The Tony Awards included some speculative plays this year.
Last Thursday was the anniversary of the drive-in movie theater. Here is a nice article about the first drive-in.
Two small-press bankruptcies made the news this week—bad news for writers and readers. Unbound and Albert Whitman and Co have both had financial troubles in the past, and both leave many writers unpaid.
Thanks to File 770 for the link to this long article discussing 100 years of film “stunts.” Some are way more dangerous and convoluted than mere “stunts;” some are classics (Buster Keaton!); at least one is just a sad story about the industry’s indifference to human life.
Reactor shares the Jersey Devil’s moment in the sun, with a book of poetry, a stage play and a comic book all celebrating the New Jersey cryptid. (And also, not to be picky, isn’t the plural of medium, “media?”)
Last year NPR interviewed the two leads of HBO’s Dune: Prophecy. The show doesn’t impress me but these two actors, Olivia Williams and Emily Watson did—and the interview has some very funny moments!
Here is an interesting interview about the costume designer for the same show. The costumes also impress me.
I may be embarrassing myself by repeating something I already posted here, but Thomas Pynchon has a new novel scheduled for Oct 7 this year. Titile is Shadow Ticket, and apparently on the shorter side rather than one or his giant tomes. Considering he just turned 88 last month, this is quite an achievement and exciting news for fans of his sometimes SF-adjacent fiction.
The Reddit Fantasy group has an interesting post by someone who claims to be a bookstore owner:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1l1w9az/what_i_learned_about_books_the_fantasy_community/
He questions what happened to male book buyers. Are men all reading on tablets or listening to audio now instead of buying physical books? Do they order everything through Amazon rather than going to local stores? Have they just stopped reading? Numerous respondents have their favorite theories or express familiarity with exceptions to what he’s describing.