a nice restaurant somewhere was scuppered, because Good Friday is the one day in Germany, where almost everything is closed.

Good Friday is a so-called “silent holiday”, where even things that are perfectly fine on other public holidays are not allowed. The most infamous rule is that dancing is not allowed on Good Friday and clubs are forced to close. Amusement parks and fairgrounds are also forced to close. Opera houses and theatres are also closed and in general and cinemas are only allowed to play a highly limited selection of movies that are deemed appropriate, so they mostly close as well. Restaurants and bakeries are usually closed as well (and the restaurants that are open don’t offer meat dishes) and shops are closed anyway. Those rules are completely outdated, but whenever someone criticises them, the response from conservatives and self-styled defenders of Christianity usually is, “Well, if you don’t want to respect Christian customs [which oddly enough do not exist in neighbouring countries which are much more religious], then maybe you should just go to work.” This isn’t as much of a threat as they think it is, because plenty of people would gladly go to work on Good Friday and get another, better day off.

Anyway, since my birthday happened to fall on the one day when almost everything is closed and anything that might be fun is banned, I decided to just stay home and have sailor’s curry, which is my traditional birthday (or somewhere around my birthday meal). Of course, sailor’s curry contains pork, but luckily the killjoys can’t tell you what to do in private.

Sailor’s curry is best made at least a day before you eat it, so I spent the evening of Holy Thursday making curry. Which meant that on my actual morning of my birthday, all I had to do was heat up the curry, cook the rice and chop the side dishes. Which still takes time – part of the reason sailor’s curry is a special occasion dish is because it’s time consuming to make – but the fact that the prep time is divided into two sessions helps.

One unexpected issue was that I was low on mango chutney, one of the side dishes served with the curry. So I went to the grocery store where I have been buying mango chutney for years, only to find that they no longer carries it and neither did the second grocery store I tried. I guess part of the problem is that the “international food aisle” hasn’t gotten bigger, while the selection expanded. For example, Korean foods, which you had to buy at an Asian grocery until recently, are now commonly found at regular grocery stores. On the downside, other products vanished from the shelves and apparently mango chutney was one of them. At the third grocery store, I finally did get mango chutney, but only by Lien Ying, a German manufacturer of Asian foods, though I prefer Geeta’s or Patak’s or Sharwood’s. Still, Lien Ying chutney is better than no chutney.

Here is the curry, rice and side dishes on the table. And no, I did not use a fancy table cloth just for myself.

The sailor’s curry itself and basmati rice.

The side dishes. Clockwise from the left: Indian lime pickle, atjar tjampoer (Dutch Indonesian pickled vegetables), onion, hardboiled egg, mango chutney, pickled beetroot, gherkins and banana.

And here is the curry, rice and side dishes all mixed up on the plate. Looks messy, but tastes amazing.

On the plus side, there are enough leftovers for tomorrow, which means I only have to cook rice again and chop some of the side dishes, which saves me time and gives me a second day of delicious curry.

I also got some congratulations from friends and family via phone calls, WhatsApp messages and social media. No cards in the mail, but then physical greeting cards are an endangered species. I also had one visitor, my neighbour Iniye, who brought me a flower, some chocolates and a card. The chocolates were Zeebanket, Belgian seafood chocolates, which are a long-time favourite of mine.

Which brings me to birthday presents. As last year (and previous years as well), there were very few actual birthday presents, mostly just things I bought for myself and decided to declare birthday presents.

Birthday presents. We have, clockwise from the top left the Masters of the Universe Classics Battleground Evil-Lyn a.k.a. 200X Evil-Lyn, Classics Horde Zombie He-Man a.k.a. Slime Pit He-Man, Masterverse New Eternia Roboto, a flower, Zeebanket chocolates, Masterverse New Eternia Beast-Man, “Where the Dark Stands Still” by A.B. Poranek and Classics Draego-Man.

The only one of these (aside from the chocolates and the flower) that’s an actual birthday present to myself is the Masters of the Universe Classics Horde Zombie He-Man a.k.a. Slime Pit He-Man, i.e. He-Man after he has been turned into a slave of the Evil Horde by the Horde’s Slime Pit. The figure was a convention exclusive and is very expensive, one of the most expensive Classics figures there is. He’s also very cool, because he’s green and translucent and an evil zombified He-Man. I recently saw Slime Pit He-Man on offer for what was a good price for this particular figure (though still expensive) and thought, “Well, it’s my birthday soon, so I’m going to buy him as a present to myself. Expect some fun with this guy soon, especially since I came up with a way to simulate slime without pouring actual slime over a very expensive action figure.

The two Masterverse figures just happened to ship around the time of my birthday. Where the Dark Stands Still I picked up in a bookshop also shortly before my birthday. The two other Classics figures I found on eBay for a good price and they happened to arrive just in time for my birthday. The Evil-Lyn figure is Lyn as she appeared in the 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, except that the outfit is not quite right, because they just repainted Teela’s outfit rather than give her her proper 200X outfit. She’s still a gorgeous figure, though, and you can never have too many Lyns. I guess I will put her with Keldor, because this is the version of Lyn who was Keldor’s girlfriend before he became Skeletor. Or maybe I’ll put her next to the Faceless One, who is her father in this version of the story. Unless she just wants to flirt with Duncan or hang out with Orko.

Draego-Man, meanwhile, was one of the new characters who was created for the 30th anniversary of Masters of the Universe in 2012 and the coolest of the bunch by far. He’s usually fairly expensive, too, because he is very cool – basically a giant dragon warrior – but I got lucky and found him for a good price. Expect some fun with this guy as well as well as better photos of all the new figures out of their packaging.

For dinner, I had some Vietnamese noodle salad which I picked up at a local grocery store. It’s one of those prepared “to go” salads they sell, but it’s really tasty.

And that’s it for my birthday this year. I have more posts in general and also more toy photo stories planned in the near future.

Posted in Personal, Recipes and Food | Tagged birthday, cartoons, family, food, He-Man, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Masters of the Universe, Masters of the Universe Classics, Masterverse, photos, toys, US TV | 4 Comments

Some Thoughts on the 2025 Hugo Finalists – with Bonus Road Trip Photos

Posted on April 7, 2025 by Cora

The 2025 Hugo finalists were announced last night – in a somewhat low-key way via Hugo administrator Nicholas Whyte (I recognised his voice) and someone else whose voice I didn’t recognise reading out the finalists in a YouTube video. If you don’t want to sit through the video, the full list of finalists is also here on the Seattle Worldcon site and here at File 770, where there’s also some discussion going on in the comments.

ETA 04-08-2025: File 770 also has a link where to read the 2025 Hugo finalists, either complete or in part, for free.

ETA 04-08-2025: Nicholas Whyte shares the Goodreads and Library Thing stats for the Best Novel, Best Novella and Lodestar finalists.

I had two very busy weeks and decided to use the lovely weather on Sunday to go out and visit an Easter craft fair in the village of Filsum in East Frisia (and it really is a very small village, albeit one with a dedicated Autobahn exit). The Easter craft fair was very busy, especially for a small village. Lots of visitors from the Netherlands, but then Filsum is only maybe twenty-five kilometers from the Dutch border.

I don’t have any photos of the craft fair, because photography was not allowed. However, I went home with a jar of spice, a beautiful handpainted china egg for my Easter branches and four vintage egg cups from a stall that was selling them for 50 cent a piece. Not that I don’t have enough egg cups (and I rarely eat hard-boiled eggs anyway), but I couldn’t resist two handpainted Delftware egg cups for my semi-accidental Delftware collection (and noted Delftware fan Skeletor would never forgive me for not picking them up) plus a Jip en Janneke egg cup, since Jip and Janneke was the first book I read in Dutch (like I noted, this craft fair took place only about twenty-five kilometers from the Dutch border, which explains the Dutch egg cups) and a metal egg cup which will double as the Motherboard chalice from Masters of the Universe Revelation.

My haul from the Filsum Easter craft fair: A vintage metal egg cup, a Jip and Janneke egg cup, a jar of spice, a handpainted porcelain egg with snow drops and two handpainted Deltware egg cups.

My haul also found favour with Skeletor, Lord of Destruction and noted collector of Delftware.

At Snake Mountain:

Tri-Klops, Evil-Lyn, Skeletor, Plundor and Anti-Eternia He-Man admire some vintage egg cups.

Tri-Klops, Evil-Lyn, Skeletor, Plundor and Anti-Eternia He-Man admire my haul from the Filsum Easter craft fair.

“Look, Lynnie, Delftware! Isn’t it beautiful? Just look at the little windmills.”

“Sigh. I’m so tired of Delftware. I have no idea why everybody is so into this stuff.”

“The sacred chalice has been returned to me. Praised be Motherboard.”

“You are aware that Motherboard is just a front for Hordak, aren’t you, Tri-Klops?”

“Praised be the Mighty Motherboard.”

“I guess the answer is no.”

“I feel kinship to these Jip and Janneke. They are negative beings of the Anti-Universe just like myself.”

“They are also characters from a children’s book.”

“My precious! I shall add you to my hoard and become the richest rabbit in the whole universe.”

“Skeletor, what are Anti-Eternia He-Man and Plundor even doing here? They’re not Evil Warriors.”

“Anti-Eternia He-Man has killed a lot of He-Men, which means our interests are aligned.”

“He has also killed a lot of Skeletors.”

“Maybe, but those Skeletors weren’t me.”

“So what about the bunny?”

“I don’t know. He just showed up and refused to leave.”

“Then why don’t you kick him out?”

“Because that wouldn’t be very nice.”

“You’re Skeletor, Lord of Destruction. You’re not supposed to be nice.”

“Never mind that, Lyn. Just look at those little windmills and admire the craftmanship of those brush strokes!”

“Praised be the Mighty Motherboard.”

“I shall seek out this Jip and Janneke to add them to my Anti-Heroic Forces.”

“Heh, heh, heh, I’m going to be rich. I’m going to be the richest rabbit in the universe and then I will impose beautiful tariffs on everybody else.”

“Sigh. Idiots! I am surrounded by idiots!”

***

And here is the handpainted porcelain egg on my Easter branches, which are still very barren. At any rate, I don’t think it took this long for them to sprout last year.

The handpainted porcelain egg adorns my Easter branches.

After the craft fair, I paid a brief visit to nearby Stickhausen Castle (yes, East Frisia has castles) in the village of Stickhausen. Though all that remains of the castle is the main tower, built in 1498.

The tower of Stickhausen castle, built in 1498.

A Dutch style drawbridge across the river Jümme in Stickhausen.

I took a few photos of the castle as well as a nearby drawbridge. And since I have started to take some of my action figures along on small or bigger roadtrips for some spontaneous outdoor toy photography, I also snapped the following picture of King Randor and Duncan in front of Stickhausen Castle.

Masters of the Universe Masterverse Man-at-Arms and King Randor in front of Stickhausen Castle

“The tower is well fortified. Let the enemy come. We are ready for them.” – “Sire, don’t you think it would be better to stay inside the tower?” – “Hide inside the tower? Never, Duncan. A king’s place is with his troops.” – “Sigh. As you wish, sire. But don’t blame me if you get yourself killed.”

I also made an unplanned detour or rather two, because Autobahn A28 was closed for construction work, so I had to drive past Zwischenahner Meer, a large lake created when a salt dome collapsed millions of years ago, where I had breakfast at Bakery Ewen in a village called Dreibergen.

A look across the Zwischenahner Meer at Dreibergen

A look across the Zwischenahner Meer from the ferry pier at Dreibergen.

Another look across the Zwischenahner Meer at Dreibergen

I’d planned to stop for lunch at Autohof Apen-Remels, which was my Dad’s favourite Autohof on the A28 (well, it doesn’t have all that many – only three Autohöfe und two service stations, including the only service station on a German Autobahn that I know of that doesn’t have a name) and where we frequently stopped on route to the Netherlands. Alas, the Autohof was refurbished last year and instead of the independent restaurant with really good food by Autohof standards, there’s only a McDonald’s now. It’s a shame how American fast food chains are gradually taking over the Autohöfe and Service Stations along German Autobahnen. I don’t mind if there is a McDonald’s or Burger King in addition to the regular truck stop, but if there’s nothing else, I’m not stopping there. So I guess it’s time to scratch Autohof Apen-Remels from my personal list of good Autohöfe in Germany. I should probably check out Autohof Moorburg, one of the other two Autohöfe on the A28, if that one’s better.

Today, however, I drove onwards to Oldenburg some thirty kilometers away and had lunch at Papa Rossi, a sort-of Italian restaurant in Oldenburg-Wechloy only a few hundred meters from the Autobahn.

But enough about my day. You’re here for my thoughts on the 2025 Hugo finalists, so let’s delve right in:

Best Novel

In this category, we have a mix of returning favourites and newcomers.

Adrian Tchaikovsky is represented not once but twice in this category with Alien Clay and Service Model, but then he is a very prolific writer and both novels are fine choices. I’m also glad to see Adrian Tchaikovsky getting more Hugo love in recent years, since he has been doing good work for years, but didn’t start to get Hugo nominations until three years ago.

T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon is a long-time Hugo favourite and her novel A Sorceress Comes to Call is a good choice. This novel was also on my personal shortlist, but didn’t make my ballot in the end.

John Wiswell burst onto the scene in recent years and has won multiple Hugo and Nebula nominations for his short fiction, so it’s no surprise to see his debut novel Someone You Can Built a Nest In on the Hugo ballot. This was also one of my nominees BTW.

Robert Jackson Bennett is an author we’ve seen on the Hugo ballot before and The Tainted Cup got a lot of positive buzz, though I haven’t read it yet.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley got a lot of buzz last year and was nominated for a couple of mainstream literary awards. This was also one of my nominees BTW. Now we do see SF-nal mainstream books on the Hugo ballot from time to time – the most notable example is probably The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. Coincidentally, the other notable SF-nal mainstream novel of 2024, Orbital by Samatha Harvey, winner of the Booker Prize, did not make the ballot. But then Orbital is less of a typical Hugo book than The Ministry of Time.

This is a very good shortlist overall. We have a good range of publishers represented with Orbit, Tor, Tordotcom (which is not the same thing as Tor), Del Rey, DAW and Sceptre), which will hopefully put the “But only Tor gets nominated” complaints to rest.

Meanwhile, the “But what about the poor widdle menz?” crowd, which seems to be out in force currently, should be thrilled that this is the first majority male Best Novel ballot since 2015 with four men (even if two of them are Adrian Tchaikovsky) and two women nominated. Plus, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Robert Jackson Bennett and John Wiswell are all white dudes, though I guess the usual suspects will find something wrong with them.

Diversity count (Adrian Tchaikovsky counted twice): 2 women, 4 men, 1 author of colour, 3 international authors*.

Best Novella

We have several returning favourites in this category.

Nghi Vo has been a finalist several times before and is nominated for The Brides of High Hill, which I haven’t read yet.

Aliette de Bodard is another returning favourite and her novella Navigational Entanglements was also on my personal ballot.

T. Kingfisher makes her second appearance on the 2025 Hugo ballot with What Feasts At Night. This one was on my personal longlist, but didn’t make my ballot.

Sofia Samatar is another author we’ve seen on the Hugo ballot before, though it’s been a while, because her last nomination was all the way back in 2014, the year she also won what was then the Campbell Award and is now the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. I’m glad to see her back with The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, which was also on my personal longlist, but didn’t make my ballot.

Ray Nayler is actually a first time Hugo finalist, because his debut The Mountain in the Sea was a Nebula, not a Hugo finalist. I haven’t yet read his nominated novella The Tusks of Extinction, though I’ve heard good things.

Amazingly, Premee Mohamed is a first time fiction Hugo finalist as well. I actually assumed that she’d been nominated in a fiction category before, which she was – for the Nebula. She was also nominated for the Hugo as part of the Escape Pod team. Anyway, The Butcher of the Forest is a great novella and I’m glad to see it and Premee Mohamed on the ballot. This was also one of my personal nominees.

