Marilyn D. Mollmann (1927–2026)

My grandma was born Marilyn Inderhees on August 6th, 1927, in Cincinnati.  She was the second of four, after older brother Jack, and before little sister Audrey, and little brother Bob. She grew up in Westwood; her father, Edward, was co-owner of a paint store, Mohawk Paints, in downtown Cincinnati.

Marilyn’s mother, Helen, was the homemaker, and she raised the family through the tough times of the Great Depression and World War II. During rationing, her dad had a secret supply of Hershey bars from Mr. Habig at Habig’s drug store. They would divide a bar up eight ways – two pieces for mom and dad, four for the kids, and two for the dog, Trixie.  They had a victory garden on the empty lot next door, and her dad was the air raid warden for the neighborhood.

Marilyn and the little girl down the street, who was a few months older, walked to school together, beginning in first grade. That was her friend Dorothy, or “Dot.” They would stay friends for over ninety years and later become sisters-in-law.

After grade school, Marilyn attended Mother of Mercy High School, graduating in June 1945, just a few weeks after Victory in Europe; she turned eighteen in August, just a few weeks before Victory in the Pacific over the Japanese. I wonder what these times were like for a young woman. After high school, she got a job working downtown, as a secretary. When not working, she had a rambunctious group of friends--she always liked to have fun.

She met Charles, and they married on June 16th, 1951, just eight days after he graduated as an electrical engineer. The night before she got married, her dad told her she was on her own, but if she ever needed help, he was there for her.  

Marilyn and Charlie were fortunate to be able to immediately buy their first house in North College Hill. Her mom and dad moved the furniture into their new house while they were gone on their honeymoon. The house was less than a five-minute walk to Charles’s brother Lou and wife Lottie, and to his sister MaryAnne and husband Mike. It was easy to hang out together at each other’s houses in the evenings, have dinner with their young families, or go to the North College Hill pool.

It took a few years to start a family, but then they came pretty quickly: Jim in 1954, Janet in 1955, Pat in 1957, Karen in 1960, and my father Dan, forever “her baby,” in 1963.

Her dad died suddenly and tragically in a car crash, in October 1955.  It was a shock to her and the rest of the family. Marilyn was 28, and her daughter Janet just a few weeks old. Marilyn forever would remember exactly where she was sitting in the living room when Charlie got the phone call. 

After seven years in North College Hill, with the family getting bigger, Marilyn and Charlie moved to the house on Lauderdale in 1958.  Here they raised the five kids, who attended Saint James School, and the family attended Saint James Church, where she would be a parishioner for almost seventy years.  She did mom duties, shuttling kids in the station wagon, clipping coupons to stretch a dollar, volunteering in the cafeteria and library and the PTA and so forth. Later in life, she would knit hats for babies in the NICU and organize the Yarn & Cards outreach here at St. James.

Marilyn and Charlie had a big group of friends who liked to play cards, party, and travel to Florida together: the Luipolds, the Grievenkamps, the Hudepohls, the Rolls, and so forth. She and Charlie liked their martinis. They would sit outside together every night in the warm months from 11:30 to 12:15 or so, and share one or two and just talk, and look out at the night.

She used to say to her husband, “Charlie you should put a porch on the roof.” An interesting vision, but it never happened. She would also say, “Charlie, you should put a skylight in the kitchen.”Also never happened. But then, “Charlie, you should cut a big hole in the back of the house and put in doors and a deck.” She got that one.

The kids got older, graduated high school, and all graduated college. She and Charlie survived a late career lay-off, and then enjoyed a long retirement with travel to far parts of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Europe. She had several bouts with cancer. Challenges like this were invariably met with a little grumpiness and depression, followed in a few hours by embracing the reality of the situation, and just dealing with it, and doing her best. Persevering. 

The grandkids started coming in the 1980s, eventually reaching sixteen. She was always interested in what I had to say, though most of the time, she would laugh and say, “You’re such a character.” Then the great-grandkids, currently at twenty-two. If there’s a way I will always remember my grandmother, it’s on the annual Thanksgiving trip. This began in 1973, and lasted through almost all of the next fifty-three years. Unable to cook a traditional Thanksgiving turkey in a tiny state park cabin kitchen, Marilyn opted to cook Cincinnati chili instead. What began with seven attendees now includes Marilyn’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren, running as many as fifty people. Because this began in West Virginia, every year at the Friday night cookout, the Mollmanns would belt out John Denver’s “Country Roads”—what the Mollmanns lack in musical talent, they make up for in enthusiasm. This song became a staple of Mollmann family weddings, and Marilyn would tear up when she heard it.

Charlie passed in 2013, after a few years of difficult health. She was in charge now, and within a few hours or days, got a new dishwasher, soon followed by repainting, updating the bathrooms, new doors, new driveway, new front porch, new garage door, new garage floor, new furniture, and so forth. She loved the house, and loved taking care of it, properly, cleanly, and neatly. She was able to stay there until the day she died.

Marilyn was a woman of tradition and habit. Every year, we would have Christmas Eve in her basement, every year we would do the same things in the same order, from the customary all-children photo, to Grandma’s punch. Every day, it was the rosary at 9:30, channel 9 noon news with lunch precisely at twelve; Divine Mercy chaplet at 3:00. Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! at 7:00. Certain days of the week had certain breakfast items.

Marilyn was always there to listen. She talked on the phone regularly to her kids, and visited for dinner quite often. She was born in a different age, with different rules, but she was open to listening to new ideas and new norms. She adapted and grew. 

She was a great daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt, grandmother, great grandmother, and friend. An inspiration. A lovely person. A devout Catholic, attending church and praying the rosary for comfort, a member of the St. Mary’s Ladies Society, member of a weekly prayer group, and she and Charlie volunteered at Church, counting the collections. 

