Fred Kiesche 🇺🇦 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇩🇰

FINISHED (133 YTD): Slow Horses 01–Slow Horses (Mick Herron). app.thestorygraph.com/books/dd0ed0...

Behold: The US Defense Intelligence Agency has released a report on challenges to security in space, including an NEI image of China’s spaceplane from Maxar, taken in 2024.

"The Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." --The Treaty of Tripoli, unanimously ratified by Congress on June 7, 1797

In #PretendersToTheThroneOfGod, Arthur C. Clarke winner & Sunday Times bestselling author Adrian Tchaikovsky (@aptshadow.bsky.social) returns to a world steeped in magic – & the #TyrantPhilosophers campaign to bring reason, logic and perfection to it. Pre-order now: https://geni.us/PTTTOGPBorgsoc

The stop-start nature of Vargr innovation leads to a thriving economy of junk dealers, scroungers and technicians keeping old tech running. Learn more in the new and improved Aliens of Charted Space Vol. 1, available for pre-order tomorrow! #ChartedSpace #TravellerRPG #ttrpg

Two days left you laggards

The Guide to Glorantha is a wonderful beast, and I figured I should write about it! Because this 800-pages, 5.7 kgs slipcase set is a great source for your next light Gloranthan setting! It makes zero sense? Sure it does! Read on! ludovic.chabant.com/blog/2026/10...

A Song for Lya by George R. R. Martin An assortment of George R. R. Martin's early SFF. jamesdavisnicoll.com/review/worry...

Interstellar dazzle camouflage!

Today we lost Walter Koenig. Some thoughts about a fine actor and genuinely nice guy....

Forms of Water xkcd.com/3315/

New art newsletter: Skull Architecture 70s-sci-fi-art.ghost.io/skull-archit...

New wallpaper. I've said it before and I'll say it again but if I have to stare at a screen all day at work then I'll be damned if I have to look at the corporate wallpaper - I know where I am, don't need reminding every few minutes 🤣 #Lightwave3d render of Howie Day's model. #ScifiArt #Scifi

Bluesky has eight kinds of users

We plan to hold a conference in August 2027 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Wow! Signal, celebrate the legacy of the Big Ear telescope, and highlight the past, present, and future of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). 😃 #AreciboWow

It was not easy. The final pieces of the puzzle came from long-forgotten data and historical documents preserved in Ohio, Illinois, and West Virginia. We are deeply grateful to the many individuals and institutions whose help made this study possible. 🙂 #AreciboWow

This was a result we had long hoped to achieve, but that everybody thought was impossible. After studying decades of archival radio data from the Big Ear telescope alongside modern observations, the solution gradually emerged. #AreciboWow

One of the biggest mysteries of the Wow! Signal is its exact location, with two possible positions in the sky. Our #AreciboWow team has solved this mystery using three independent methods. We’ll present our findings in 2027. We know! 😉

Design Thinking has evolved

↘️Star Odyssey (Sette uomini d'oro nello spazio) was released 47 years ago today. "Earth is attacked by an intergalactic villain and his army of androids." ↙️Moon Zero Two was released 57 years ago. "A salvage expert become involved with a group of criminals intent on hijacking a small asteroid."

R.I.P. Walter Koenig (1936–2026)

RIP Walter Koenig (September 14, 1936 – October 25, 2026)

Just speaking for myself but I was completely fine not knowing what Matt Yglesias thought about basically anything

Walter Koenig passed away peacefully last night. 😔 Here he is, looking back at the Captain in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". A familiar shot, as it's stock footage used in several #StarTrek episodes. We'll salute him on our next #StarTrek night and watch a Chekov episode in his honor! 🖖

"Koenig lost out on a chance to appear in Babylon 5 when he suffered a heart attack and had a quadruple bypass in 1993, but J. Michael Straczynski wrote the part of Bester for him when he was healthy enough to act again. Unlike Chekov, this character was multidimensional, key to several storylines."

Great character. Never too late to (re)watch Babylon 5 🖖

♥️

"Koenig tells of series creator Gene Roddenberry’s insistence on ethnic diversity in Star Trek, and why he believes it is a key to the franchise’s ongoing success." Don't miss this half-hour with Walter 🖖

Oh no 😭 One of the last members of the USS Enterprise has left. RIP Walter Marvin Koenig (1936-2026) Star Trek, Babylon 5, Moontrap, The Starlost, The Questor Tapes, Futurama... What a career in sci-fi. I will miss Pavel Chekov. Again 😞

In unrelated news, Fun Foods has announced their newest and most popular mandatory consumable! Try Hot Garlic Fun™ today!

This is a public service reminder: Vampires are a myth. Reports of shriveled citizens missing most of their blood are due to perfectly normal, completely mundane causes that just so happen to be above your security clearance.

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

My pal Danielle Koenig shared that her father Walter Koenig passed away last night at age 90. A performer whose kindness and warmth shone through the screen. He will be well remembered.

Hear an Hour of the Jazzy Background Music from the Original 1967 Spider-Man Cartoon www.openculture.com/2026/10/an-h...

"...of course more—City of God, but also Cinema Paradiso or Mean Streets. (...) So there’s even a bit of Clockwork Orange in what I would say is one of the most shocking scenes—not just in Edgerunners, but in the whole Cyberpunk 2077 universe."

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 (Netflix, 2026) Showrunner Bartosz Sztybor: "When I visited Trigger with my first story pitch for Edgerunners 2, I said that I wanted to create an homage to the cinema of the ’90s. Two of my main inspirations were Pulp Fiction and Léon: The Professional. But there’s..." 🔽

arm wrestling match, ocean city, maryland, 1985

#apod 2026-10-26 M42: The Great Nebula in Orion Image Credit: Roberto Palaia Web page: https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/2026-october-26-m42-the-great-nebula-in-orion/

Both MAGA & UFO/UAP fetishes are lunacy. I’ve explored many concepts of the ‘alien’ in astrophysics, SETI &scifi. But a fetish that ignores all logic or science is almost as toxic as MAGA and likely similarly sourced. Feh. Snap out of it! davidbrin.blogspot.com/2026/10/disc...

Lord Dunsany sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/dunsan... died on this day (25th), so here are some of the illustrations from his "The Book of Wonder" (1915) by artist SH Sime:

A drop of dream fuel - Tree Shadows on the Park Wall, Roundhay Park, Leeds by John Atkinson Grimshaw

David A. Hardy ‘Planet of Beta Lyrae’ from The New Challenge of the Stars by Patrick Moore & David A. Hardy, 1977

Editor/author John Gregory Betancourt sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/betanc... and artist Fred Marcellino sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/marcel... were born on this day, so here are some of their book covers (Artist: Bob Eggleton, Romas Kukalis, Fred Marcellino and Fred Marcellino):