I’m surprised that Countess by Suzan Palumbo didn’t make the ballot, because it was excellent, but then it’s probably sitting just below the nomination ranks.

Publisherwise, this category actually is dominated by Tordotcom with the only outlier being What Feasts At Night, which was published by Nightfire, another Tor imprint. But Tordotcom and other Tor imprints not only have a solid novella program, but also lots of marketing dollars. Though I still wish that Hugo voters would look beyond Tordotcom‘s novella program at the good work done by Rebellion Publishing, Neon Hemlock, Subterranean other small presses or at the occasional novella published in an SFF magazine or even at indie authors publishing standalone novellas.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 4 authors of colour, 2 international authors

Best Novelette

This category is a mix of returning favourites and newcomers.

Premee Mohamed makes her second appearance on the ballot with “By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars”, which I haven’t read yet.

Multiple Hugo finalist and winner Naomi Kritzer made the ballot with “The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea”, another story I haven’t yet read. Coincidentally, this is the first time in a decade or so that a story published in one of the so-called “Big Three” print SFF magazines (i.e. Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF) has made the Hugo ballot. Though I’m not sure you can call these mags the “Big Three” anymore, since their importance and readership has dwindled a lot.

Sarah Pinsker is another multiple Hugo finalist and previous winner. She is nominated for “Signs of Life”, which again I haven’t yet read.

Ann Leckie is another previous finalist and winner. This year, she is nominated for “Lake of Souls”, which – this is kind of becoming a pattern in this category – I haven’t read yet.

Eugenia Triantafyllou has been making a name for herself with short fiction in recent years and made the Hugo longlist a couple of times, but this is her first nomination. Once again, I haven’t yet read her nominated novelette “Loneliness Universe”. I also think this might be the first ever Hugo nomination for a Greek person.

Thomas Ha is the second first-time finalist in this category, nominated for “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”, which is also a Nebula finalist this year. Once again – yes, you guessed it – I didn’t get around to reading it yet. I didn’t get to read nearly as much as I wanted to to last year.

Venue-wise, we have two stories from Uncanny, one from Strange Horizons, one from Clarkesworld, one from Asimov’s, marking the first Hugo nomination for a story published in a print magazine in a decade or so, and one from a collection. All in all, this is a nice mix of venues.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 2 authors of colour, 2 international authors

Best Short Story

Rachael K. Jones was a Hugo finalist in this category last year and made the ballot again this year with the haunting “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus”. This highly memorable story was also on my personal ballot.

Nghi Vo makes her second appearance on the 2025 Hugo ballot with “Stitched to Skin Like Family Is”, which I haven’t yet read.

Mary Robinette Kowal is a multiple Hugo finalist and previous winner. This year, she is nominated for “Marginalia”, which I haven’t read yet.

Caroline M. Yoachim has been a frequent presence on Hugo and Nebula ballots in recent years as well. This year, she is nominated for “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read”, which I once again haven’t yet read.

Arkady Martine is a two-time winner for Best Novel and is nominated for her story “Three Faces of a Beheading” this year. This story was on my personal longlist, but didn’t make my shortlist.

Finally, we have “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim. This is her Isabel J. Kim’s first Hugo nomination, though she was a finalist for the Astounding Award in 2023. Once again, I didn’t get around to reading this story yet.

This category has the most overlap with the 2024 Nebula ballot, since three stories appear on both ballots. With regard to venues, we have three stories from Uncanny, two from Lightspeed and one from Clarkesworld, i.e. not a lot of diversity. But then there is a reason that Uncanny, Lightspeed and Clarkesworld are probably the real “Big Three” of our era.

Diversity count: 6 women, 3 authors of colour

Best Series

Seanan McGuire has been a constant and well deserved presence in this category since its inception in 2017. This year, she is nominated for her InCryptid series, which I like a lot.

Adrian Tchaikovsky actually won in this category with Children of Time in 2023, but has disavowed his win following the Chengdu Hugo mess, which has been exhaustively discussed on this blog and elsewhere. Therefore, I’m glad that he gets another shot at an untainted Hugo. This year, he is nominated for his Tyrant Philosophers series. He was also nominated in this category last year for another series, but then like Seanan McGuire, Adrian Tchaikovsky is very prolific..

Brandon Sanderson has also been nominated in this category (and other categories) before, also for the Stormlight Archive series. His work isn’t really for me, but he is hugely popular.

Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy got knocked off the ballot by puppy shenanigans, back when it came out, though the film version of Annihilation made the ballot. Nonetheless, I’m glad to see him nominated.

I enjoyed The Burning Kingdoms trilogy by Tasha Suri lot and am glad to see it on the ballot. Tasha Suri was an Astounding finalist in 2020 as well as a World Fantasy winner, but this is her first Hugo nomination.

Rebecca Roanhorse won the Hugo Award for Best Short story and what was then the Campbell and is now the Astounding Award in 2018 and has had several nominations since then. I enjoy her work and am glad to see her Between Earth and Sky series on the ballot.

The Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo received enough nominations to make the ballot, but was disqualified due to not insufficient wordcount.

Overall, I still don’t think the Best Series Hugo does what I expected it to do, namely honour long-running popular series where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That said, we do have two finalists on this ballot – InCryptid and Stormlight Archives – which absolutely fall into this category. And overall, this is a good Best Series ballot and not just another bite of apple for Best Novel finalists, so I guess Best Series is working, after all, even though it rarely reflects my taste in series.

Publisherwise we have some nice diversity with Tor, Orbit, Saga Press, DAW, Ad Astra and Farrar, Straus and Giroux all represented.

Diversity count: 3 women, 2 men, 2 authors of colour, 2 international authors

Best Graphic Story or Comic

This category tends to get a little stale with the same long-running series getting nominated over and over again.

This year, we only have two returning favourites, volume 9 of Monstress by Marjorie M. Liu and Sana Takeda, which has a ton of nominations and wins under its belt, and book 2 of My Favourite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris, where the first book was a Hugo finalist several years ago.

Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans have both been nominated in this category before for DIE and Kieron Gillen has also been nominated for Once & Future and The Wicked + The Divine. Their 2025 finalist We Called Them Giants is a standalone post-apocalyptic graphic novel.

G. Willow Wilson has also been nominated in this category before for her work on Ms. Marvel. This time around, she is nominated for her work on The Hunger and the Dusk with Chris Wildgoose.

I’m not familiar with The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag, though it seems to get a lot of positive attention.

Finally, we have a tie-in comic called Star Trek: Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way written by Ryan North, art by Chris Fenoglio. This isn’t the first time we have seen a media tie-in comic make the Hugo ballot (and indeed two of my personal nominees were media tie-in comics). And besides, Star Trek: Lower Decks is very popular with Hugo voters.

With regard to publishers, it’s notable that not a single Marvel or DC comic made the ballot. Ditto for Dark Horse and Boom. Instead, two finalists were published by Image, two by IDW, one by Fantagraphics and one by Graphix.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make comics.

Best Related

It’s no secret that I have a strong preference for well researched academic and popular non-fiction books in this category. And indeed, two finalists are exactly the sort of thing I want to see nominated in Best Related.

The first of these two is Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right by Jordan S. Carroll, an excellent and well researched non-fiction book, which was also one of my personal nominees.

Track Changes by Abigail Nussbaum was not on my personal ballot, but is nonetheless exactly the sort of book I want to see in this category.

Next, we have two finalists which are not books, but nonetheless highly deserving works of non-fiction, namely “Charting the Cliff: An Investigation into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics” by Camestros Felapton and Heather Rose Jones and “The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion” by Chris M. Barkley and Jason Sanford. Both works are very much companion pieces and were crucial in digging into the complete and utter mess that was the 2023 Hugo Awards. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of “inside baseball” finalists, i.e. works that examine some genre uproar in minute detail, because I keep wondering what a reader in ten or twenty or fifty years will make of those works and the controversy that spawned them. However, the 2023 Hugo Awards were a huge mess, probably the biggest in the history of the award and the dilligent work of Cam, Heather, Chris, Jason and lots of other fans was crucial in uncovering the sheer scope and scale of malfeasance, therefore these two reports are highly deserving finalists. Besides, Cam, Chris, Jason and Heather are all friends and I’m happy to see them nominated.

ETA 05-02-2025: The Bayer internal employee newsletter reports about Heather Rose Jones’ Hugo nomination. The newsletter itself is not accessible for non-employees, but Heather has reproduced the text on her blog.

YouTuber Jenny Nicholson has been nominated in this category before for her video essays/documentaries. This year, she is nominated for her documentary The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel. I actually watched this one – at part of it (it’s three hours long and I don’t care that much about failed US theme park projects**) – because the YouTube algorithm kept pushing it into my feed. Jenny Nicholson actually spent a shitload of money to stay at the infamously expensive Star Wars Hotel, so she knows what she’s talking about, though her style and video essays on YouTube in general aren’t really my preferred format. Personally, I think that documentaries belong in Best Dramatic Presentation, but in those categories, documentaries would get drowned out by popular Hollywood movies and TV shows, so Best Related is probably the best fit and indeed we have seen several documentaries nominated in this category before.

Finally, we come to this year’s edge case finalist, namely “r/Fantasy’s 2024 Bingo Reading Challenge”. r/Fantasy is a big and popular subreddit and home of the Stabby Awards. I’m not a member, so I’m not sure what exactly the “r/Fantasy 2024 Bingo Reading Challenge” was, though I assume the Hugo voters packet will clear this up.. However, I’m sure it was a worthy project, but like the fanfiction archives, virtual conventions, filk records and other edge case finalists of years gone by, this is not a non-fiction book or sufficiently book-like object (i.e. a long-form article, essay, report or documentary) that I think belongs in this category. Coincidentally, we really need a “Best Fannish Thing” or “Best Miscellany” Hugo category to give a home to all of these worthy projects which don’t really fit anywhere else and return Best Related to the Best Non-Fiction category it was supposed to be.

That said, some of the r/Fantasy people showed up at the Hugo finalist Discord and they seem to be lovely folks and clearly happy about their nomination and it’s always great to see happy finalists. They’re also sharing book recommendations.

Diversity count (minus r/Fantasy, because they have about as many people listed as Strange Horizons and I’m not googling them all, though from what I’ve seen in the finalist Discord, they have members of various genders, races and nationalities): 3 women, 4 men, at least 1 author of colour, 2 international authors

Best Dramatic Presentation Long

Not a lot of surprises in this category.

Dune, Part Two is probably as close to a sure bet you can get, since anything with the name Dune attached tends to get nominated. In fact, Dune, the Musical was disqualified due to being first performed in 2023. Honestly, I think at this point Dune must be the most Hugo nominated property of all time.

The Hugo nomination for Wicked was probably inevitable, because the movie was extremely popular. That said, this is the one finalist I dread having to sit through, because I have zero interest in Wicked. I have neither read the book nor seen the stage musical and the trailers looked very unappealing.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a prequel to the 2016 finalist Mad Max: Fury Road and also a good film, so I’m not surprised to see it on the ballot, though apparently it underperformed at the box office.

The Wild Robot was hugely popular and is also apparently a lovely film, though I haven’t seen it yet. Though oddly enough, I did nominate another animated film about robots, which came out around the same time, namely Transformers One.

Flow is the 2025 Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature and allegedly a lovely film, though again I haven’t seen it yet. Though I’m happy to see animated films and TV shows well represented on the Hugo ballot in both Dramatic Presentation categories this year. Besides, this is very likely the first Hugo nomination for Latvia ever.

I Saw the TV Glow is this year’s indie/arthouse finalist that managed to break through the stranglehood of the big studios. That said, I’m not at all surprised to see it nominated, because this movie about two outsiders bonding over and becoming obsessed by an obscure TV show (if that’s all it is) mirrors an experience that so many of us had as teenagers and young adults, when some weird, obscure and now forgotten (and frankly often not very good) TV-show not only completely seemed to understand how we felt and mirrored our experiences**, but also became a vehicle via which we bonded and communicated with others. It’s a movie that almost every Hugo voter can probably identify with to some degree, because everybody had their own Pink Opaque or several. Anyway, this was also one of my nominees and I’m so glad it made the ballot.

Somewhat conspicuous by its absence is The Substance, especially since it was a Best Picture nominee.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies.

Best Dramatic Presentation Short

In the past, this category often had the problem that multiple episodes of a popular series would get nominated, shutting out other worthy works. Even when the maximum number of episodes per series was limited to two, we still has the problem that two or three series took up the majority of the slots, often for several years in a row.

In recent years, this problem seemed to have resolved itself and there was more variety on the ballot, but 2024 and 2025 saw a resurgence of this phenomenon.

Perennial Hugo favourite Doctor Who is represented with two episode, “73 Yards” and “Dot and Bubble”. Now the latest series of Doctor Who was actually pretty good, a return to form after the Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi years, where the series often got entangled in its own mythology. And “73 Yards” was a very good episode, though I didn’t nominate it, because Doctor Who doesn’t need my help. “Dot and Bubble” is a bit more of a surprise, since it got very mixed reviews when it first aired. But then, this episode was also nominated for a Nebula Award.

Star Trek in all of its guises is another perennial Hugo favourite. This year, two episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks made the ballot, namely “Fissure Quest” and “The New Next Generation”, i.e. the final two episodes of the series, which ended last year. “Fissure Quest” got a lot of positive attention, mostly because it featured a Starfleet ship crewed entirely by alternate reality version of past Star Trek characters and gave us Curson Dax, Garak and Dr. Bashir is a married couple (hurray!), the return of T’Pol, voiced again by Jolene Blalock who came out of retirement to play the character one more time, the return of Lily Sloane from First Contact, whom most of us have forgotten, though actress Alfre Woodward went on to many greater things, and a whole squad of Harry Kims. In short, it’s abolutely no surprise that this episode got nominated. As for “The New Next Generation”, it is the series finale of this popular Star Trek show. Besides, I’m always happy to see animated shows on the Hugo ballot.

The creator is Star Trek: Lower Decks was also celebrating the Hugo nomination on BlueSky, which is always nice to see since a lot of Dramatic Presentation finalists barely seem to acknowledge their nomination at all.

The category is rounded out by the Fallout episode “The Beginning” and the Agatha All Along episode “Death’s Hand in Mine”. I actually nominated episodes from both series, though different ones. Coincidentally, Agatha All Along is also the sole work on the entire Hugo ballot that holds up the Marvel flag.

Somewhat conspicuous by its absence is Arcane, which is extremely popular and a past Hugo finalist. Ditto for X-Men ’97, which was very well received. It’s also notable that no Star Wars series made the ballot, neither The Acolyte (which was hated by a vocal minority, but also had its share of fans and actually tried to do something new) nor Skeleton Crew, which most people actually seemed to like.

That said, all in all this is a pretty good ballot, though personally I would have swapped out “Dot and Bubble” and “The New Next Generation” for episodes from other worthy series. Though 2024 was something of a weak year TV-wise, at least for me. There were a few shows I really loved, but none of them made the ballot.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make TV shows.

Best Game or Interactive Work

As usual, I can’t say much about this category, because I’m not a gamer.

That said, even I have heard of Dragon Age: The Veilguard and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.

Best Editor Long

This is another category with the tendency to get stale, because there are only so many editors working in SFF.

And indeed, Carl Engle-Laird, Lee Harris, David Thomas Moore and Diana M. Pho have all been nominated in this category before, while Ali Fisher and Stephanie Stein are first time finalists. They’re all very worthy, though.

Coincidentally, since Hugo voters seem to enjoy David Thomas Moore’s work at Rebellion Publishing enough to nominated for him for the Hugo for Best Editor Long for the second year in a row, could they maybe check out Rebellion Publishing‘s fine novella program as well?