She was always positive, open to a new adventure, and full of energy. At age eighty, the first time she got on the waverunner with her son Dan, and he asked what she wanted to do, she said, “go fast.”

We want to thank Janet, Pat, and Karen for taking such good care of her in her final days.

She will be remembered and missed by her family and friends.

I cowrote the above with my dad, and read it at my grandmother's funeral earlier this week. She died on July 4th, just over a month shy of what would have been her 99th birthday. (Most people call this a eulogy, but in Catholicism it's technically "Words of Remembrance.") I'll probably have more to say about this later, but I just wanted to post the text for now.

Hugo Awards 2026: Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer

There are two ways to think about every Hugo finalist, of course: how good of a book is it, and how good of a finalist is it. In many cases these are pretty much the same thing, but in some cases they are very different. Inventing the Renaissance is a good example of a finalist where they are very different. In this post I'll talk about the the book qua book, and when I do my ranking post, I'll tackle my thoughts about it as a Hugo finalist.

Inventing the Renaissance: Myths of a Golden Age
by Ada Palmer

Originally published: 2025
Acquired: May 2026
Read: June 2026

Inventing the Renaissance is the work of Ada Palmer, a history professor best known around these parts as the author of the Terra Ignota tetralogy, whose first installment was a finalist for Best Novel back in 2017. Inventing the Renaissance is sort of two or three things at once: it's kind of a history of the Renaissance. But it would be more accurate to say that it's also a history of the history of the Renaissance. Palmer is less interested in giving the reader an overview of the Renaissance and more interested in giving the reader an overview of the idea of the Renaissance. As indicated by the subtitle, she's really focusing on the idea of the Renaissance as a "golden age": did the people from the actual Renaissance think they were living in a golden age? were they trying to make one? what did they see as a golden age? but then also: when did later people start seeing the Renaissance as a golden age? what made them do this? how has our understanding of the Renaissance changed over time?

To me, these are interesting questions, and the closer the book stuck to them, the more interesting I found it. It's huge—not counting backmatter, my Head of Zeus paperback edition is 650 pages long—and divided into six parts. The first goes back and forth between the actual Renaissance and our later understandings of it, trying to tease out what was actually happening and what later people thought about it; the second delves more into the actual intellectual project of the era. The third, and longest, provides fifteen mini-biographies of various people from the era. The fourth tries to figure out if there is such a thing a "Renaissance humanism," the fifth focuses on what distinguished the Renaissance from the eras that came after, and the sixth ends with contemplating if there are any lessons in the Renaissance for the present day.

It's a sprawling book, and different readers will take away different things. I found most interesting Palmer's claim that historians look back into the Renaissance seeking an "X-Factor": there's something that makes modernity* different from the medieval period, and whatever you think that is drives what you see as the distinct feature of the Renaissance, and thus determines the histories you write about the period. Is it investment banking? Atheism? Nationalism?

Having set this up, Palmer does end by telling you what she sees at the X-Factor—she's just given you enough background and context to make it clear that this is her interpretation of the period, and not necessarily the interpretation of the period. Her argument is that the Renaissance is the period where we move from seeing authority as a source of truth to seeing observation as a source of truth. The scholars of the period were interested in what they saw as the golden age because they wanted to reconstruct what those authorities believed. But thanks to a whole number of changes in society, this dependence on authority became untenable, and things started to shift to the way we see truth now. And then beyond that, this is the era where we started to think the world could be changed by people. More than any other figure, Palmer focuses on Machiavelli, providing a lot of context for who he is and why he wrote The Prince and what makes him a distinct figure. Machiavelli, as Palmer tells it, becomes a key example of this shift—what makes The Prince noteworthy is that he looks at the past not for examples of what is morally right, but what is effective... which is what modern academic disciplines do all the time! But Machiavelli doesn't go as far as a "modern" would in seeing that what humans do can change in fundamental ways.

The part of the book I did not get a lot out of was the third: I see why she wanted to include these diverse portraits, showing how the "Renaissance" was by no means a singular thing, and there are some good nuggets in them... but there are a lot of details in them, and this was really the only part of the book I got lost in all of the details. I feel like this needed more breathing room to be effective, like it was really a totally separate book from Inventing the Renaissance.

Palmer is clearly writing for a learned-but-popular audience; the book is not academic in tone, and I very much appreciated that. That said, I did find at times that the jokes grew wearying: I get why she gives lots of historical figures nicknames, to make them more memorable, but at the fifteenth reiteration of the "Battle Pope II" joke it's like, "yes I got it." Whenever there was a pretend dialogue, I skipped over it. And I did not care for at all the "History Lab" metaphor, which she doesn't really explain, and seems to me to subordinate the humanities to the sciences. (And this isn't a criticism per se, but man, her experience of academia is pretty different to mine. It must be nice to go to Harvard and teach at the University of Chicago and hang out at miniconferences in French villas! There's a lot of privilege here.)

But overall, this is a very interesting, very readable book on a very important topic. I don't know if everyone will think those things are true (I care a lot about history and forms of truth and academic fields of study), but I think those things are true. 

* Probably my favorite joke in the whole thing is the chart of when "modern" starts according to academics in different disciplines.

Doctor Who: Timelink by Jon Preddle

Timelink is a two-volume book from Doctor Who fan Jon Preddle, exploring the continuity of the series—at least as it existed circa 2010, when David Tennant regenerated into Matt Smith (it very briefly glosses Smith's first series). Obviously, as is typical for me, I came to it very late! The book has five parts across its two volumes, and I'll tackle each of them individually. Before the five parts, though, Preddle lays out his "rules," probably the most important of which is that he only cares about what's on screen, unlike Lance Parkin and Lars Pearson's Ahistory. He is also very into taking things literally: if a character says something happened a thousand years ago, they are very much not rounding.