Considering how female dominated the publishing industry is, it notable that we have gender parity in this category.

Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, two international editors, one editor of colour

Best Editor Short

Like the long form category, Best Editor Short tends to get stale, because there are only so many editors working in SFF at any given time and they also tend to stay at their respective magazines for a long time. And indeed every single finalist in this category has been nominated for a Hugo before.

That said, Scott H. Andrews of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld, Jonathan Strahan of Lightspeed, Sheila Williams of Asimov’s and Lynne and Michael Damian Thomas of Uncanny all do very good work, even though they have multiple nominations and sometimes wins under their belt.

I’m also very happy to see Jennifer Brozek on the Hugo ballot again and not just because I have a story in the anthology 99 Fleeting Fantasies, which she edited. Because the first time Jennifer Brozek was on the Hugo ballot was in 2015, when she got caught up in the puppy mess, which led to the entire category being no awarded, even though one can hardly blame her for the fact that Brad Torgersen liked her work and put her on his slate.

Diversity count: 3 women, 4 men, 1 international editor

Best Professional Artist

This is another category that tend to get stale, though we do have a nice mix of new names and returning favourites this year.

For starters, I’m happy to see my friend Alyssa Winans on the ballot again. Rovina Cai is another artist who has been nominated several times in this category before and also won in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Maurizio Manzieri and Micaela Alcaino have also been nominated before, while Tran Nguyen and Audrey Benjaminsen are first time finalists. They all do wonderful work, though.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 4 artists of colour, 3 international artists

Best Semiprozine

This category often consists of “the usual suspects”. Part of the problem is the way the category is defined, which means that long-running, popular magazines, which pay their author pro-rates and are defined as semipro solely because no staff member makes their main income via the work on the magazines, are competing with small mags that pay maybe ten or twenty dollars per story.

And so Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, Escape Pod and FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction have all been nominated multiple times in this category before. They also do excellent work.

khoréo (apologies for WordPress butchering the title) was a first time finalist in this category last year and won another highly deserved nomination this year.

Finally, we do have a new name in this category with the excellent The Deadlands.

There also was a withdrawal for Beneath Ceaseless Skies, who permanently recused themselves from consideration in this category.

So yes, the fact that we keep seeing the same magazines nominated over and over again in this category is a problem, though they are also all highly deserving finalists. Besides, even though five of six finalists in this category are repeat finalists, kh?ré? are only on their second nomination, Escape Pod has never won in spite of multiple nominations and Strange Horizons has only won once in spite of more nominations than any other finalist in this category. Also, new magazines need some time to establish a readership and reputation and some magazines, though highly deserving , just aren’t what Hugo voters commonly read.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make semiprozines.

Best Fanzine

This is another category where we tend see the same finalists nominated over and over again, which is why it’s good to see a few new names.

Let’s start with the established names.

Galactic Journey is back on the ballot after a year of absence, which of course thrills me, because I am a contributor to the site. And if you look at the finalist listing, you’ll see my name listed, which means that I’m now a four time Hugo finalist in two different categories.

My friends Olav and Amanda of the Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog have been doing great work for years and I’m thrilled to see them on the ballot again.

I’m always happy to find a new issue of The Full Lid in my inbox every Friday. Alasdair and Marguerite do great and are highly deserving finalists.

Journey Planet has been a fixture on the Hugo ballot for years, but then every single issue of Journey Planet is drastically different with its own theme. Journey Planet isn’t one magazine, but several different ones, each of them highly deserving.

Black Nerd Problems have been doing great work for years and made the longlist a few times, so I’m glad to see them finally make the ballot.

Ancillary Review of Books is new to me, though I like what I see.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make fanzines.

Best Fancast

Again, we have a nice mix of returning favourites and newcomers in the category.

For starters, I’m thrilled to see my good friends of Hugo, Girl!, Hugos There and Worldbuilding for Masochists on the ballot again. The always excellent Coode Street Podcast is another returning favourite.

We also have two first time finalists, Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, presented by Emily Tesh and Rebecca Fraimow and A Meal of Thorns, presented by Jake Casella Brookins. I’m not familiar with either podcast, though I look forward to checking them out.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to produce podcasts.

Best Fan Writer

This category is close to my heart for obvious reasons and also full of good people doing good work.

I’m very glad to see my friends Camestros Felapton, Alasdair Stuart and Jason Sanford on the ballot again. Örjan Westin has been doing great work with his MicroSFF fiction on Twitter and now BlueSky and I’m happy to see his hard work recognised.

Abigail Nussbaum always has insightful things to say and I’m happy to see her back on the ballot for the first time since her win in 2017.

Roseanna Pendlebury, finally, is a new finalist in this category, though a previous winner for nerds of a feather. She’s also highly deserving.

Next to Best Editor Short, this is the only category that’s all white and yes, this is a problem. And there are some excellent fan writers of colour out there whom I hope to see on the ballot (again) one day, such as Arturo Serrano, Ann Michelle Harris, Wendy Browne, Chris M. Barkley, Christopher J. Garcia, Sarah Gulde, Arthur Liu, RiverFlow, Juan Sanmiguel, Aigner Loren Wilson, etc…

That said, this is an excellent Fan Writer ballot and also a very international one with one American, two British, one Australian, one Swedish and one Israeli finalist and that is reason to celebrate.

Diversity count: 2 women, 4 men, 5 international writers

Best Fan Artist

This category has a lot of repeat finalists, since Iain J. Clark, Sara Felix, Meg Frank, Alison Scott and España Sheriff have all been nominated in this category before. Michelle Morrell is the only new finalist in this category. There is an Alaskan artist with that name, though I’m not sure if it’s the same person.

ETA: Michelle Morrell herself commented that she is not the Alaskan painter, but the artist who designed the lovely free cross stich patterns on the Seattle Worldcon website.

Diversity count: 4 women, 1 man, 1 non-binary, 3 international artists

Best Poem

This is a special one-of Hugo category run by the Seattle Worldcon, though in the past we have occasionally seen special categories become regular categories.

Calypso by Oliver K. Langmead is a highly deserving finalist. It’s also not what most people think of when they think of poetry, since it’s a novel or at least novella-length work written in verse. Calypso could easily have made the novel ballot, since the fact that it’s written in verse is not a disqualifying characteristic.

The remaining finalists are closer to traditional poem length. I’m really happy to see Mari Ness on the ballot, especially since this is her first Hugo nomination as far as I know. Marie Brennan and Ai Jiang have both been Hugo finalists in other categories before. Devon Barlow and Angela Liu are both first-time finalists, though Angela Liu is also an Astounding finalist this year.

With regard to venues, we have two poems from Uncanny, two from Strange Horizons, one from Haven Spec as well as a novel in verse published by Titan.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 2 poets of colour, 2 international poets

And now we come to the two not-a-Hugos:

Lodestar

I freely admit that I’m not the target audience for YA and I usually leave the Lodestar finalists for last, because the books just aren’t for me and I’m not familiar with any of the finalists. That said, YA fiction is an important part of our genre and the Lodestar has established itself as a valid award in recent years.

Xiran Jay Zhao, Jordan Ifueko, Yoon Ha Lee and Darcie Little Badger have all been nominated in this category (and elsewhere) before and I enjoyed their previous works. H.A. Clarke is a first time Hugo finalist, though they have been a Nebula finalist in the past. So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole is new to me, though it sounds like something I would enjoy.

We also have a withdrawal in this category, namely Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White, which I’m not familiar with either.

ETA 05-02-2025: And we have a second withdrawal in this category, because Yoon Ha Lee has withdrawn Moonstorm in response to the Seattle Worldcon using ChatGPT to vet potential panelists and issuing a mealy-mouthed apology afterwards. I’m not really in the headspace right now to blog about that controversy, but needless to say that everybody is understandably angry. For more, see the discussion at File 770.

Diversity count: 3 women, 1 man, 2 non-binary, 5 authors of colour, 1 international author

Astounding

I enjoyed Hannah Kaner’s debut novel Godkiller and the sequel Sunbringer and am glad to see her back on the ballot.

I also enjoyed Bethany Jacobs’ debut novel These Burning Stars and the sequel On Vicious Worlds a lot and am glad to see her on the ballot.

Moniquill Blackgoose was an Astounding finalist last and won the Lodestar for To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, so I’m not surprised to see her on the ballot again.

Angela Liu burst into the scene in 2023 and has since been nominated for the Nebula, Ignyte and Rhysling Awards and is also nominated in the Best Poem category, which makes her a highly deserving finalist.

Jared Pechacek (apologies for WordPress butchering his surname) was something of a surprise to me. Apparently, he lives in Seattle, so the 2025 Worldcon is on his home turf. I haven’t read his debut novel The West Passage yet, though I look forward to checking it out.

Tia Tashiro had several stories published in Uncanny, Clarkesworld and Apex Magazine. Unfortunately, I haven’t read any of them, though I’m looking forward to remedying that.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 3 authors of colour, 1 international author.

***

And that’s it for the 2025 Hugo finalists. Personally, I think it’s a very good ballot, even though a few finalists which are not to my taste. But then every year, there are finalists who are not to my taste.

Are some categories too white? Yes. Could we have more diversity in some categories with a lot of repeat finalists? Yes as well. But then, none of these issues are new. There have always been repeat finalists and some categories where the same person or institution won over and over and over again. Just take a look at ballots from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and even 2000s to see how far we’ve come.

So far, there haven’t been a lot of reactions beyond excited finalists. Double finalist Camestros Felapton briefly weighs in on his blog and there is some discussion and a lot of congratulations in the comments.

ETA 04-07-2025: Allison Scott, John Coxon and Liz Batty discuss the 2025 Hugo finalists on the Octothorpe podcast.

ETA 04-10-2025: The transcript of the Octothorpe episode is now up as well.

ETA 04-08-2025: Camestros Felapton shares his thoughts on the Hugo finalists in greater detail.

ETA 04-09-2025: Dina at SFF Book Reviews shares her thoughts on the 2025 Hugo finalists, focussing mainly on the longer form fiction finalists.

ETA 04-14-2025: At the French site Actualité, Antoine Oury reports about the 2025 Hugo finalists. It’s mostly just a listing of the finalists, but he also refers to the Hugos as “Oscars de l’imaginaire”. Found via Jordan S. Carroll.

One person decided to air their displeasure with the 2025 Hugo finalists on social media barely an hour after the finalists had been announced and found some agreement among commenters. I’m not linking to them, because this person is displeased with the finalists every single year (which is their good right) and rude enough to not even wait twenty-four hours to air their displeasure.

I haven’t seen any reaction from the far right yet, though they mostly seem to have stopped paying attention to the Hugo Awards, which is better for all of us.

ETA: 04-08-2025: A certain infamous “leading voice” felt the need to air their thoughts on their Substack newsletter. Basically, it’s just reiterating Hugo grievances from a puppy POV. He might get into the actual 2025 finalists at some point, but I’d have to subscribe to read the entire thing and I’m not subscribing to this person’s mental diarrhea.

There’s also a video on his YouTube channel, if you have the stomach to sit through eighteen minutes of blathering. I suffered through this nonsense, so you don’t have to, and he actually does go into the 2025 finalists, at least the top of the ballot categories, only to display his complete and utter ignorance of current SFF as well as of how the Hugos work.

Also, comparing the number of Hugo nominations and votes in 2015 and 2016, the two main puppy years, with nominations in 2025 doesn’t say what this person thinks it says, because 2015 and 2016 were outlier years with lots of people joining to either support or vote down the puppies.

More reactions will be added to the post as I find them.

I’ll keep the comments open, but if things get rude or people start fighting each other, I reserve the right to close them.

*I define “international” as a writer/creator living outside the US. If we include writers who are first or second generation immigrants, there would be several more. I’ve also stopped counting LGBTQ+ finalists for the diversity count, because it’s very difficult to determine, since not everybody is out. Apologies if I’ve accidentally misgendered anybody.

**Fun fact: In elementary school, I was chided for talking too much about Disney World (which I visited for the first and only time in 1978 at the age of 5, when this was still something very special), because this was considered bragging. Now, 47 years later, I no longer care about theme parks, including the Disney parks, at all.

***Coincidentally, I only realised recently why my entire class became obsessed with Twin Peaks – to the confusion of the adults in our lives, who neither understood nor liked the show. It’s because our school had its own Laura Palmer case, a girl a few years older than us who’d been killed during a spectacular and senseless crime a little over a year before. Many of the students at our school were what I recognise as traumatised now and the teachers did not react well to this at all. Twin Peaks gave us a mirror through which we could process this experience and we lapped it up. Some friends from school and I were quoting lines from Twin Peaks for years.

Posted in Books, Comics, Fanzine Spotlight, Film, Non-Fiction Spotlight, Semiprozine Spotlight, TV | Tagged Agatha All Along, awards geekery, best fanwriter, Doctor Who, Dune, East Frisia, Easter, Easter branches, Fallout, fan writing, fancast, fantasy, fanzines, Galactic Journey, gender, Hugo Awards, international writer, non-fiction, race, roadtrip, science fiction, Seattle, Star Trek: Lower Decks, WorldCon, YA fantasy, YA science fiction | 4 Comments

Easter Branches 2025

Posted on March 19, 2025 by Cora

So what are Easter branches?

Easter branches are a North and Central European tradition, where you cut (or buy) bare branches in the run-up to Easter, put them in a vase and decorate with painted eggs or other festive decorations. The branches will then sprout in the vase. Here is an explanation in English from Southern Living. There’s also an outdoor version where a tree or bush in the garden is decorated with colourful eggs, mostly plastic for durability. It’s basically the Easter equivalent of a Christmas tree.

When I was a kid, we always had Easter branches. There is a photo of me aged about three or four sitting on a chair with that year’s Easter branches on the table next to me. We even set up Easter branches when we spent Easter abroad. When Dad was working in Singapore in 1982/83 and Mom and I spent the Easter holidays with him, we brought our decorations along and had Easter branches in Singapore, which were a minor sensation among our neighbours, because the tradition wasn’t known there at all.

As I grew older, my parents eventually stopped putting up Easter branches and Easter decorations in the house were limited to a few decorative bunny figurines and two collectible Hutschenreuther porcelain eggs which either Mom or I had gotten as a gift. Collectible Hutschenreuther holiday ornaments are a popular gift (though not really suitable for putting on a Christmas tree or Easter branches, because they’re too heavy) and I have a lot of Christmas ones that accumulated over the years. But for some reason, I have only two Easter eggs.

Fast forward to last year. In early March, shortly after Mom died, I chanced to walk past a flower shop and saw Easter branches for sale, because it was the season. And I thought, “I haven’t had Easter branches in years. So why don’t I buy some and put them up to make the house cheerier?”

So I bought the branches, realised that I couldn’t find our old Easter branch decorations (I’m still waiting for them to show up in some unexpected place), so I bought new decorations. And because I enjoyed bringing some springtime cheer into my home last year, I decided to set up Easter branches again this year. Besides, I do have decorations now.

Since I had an appointment in the city center, I went to the Bremen flower market, which is clustered around the Church of Our Lady, and got some Easter branches, because they are fresher and cheaper at the market than at a flower shop.

There was a nice variety of branches on offer. Cherry, pussy willow, forsythia, birch tree, juneberry. I chose corkscrew hazel, because I like the way they look. And since Easter is late April, there is a chance that blossoming branches like cherry, forsythia or juneberry will be wilted by then. Pussy willow and birch are messy and besides, I’m allergic to birch pollen, so bringing it into the house isn’t a great idea.

Of course, you can also cut your own branches, if you have a suitable tree in the garden. And in fact, that’s what Dad did, when I was a kid. I think we had mostly birch branches, because we had a birch tree in the garden. I have no idea what we used in Singapore.

At home, I put the corkscrew hazel branches into a large mid century modern vase of my Mom’s and added the decorations. Here is the result:

The vase with the Easter branches on the kitchen table, where I decorated it.

The Easter branches in their final location in the dining room/parlour.

And here is a closer look at the guardian bunnies:

Three bunnies guard the Easter branches.

The two smaller bunnies were my Mom’s and are probably between fifty and sixty years old. At any rate, we’ve had them for as long as I can remember.

The white laughing bunny was designed by Max Hermann Fritz in 1929 for the Rosenthal porcelain company. Rosenthal produced this bunny for decades (though apparently he has been discontinued by now) and for a while it seemed as if every German home had one.

The gun-toting pink bunny is Plundor the Spoiler from the Masters of the Universe Classics toyline. Plundor is an obscure villain who only appeared in a single episode of the Filmation He-Man cartoon. In the cartoon, Plundor has taken over the planet Trannis, where he steals natural resources, extracts the planet’s lifeforce and pollutes the environment until he is stopped by an amnesiac He-Man and a local woman named Gleedil, who looks like a humanoid chicken. In short, it’s a not very subtle tale about the evils of capitalism and pollution, except that the villain is a pink bunny. Sometimes, I really wonder just what they put into the water cooler at Filmation.

When Plundor appeared as an action figure in the Masters of the Universe Classics toyline, many people disliked him, because Masters of the Universe Classics was a serious toyline for serious people and they’d rather forget that He-Man once fought an evil pink bunny. So I got my Plundor for a good price and he makes a great Easter decoration. He also has an eerie facial resemblance to the Rosenthal bunny, which I only noticed when I put them next to each other. Now I wonder if someone at Filmation had this Rosenthal bunny at home.

Posted in General, Personal | Tagged antiques, Easter, Easter branches, Filmation, He-Man, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Masters of the Universe Classics, photos, wacky German customs | 2 Comments

An Open Letter to the 2025 Hugo Finalists, Whoever They May Be

Posted on March 15, 2025 by Cora

This is an updated version of this post from 2021, this post from 2022, this post from 2023 and this post from last year, which a lot of people found helpful. There also a Chinese translation of the 2023 post to be found in issue 14 the Hugo winning fanzine Zero Gravity Newspaper.

Nominations for the 2025 Hugo Awards closed two hours ago and the finalists are expected to be announced in a few weeks.

Right now, no one except for possibly the Hugo administrators knows who those finalists will be. And yes, I deliberately posted this so shortly after the Hugo nominations closed that the e-mails won’t have gone out yet and no one knows who the finalists are.

However, sometime in the next two weeks or so, some of you will receive an e-mail from the Seattle Worldcon, informing you that you are a finalist for the 2025 Hugo Award and asking you whether you want to accept the nomination. Some of you will have received such e-mails before, for others it will be the first time.

But whether it’s your first or your twentieth nomination, congratulations! That’s awesome.

As a first time recipient of such an e-mail in 2020 as well as a Hugo finalist in 2021 and Hugo winner in 2022, here are a few things I’ve learned:

The e-mail may not look like you think it will. When I got the e-mail from CoNZealand in 2020, the subject line was “CoNZealand Hugo Awards Confidential”. I was exhausted that day and waiting for two important e-mails, so I scanned right past that subject line, because I assumed it was the convention newsletter. I only opened the mail, because none of the two important e-mails had come yet, so I thought I might as well check out the CoNZealand e-mail while I was waiting. Good thing that I did.
If you receive an e-mail from the Seattle Worldcon, please reply as soon as you can whether you accept the nomination or not. If there are questions with regard to eligibility, answer them as soon as possible. The Hugo administrator and their team work very hard, so don’t make their job any harder than it has to be.
The Seattle team will also ask you to keep quiet about your nomination until the official announcement. Please don’t violate this, because you don’t want to steal Seattle’s thunder!
The period between the time when the finalists are notified and when the Hugo finalists are officially announced can be weird, because while you know that you’re a finalist, almost nobody else does. I blogged a bit about my experiences in 2020 here. Basically, I kept having the niggling fear that there had been some terrible mistake and that I wasn’t a finalist after all or that I only was a finalist because all twenty people who would have been ahead of me had withdrawn. From talking to other first time finalists, I learned that I wasn’t alone in this. And while I can’t guarantee that terrible mistakes won’t happen, the chance that the wrong person is notified about being a Hugo finalist is extremely small. So relax. You really are a Hugo finalist, even if nobody else knows it yet.
In 2023, it turned out that the Hugo nominations had been massively tampered with by Hugo administration team. However, this was the first time something like that happened and no member of the 2023 team is involved in any way with the 2025 Hugos, so chances of it happening again are minuscle.
Do something nice for yourself to celebrate. Have an ice cream, a nice box of chocolates, a glass of champagne, a good beer, a bubble bath, whatever it is that makes you happy. You’re a Hugo finalist, so you damn well deserve to celebrate in private.
You can tell a few people you trust about your nomination as long as you know they won’t blab it all over the internet. Before the official announcement, a handful of people knew I was a Hugo finalist. These include my parents (whose reaction was, “That’s nice,” before turning back to watch a rerun of Midsomer Murders), some folks from Galactic Journey and others in the SFF community, who knew not to say anything before the official announcement, as well as my accountant (because I asked her if buying an evening gown for the Hugo ceremony was tax-deductible – it’s not BTW) and the guy who repaired my patio, because he just happened to be there, when I got the e-mail. Neither the accountant nor the patio guy are SFF fans, so chances of a leak were zero. They both also probably thought I was quite mad.
If you are nominated in a fiction category – i.e. short story, novelette, novella, novel, Series, Lodestar or Astounding – or nominated for a non-fiction book or essay in Best Related Work or in the special Best Poem category, you should let your editor and/or publisher know that you’re a finalist. They work in the industry and therefore know not to say anything and they may want to prepare some kind of congratulatory tweet, post or other promotion effort. Finally, editors are also thrilled when one of their authors is nominated.
One thing I did not do is tell people about my nomination who might be up in the same category. Because I didn’t know who else was nominated (you don’t before the official announcement) and didn’t want anybody to feel disappointed, because I was a finalist and they were not.
Even if you can’t publicly talk about your Hugo nomination just yet, there are still a few things you can do in the meantime. For example, you can update your bio to mention that you’re a Hugo finalist or write a bio, if you don’t have one yet. Important: Don’t upload your updated bio anywhere until the official announcement has been made! In fact, I spent a chunk of the evening after the Hugo finalists had been announced updating my bio everywhere it appears.
In fact – and this is important – don’t upload anything that mentions your Hugo nomination anywhere on the internet, until the official announcement has been made. Even if you set a Tweet or blogpost to go live after the announcement has been made, don’t upload it yet. Because mistakes happen, you accidentally hit “publish” rather than “schedule” or a post goes live too early. I had my celebratory blogpost ready to go in Word, but I only uploaded it with links and a few comments added once the announcement had been made.
Another thing you can do in the meantime is prepare a media kit, if you haven’t got one already. You can see mine here (which is in need of an update) and there are also plenty of pages around the web that tell you what a media kit is supposed to contain. Important: Get permission to use any photos that you did not take yourself.
Another thing you can do is write a press release about your Hugo nomination. It doesn’t matter which category you’re nominated in, whether it’s Best Novel or a fan category. Write a press release anyway. There are plenty of places around the web which tell you how to write a press release. It varies from country to country, so make sure you get the correct format for your country. My press releases from 2020, 2o21 and 2022 (in German) are here. Then make a list of the contact info for the relevant newspapers, radio stations and other media outlets in your region or country. Once the nominations have been announced, send your press release as well as the link to your media kit to those media outlets. The press release linked above netted me two in-depth profiles and a bonus article in two different newspapers in 2020 and two more in-depth profiles in 2021 as well as an article and an interview in 2022, which is much more than I’d hoped for.
Because this came up in the Hugo finalist Discord, if media attention for yourself or your work could cause a problem with your day job, talk to a union representative, workers council member or – if none of those are available – a trustworthy co-worker first to make sure you’re not accidentally jeopardizing your job.
Consider whether you want to attend Worldcon and the ceremony. First of all, get a Worldcon membership, if you haven’t got one already. Like most recent Worldcons, Seattle offers a reduced rate for people attending their first ever Worldcon and others whose finances aren’t great. You can also start looking for flights, hotels, etc…. If you need to apply for a visa, do so now. If money is an issue, as it’s for many of us, think about crowdfunding your Worldcon trip, as several finalists have done in recent years. However, don’t start your crowdfunding campaign, until after the finalists have been announced.
If you cannot attend Worldcon for health, family, work or other reasons or feel uncomfortable travelling to the US in the current political climate, there are also virtual memberships available, which allow to participate virtually. You can also accept a Hugo Award virtually and indeed that’s what I did in 2022.
If you want to participate in programming, sign up at the Seattle Worldcon website. Do this as early as possible, so the programming team doesn’t have to find suitable programming for you at the last minute. You can also participate in programming as a virtual participant.
Finally, start thinking about your Hugo voter packet. If you need to get permission to include certain texts or images, contact the relevant people.

Finally, here are a few observations regarding what happens after the Hugo finalists are announced:

A lot of people will congratulate you. These will be people you expect – friends, peers, etc… – but also people you don’t expect. After the newspaper articles mentioned above came out, I suddenly got congratulations from translation customers, various relatives, neighbours, former classmates, my plumber, my Dad’s diabetes doctor and a random lady at the Easter fire among others. Enjoy the experience, thank everybody and don’t forget to congratulate your fellow finalists.
Some people will also not congratulate you and again, some of these will be people you don’t expect. There are several reasons why someone might not congratulate you and most of them are not malicious. For example, some people might simply not have seen the news yet. Or they may not understand the significance, since not everybody is plugged into the SFF community and knows how important the Hugos are. Of course, there will also be a few people who think that you don’t deserve your nomination. Ignore them!
Your fellow Hugo finalists are not your rivals, they are your peers. You’ll probably know some of them already and if not, you’ll quickly get to know them. And yes, only one of you will get to take home the rocket in the end, but all six of you are amazing and in a way, you’re all winners. This also applies across categories. I met a lot of great people in the SFF community and even made new friends, just because we were on the Hugo ballot in the same year.
In general, there is a sense of community to siblinghood among Hugo finalists. Whether you’re a bestselling author or a first-time finalist in a fan category, you’re all in this together. There is usually a private group for Hugo finalists – in recent years on Discord – to chat, ask questions, share gripes, post photos of Hugo gowns, tiaras and pets, etc…
If you’re not part of the Worldcon SFF community and don’t know anybody else on the ballot, don’t worry! You’ll get to know the others soon enough and pretty much everybody in this community is lovely and very welcoming. If you’re a repeat finalist, reach out to the first-timers to make them welcome.
As a Hugo finalist, you will get plenty of e-mails from Seattle about anything from the Hugo voter packet via the program book to the ceremony itself. Pay attention to those e-mails, send any information requested in time and check your spam folder. You don’t accidentally want to miss something important.
Once the Hugo finalists have been announced, there will be people who have opinions about the ballot. Most will be positive or at least fair – I always try to be fair in my own Hugo and Nebula finalist commentaries, even if I don’t care for some of the finalists – but some will be not. There are always people who think that your category or the entire ballot is too male, not male enough, too white, not white enough, too queer, not queer enough, too American, not American enough, too bestselling, not bestselling enough – you get the idea. There will be people who complain that only people no one knows got nominated or that only the usual suspects got nominated – and multiple bestsellers and Hugo winners can be “people no one knows”, while first or second time finalists can be “the usual suspects”. Some of these people won’t even wait 24 hours after the Hugo finalists have been announced to air their opinions – at least they didn’t in 2021. Some will even tag you, just to make sure you don’t miss their very important opinions. The best thing to do is ignore those people.
A handful of people seem to have made it their life’s mission to mock and harass Hugo finalists. Ignore them and block them on social media and don’t let them get you down. Most of them are just jealous.
There will be drama. So far, I’ve never seen a Worldcon that did not have at least some degree of drama and I have been a Worldcon member since 2014. It rarely gets as bad as it did in 2023, but there’s always drama of some kind. Often, this drama affects the Hugo finalists in some way. Sometimes, the Hugo finalists even band together and try to resolve this drama. How you engages with whatever this year’s drama will be is up to you. However, don’t let it get you down. Drama is normal. At this point, I would be more surprised at a Worldcon without drama than at one which has some degree of drama. And usually, everybody winds up having a great time anyway.

So what happens, if you win?

Basically more of the same. Lots of people will congratulate you, most of them with genuine enthusiasm, a few very grudgingly (one in my case, not a fellow finalist) and some not at all.
Make sure to have your acceptance speech ready before the ceremony with the names of all the people you want to thank. Check with people how their names are pronounced, if you aren’t sure. Always have a printed paper copy of your speech, because phones can and do break down, run out of juice, fail to have reception or get overloaded with messages at the crucial moment.
After you win a Hugo, you should prepare another press release and send it to all the local, regional and national media you can think of. I actually wrote mine at six AM in the morning after the winners had been announced.
Don’t forget to update your bio wherever it appears. That includes anthologies or magazines where you’ve been accepted, but which aren’t out yet.
Your “market value” (for lack of a better word) does go up with your first nomination, goes up even further with your second and even more, if you win. For example, I got a story acceptance in the mail literally the day after I won. Of course, the story might have been accepted anyway, but the timing was still interesting. I also gained a bunch of new Twitter followers with every nomination and winning a Hugo pushed me over the 3000 follower mark for the first time. You’ll get invited to cons and you’ll notice that your name will start to show up on covers of anthologies or magazines, sometimes with “Hugo winner” attached. However, you’ll still get rejections as well, because even Hugo winners get rejected and that’s perfectly normal.
You’ll also find that you have acquired more clout in the SFF community, something which also happens once you get nominated. Use what influence you have in the SFF community for good, to uplift and support others.
One thing I noticed is that I would sometimes find myself thinking, “Wait a minute, I have a Hugo and [insert name of vastly more important genre person here] doesn’t? How on Earth did that happen?”
That said, certain people will still call you a nobody who barely sells any books or a fake fan or whatever. This literally happened to me approx. a month after I won the Hugo, when I got into an argument about a TV show with the adherents of one of those “We hate everything” outrage clickbait YouTube channels. I pointed out that I really enjoyed the object of their rage du jour and so did many others and was called “not a real fan” in response. When I said, “Dude, I’m the 2022 Hugo winner for Best Fan Writer”, I was told that awards didn’t matter, that I was clearly not a real fan, because I didn’t hate the thing. Best just ignore those people and privately think, “Guess who has a shiny rocket? Hint, it’s not you.”
Sometimes, it gets worse than online arguments with idiots. Because as I said above, there are a handful of people who seem to have made it their life’s mission to harass Hugo finalists and winners and will use any excuse, no matter how small, to send their flying monkeys after you. That happened to me, almost to the day a year after I won the Hugo, and I’ve seen it happen to others. Often, not a lot of people will help you and sometimes people you know and actually were friendly with before will join in. The best thing to do is to liberally mute and block harassers and if necessary, break off contact with some folks. On the plus side, you’ll know who your friends are afterwards. Also, never let yourself be silenced, because that’s what these folks want.

Finally – and this is the most important point – enjoy your experience! You’re a Hugo finalist, i.e. your peers consider you and your work one of the six best in your respective category. That’s amazing, so celebrate!

Posted in Books, General | Tagged awards, awards geekery, Hugo Awards, Hugos, Seattle, WorldCon | Leave a comment

Some Comments on the 2024 Nebula Finalists

Posted on March 13, 2025 by Cora

The finalists for the 2024 Nebula Awards were announced today. The video of the live announcement may be found here.

Once again, I didn’t get to read nearly as much as I wanted to last year for personal reasons, so there are a lot of finalists here that I haven’t yet read and can’t say a lot about.