Timelink: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Exploration of Doctor Who Continuity, Volume One
by Jon Preddle

Published: 2011
Acquired: January 2013
Read: March 2026

The first part, called "The N-Space Universe," lays out a bunch of "facts" we can discern about the Doctor Who universe: how does time work, can you change history, what kinds of time anomalies are there, what are the major places, who speaks English, and so on. There is a lot of detail here, and I skimmed much of it. I very much disagree with his conclusions about language; Preddle is the kind of guy who will not go for the interpretation that people speak English because this is tv; no, Gallifreyan and English must (somehow) be the same language. It ends with a 100-page timeline; this is just a list, and I much more appreciate the detailed footnotes of Ahistory. (That said, we do get rationales for these placements in the story entries in volume two.)

The next part provides a set of histories: what are the chronological sequence of Cyberman stories, Dalek stories, UNIT stories, the 2005-09 contemporary stories, British prime ministers, and the British space program. The real highlight of these is the meticulously thought through Cyberman and Dalek stories; I don't think I've ever read a better, more detailed take on how all their screen adventures fit together. If I were, say, writing a Cyberman or Dalek Big Finish adventure, I would definitely use this. On the other hand, I very much disagree with his take on UNIT dating, because he acts like there's only one possible conclusion from the data on screen, which is very much not the case!

The third part goes into the histories of the Doctor and Gallifrey. Though I don't think it would hold up with what we saw on screen from 2010 onward, and it definitely doesn't hold up with what the comics and novels and audios have done, he provides a very compelling take on how Gallifrey's timeline syncs up with the universe's, and thus how the Doctor's age fits into this, and what counts as the "future" and the "past" from a Time Lord perspective. (His claim is that Arc of Infinity sets the present of Gallifrey as 1983, and thus you can work out everything relative to that using the Doctor's age.) He makes it all work quite nicely; it's very satisfying!

Timelink: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Exploration of Doctor Who Continuity, Volume Two
by Jon Preddle

Published: 2011
Acquired: January 2013
Read: March 2026

From here, I recommend jumping ahead to part five, which makes up the entirety of volume two. It's clearly here so that the two volumes are roughly equal length, not because it would read best last. This is Preddle's story-by-story history of the whole show, from 100,000 BC to The End of Time. For each story, he gives you details on its chronological placement, an estimate of how much time passed within it, links to other stories, and so on. Surely my favorite part was the estimate of time passed; it's an aspect of chronology I feel like people rarely care about! I do think he makes some weird calls sometimes (the pith-helmet-wearing explorers with English names in Kinda are supposedly not humans from Earth!) but he always explains his logic. This isn't designed to be read word for word in order, I'm sure, but I did so as much as I could. It reads very quickly... well it did for me anyway. I would guess a number of people would find it quite dull.

Lastly, part four in volume one is the "appendices": recaps of other writers' thoughts on UNIT dating, a discussion of if the Doctor is half-human (here Preddle struggles a bit, having to willfully misread the TV movie... though there's not much you can do about this if you're insisting all of Doctor Who somehow does fit together), and then story-by-story histories of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. I particularly appreciated his meticulous approach to the chronology of Torchwood and SJA; someday maybe I'll rewatch those two shows along with the present-day episodes of the parent show following his order.

Overall, my guess is that you're either a certain kind of person who finds this kind of thing interesting or you're a kind of person who very much does not! To be honest, I think I am less the kind of person who finds this kind of thing interesting than I was thirteen years ago when I bought this book, but I still find it interesting enough. 

Marvel's The Transformers Year Three, Part II: Wanted: Galvatron, Dead or Alive (US #26-27 / UK #109-18 & 277-81)

Here, I have one last bit of jumping around between volumes 2 and 4 of the Til All Are One compendia, before things finally settle down and I just do the stories in the order they're presented... for a bit anyway. As I have been doing, I've incorporated the issues of Transformers Universe and G.I.Joe and the Transformers in publication order relative to the US stories.

from Transformers Universe #4

Steeljaw – Windsweeper & Arblus – Wreck-Gar, from Transformers Universe #4 (Mar. 1987), plus other issues; reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Four (2025)

written by Bob Budiansky, illustrated by Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, lettered by Brenda Mings, colored by Nel Yomtov

 

The last set of Transformers Universe profiles is mostly notable because it contains the ones for characters from The Transformers: The Movie. I was mostly surprised to realize that the robots from Lithone (the planet Unicron devours at the beginning of the movie to prove the situation is serious) have detailed personalities and bios given they just get killed off!

 

"Funeral for a Friend!", from The Transformers US #26 (Mar. 1987) / Transformers UK #109-10 (18-25 Apr. 1987), reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Two (2025)

written by Bob Budiansky, penciled by Don Perlin, inked by Brett Breeding, lettered by Janice Chiang, colored by Nel Yomtov

I want to like this issue, which focuses on one my favorite Autobots, Ratchet. But one has the feeling the Budiansky has lost interest in and control of his characters, and this story in particular is very contrived. Some random two-bit human crook called "The Mechanic" manages to take over Ratchet and gain access to the Ark while all the Autobots are away at Optimus Prime's funeral. It feels like Uncle Bob isn't really trying on this one.