Nonetheless, let’s delve right into the individual categories:

Best Novel:

This category is a mix of novels that got a lot of buzz and a few more surprising choices.

T. Kingfisher is a perennial Hugo and Nebula favourite and A Sorceress Comes to Call got a lot of attention last year. It’s also a very good book.

John Wiswell burst onto the SFF scene five years ago (Wow, has it really been that long?) and quickly established a name for himself with his quirky works which use common horror tropes to tell very different stories. Someone You Can Build a Nest In is his novel-length debut. It’s a good book and I’m not surprised to see it here.

The Book of Love by Kelly Link is also a debut novel, even though Kelly Link sold her first story thirty years ago. However, until last year, Kelly Link was purely a short fiction writer. The Book of Love got a lot of attention upon release, including from mainstream outlets that don’t normally cover SFF, probably because Kelly Link’s blend of magical realism is a very mainstream friendly type of speculative fiction. As a result, I’m not surprised to see The Book of Love nominated, though I’m afraid I haven’t read it yet.

Vajra Chandrasekera is another writer who burst onto the scene in recent years and quickly made a name for himself. Rakesfall got a lot of buzz and is not a surprising finalist. Coincidentally, his novel The Saint of Bright Doors also won the Nebula Award in this category last year. Unfortunately, The Saint of Bright Doors didn’t work for me, so I haven’t yet read Rakesfall. Maybe I will enjoy this one more.

The nomination for Asunder by Kerstin Hall is something of a surprise to me, for while I was aware of the novel, it didn’t really appear on my radar as a potential awards finalist. I haven’t read the book, though I’m looking forward to checking it out.

The nomination for Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov also came as a surprise to me, because I wasn’t aware of the book at all. It’s also published by a small press, whereas all the other finalists for published by Big Five imprints. Though Yaroslav Barsukov has been a Nebula finalist before in the novella category.

Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, 1 writer of colour, 2 international writers

Best Novella:

This category has the fewest surprises for me and also the most overlap with my personal Hugo ballot.

Premee Mohamed has been getting a lot of attention in recent years. The Butcher of the Forest is a great novella and I’m glad to see it nominated. This one was also on my personal Hugo ballot.

Countess by Suzan Palumbo is a gender-flipped queer retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo in space with a bonus critique of colonialism. It’s also a really great story and I’m thrilled to see it nominated. This novella was also on my personal Hugo ballot.

Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa was on my Hugo longlist, but didn’t quite make my shortlist. Nonetheless, I’m happy to see it nominated.

Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea made a big splash (pun intended) two years ago and The Tusks of Extinction also got a lot of positive attention, so it’s not a surprising finalist at all. Though for some reason, I thought this was a novel. I haven’t yet read it.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar is an Omelas type tale (not the only one on this Nebula ballot) about a kid from the deprived undercaste of a starship suddenly taken out of his environment to be educated among the elite. It’s a good and thought-provoking story and was on my Hugo longlist, but didn’t make my ballot in the end.

The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui is the only finalist in this category I’m not familiar with, though it sounds like a book I would enjoy.

The novella category at the Hugos or Nebulas is often a Tordotcom sweep due to their popular novella program, which is largely responsible for the novella resurgence we’re currently seeing. However, this year ECW and Neon Hemlock both managed to break through the Tordotcom dominance.

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 4 writers of colour, 4 international writers

Best Novelette:

I have read only one of the finalists in this category – at least as far as I recall – and there is zero overlap with my personal Hugo ballot, so I can’t say much about the individual stories.

Eugenia Triantafyllou has made a name for herself with her short fiction in the past couple of years and is represented on the Nebula ballot with not one but two stories.

Angela Liu is another short fiction author who burst onto the scene in the past couple of years. Her story “Another Girl Under the Iron Bell” is the only novelette on the Nebula ballot I’ve read.

I have enjoyed stories by Aimee Ogden in the past, but her nominated novelette “What Any Dead Thing Wants” passed me by.

Thomas Ha’s work has appeared on several awards ballots in the past, though I haven’t read his nominated story “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”.

Christine Hanolsy is a writer who’s new to me. That said, I’m surprised I didn’t read her nominated novelette “Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka”, because it was published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, a magazine I normally read. However, the story came out on my birthday, which may be why it passed me by.

A.W. Prihandita is another author who’s new to me, though her nominated novelette “Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being” sounds like something I will enjoy.

We have a nice range of venues in this category with two stories from Uncanny, two from Clarkesworld, one from Beneath Ceaseless Skies and two stories from Psychopomp, publisher of The Deadlands and the revived Fantasy Magazine which also publishes standalone fiction. The fact that Psychopomp managed to place two novelettes (out of a total three they published) on the Nebula ballot is certainly interesting.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 3 writers of colour, 2 international writers

Best Short Story:

Once again, this category has hardly any little overlap with my personal Hugo ballot and I’ve only read one of the stories.

That story is “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones, a chilling tale – more flash fiction than short story – of the fiendish punishment meted out by a space empire. This one is also on my personal Hugo ballot.

I haven’t read “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim, though I enjoyed other stories by the author. Coincidentally, this is the second “Omelas” response tale on this ballot, but then “Omelas” response stories are as common as “Cold Equations” response stories.

Caroline M. Yoachim has been a frequent presence on Hugo and Nebula ballots in recent years, though I haven’t read her story “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” yet.

P.H. Lee is another author we’ve seen on awards ballots in recent years before, though again I haven’t read their nominated story “The V*mpire”.

Jordan Kurella has been a Nebula finalist before, though I haven’t read his nominated story “Evan: A Remainder”

I also haven’t read “The Witch Trap” by Jennifer Hudak, because I don’t read the magazine it appeared in.

Once again, we have a nice range of venues in this category with two stories from Lightspeed, two from Reactor (the former Tor.com), one from Clarkesworld and one from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, a magazine about which I haven’t heard a lot in recent years, though it got a lot of buzz some fifteen years ago or so. Coincidentally, it’s also the only print zine to get a story on the Nebula ballot.

Diversity Count: 4 women, 1 man, 1 non-binary, 2 writers of colour

Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction:

This is another category where I haven’t read any of the finalists, but then I’m not the target audience for middle great and young adult books.

The said, José Pablo Iriarte has been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula before, though I haven’t read Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed.

Yoon Ha Lee is another author who’s been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Award multiple times, including in this category. I have enjoyed some of his earlier books for younger readers, but again I haven’t read Moonstorm yet.

Leah Cypess has also been nominated for the Nebula before, including in this category, but once again I haven’t read Braided.

Jenn Reese has also been nominated in this category before, though again I haven’t read Puzzleheart.

Daydreamer by Rob Cameron is a debut novel, which actually sounds like something I will enjoy, even though it is a book for younger readers.

The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts by Vanessa Ricci-Thode is a self-published book, something we haven’t seen on the Nebula ballot since 2019 and the 20BooksTo50K debacle. Considering the Nebulas were the first genre award to have a self-published finalist – before SFWA even opened membership to purely self-published writers – I’m glad to see another indie book get a Nebula nod.

Diversity count: 3 women, 2 men, 1 non-binary, 3 writers of colour, 1 international writer

Nebula Award for Game Writing:

As usual, I can’t say very much about this category, because I’m not a gamer. Elden Ring is the only finalist in this category I’ve even heard of.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.

Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation:

The nomination for Dune, Part 2 was probably as close to a sure thing as you can get and I strongly expect it to make the Hugo ballot as well. Even sixty after its first publication, Dune is still beloved by the SFF community (and was the first ever Nebula winner for Best Novel) and Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation is actually good – unlike the Sci-Fi Channel version from the 2000s – though I do have a soft spot for the David Lynch version as well, which was my introduction to Dune and prompted me to buy the book.

The nomination for Wicked was also pretty much a given and it will very likely make the Hugo ballot as well. After all, the movie was a massive success, based on the beloved musical adaptation of a popular novel. This is unfortunate for me, because I have never read the book, have never seen the musical and have zero interest in the film. If Wicked makes the Hugo ballot, I will force myself to watch it, but this one really isn’t for me.

Doctor Who has been a nigh constant presence on the Hugo ballot since its return almost twenty years ago, though its appearances on the Nebula ballot have been less common. That said, I have enjoyed Ncuti Gatwa’s and Jodie Whittaker’s takes on the character much more than Matt Smith’s and Peter Capaldi’s takes, which I only ever saw, when they were nominated for the Hugo and which I often found a chore to watch. That said, “Dot and Bubble” isn’t really the episode of Gatwa’s first season I expected to make the ballot and I recall it being one of the less well received episodes.

The animated Star Trek: Lower Decks has established itself as being more popular than the various recent live action Star Trek series released since the dawn of the third age of Star Trek in 2017, probably because the show is funny, well written and acted and not afraid to play with Star Trek tropes in a way the live action shows often don’t. The Nebula nomination for its fifth and final season is well deserved. Plus, I’m always happy to see animated films and shows recognised by the big SFF awards, because we have so many great animated works out there which are often ignored due to their medium.

I Saw the TV Glow is a beautiful movie about two outsiders finding connection via a TV show they’re both obsessed with. I was too old for the 1990s teen shows that inspired the fictional TV-show The Pink Opaque, but I completely sympathise with the two lead characters and their TV-inspired bond. I had similar friendships and I certainly had similar TV obsessions. This film was also on my personal Hugo ballot and I’m thrilled to see it nominated here.

Kaos, which reimagines the Greek Gods as a Dallas/Dynasty type family saga, got very positive reviews upon release, but sank like a stone with viewers and was cancelled after only a single season. I have to admit I was a bit surprised to see it nominated here, though those who actually watched Kaos really seemed to like it. Plus, you can’t go wrong with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus. I haven’t yet watched it, but I probably should.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies and TV shows.

***

There are a few trends among the finalists this year. Retellings continue to do well with not one but two Omelas riffs, plus retellings of The Count of Monte Cristo, The Wizard of Oz, Greek mythology and fairytales (and possibly others in the stories I haven’t read). We also have several stories with horror elements, at least two magical realist works and several works dealing with colonialism, slavery and crime and punishment. I don’t see any SFF mysteries this time around and also no robot/AI POV stories.

All in all, this is a very good and diverse Nebula ballot. It’s great to once again see so many international writer and creators on the ballot. The usual suspects will probably complain, but then they always do.

Posted in Books, Film, TV | Tagged awards, awards geekery, Doctor Who, Dune, fantasy, gaming, horror, I Saw the TV Glow, Kaos, Nebula Awards, science fiction, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Wicked, YA SFF | 3 Comments

Journey to the Edge of the Ruhrgebiet: Cora’s Adventures at the Marché Noir Retro Fair in Dorsten, Part 3: The Road Home and Greven

Posted on February 25, 2025 by Cora

Two weekends ago, I attended the the Marché Noir retro toy/comic/games/cool stuff con in Dorsten on the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet. For the trip to get there, see part 1 and for my impressions of the con itself and the venue, a former coalmine, see part 2.

The Quest for Lunch

By the time I left the con and took my purchases to my car, it was twenty past twelve, i.e. time for lunch. But where to have lunch? There was a Mediterranean restaurant on the premises of the Fürst Leopold mine, but there was no menu posted outside the restaurant and I wasn’t really in the mood for pasta or pizza either.

Now Dorsten actually has got not one but two Michelin starred restaurants, which is highly unusual for a comparatively small town. One of them is the restaurant of Frank Rosin, a chef I mainly associate with a reality show on TV where Rosin tries to help struggling restaurants succeed, which for some reason involves a lot of yelling. Not that I’ve ever watched the show, but I’ve seen trailers. Turns out that Rosin actually hails from Dorsten and that this is the restaurant which put his name on the culinary map and eventually got him the TV gig.

The second Michelin starred restaurant is called Der Goldener Anker (The Golden Anchor) and is run by another TV chef named Björn Freitag. Freitag also hails from Dorsten and The Golden Anchor used to be his parents’ restaurant, which he took over after his father died. Honestly, there must be something in the water in Dorsten – probably something the miners dug up – because how likely is it that a fairly unremarkable mining town birthes not one but two Michelin star winning chefs?

On my way back to the Autobahn, I actually passed The Golden Anchor, because I noticed the historic building and thought, “This looks like a nice place.” Alas, I did not eat at The Golden Anchor nor at Frank Rosin’s Restaurant, because neither of them was open for lunch.

Also on my way back to the Autobahn, I drove past a fairly unremarkable retail park with the sort of stores you normally find in places like that – gorcery store, DIY store, furniture store, that sort of thing. Since it was Sunday, everything should be closed and the retail park should be a ghost town. However, when I drove past, it was super busy, so busy that cars were parking all along the road – a road which is not intended for parking – and I had to slow down to avoid endangering pedestrians walking along the road. There was even a traffic jam in the opposite direction from the Autobahn to the retail park. I was baffled for what on Earth could habe drawn so many people here on a Sunday, when all the shops were closed? Even if there was an open Sunday in one or more of the shops, the huge crowds didn’t make any sense, because the shops mostly seemed to be unremarkable chain stores. Some googling eventually revealed that there was popular flea market happening on the parking lot of a furniture store, which is what seemed to have drawn half all of those people.

Just before the Autobahn, there was another restaurant, a country inn type place called Landküche zum Schwatten Jans (The Black Jan Country Inn). They were open for lunch and I might have stopped and checked the menu, except that the place looked extremely busy with lots of cars in the parking lot. Besides, I’d already made another plan.

For in the end, I did not eat in Dorsten at all. Because once I had made it back to my car and was considering my options, I thought, “Münster isn’t that far away and should have plenty of dining options.” I also recalled that Aro Asian Fusion Bowls, a restaurant I like patronise in Oldenburg, had one or more branches in Münster. That seemed like a great lunch option. So I fired up Google Maps on my phone to look up the address of the Aro restaurant(s) in Münster and found that there also was an Aro branch in Greven, a town just north of Münster that was located much closer to the Autobahn A1 than Münster proper. They were open on Sunday for lunch and – most importantly – they didn’t close down again in the afternoon, which meant that I could have lunch at two PM, if I felt like it. So I decided to stop in Greven for lunch.

Service Station Münsterland

The way back was the same as the trip out. I drove onto Autobahn A52 at Marl-Fentrop, changed onto Autobahn A43 at the intersection Marl-North and then back onto Autobahn A1 at the intersection Münster-South.

By now, I was experiencing some pressure on my bladder and grumbling in my intestines, which meant that I should start looking for a toilet. The toilets at the rest areas and parking lots along the route are often not very clean and only for emergencies. The toilets at service stations are normally clean, but they cost 1 Euro to use.

There was a service station on the A43 named Hohe Mark, but by this point that pressure on my bladder wasn’t that bad yet, so I decided to save the 1 Euro and use the free toilet at the restaurant in Greven.

By the time, I reached the A1, the pressure on my bladder and the grumbling in my intestines was more notable. Greven wasn’t that far away and I could have made it there, but I would probably have to sprint for the toilets as soon as I entered the restaurant.

However, service station Münsterland was right ahead, so I decided to stop there to use the toilet, even if it would cost me 1 Euro. Though that toilet really wasn’t worth a Euro. Several stalls did not have toilet paper, the soap and hand sanitiser dispensers were empty and to top it off, I killed a stink bug in the washing room. There was no toilet attendant in sight, so I found a staff member at the restaurant and told him that the toilets were in bad condition. He replied that the toilets aren’t his responsibility and I should tell the toilet attendant. I said, “Well, I would have, but there was no toilet attendant.” The staff member then promised to pass it on. BTW, service station Münsterland was actually found to be one of the two worst service stations in all of Germany during a recent test. I’d say that service station Goldbach on the A27 is even worse, because Münsterland was at least open, but even by the low standards of German Autobahn service stations, Münsterland is pretty bad.

But even the service station itself is bad, it does have a lovely Autobahn chapel at the edge of the parking lot. I’ve written about Autobahn chapels before. Inspired by the roadside shrines and chapels found in Catholic parts of Germany from the Middle Ages until today, the big Christian churches started setting up chapels and churches at service stations along the Autobahnen from the 1950s on. Some of these were existing village churches which were incorporated into the Autobahn network, others were newly built. For more about Autobahn churches and chapels, see here and here.

I don’t consider myself religious, but I like churches and whenever I find an Autobahn chapel, I pay a visit. And so, once I’d finished my business at the service station proper, I walked along a footpath towards the Autobahn chapel at the far edge of the parking lot.

The Autobahn chapel Roxel at service station Münsterland on Autobahn A1. Built in 1969 and designed by Hubert Teschlade.

The Autobahn chapel is called Roxel after a nearby village and not Münsterland like the service station. It was built in 1969 a few years after this stretch of the A1 was completed. The Münsterland region is very Catholic and the locals felt that the new Autobahn should have a roadside shrine just like the older roads in the region, so they collected money to build this chapel.

The chapel sits a bit apart from the busy service station in a small patch of woodland. As a bonus, there were snowdrops blooming along the footpath leading to the chapel. These were the first snowdrops and indeed spring flowers of any kind that I’ve seen this year.

Snowdrops blooming along the foot path to the Autobahn chapel Roxel.

Autobahn chapels tend to be fairly plain. There’s a small altar, a bench or chair to sit down, some artwork and a place to light candles. The Roxel chapel also held a surpise, because through the large plate glass windows you could see a huge crucifix behind the chapel in front of the woods.

Crucifix behind the Autobahn chapel Roxel. Designed by Hubert Teschlade in 1969

The crucifix is huge, easily two and a half meters tall. It was set up in 1969, when the chapel was built, and designed by architect and artist Hubert Teschlade, who also designed the chapel itself.

Greven

After my little stopover at service station Münsterland, I drove onwards to Greven.

Now Greven isn’t a town I was familiar with at all, but then my knowledge of the exits and towns along the Autobahn A1 gets fuzzy after Osnabrück. In fact, of the three Autobahn exits on the roughly fifty kilometer stretch between Osnabrück and Münster (the Münsterland is sparsely populated), Greven is the least familiar to me. Lengerich takes you to Tecklenburg, Bad Iburg and the Teutoburg Forest, Ladbergen has an Autohof that’s not very good, but Greven? What does Greven have? Well, Airport Münster-Osnabrück is nearby and prominently listed on the Autobahn exit sign, but that’s mainly a freight airport and not one which has a lot of passenger flights. In fact, I’ve never flown from Münster-Osnabrück, though it’s not further away than Hamburg or Hannover, from both of which I have flown.

Turns out Greven is a small town that was mashed together from several villages, which is quite common in many parts of Germany due to community reforms in the 1960s and 1970s eliminating small villages in favour of larger towns. Though the part of Greven I saw seemed more like an actual town than e.g. Stuhr, where I live, which is still eight separate villages of varying size who are forced to share a single townhall and administration.

Greven is located on the banks of the river Ems, which was a bit of a surprise, because I associate the river Ems mainly with northern Germany (see my photos of the Ems barrier at Gandersum here). However, the spring of the river Ems is in the Teutoburg Forest and it flows through the Münsterland before reaching the Emsland region, which is named after it. And indeed the Autobahn A1 crosses the river Ems just before the exit Greven. Though I didn’t see anything of the river Ems, since it flows between two of the formerly independent villages that make up Greven.

I parked my car on the parking lot behind an electronic store, which was closed for Sunday, and walked maybe two hundred meters or so to the Aro Asian Fusion Bowls restaurant. It was already almost two PM, so there weren’t a lot of people around, just a man with his daughter who ordered two bowls to take-out. The Greven Aro branch is also a lot bigger than the Oldenburg branch, which is located in a historic timbered house and thus very small.

I went to the counter, placed my order and sat down to enjoy a chicken yakitori bowl.

Chicken yakitori bowl with two types of pickled cauliflower, sweet potato, chickpeas and roasted edamame, topped with peanuts, roasted onions, sesame seeds and sweet chili sauce.

By the time the bowl was about three quarters empty, I started to notice that my intestines were rumbling again. So I went to the toilet after finishing my bowl and then decided to take a walk to help my stomach calm down and explore the town a bit.

I spotted the tower of a church in the distance, so that’s the direction in which I went.

The St. Martinus Church in Greven.

A closer look at the St. Martinus church in Greven

The church is called St. Martinus and it has a long history. There has been a church on this spot since the eighth century. The oldest part of the current church, the lower part of the tower, dates from the twelfth century. The rest is more recent, dating anywhere from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. St. Martinus is a Catholic church, because the Münsterland is very Catholic.

I found it odd that Greven had such an old church, because the other buildings in the town center were not very old at all. Turns out that much of the town was destroyed in the Thirty Years War and most of what survived fell victim to nineteenth and twentieth century modernisation attempts.

Behind the church, I came across an open square with an interesting fountain.

The rear of the St. Martinus and the market fountain.

The fountain dates from 1993. There was a plaque explaining that the various figures depict the inhabitants of Greven and the surrounding villages on tax day, when they had to deliver goods to the tax man. The scene on top of the fountain, where some poor fellow is dunked into a basin with water, depicts an old custom according to which newly-wed men were baptised in a water basin on tax day.

Another look at the market fountain in Greven. Note the sacks and basket in the foreground, representing the goods to be handed over as taxes.

Another look at the market fountain in Greven

As you can see in the background, most of the houses around this square are not very old and date from the 1970s to 1990s, when parts of the city centre were turned into a pedestrian zone.

A little or rather pretty big free library in the pedestrian zone in the city center of Greven.

A colourful sculpture in the middle of a roundabout. I couldn’t find out anything about this sculpture online, though it looks nice.

In spite of my little walk through the town center of Greven, my stomach was still rumbling. I also had one and a half hours or so of driving ahead of me, so I decided to have a cup of coffee before heading home.

On the square with the fountain, there was a bakery café called Liesenkötter, so that’s where I went. Because it was a Sunday afternoon and coffee time, the café was busy with locals, often elderly people, enjoying coffee and cake. The cake on offer looked very promising, but I had just eaten and besides, my stomach was not just rumbling, but actually aching by now, so I just ordered a latte macchiato and bought some cookies to take home, because I just can’t resist cookies.

Once I’d finished my coffee, I took my cookies back to the car and drove off again, headed homewards. The mild rumbling in my stomach had turned to a full blown ache by now. I wondered whether there had been anything wrong with my lunch. But I’d eaten at Aro before and had never had these problems.

On my way home, I stopped once more at the Bakumer Wiesen rest area on Autobahn A1 just ahead of the exit Vechta (which is nowhere near Vechta). I drank some water and hoped that the ache would subside, but it didn’t.

I stopped one more time to refuel my car, because the diesel price was reasonable, and finally made it home at five forty PM, just around sunset, so I actually made the entire drive by daylight, which is a far cry from my trip to Hanau in December. As for the grumbling stomach, I had been experiencing a bit of constipation the days before, which caused the stomach ache. I felt better after an extended visit to my own toilet at home.

So was Marché Noir worth the trip? I’d say yes. It was a fun con and the venue alone was worth the price of admission. Besides, it’s always nice to get out of the house and visit a place (or several) I’ve never been to before.

Posted in Con Reports | Tagged 1980s child, architecture, con reports, Dorsten, food, German history, Greven, industrial history, Marché Noir, photos, religion, road trip, roadside views, Ruhrgebiet | Leave a comment

Journey to the Edge of the Ruhrgebiet: Cora’s Adventures at the Marché Noir Retro Fair in Dorsten, Part 2: The Con and the Mine

Posted on February 23, 2025 by Cora

Here is part 2 of my adventures at the Marché Noir Retro Fair in Dorsten. Part 1 about the trip to get there may be found here.

Coalmine Fürst Leopold

As mentioned before, the 2025 Marché Noir retro toy/comic/cool stuff fair in Dorsten took place on the premises of the former coalmine Fürst Leopold (Count Leopold), named after Count Leopold zu Salm-Salm, the nobleman who owned the mining rights for the region. Though Count Leopold himself wasn’t particularly interested in mining, but was a passionate ornithologist and collector of snails and shells as well as a horse breeder.

The Fürst Leopold mine started operation in 1913, five years after the Count’s death. It was combined with two other nearby mines and survived several mining crises, until it was finally closed and decomissioned in 2001.

Naturally, I took the opportunity to wander around the premises of Fürst Leopold mine and take lots of pictures of the interesting industrial architecture to be seen there.

Former gate of the Count Leopold mine in Dorsten

The former gatehouse of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. RAG stands for Ruhrkohle AG, a mining conglomerate founded in 1968 which operated most of the remaining German coalmines until the end of coalmining in Germany in 2018.

The porter’s lodge of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. This building probably dates from the 1910s or 1920s.

A closer look at a memorial plaque next to the gatehouse of the former Fürst Leopold mine, commemorating a miners strike in 1996/1997.

I have zero memory of this particular strike – miners seemed to be striking all the time in the 1980s and 1990s – and I could find very little online either and most of what there is is focussed on artist/nun Tisa von der Schulenburg who supported the miners and actually designed the memorial plaque pictured above. According to this page about the history of coal mining in Dorsten, the Fürst Leopold Mine still had 3000 employees in 1997 and reached its all-time annual peak production of 2.4 millions tons of coal. Four years later, the mine was shut down.

It’s not that there is no more coal in the Ruhrgebiet. Some mines have been exhausted, but far from all. However, the market for German coal has been shrinking since the late 1950s – in spite of various attempts to prop up demand such as a so-called “coal pfennig” (which was considerably more than a pfennig) which was added to everybody’s electricity bill to support the German coal industry. The “coal pfennig” existed for twenty years until it was finally struck down by the German Supreme Court in 1995, because customers of German electricity companies could not be expected to support a dying industry. By the 2000s, German coalmining simply was no longer cost-effective and frankly, it probably hasn’t been since well before that time.

I think they should have kept one or two mines operating to test new mining equipment – something for which there is a market abroad – and they definitely should have shut down lignite coal mining, which is extremely harmful for the environment at any stage (lignite coal is strip-mined and generates more harmful substances, when burned) and displaced thousands of people who lost their homes to strip-mining, well before they shut down the subterranean coalmines. But lignite coal is still strip-mined in Germany, while the last subterranean coalmines shut down in 2018.

I do feel sorry for the miners who had their jobs vanish, but the German coalmines have been dying all my life (and longer, though I didn’t know that at the time) and the dying mines got so more attention than industries in trouble. When the coalmines were dying once again in the 1980s, the shipbuilding industry in North Germany was also in trouble, which also affected me, because the shipyard crisis sent my Dad travelling ever further in search of work. But while the coal industry was propped up with the “coal pfennig” and other measures, the political response to the shipyard crisis was basically a shrug and “Well, you can’t expect us to save your jobs. Ships are built in Asia these days, where it’s cheaper.” This left me with a lingering resentment for coal miners, which is unfair, because they no more asked to lose their jobs than the shipyard workers did. Besides, playing workers against each other was a classic divisionary tactic.

When I was younger, I also resented coal mining and mining in general. This is probably because the school curriculum in the 1980s forced coal mining down our throats. At any rate, I was taught about coalmining and mining in general (there was also something about salt mines) several times in school, even though I didn’t live in a coalmining region, had zero interest in mining and besides, the mines were all dying anyway, so why were we learning about this? We were also forced to learn about lignite coal strip-mining, which left me terrified that giant bucket-wheel excavators would destroy my home – honestly, what were the teachers thinking to foist this stuff on ten-year-olds? We even visited the Clausthal-Zellerfeld mining museum and exhibiton mine (which is not in the Ruhrgebiet, but in the Harz), which mostly terrified me, because the guide said that there were bats living in the mine tunnels who liked to attack girls and get entangled in their hair. Yeah, that guide was an arsehole.

As an adult, I do find coalmines and industrial history and heritage in general fascinating. I guess it helps if you don’t have this stuff forced down your throat in school and if you know that there are no monstrous bats waiting to attack you nor giant bucket wheel excavators waiting to destroy your home. In fact, I should probably visit the Clausthal-Zellerfeld museum again some time, because this time around I would actually enjoy it.

Coalmines are big – even above ground, let alone below. If you look at the photos on the sites I linked above, you can see a lot of buildings that are now gone such as the massive coal washing plant. The buildings that remain mostly date from the early years of the mine in the 1910s and 1920s. The rest has been demolished to make way for a business and office park as well as two grocery stores.

Of course, the Fürst Leopold Mine also has a mineshaft elevator tower, which is the iconic symbol of coalmining in general and the Ruhrgebiet in particular. Apparently, this is the original mineshaft elevator tower, built in 1913, when the mine opened. There was a second mineshaft elevator tower as well, but that one has been demolished.

The mineshaft elevator tower of the Fürst Leopold Mine sits on a plot of land next a street on the edge of an office park. This is the oldest mineshaft elevator tower of the Fürst Leopold Mine, built in 1913.

A closer look at the mineshaft elevator tower of the Fürst Leopold mine, complete with sign. In 1970, the Fürst Leopold Mine was combined with the nearby Wulfen Mine and renamed Mine Fürst Leopold/Wulfen.

Fürst Leopold mine building, mineshaft elevator tower and mine pump.

Another look at the Fürst Leopold mineshaft elevator tower as well as one of the above-ground mine buildings. The rusty components on the lawn are parts of a former mine pump.

Those parts of the Fürst Leopold Mine premises that had been turned into an arts and events center were all buildings that dated from the the early years of the mine in the 1910s and 1920s. There was also a lot of vintage mining equipment – mine cars, pumps, elevator wheels, etc… – installed around the area as exhibits. All in all, the whole place was a great example of how to repurpose older industrial facilities while retaining their original character.

The machinery hall of the former Fürst Leopold Mine in Dorsten.

The machinery hall, the mineshaft elevator tower and another former building of the Fürst Leopold mine, which now houses a restaurant.

The restaurant housed in this former mine building (I don’t know what this building used to be) appears to be part of a chain of mediterranean restaurants active in the northern Ruhrgebiet and southern Münsterland, since I ran across the same chain twice more on the same day, though I’d never heard of it before. Restaurant and bakery chains are still regional in Germany, while most retail chains now operate nationwide.

Fountain at the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

This interesting fountain sits in front of the restaurant on the premises of the former Fürst Leopold mine. There was still some ice on the water, because the night had been cold.

Staircase at the former Fürst Leopold Mine in Dorsten

A metal staircase and walkways connect different buildings of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. There are artist studios located in one of the buildings. Next to the staircase, you can see the terrace of an ice cream parlour, which was closed for the season, as well as a former mine car.

The former mine cars were scattered all over the premises as decoration. They probably double as flower pots in the summer.

Former mine carts of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

Former mine carts on the premises of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten.

More former mine carts on the premises of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. These even form a little train.

Mine cart benches at the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

These former mine carts have been transformed into benches.

Mine equipment on the premises of the former Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

A random piece of mining equipment on the premises of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. Note the “Fck AfD” and anti-Nazi stickers.

In general, the Fürst Leopold premises with all the mining equipment scattered around would have made a great location for some toy photography. And since I was there for a geeky event, I wouldn’t even have drawn weird looks or – worse – overly curious dogs for setting up action figures to take pictures of them. Fisto and Ram-Man would have been great choices, since they’re both former miners in some versions of Masters of the Universe.

But while I have started to take action figures along on my outings and roadtrips, just in case there is an opportunity to take a cool photo, I didn’t take any of my figures along on this outing, because I figured I’d probably buy something I’d want to photograph.