 

from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #4

"...All Fall Down!", from G.I.Joe and the Transformers #4 (Apr. 1987) / Transformers UK #277-81 (7 July–4 Aug. 1990), reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Four (2025)

written by Michael Higgins, penciled by Herb Trimpe, inked by Vince Colletta, lettered by Joe Rosen, colored by Nel Yomtov

At this point, I have lost all interest in this crossover. So too, it seems, has everyone involved in the regular Transformers book; earlier, there was sort of a sop that this could be taking place at the same time as it, but I don't see how this possibly fits it or around the events of "Funeral for a Friend" at all. Well, at least it's all over... though the UK version of the G.I.Joe crossover is coming up, so I haven't escaped yet.

 

"King of the Hill!" / Wanted: Galvatron, Dead or Alive / Burning Sky! / Hunters, from The Transformers US #27 (Apr. 1987) / Transformers UK #111-8 (2 May–20 June 1987), reprinted in The Transformers: Til All Are One Compendium Two (2025)

written by Bob Budiansky and Simon Furman; penciled by Don Perlin, Geoff Senior, Will Simpson, Dan Reed, and Jeff Anderson; inked by Ian Akin & Brian Garvey, Geoff Senior, Tim Perkins, Dan Reed, and Stephen Baskerville; lettered by Janice Chiang, Annie Halfacree, Starkings, and Mike Scott; colored by Nel Yomtov and Steve White

from The Transformers US #27

This sequence of stories starts with one US one, another one showing the fallout from the death of Optimus Prime. In this case: who will command the Autobots now that Optimus is dead? Unfortunately, the Autobots have no plan of succession, which seems pretty dumb for what is supposedly a military unit of some kind. This is especially dumb if you're reading this story in the context of the UK stories, because it's the third time in recent memory Optimus has "died" (see also Target: 2006 in post #7 below and Prey! in #9), leaving his subordinates in chaos. Like, c'mon dude, leave them directions, even if  they're just "Prowl is in charge now"! It gets even dumber, though, when Grimlock declares his intention to become leader, they reject him, and then in a contrived series of events, they decide Grimlock will make a good leader anyway. I think the idea of Grimlock as leader is potentially fun, but it has to be handled much more convincingly than this!

 

from The Transformers UK #115

Wisely, then, the next UK storyline largely avoids anything that's going on in the US books. For the first time, we pop back into the future world of Target: 2006 (though Galvatron did jump back to the present day in Fallen Angel, some ten issues ago): Rodimus Prime wants to take care of Galvatron, but is too busy mopping up the remaining Decepticons on Cybertron, so he puts a bounty on Galvatron's head. This bounty is taken up by Death's Head, who travels back in time to 1987... and then Rodimus follows him, when he realizes what a bad idea Galvatron fighting Death's Head in the 1980s is. Meanwhile, Ultra Magnus (the 1980s one) gets entangled in events and Bumblebee is killed!

 

from The Transformers UK #118

The story isn't done yet so I can't completely judge it, but it's enjoyable so far, particularly the first appearance of Death's Head, who basically emerges fully formed by Simon Furman and Geoff Senior. In classic Marvel UK fashion, the 66 pages here have four different pencilers, but of course Senior's work is the best. Some other points:  

• Target: 2006 was eleven parts long. Someone must have decided that was a bad idea and shouldn't be repeated, because this story is nine parts long but divided into five separate "stories" of mostly two parts.
• How can Ultra Magnus be wandering around the American countryside for months without finding the Ark? Is he stupid?
• Kup is always portrayed as one of the longest-serving Autobots... yet whenever 2007 Kup travels back in time to 1987, none of the 1987 Autobots know who he is. So where did he serve and who with? 

This is the eleventh in a series of posts about Marvel's The Transformers. The next covers US issues #28-30 and UK issues #119-27 & 130-33. Previous installments are listed below:

1. US #1-3 & 33-34 / UK #1-6 & 9-17 (1984-85)
2. US #4-8 / UK #7-8 & 18-30 (1984-85) 
3. US #9-12 / UK #31-41 (1985-86) 
4. US #13-14 / UK #42-54 (1985-86) 
5. US #15-16 / UK #54-63 (1985-86)
6. US #17-20 / UK #64-74 (1986)
7. UK #75-84 (1986-87) 
• Budianskian vs. Furmanist 
8. US #21-22 / UK #85-92 (1986-87) 
9. US #23 / UK #93-104 (1986-87)
10. US #24-25 / UK #105-8 & 265-76 (1987) 

Legion of Super-Heroes: The Life and Death of Ferro Lad by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, and George Klein

DC Comics Classics Library: The Legion of Super-Heroes: The Life and Death of Ferro Lad

Collection published: 2009
Contents originally published: 1966-67
Acquired: December 2024
Read: April 2026

Writer and Layouts: Jim Shooter
Penciller: Curt Swan
Inker: George Klein
Letterer: Milton Snapinn

DC Comics Classics Library was a short-lived reprint series from the late 2000s. Looking at its offerings, I'm not entirely sure what its focus was supposed to be: clearly Silver Age material, but beyond that it seems a pretty eclectic mix. Some of it was high-profile storylines, such as this volume and Superman: Kryptonite Nevermore, but there was also a comprehensive artist run (the complete George Peréz Justice League of America) and a bunch of Batman Annuals... why exactly? And some of them hadn't been collected before (like Kryptonite Nevermore), other volumes had been collected before—like this one, which reprints issues previously printed in volumes 5 and 6 of the Legion of Super-Heroes Archives.

Still, while my drive to collect all Legion collected editions usually draws the line at collecting the same material twice over (e.g., I have not and will not pick up the Silver Age omnibus volumes, nor any DC Finest collections with only already reprinted material), I thought this volume intriguing enough to pick up. And indeed, it's a nice package, a well-designed hardcover with sharp design and period-appropriate paper. And how often do you get a collected edition of the Silver Age Legion where every issue is from the same creative team?

This collects issues #346-47, 352-55, and 357 of Adventure Comics, which are all the issues by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, and George Klein focused on Ferro Lad. All of these were rereads, but I hadn't read them in order, since I read volume 6 of the archive editions long before volume 5. The first story is "One of Us Is a Traitor!"/"The Traitor's Triumph!" This is the story where Ferro Lad joins the Legion. It's a solid story—but it's also the story where Karate Kid, Nemesis Kid, and Princess Projectra join the Legion, and it's very much focused on the first of those two; we get little sense of Ferro Lad.

Ferro Lad's big contribution.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #347

The collection then jumps ahead to "The Fatal Five!"/"The Doomed Legionnaire!" (Ferro Lad only appeared in two of the intervening issues according to the GCD, and I'm assuming he was just one of the crowd.) This is a very famous story, it's what the title of the collection alludes to, and it both works and doesn't work.

What works is the introduction of the Fatal Five. I had forgotten they weren't really a supervillain team on their original appearance, but actually a media nickname for five of the Science Police's most wanted criminals. The Legion gets a briefing on them, but are interrupted when an entity known as the "Sun-Eater" (it does what it sounds like) enters the galaxy, advancing toward Earth. With all but five members of the Legion on a mission to another dimension, they ended up deciding to recruit the Fatal Five for assistance. This is all very well done: the Legion's desperation works, but in particular the Fatal Five really work; lots of comics writers struggle to come up with one good villain, but Shooter comes up with five in one got, with interesting personalities and powers, and Swan and Klein give them all great visual designs. I particularly like both the Emerald Empress (neat visual gimmick with the Emerald Eye, fun personality) and Validus (cool looking, sort of tragic). They bring a lot of spark to the story.

Somehow I feel like she would have gotten out of this even without Superboy's help.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #352

The shift to the Legion and the Fatal Five working to attack the Sun-Eater is also great, with good use of everyone's powers and a real sense of desperation. Shooter is a smart writer, really thinking through ways to make his story dynamic and clever.

It wasn't until writing up this review that I realized his name was Validus, not Validius. I like my version better.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #353

Unfortunately, after a great first three-quarters, it all falls apart in the last part. One, Ferro Lad's decision to sacrifice himself just isn't given enough weight; he does it, blam, he's dead, like Shooter ran out of pages after all that impressive buildup. Second, we barely know Ferro Lad! I know the fact that Shooter created him was also the reason he was allowed to kill him off, but he's just been a guy in crowd scenes aside from his initiation scene. I don't feel anything because I don't know this guy from Adam, unfortunately. One wishes Shooter had postponed his idea here, given Ferro Lad more to do in some other stories, then killed him off. Or... killed off someone else! (Sun Boy?) Either way, the story ends with a fizzle.

Doesn't Tenzil actually go into politics later on? Wait, earlier on?
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #354

Lastly, the collection contains two stories dealing with the aftereffects of Ferro Lad's death. One is the legendary "Adult Legion" story, where Superman visits the Legion, and thus it's about twenty years in the future of what we normally know. The villain here is Ferro Lad's twin brother, though he turns out to be the patsy of the Legion of Super-Villains. It's fine, I always find this story a bit silly. (All of the adult male Legionnaires have receding hairlines and smoke pipes.) The other is about the Legion behind haunted by the ghost of Ferro Lad. This one is slight but well done; I like the villain's plan and I like the bit about the actual ghost(???) helping Superboy, though my favorite part is that Shooter correctly identifies that the two Legionnaires least likely to believe in all this ghost malarkey are Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl. I also really like how Swan and Klein draw the "ghost" of Ferro Lad.

Alas, cooler in death than he ever was in life.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #357

So, a nice little collection. I want to hunt down some other of these DC Comics Classics Library editions now! On top of that, when I left it lying around, my seven-year-old picked it up; they'd tried to read volume 1 of the Legion Archives and bounced off it in the past, but they sped through this and expressed interest in reading more Legion comics, so mission accomplished! They also saw the ad for Kryptonite Nevermore in the back and were intrigued by the cover image—how could Superman break kryptonite chains!?!—so that's probably in our future as well.

I read a Legion of Super-Heroes collection every six months. Next up in sequence: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 8

Reading Issue #3 of Oz-story Aloud to My Kids

As previously discussed here on this blog, I've been rereading some of the early L. Frank Baum Oz books aloud to my kids. So far, we've done The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Marvelous Land. But in between these, we've been working in some later "apocryphal" Oz books based on when they take place. So, for example, we read Donald Abbott's Speckled Rose between the first two because that's when it's set. In between Marvelous Land and Ozma, we read issue #3 of Oz-story Magazine because it contains the story "Ozma Sees Herself" by Edward Einhorn, which is set during that span; I also read the kids a couple other stories from the book I thought they would be interested in, and then read the rest of the book to myself.

Oz-story Magazine, Number Three
edited by David Maxine with Eric Shanower

Anthology published: 1997
Contents originally published: 1901-97
Acquired: May 2026
Read: May–July 2026

"Ozma Sees Herself" is set shortly after Marvelous Land, and concerns something L. Frank Baum himself was resolutely uninterested in: the psychological ramifications of Tip's transformation back into Ozma. It's pretty short, but like all of Einhorn's Oz work, well done. It also introduces Ozma to the Hungry Tiger; I was a bit surprised that Einhorn had the Tiger and the Cowardly Lion know each other from before Dorothy met the Lion, because I personally am a fan of the interpretation that the Tiger we see in Wonderful Wizard when the animals beg the Lion to kill the giant spider is the Hungry Tiger. But that's a quibble: the idea that Ozma sees a beautiful nymph and comes to recognize it as herself is a clever one.