The main building of the Fürst Leopold complex is the so-called Wage Hall, the building where the miners received their wages in cash before bank transfers were common. Wage Halls were often the grandest building on the premises to display the wealth of the mine owners. A remarkable number of them survive and have been turned into hotels or restaurants. This is also what happened to the Wage Hall of the Fürst Leopold mine, which now houses a hotel and restaurant.

Wage hall and washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

The former Wage Hall and administrative building of the Fürst Leopold mine.

A closer look at the former Wage Hall of the Count Leopold mine. Note the sculpture in front of the building which looks like a Christmas tree made from scrap metal.

The Marchè Noir fair was supposed to take place inside the former washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine. However, so far I hadn’t any signs that pointing to the washing hall. What is more, I also wasn’t entirely sure what the washing hall had originally been for? What precisely did they wash in there? Coal? Equipment? Miners?

As I approached the Wage Hall to take the picture above, I spotted a sign saying “Marché Noir” with an arrow pointing towards the entrance of the Wage Hall. So I followed the sign and promptly found the ticket office/registration desk. I got my armband and walked into what was now the lobby of the hotel housed inside the Wage Hall, which had a bunch of fans and cosplayers milling about.

Cosplayers at Marché Noir gathered in the lobby of the former Wage Hall

Some cosplayers have gathered in the lobby of the hotel housed inside the former wage hall of the Marché Noir con. There’s the Swamp Thing and the fox chatting with a Ghostbuster and a guy carrying a skeleton around.

The Washing Hall or How to Clean a Miner

The washing hall turned out to be adjacent to the former Wage Hall. I walked into an enormous tiled space and was immediately struck by thousand of chains and cages dangling from the ceiling.

Marché Noir in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

A look down the washing hall of the former Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten. Note the chains and the cages dangling from the ceiling.

Cages and chains dangling from the ceiling the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine

Another look at the chains and cages dangling from the ceiling of the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine. Also note the food stall offering crepes and baked feta.

Chains and cages dangling from the ceiling of the Fürst Leopold mine washing hall

Another look at the ceiling of the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine with all the chains and cages.

My first reaction – after “Wow” – was “What on Earth is this and what was it for?” The place certainly gives off torture chamber vibes, except that the chains are too flimsy to hold a human being and the cages are too small for humans, though sized just about right for gnomes. So did the miners hold gnomes and dwarves captive here?

The reality is not as dramatic, though just as fascinating. As explained on Wikipedia, the miners would store their civilian clothes in and on those cages and pull them up to the ceiling to keep their clothes and possessions safe from dirt or thieves. Then the naked miners would walk over to the second washing hall, where their work clothes and equipment were stored in and on similar cages. They’re pull down the cage, put on their work clothes and safety gear and go off to the mine. After their shift, they’d do the same thing in reverse – take off work clothes and store them in the cages, then walk over the second washing hall to retrieve their civilian clothes – except that they would shower inbetween, which is the washing part of the washing hall. So basically, this entire complex was a giant changing room for miners.

Now I mentioned that I did not pay much attention when teachers tried to teach me about mining in school, but I’m pretty sure I’d never heard of this system before. Honestly, if someone had told me about naked and sweaty miners walking around giant halls with chains and cages dangling from the ceiling, I might have been more interested.

That said, once you know how it works, the set-up of the washing hall makes a lot more sense. For example, on one end there was a tiled area separated by dividing walls, which now housed the toilets. However, I’m pretty sure that this used to be the showers. Straight in the middle of the hall, there were also the remnants of some kind of plastic divider curtain, which likely once spearated the clean from the dirty area.

The chains hung in rows that looked a lot like beaded curtains. The chains were also numbered – so the miners could easily find their clothes and gear again – and in front of those curtains there were long plastic covered benches, where the miners could sit down to disrobe.

Chains and benches in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine

A closer look at the row of chains in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine. Also note the bench running along the curtain of chains. These benches were now used by exhausted con goers to sit down.

Numbered chains in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

Another closer look at the chains in the washing hall of the Fürst Leopold mine. Note the numbers, which made it easier for miners to locate their clothes and gear. Also note how high the numbers are, indicating how many people used to work here.

One thing I really enjoy about the roadtrips I’ve been taking this past year – whether con-related or not – is learning so many things I never knew about before, such as how exactly miners cleaned themselves and how they stored their clothes and gear. I suspect this will find its way into a story somewhere down the line.

However, I wasn’t just here to admire vintage industrial architecture, but to attend a con. So let’s have some impressions of the con proper.

The Con

For starters, here is an article by Stefan Moutty from the local paper for Dorsten, the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, about the 2025 Marché Noir. He also interviews one of the organisers.

Once again, there are several videos about the 2025 Marché Noir con, because German fandom is very active on YouTube. Here is a documentary by the organisers Super Mega Action. Here is another documentary with plenty of interviews by Goreminister. Here is a video with impressions from the con by PogoBär1985. Here is a video of the con by Die Trödelmama. I definitely saw this lady – the Elvira cosplay is quite unmistakable. Here is a video about the con by We Are Ghostbusters Germany. Once again, I saw these folks at the con – some twenty Ghostbusters or so are kind of hard to miss. They also had a stall at the con. Here is a video by RetroRauner, in which he presents his Marché Noir haul. One of the two hosts of the Tales from the Fright Zone podcast also discusses Marché Noir and his haul. Coincidentally, he also didn’t know what the mine washing hall was and how it worked.

Entrance area of the Marché Noir con at the Fürst Leopold mine in Dorsten

A look at the entrance area of the Marché Noir con with the stall of the organisers, a Ruhrgebiet area fan and collector zine. Also note the Stormtrooper, Predator and Imperial officer cosplayers as well as a bunch of Ghostbusters.

As you can see in those videos and also in my photos, there was a lot of cosplay at Marché Noir, more than you usually see at German cons. In addition to the Ghostbusters and Elvira, there were a lot of Star Wars cosplayers, including several Mandalorians, a handful of Jedi and a lot of Stormtroopers. There was an Emperor Palpatine cosplayer who was accompanied by a guard of Stormtroopers and Imperial officers wherever he went. They even held the doors open for him. But then, the Emperor of a Galactic Empire beset by rebellion and civil war cannot be expected to go out in public – even to an otherwise friendly and peaceful con – without a suitable contingent of bodyguards.

Battlestar Galactic centurion and Star Wars cosplayer at Marché Noir

A Star Wars cosplayer named Imperathomas, who runs an anti-cancer charity, chats with a Battlestar Galactica centurion, who has removed his helmet.

Other cosplayers included a gleaming Battlestar Galactica centurion, a Ninja Turtle (I think it was Michalangelo), a Gremlin whom I saw sharing a coffee with an elf at one point, a Predator, the Swamp Thing, Deadpool, who was manning a bubble tea stall, and a bunch of elves. At one point, I was sitting in one of the chairs in the lobby that connected the wage hall to the washing hall, when the Predator emerged from the washing hall and yanked off his rubber mask to get a breath of fresh air. “Do you want to sit down?” I asked him, since he was clearly exhausted from walking around the pretty warm washing hall in a heavy costume. “I’d love to”, he replied, “But I can’t sit down with this costume.”

Regarding the con goers, there were obviously a lot of guys ranging in age from their thirties to their fifties. However, there were also a lot of women and not just women who’d been dragged along by their menfolk either, but woman fans. The gender breakdown was roughly 60% male to 40% female, which matches what I’ve observed at other German cons. There were also quite a lot of children ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers, which made me happy.

At one point, I saw a little boy, maybe four or five years old, who’d fished a vintage Panthor out of a bin full of vintage Masters of the Universe toys and cradled the Panthor in his arms and was clearly determined to take him home. The parents were not quite so eager to buy a forty-year-old vintage toy for a four-year-old kid. I still hope he got to take Panthor home, because I’m sure that Panthor would get a lot of love – and probably lose what’s left of his flocking.

In addition to sales and food stalls, there was also an area where you could sit down in a 1980s inspired lounge to play vintage video games. Some arcade games and pinball machines were on display as well. There was also a beer specially brewed for the con. Alas, I couldn’t try it, because I was driving.

Lounge for playing vintage video games at Marché Noir

A lounge styled like a 1980s teen bedroom where you could play vintage video games at Marché Noir. The slanted posters are spot on.

The wares on offer were a mix of vintage toys and collectibles, comics, games, t-shirts, videotapes and DVDs as well as vinyl records and cassette tapes. In fact, I was surprised how many vinyl records there were.

Comics for sale.

There were also a lot of audio dramas available, both vintage audio dramas on cassette tapes and modern ones on CD. This isn’t overly surprising, because audio dramas, particularly those aimed at kids and teenagers, have a long history in Germany. For pretty much everybody who grew up in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s and beyond, audio dramas on cassette were an integral part of their childhood. There were dozens of series available for every age range and gender and in every genre, including lots of licensed properties. The production values were amazing – a full cast of excellent voice actors, sound effects, music – all for audio dramas aimed at children.

Every West German kid had at least a few of those audio dramas on cassette (and they also found their way to East Germany in parcels or as gifts) and would pop the tape into the player before falling asleep or as entertainment during long road trips o as background noise while doing homework. The tapes were swapped around and shared and they were ubiquitous to the point that it never even occurred to me that audio dramas on cassette were mainly a West German thing and not nearly as prevalent elsewhere. As an adult, I also learned that a single company – Europa records – was responsible for most of these audio dramas and that a single woman – Heikedine Körting – directed and produced these dramas. She turns eighty this year and has been awarded more than 180 golden and several platinum records over her lifetime.

A selection of audio dramas on tape for sale at Marché Noir. The series include Gruselserie (The Spooky Series), Jan Tenner (a Flash Gordon style science fiction series), Masters of the Universe, Princess of Power, both Filmation and the Real Ghostbusters, Asterix, James Bond, Knight Rider, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The A-Team and The Simpsons.

Looking at the photo above, I’m struck by how many series there were of which I have zero memory, even though they had lots of installments. I remember Masters of the Universe, of course, and Jan Tenner (which is one of the few audio drama series that were not issued by Europa) and the Knight Rider series as well as popular series like The Three Investigators or TKKG (both teen mystery series) that aren’t pictured here, but I had no idea that the rather obscure Filmation Ghostbusters or even the much better known Real Ghostbusters ever had audio dramas, let alone James Bond or A Nightmare on Elm Street. Reissuing these audio dramas, particularly the licenced ones, is a rights nightmare, so these cassettes are highly collectible, since they are the only way to listen to many of those series (okay, a lot of them are also on YouTube).

Regarding the vintage toys, there were a lot of Star Wars toys on offer from all generations of the franchise. Masters of the Universe was also represented, but not quite as much. I also noticed that most of the Masters of the Universe toys on offer were from the vintage and to a lesser degree New Adventures era as well as some recent Masterverse and Origins figures. The 200X, Classics and vintage Princess of Power lines were much less represented, though there were a few things. Transformers, Marvel Legends and Playmobil were also quite well represented. I also spotted Micro Machines, Starcom, Bravestarr, The Real Ghostbusters, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Biker Mice From Mars and lots of other toylines from the 1980s and 1990s. There was also a stall selling vintage wind-up tin toys, which predate the 1980s. As is common with vintage toy shows, at least in Germany, boy-focussed toylines were a lot more common than girl-focussed toylines, though I did spot a couple of Barbies, Monster High dolls, My Little Ponies and even two Golden Girl and the Guardians of the Gemstone fashion sets still in box.

Later, I chatted with a woman who collects vintage dolls and hadn’t really found anything and was now waiting for her ride companions to return. “I only got a pair of socks”, she said.

Some custom Masters of the Universe Lego mini-figures on display at Marché Noir. Mattel owns the Lego rival Mega Construx, so there are no official Masters of the Universe Lego sets, though there were several Mega Construx sets.

New Adventures of He-Man Terrorclaw/Terrapod, piloted by Hoove and Karatti

A vintage New Adventures of He-Man Terrorclaw/Terrapod vehicle piloted by the evil space mutants Hoove and Karatti. I have a Classics Karatti and he’s awesome. No Hoove, alas, since he was never made in Classics and the vintage New Adventures figures aren’t in scale with anything and no Terrorclaw either. There’s also a collection of Godzillas, an Alien xenomorph and the Infinity Gauntleton display.

A selection of vintage Masters of the Universe vehicles on offer at Marché Noir. You can see the Laserbolt (first one I’ve ever seen in person), two Battle Rams, an Attak Track, a Road Ripper, a Wind Raider, a Roton, Panthor, Stridor, a Land Shark, Spidor, the Monstroid and the totally awesome Bashasaurus and Dragon Walker. Also note the beautiful in box vintage He-Man and Battlecat gift set as well as a Club She-Ra and Sorceress. There also are some vintage alarm clocks and – sigh – a Harry Potter jigsaw puzzle.

Those vehicles were very tempting, especially the Dragon Walker and the Bashasaurus, though my will power was strong enough to resist them. The fact that I’d probably have to deal with peeling stickers, missing pieces and mechanisms that either were broken or would break down in the none too far future also helped. But damn it, those vehicles were awesome.

My Haul

But enough about what I didn’t buy. I guess you want to hear and see what I did buy.

In addition to dealers selling all sorts of merchandise, there were also several small press publishers of comics, books and audio dramas present at Marché Noir. One of those publishers is Retrofabrik, who reprinted many of the West German Masters of the Universe comics of the 1980s and launched a new line of Masters of the Universe audio dramas last year. I already have all of their comic reprints courtesy of my friend local comic shop, but I was still missing the latest audio drama (episode 4), so I took the chance to purchase it at the con and compliment the Retrofabrik guys on their excellent work.

I also wound up purchasing a graphic novel biography of Friedrich Engels from the stall of the publisher and even got it signed by the author. We also chatted about the fact that Engels spent part of his youth in Bremen as an apprentice to a merchant.

The Trash-o-thek podcast, which is dedicated to trashy movies, offered a so-called Wonder Box at their stall. Five bucks got you a cardboard box which includes a trashy movie on DVD or BluRay, an audio dramas on CD and a selection of other goodies like small toys and candies. I think these boxes were also supposed to raise funds for the podcast and the con. At any rate, it’s a good deal and I got one of them.

And here is what’s inside the Wonder Box: A BluRay of the movie “Fortress: Sniper’s Eye”, the audio drama “Bloody Zombies in Bottrop”, a toy dart gun, a few postcards, a sticker, a mini-game and some retro candy.

I’m keeping the BluRay, the audio drama (Come on, who could resist Bloody Zombies in Bottrop?) and the postcards and gave the candy, the mini-game and the dart gun to my neighbour’s kids. The candy filled plastic seashell really brought back memories, because I loved those seashells as a kid, though I never liked the candy. I had no idea they were still making these. Still a good value. If I’d bought the BluRay and the audio drama separately, I’d probably have paid more.

As for toys, I found a 200X Teela, still on card (not sure if you could call it mint, because those 200X blisters are yellowing ferociously some twenty years on). I don’t really collect 200X figures – except that I occasionally pick them up, when I come across one I like – and I do like the 200X Teela. She’s also quite hard to find, because Mattel underproduced her due to some “boys don’t buy girl figures” gender essentialist nonsense. So I’m glad I finally got a Teela to go with my 200X Prince Adam and Man-at-Arms. I also picked up a loose but complete 200X Battle Cat for my 200X He-Man, because He-Man needs Battle Cat and my 200X He-Man doesn’t have one.

Finally, I also snagged a vintage Princess of Power Entrapta. She’s missing her tiara and her shield and has a few scratches, but otherwise she’s in good condition. Entrapta’s hair tends to get really messy, but this one looks nice.