The book also contains three installments from W. W. Denslow's newspaper strip that featured the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. (Denslow and Baum shared copyright on the first book, and each made their own attempts to capitalize on the success of the stageplay adaptation of it; for Baum, that was Marvelous Land and its own stageplay adaptation, while for Denslow, it was a series of short stories he wrote and illustrated himself.) Denslow is an amazing illustrator, of course, but his writing does not really hit the tone of an Oz story. His work actually reminds me a lot of the next Oz-illustrator-turned-writer, John R. Neill—basically anything can happen if it gives Denslow an excuse to draw something interesting. For example, in these stories, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman can casually travel to America! Overall, they're pretty harmless and forgettable. If you care about timelines, they probably take place between Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land, except for the first one, which includes Dorothy. This is about her being sad because it's Christmas and she's away from her family; my understanding is that Oz timeline aficionados place it during Wonderful Wizard, in the segment after the Wizard has left Oz in his balloon, before the characters get the idea to go see Glinda for help. (Hungry Tiger Press later collected all of Denslow's stories in a book called The Scarecrow and the Tin-Man of Oz, which I own but have not read. Maybe someday I'll read it to the kids.)

This volume didn't contain as much kid-friendly material as some other installments of Oz-story; the only other thing I read aloud to the kids was "Spots in Oz" by Rachel Cosgrove Payes, which features the leopard with changing spots named Spots from The Hidden Valley of Oz. It was two years ago that we read this book, and it is honestly pretty forgettable, so Kid One has only a vague memory of Spots, and Kid Two doesn't know it at all. This story isn't much cop either, but it's fine. It also features the Hungry Tiger, so that lined up nicely with "Ozma Sees Herself" and our imminent rereading of Ozma of Oz.

There's some original comics material here, all written by Eric Shanower, with various illustrators (including himself); I particularly enjoyed "Poppies," a one-page conversation between Ozma and Dorothy about the poppies Ozma wears in her hair, with beautiful artwork by Ramona Fradon.

In terms of prose, ones I read to myself included "Buffalo Dream" by Jane Mailander, which was a reprint from an anthology of original sf&f. This is about a strange thing that happened to Oscar Diggs—the man later known as the Wizard—during his time as an itinerant circus performer in Nebraska. It's very different from an Oz story, but I really enjoyed it: a melancholy story about the last of the buffalo, told in the first person. "It was very long ago... and far stranger things have since happened to me." Reading it in this context, it's immediately obvious who the main character is, but it would have been fun to encounter it in the wild. 

There are a couple Baum reprints; the one of "The Glass Dog" from Animal Fairy Tales is fine. This issue's full-length novel is his The Flying Girl, originally published under the pseudonym Edith Van Dyne in 1911. The novel is about a brother and sister; she's seventeen and working as a secretary to help the family make ends meet, he's a recent engineering grad from Cornell who can only find employment in an automobile repair shop, but soon gets swept up in the mania for flying. He develops his own airplane, and the two must navigate the skullduggery of potential investors to support their invention... as you might guess from the title, she ends up being the one to fly it!

I found it a quick and charming read. I was surprised by some of the turns some of the characters take; Baum actually does a decent job avoiding what initially seem like some obvious directions. While Baum's main talent was surely in his fantasies, he was able to turn his hand to other genres quite successfully. In fact, though, I would say the book is clearly science fiction! It is about a new technology, one that's not real at the time the story was written, and the ramifications of it. If this isn't sf, then I don't know what it. 

I should also point out that while there is some surprise at the idea of a "flying girl," there no resistance. I bet if someone remade this book now, there'd be a bunch of misogynists going, "NO FE-MALE IS SUITABLE FOR FLYING!" In fact, we get the exact opposite from one of the characters: "The most successful aviators of the future... are bound to be women. As a rule they are lighter than men, more supple and active, quick of perception and less liable to lose their heads in emergencies. The operation of an aeroplane is, it seems to me, especially fitted to women."

Though, the same character goes on to make this prediction: "The airship of the future will not be a passenger affair... but an individual machine for personal use. They’ll be cheaper than automobiles, and more useful, for they can go direct to their destination in a straight 'airline.' Men will use them to go to business, women to visit town on shopping expeditions or to take an airing for pleasure; but I’m sure they will be built for but one person." Whoops!

Two other things of note. First, there's some discussion of mental illness and domestic abuse that really does not past muster in 2026, and made me very glad I did not elect to read the book aloud to my kids:

"He says that—that you abused his sister," doubtfully remarked the girl.
     "Well, I did," said Cumberford, calmly. "I pounded her two or three times. Once I choked her until it’s a wonder she ever revived."
     "Oh, how dreadful!" exclaimed Orissa, shrinking back.
     "Isn’t it?" he agreed, lighting a cigarette. "Only a brute would lift his hand against a woman. But Burthon's sister—my wife—had a fiendish temper, and her tantrums aroused all the evil in my nature—there's plenty there, I assure you. It was the time I choked her that Burthon had me arrested for cruelty. She had put poison in my coffee and I took the fluid into court with me. Burthon said I was lying and I asked him to drink the coffee to establish his sister’s innocence. But he wouldn’t. Pity, wasn’t it? The judge begged my pardon and said I ought to have choked her a moment longer. But no; I’m glad I didn’t, for she died naturally in the end. My dear daughter, whom I sincerely love, is like her lamented mother, except that I can trust her not to poison me."

Egads, I don't even know what to say about all that.

On the other hand, the "daughter" referred to in that passage, Sybil, very much reads as autistic to my 2026 eyes. Here's her first appearance:

As they went up the path Orissa, anxious to be sociable and to put the stranger at her ease, said brightly: "Don't you think the ride out here is beautiful?"
     "Yes," responded Sybil.
     "The orange groves are so attractive, just now," continued Orissa.
     There was no response.
     "I hope you enjoyed it, so you will be tempted to come again," resumed the little hostess.
     Miss Cumberford said nothing. Her father, a step in advance, remarked over his shoulder: "My daughter seldom wastes words. If you wish her to speak you must address to her a direct question; then she will answer it or not, as she pleases. It's her way, and you'll have to overlook it."

As the father of an autistic kid, this could be describing their approach to social interaction to a T!

Anyway, I was pretty into this. The sequel, The Flying Girl and Her Chum, was reprinted on its own by Hungry Tiger Press, so I'll probably end up picking it up at some point. (I gather the first book had minimal illustrations; it's been reillustrated here by Eric Shanower.) 

Hugo Awards 2026: The Summer War by Naomi Novik

When it comes to my annual Hugo Awards reading, my habit is to buy all the finalists for Best Novel in hard copy; in other categories I get them from the library and/or use the ecopies in the packet. However, I will pick up hard copies if they're by an author whose work I've come to particularly enjoy—such a case in point is Naomi Novik, whose work on both the Scholomance series and Temeraire I have rated highly, not to mention the excellent Spinning Silver.

The Summer War by Naomi Novik

Originally published: 2025
Acquired and read: June 2026

Like Spinning Silver, The Summer War—finalist for Best Novella—is a loose fairy tale adaptation. If there was a specific fairy tale referent for Summer War, I didn't recognize it, but the whole story has a very self-conscious fairy tale vibe. Like a lot of contemporary fantasy, it uses this approach to think about what stories we tell, why we tell them, and how we might tell different stories.

Novik is one of those writers who is very economical, filling in a lot of character and worldbuilding without feeling like she's dumping it on you. Yes, there is a whole segment laying out the history of all the characters, but the narrative voice stops it from ever feeling like exposition. The basic premise is one I discovered for myself as I read it, so you might skip this bit if you like doing that yourself, but it's about the daughter of a lord who accidentally curses her gay older brother when he thoughtlessly does something cruel to her. He departs to go on quests as a knight in the land of the "summerlings" (these are a bit fae-like but we don't get so much of them as to annoy me), and so she must learn to navigate her relationship with the middle child of her family, who she has previously not thought much about at all.

That, to me, was the highlight of the book: the way Celia and Roric discover each other as siblings who had previously ignored each other. Before, they had only been bit players in the story their father was concocting for his life; following the departure of their brother, they need to figure out their own stories and their own lives.

In the last third of the book, the characters all end up travelling into the summer lands themselves, as they are ensnared in a plot between the summer prince and their own king, not to mention the consequences of the curse Celia created so long ago. This was interesting but not as interesting as what had come before. I appreciate what Novik was trying to do here: the strictures of the promises the summer prince has made and the curse are clearly meant to be a metaphorical stand-in for the way stories can create strictures on our own lives. I did really like the moment where Roric turned up and began telling stories, especially his final story. But I got a bit lost in the somewhat intricate web of curses and unbreakable promises, and the final solution felt a bit arbitrary to me, as opposed to a clever untying of a Gordian knot.

But for all that, it's well told and well done, full of nice little details of character, the kind of thing that makes the Temeraire series work so well. 

The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold, Part 10: "Dreamweaver's Dilemma" and Other Stories

Dreamweaver's Dilemma is a collection of stories and essays by Lois McMaster Bujold; it contains two Vorkosigan-universe stories, one of which was previously published, but the other of which can only be found in this collection. I chose to read the volume relative to where it was originally published; it came out in 1995, between Mirror Dance (1994) and Memory (1996).

Dreamweaver's Dilemma: Short Stories and Essays by Lois McMaster Bujold
edited by Suford Lewis

Collection published: 1995
Contents originally published: 1985-95
Acquired and read: February 2026

The title story, "Dreamweaver's Dilemma," is the Vorkosigan story original to this volume, though my understanding is that it was written very early on, possibly even first; it's set hundreds of years before the rest of the "saga" and thus its ties to it are fairly light. Like a lot of Bujold's short fiction, I am discovering, it is sort of a murder mystery; a woman who is a "dreamweaver" (someone who composes immersive psychic experiences) comes to realize one of hers may have been used for nefarious purposes and thus tries to figure out what's going on. I would say it's fine but not great; perhaps predictably, my favorite part was the joke about Cleveland!

What is great is "The Mountains of Mourning," which was a reread for me, as it was also collected in Borders of Infinity (1989). (The cover blurb trumpets this is as the story's first hardcover appearance.) Great story, one of my favorite Miles tales, and well worth the excuse of a reread even though I read it less than a year ago!

Other than those two, we have four other pieces of short fiction. One, "The Adventure of the Lady on the Embankment," is a passable piece of Sherlock Holmes pastiche; it's probably not a surprise that Bujold does an excellent Watson. The other three are similar in that they're all what Farah Mendlesohn would call "intrusion fantasies": all stories of the fantastic intruding in an ordinary domestic space. My favorite of these was "Barter," where an overworked stay-at-home mother makes a trade with an alien salesman for a device that makes her life at home much easier! A quick and cute story.

Finally, there are essays, both by and about Bujold. I found the ones giving insight into Bujold's life and process the most interesting; if you like good "behind-the-scenes" material about an author you enjoy, this material is solid. She is never not an entertaining writer!

Every five months I read a book in the Vorkosigan saga. Next up in sequence: Memory

Death of the Planet of the Apes by Andrew E.C. Gaska

Several years ago, I read Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, the first-ever original novel set in the continuity of the original Planet of the Apes films. I felt like it functioned as a novelization of the original film, the only one not to ever receive one.