My Marché Noir haul: A Wonder Box, a 200X Battle Cat, 200X Teela, vintage Princess of Power Entrapta, a graphic novel biography of Friedrich Engels and the latest Masters of the Universe audio drama by the Retrofabrik

The various accessories – mostly some kind of projectile launcher thing, because everything in the 200X line had to launch projectiles – that came with the 200X Battle Cat are not pictured, though they were included. I honestly don’t get this fascination of the 200X toyline with projectile launchers and I don’t think anybody else does either.

Once I’d done my round of the con and it started to get quite crowded, I took my haul back to the car and decided what to do next. But that’s a story for part 3.

Posted in Con Reports | Tagged 1980s child, architecture, audio dramas, comics, con reports, cosplay, Dorsten, German history, graphic novels, industrial history, Marché Noir, Masters of the Universe 200X, photos, road trip, Ruhrgebiet, She-Ra: Princess of Power, Socialism, toys | 2 Comments

Journey to the Edge of the Ruhrgebiet: Cora’s Adventures at the Marché Noir Retro Fair in Dorsten, Part 1: It’s Roadtrip Time Again

Posted on February 18, 2025 by Cora

I first heard about Marché Noir, a retro toy/comic/games/cool stuff fair in the Ruhrgebiet region, sometime last year. It sounded like exactly my sort of thing. However, Marché Noir is traditionally in February and last year I couldn’t go for personal reasons and probably wouldn’t have enjoyed myself, even if I had been able to go.

In previous years, Marché Noir took place in a former tram depot in Dortmund, but this year they moved to a new venue on the premises of a former coalmine in a town called Dorsten. The name of the town didn’t ring a bell at all, but when I looked it up on a map, I saw that Dorsten is located on the northern edge of the Ruhrgebiet and is actually closer to Bremen than Dortmund would have been. And of course the fact that the con venue was a former coalmine turned arts and events venue also intrigued me, because anything that combines a con with industrial history has to be cool. Plus, last week was the first anniversary of Mom’s death, so Marché Noir gave me something to distract me and look forward to. So I decided to go.

And you know what this means. It’s roadtrip time again!

Autobahn A1

I got up at quarter past six AM. As with my trips to Castrop-Rauxel and Hanau, it was still dark when I got up. However, by the time I got into my car shortly before seven AM, the pitch darkness of the night had been replaced by gray twilight gloom. By now, it’s quite notable that the days are getting longer again. However, it was also freezing cold – the entire week has been cold and we even had snow.

I made a brief pitstop to throw my mail-in ballot into a mailbox – Germany is having a general election next Sunday, which is dreaded by pretty much everybody, and since the far right AfD is projected to win approx. twenty percent of the total vote, every vote counts even more than usual. Then, my civic duty done, I set off towards Dorsten.

I drove onto my old friend Autobahn A1 at Groß-Mackenstedt in southbound direction. As I’ve said before, almost every roadtrip starts on the A1. Because it was seven AM on a Sunday morning, even the normally busy A1 was as empty as it ever gets. There were very few cars about, because it was so early. And since trucks are not allowed to drive on German roads on Sundays except for urgent cargo like perishable goods or live animals, there were hardly any trucks either, at least not on the Autobahnen. Because there were plenty of trucks parked on the large parking lots along the route.

Because there was so little traffic, I made good time. Even better, my old nemesis, the monster 33 kilometer construction zone between exits Lohne/Dinklage and Bramsche is also gone with a few leftovers, where there’s still some construction work going on at the edge of the highway or on highway bridges and the like.

On the downside, the stretch of Autobahn from Groß-Mackenstedt to Wildeshausen, which used to be a “go as fast as you like” zone and then acquired a speed limit of 120 kilometers per hour, has now had the speed limit reduced to 100 kilometers per hour because the tarmac is in bad condition. I guess that’s where the next monster construction zone will be. It’s still a bummer, though, because 100 kilometers per hour is pretty slow for an Autobahn that’s straight and even, not to mention almost empty.

After Wildeshausen, however, the speed limit was lifted and I could drive as fast as I like. And because the Autobahn was empty and there are few curves and no hills here, I drove at top speeds up to 150 kilometers per hour or so, which is faster than I normally go. But in such conditions and with good music on the radio, driving is fun. Plus, it wasn’t dark anymore, but gray, though the sun didn’t rise until approx. 7:40 AM, by which time I had reached Service Station Dammer Berge with its iconic bridge restaurant. Though this time around, I didn’t stop there, because I wasn’t in the mood for soapy coffee or gloopy cake.

There was snow in the fields and woods alongside the A1. At first just a little bit and then by the time I reached Cloppenburg, the fields were fully covered in snow, though the Autobahn itself was free. Interestingly enough, the snow completely vanished by the time I Osnabrück. Normally, the hillier and more southern parts of Germany get more snow. But this time around, North Germany got all the snow, while the regions further south didn’t get nearly as much.

Country Roads, Take Me Home:

When I’m driving I need music on the radio to stay awake and alert. That makes me the opposite of my Dad, who needed to hear someone talking to stay alert, preferably live, but the radio would do as well. With was a problem during roadtrips, when I was a kid, because Dad would switch on talky radio stations – usually news and political stuff – and also keep the music at a very low volume, whereas I wanted music at higher volume and preferably no talking at all, because it disrupted my thoughts. And since I cannot tolerate headphones, a walkman was no solution either. Eventually, I learned to tune out the talking on the radio to the point that I accidentally gave myself audio processing issues (basically, I tend to drift off after a few minutes of talking on the radio or another medium), which initially made it difficult for me to listen to podcasts, audio books and audio dramas (which is ironic, considering how important audio dramas were in West German youth culture). Come to think of it, I’m not sure if I ever suggested to my Dad popping an audio drama on cassette into the tape deck of the car radio, so we could at least listen to talking that was fun. But then, I don’t think it would have worked, because my parents didn’t like audio dramas very much (some nonsense about audio dramas harming reading abilities), so I never had all that many audio dramas on tape. Oddly enough, they did buy me Kid Stuff readalong records from the US, because anything is educational, when it’s in a foreign language.

My radio station of choice has always been Radio Bremen 1, because I like their mix of older and newer music in a variety of styles. However, around Osnabrück you get out of range and have to choose a different station. In this case, this was WDR 4, which has a similar mix of music to Radio Bremen 1, though they’re more 1980s and generally oldie focussed than Radio Bremen 1, and is enjoyable enough to listen to. Though my trip to Hanau in December was actively painful, because I just couldn’t find a radio station that worked for me at all. At one point, I even asked an employee at an Autohof to which station their radio was tuned, because at least that one had decent music.

A few days ago, there was a discussion on BlueSky, where an American expat in Germany said in response to “Country Roads, Take Me Home” being played at the Super Bowl (allegedly – I didn’t watch that thing and actively dislike it, since Mom died during the night of last year’s Super Bowl, so it brings back bad memories) that in Germany the entire stadium would have sung along. In response, another expat said that they didn’t understand why Germans liked that song as well as “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks so much, since no one under fifty in the US would know those songs, which led to a discussion about John Denver (whom supposedly no one under fifty remembers either) and the music played on German radio stations, which many expats find irritating. Well, to be fair, I find American and Canadian radio stations with focus on only a single type of music irritating as well.

Anyway, as I was driving down the A1, what song came on on the radio? Exactly, “Country Roads, Take Me Home”. And yes, I did sing along – because that’s another thing I like to do, when I’m driving on my own, singing along with the radio. Later in the day, I actually heard the song a second time, this time courtesy of WDR 4. I also heard “Seasons in the Sun” BTW, which I did not need right now. Not that I don’t like “Seasons in the Sun” – it’s a good song. However, it was played at my Mom’s funeral, because she loved that song, so I really didn’t need to hear it only a few days after the anniversary of her death.

Autobahn A43 and Breakfast in Dülmen

I made excellent time and drove past Osnabrück towards Münster. At the intersection Münster South I changed onto Autobahn A43 – yes, one of the dreaded A-fortysomethings that criss-cross the Ruhrgebiet. By now, it was 8:30 AM and time to look for a place to have breakfast. But where?

The first exit on the A43 had an Autohof, but it was closed for renovations. I also wasn’t familiar with any of the names of the exits and towns at all, since I don’t think I’ve ever been on the A43 before – at least not in the last forty years. So I had no idea which exit had a town nearby and which would just lead to an industrial estate or disgorge me in the middle of nowhere. So when I spotted a sign for a rest area named Karthaus, I stopped to check Google Maps for a suitable place nearby to have breakfast. I saw that there was a town of reasonable size called Dülmen up ahead, which had several bakeries fairly close to the Autobahn. Dülmen also apparently has some surviving medieval buildings as well as a famous nature park with wild horses, but I didn’t see any of this.

So I left the Autobahn at the exit Dülmen, ignoring the complaints of Else, my GPS. The first bakery turned out to be attached to a grocery store and was closed, but the second one was not only open and busy, but also had a large café. It was a branch of Bakery Geiping, a chain that operates bakery cafés all over the Münsterland and the northern part of the Ruhrgebiet. The name rang a bell and indeed I had coffee at another Geiping branch on my way home from Toyplosion in Castrup-Rauxel last year.

For a Sunday morning, the bakery was busy and there was a line of people waiting to be served. However, most of them were picking up fresh bread rolls to take home – Sunday breakfast is something of a ritual for many German families – and the line to eat in was much shorter. There was a poster advertising an avocado bagel, but the lady behind the counter informed that avocado bagels were only available during the week. So I ended up ordering scrambled eggs with vegetables and a latte macchiato.

Autobahn A52, Marl and fucking Gladbeck:

After breakfast, I got back into my car for the rest of the trip. I drove back onto the A43 and two exits later my GPS Else instructed me to change onto Autobahn A52 – not an A-fortysomething for once – at the intersection Marl-North. Though it’s more of a junction, because the A52 peters out shortly after Marl-North.

Marl was actually a town whose name I did recognise as a Ruhrgebiet city that’s a center of the chemical industry. Indeed, the Autobahn directly passed Marl Chemical Park, a massive industrial complex, and I could see the various chemical plants in the distance. Apparently, parts of Mark Chemical Park are open to visitors and there is also a former coalmine on the premises, which you can visit as well. However, I didn’t know this at the time and besides, I already had an appointment at a different coalmine.

I also saw a mosque, complete with dome and minaret, directly next to the Autobahn. Mosques aren’t rare in Germany – we have approx. 5.5 million Muslims after all. And due to its industrial history, the Ruhrgebiet has a higher percentage of Muslims than many other places, because many Turkish immigrants flocked to the Ruhrgebiet cities in the 1960s and 1970s to work in the mines and factories. However, most mosques in Germany are converted warehouses, shops, restaurants or even single family homes. Purpose-built mosques with minarets and interesting architecture are still fairly uncommon and sadly controversial. Some research reveals that this particular mosque was actually one of the first purpose-built mosques in all of Germany and was built in 1992.

The signs on the Autobahn did not mention Dorsten at all, but instead announced Gelsenkirchen and – somewhat troubling to me – Gladbeck. As for why seeing the name “Gladbeck” on a roadsign upsets me, that’s because of the so-called Gladbeck hostage crisis, most of which did not actually take place in Gladbeck but in Bremen. That hostage crisis led to a massive media circus and cost three lives – police officer Ingo Hagen, 15-year-old Emanuele di Giorgi and 18-year-old Silke Bischoff, who went to my school, though she was a few years ahead of me. As a result, the entire school was traumatised – because the victims were our age, because Silke had been one of us, because everybody knew the bus stop where the bus was hijacked (it was a main stop on the bus route into Bremen and my best friend and I had been at that same bus stop the day before) and because it could have been anyone of us. Rumours were also flying high, making events that already were horrible enough even worse. I don’t know if any of those rumours were ever true and I have certainly never repeated them. And our teachers not only had no idea how to handle a bunch of traumatised teenagers, but probably didn’t even recognise they were dealing with traumatised teenagers and reacted really badly. Indeed, the mere fact that we wanted to talk about the events seemed inconvenience the teachers. Mr. Bösche, who was my class teacher at the time and a terrible person, basically told us that everything that had happened was our fault, because we had watched the news reports and live interviews with the gangsters on TV. Honestly, as an adult the lack of empathy among our teachers is shocking. If something like this happened nowadays, there would probably be psychological support offered for students.

It took me a long time to even understand that the Gladbeck hostage crisis had caused a lingering trauma in me. After all, I wasn’t directly affected. I didn’t even know Silke Bischoff personally and I didn’t know Emanuele di Giorgi at all. But 36 years later, I still cannot look at the iconic photos of the gangsters brandishing their guns inside the bus and of the gun pressed to Silke Bischoff’s head and get upset when I chance to see them without warning. I also still get upset when I pass service station Grundbergsee on the A1, where Emanuele di Giorgi was murdered and Ingo Hagen was killed in a car crash, and I would never ever stop there. When one of the gangsters was released from prison in 2018, I was furious, though I’m normally not in favour of extremely long prison sentences. And when a trailer for a 2018 TV movie about the Gladbeck hostage crisis came on unexpectedly, I literally screamed at the TV how on Earth they could broadcast this without even the courtesy of a trigger warning. That was the point when I realised that it had been thirty years after all, well beyond any statute of limitations, and that my reaction wasn’t exactly normal, but a trauma response.

Just as service station Grundbergsee bothers me, seeing the name “Gladbeck” on every second sign on Autobahn A52 also bothered me a lot. Though of course, I can’t expect Autobahn signage to respect my personal issues with a town which probably isn’t happy to be synonymous with one of the most infamous crimes in postwar Germany either. In fact, I even briefly considered stopping in Gladbeck after the con to see if seeing the place would exorcise my demons. However, I didn’t know where the bank was and apparently the building no longer exists anyway, but was demolished. I guess they wanted to exorcise the memory, too.

Besides, I didn’t have to drive as far as Gladbeck or even Gelsenkirchen anyway, because Else directed me to leave the Autobahn at the exit Marl-Frentrop. I ended up in a rural and very flat area (parts of the Ruhrgebiet have hills and mountains, but this one doesn’t), while Else told me not to take the road that led into Dorsten proper. I went along with this, because a coalmine probably wouldn’t be located in the city center, but somewhere on the outskirts. So I crossed the river Lippe and the Wesel-Datteln canal and got a little nervous, when I still saw only rural landscapes and no sign of a town, let alone a coalmine. In other parts of the Ruhrgebiet, towns and cities tend to blend into each other, but this was clearly not the case here.

When I programmed Else before setting off, I couldn’t find the street where the former coalmine was located. According to Else, the street didn’t exist. I later realised that this was because Else’s map is out of date (and can’t be updated anymore, because the manufacturer no longer supports this particular system) and because the street in question wasn’t built until the coalmine was decommissioned and turned into an arts venue and business park, which meant Else had no way of knowing the street. So I programmed Else for a nearby street that she did recognise. There was only one problem. The street in question was long and so Else just led me to an intersection in a rural area and announced that I had reached my destination.

I turned into the destination street into the direction of Dorsten, figuring that since coalmines are big, I should be able to spot it from the car. Never mind that there would probably be signs pointing at the arts venue. And indeed, I eventually came to a roundabout with a sign indicating the arts venue. Even better, I could spot a mineshaft elevator tower in the distance. So I had found the right place.

Finding a place to park was slightly more difficult, because the dedicated parking lot of the arts venue was full as was the parking lot of an adjacent grocery store (which was closed, since it was Sunday). Across the road from the grocery store, there was an office park built on top of the former coalmine. The office buildings had parking lots, so I just parked my car there. After all, the offices were all closed for the weekend, so who would mind?

Then I headed to the mine and con. But that’s a story for part 2.

Posted in Con Reports | Tagged 1980s child, Autobahn, comics, con reports, Dorsten, family, German history, industrial history, Marché Noir, music, road trip, roadside views, Ruhrgebiet, toys | 3 Comments

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