Death of the Planet of the Apes by Andrew E.C. Gaska

Published: 2018
Read: April 2026

Seven years after Conspiracy, author Andrew Gaska wrote a sequel, Death of the Planet of the Apes. Even though the second POTA film, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, did receive a novelization, Death reads like a novelization of it much as Conspiracy did of the first film. And just like Conspiracy folded in details from the later films and explained continuity discrepancies between them, so too does Death bring in a lot of details from the later films and explain discrepancies between them. Specifically, we learn how Milo was able to rebuild the Liberty 1 ship from the first movie (as we found out in the third movie), and why he and Cornelius and Zira were aboard it in spacesuits (the third movie implies they were trying to get away from the destruction of Earth, but there was no reason they would know about this). It explains what happened to Cornelius and Zira's nephew, who was in the first movie but not the second, it explains when they got married, it explains why Doctor Zaius was more sympathetic in the second movie than the first, it explains how Cornelius didn't know how humanity used to be capable of speech in the first movie but by the third knows the true history of the apes. And there's still more things it explains that I noticed, and I'm sure even more beyond those that I didn't!

Beyond that... what's it about? is it any good? 

One of the weird things about the second movie is that it opens by showing you what Charlton Heston's Taylor is up to, and then he buggers off only to reappear at the climax of the movie—because Heston was not really that interested in doing the movie. The lead character for most of the second movie is the Temu Charlton Heston, Brent. Gaska very much cuts down Brent's scenes, but provides lots of Taylor—both what he is doing during the events of the movie, and giving us copious amount of backstory, from Taylor's days as a World War II fighter pilot up up through becoming an ANSA astronaut and his selection for the crew of Liberty 1. There was probably a bit too much of all of this, to be honest; I don't know that any Planet of the Apes novel really needs to be over 400 pages long! I think something tighter could have better highlighted the thread of Taylor's developing nihilism, which is intended to lead up to the decision he makes at the end of the film. It might also have made more clear the parallels between the societies of twentieth-century Earth and ape civilization: I think Gaska was going for commentary on the dangers of nationalism (the new ruler of Ape City proposes building an expensive border wall), but I also felt the thread wasn't as clear as it might be.

Overall, other than getting kind of bored at the length, I enjoyed it. It's not high art but it scratches the itch I want from a POTA tie-in. I found some interviews from Gaska where he talks about Conspiracy and Death as the first two books of a planned six-book sequence... but we're now at eight years since Death with no sign of book three, so I suppose that will never eventuate. I'm guessing each book would have been a side story to a film, so the next book would have retold the events of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, presumably folding in the stuff about ANSA and Earth history revealed in this volume and Conspiracy. Would the sixth have thus taken events beyond Conquest, completing the time loop leading into the original film? I guess we will never know.

Reading Roundup Wrapup: June 2026

Pick of the month: The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. As I write this, I have read four of the six Hugo Award for Best Novel finalists, and The Incandescent is currently my top pick. Find out why at the link!

All books read:

1. The Raven Scholar: Book One of the Eternal Path Trilogy by Antonia Hodgson
2. North Woods by Daniel Mason
3. A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
4. Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks 
5. The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
6. Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
7. A Girl and Her Fed: Act 3 by K. B. Spangler and Ale Presser
8. Cinder House by Freya Marske
9. Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen
10. The Summer War by Naomi Novik
11. Inventing the Renaissance: Myths of a Golden Age by Ada Palmer
12. Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Tiktok, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein by L. Frank Baum, illustrated by John R. Neill

I thought this was going to be a lower month because I read a number of very long books (The Raven Scholar, North Woods, Holy Terrors, Inventing the Renaissance) but it actually ended up being an average month because they were evened out by a number of very short books (A Short Stay in Hell, The Day of the Daleks, Automatic Noodle, Cinder House, The Summer War). 

All books acquired:

1. The Last Hot Time by John M. Ford
2. Sex, Lies and Private Eyes edited by Joe Gentile and Richard Dean Starr
3. Legion of Super-Heroes: An Eye for an Eye by Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen, Steve Lightle, Joe Orlando, et al.
4. Young Allies by Sean McKeever, David Baldeón, Emma Rios, et al.
5. Sif: Journey into Mystery by Kathryn Immonen, Valerio Schiti, et al.
6. Generation Mechs: Transformers Fan Culture in the '90s by James Roberts
7. Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion by Malcolm Hulke
8. The Summer War by Naomi Novik 
9. The New Doctor Who Adventures: Transit by Ben Aaronovitch
10. The New Doctor Who Adventures: The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch
11. The New Adventures: Return of the Living Dad by Kate Orman
12. The New Adventures: Eternity Weeps by Jim Mortimore
13. The New Adventures: The Room with No Doors by Kate Orman 

 I really do try to not buy so many books these days...

...but I bought some comics from a website I don't normally order from because they had one specific comic I needed, and they had good prices on #3-5, so I added them to my order to get free shipping. And then I visited a local used bookstore and walked away with #9-13... they had a lot more Doctor Who books, so really, I was being quite restrained!

Currently reading:

• Star Trek: The Original Series: Harm’s Way by David Mack
• The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066–1284 by David Carpenter
• Oz-story Magazine, Number Three edited by David Maxine
• Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion by Malcolm Hulke
• Sex, Lies and Private Eyes edited by Joe Gentile and Richard Dean Starr

Up next in my rotations:

1. Star Trek: Vanguard: Declassified by Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore, Marco Palmieri, and David Mack
2. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois
3. The Poe Clan Vol. 1 by Moto Hagio 
4. On Progress in Physics and Subjectivity Theory: An Amateur’s Meanderings as Inspiration for Actual Physicists by N. Otre Le Vant 

Books remaining on "To be read" list: 678 (up 10! oh no!)