2026 Hugo, Lodestar and Astounding Award Finalists

The finalists for the 2026 Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Awards have been announced. The winners will be announced at LAcon V, the 84th World Science Fiction Convention over the last weekend in August. 

These are  the finalists for best novel.

• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)
• Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz)
• Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)
• The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)
• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK)
• The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)

I've not read any of them, though there are two or three that might end up on my iPad one of these days. I was glad to see "Automatic Noodle" by Annalee Newitz, which I have read, is a finalist for the Best Novella award. 

Featured Links - April 22, 2026

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Boats at the marina waiting for summer

• Game of drones. "As the federal government spends billions on military modernization, Canadian drone innovators are vying to meet the moment in the sky, on land and in the water." Good coverage of a new industry with lots of photos. 
• Power imbalance. "James S.A. Corey on The Captives War, The Book of Daniel, and how the only way to survive an alien invasion might be appeasement." A fascinating interview with the authors of the wonderfu Expanse series. 
• What Discoveries Might Be Hiding in the Artemis 2 Images and Data? "NASA’s Artemis 2 mission produced a wealth of data that experts will be analyzing for years to come."
• They Are Killing Our People. "This past week, the Mikisew Cree First Nation of Alberta released a report on the massive cancer rates in their community. The Alberta government withheld key medical statistics, and the federal government dragged their feet. The Feds promised to fund a study that would take 10 years to complete. And so, the community paid for their own research." This is what happens when you live downstream from the biggest polluter in Canada. 
• 'For All Mankind' alternative timeline vs reality: How Apple TV's sci-fi show diverges from history.. "How do "For All Mankind"'s six decades of space exploration "history" compare with the real thing?" Spoiler warning for those who haven't watched the show,
• Why Medieval Bread Was A Superfood While Your Modern Bread Makes You Sick (YouTube). "There's a significant issue with the bread we consume today. While bread was once a fundamental part of civilizations, sustaining families and armies, modern bread often causes gut issues, blood sugar spikes, and leaves us feeling unsatisfied. This food history explores how the bread industry has changed, contrasting today's offerings with the traditional bread that nourished our ancestors. We conduct a food industry case study, examining how the history of bread, including ancient grains and sourdough, shows a stark difference from what we find on shelves now."
• The Making of Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool".  A long essay on one of the true classics of 20th century music. 
• Facebook and Instagram Tighten Censorship Rules for Saying “Antifa”. 'Meta’s new rules let it ban users or suppress comments that include the word “antifa” alongside “content-level threat signals.”'
• How two mathematicians created an equation that quietly runs the planet. "The Diffie-Hellman key exchange secures everything from your text messages to government secrets." This article has the best explanation I've seen ofhow public key cryptography works. 
• Winner of top Sony World Photography Awards $25,000 prize revealed. "With nearly half a million entries, the judges must have had a tough job choosing the winners of this year’s Sony World Photography Awards. The competition is now in its 19th edition, and the overall Photographer of the Year 2026 title has been named as Citlali Fabián with the series ‘Bilha, Stories of My Sisters’."
• Inside the stunning fall of the Maple Leafs: Chaos, dysfunction and AI. For the (probably few) hockey fans reading this blog, a deep dive into the latest pathetic season of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I was in high school the last time this team won the Stanley Cup. The way they are playing, I may not live long enough to see them win one.
• How Ukraine became a drone factory and invented the future of war. "Ukraine has responded to a war it didn’t start by creating an industry it doesn’t want, but could the nation's drone expertise help it rebuild? To learn more, New Scientist gained exclusive access to the research labs, factories and military training schools behind Ukraine’s drones."

The Mythos Problem

Last week, Anthropic announced that its Mythos AI tool had found multiple serious problems with many open source software programs, including some that are core services on the internet and were long thought to be secure. They are not releasing Mythos publicly, instead opting to provide it to several major internet companies (Microsoft, Apple, Google, and the like) so that they can use it to test their software for vulnerabilities. 

This has not escaped the notice of the press. (BBC, Scientific American and many more).

Security expert and long-time podcaster, Steve Gibson, thought Mythos significant enough that he devoted the entirely of last week's Security Now! podcast to it. It's the best coverage of the topic that I've seen. And he has concerns. From his show notes (which are extensive):

Okay. Let me interrupt here to insert a “Holy EFF” explicative. What Mythos autonomously did, without any explicit guidance beyond just being asked to, was to discover and invent an exploit which deeply manipulated FreeBSD’s Network File System server by using Return Oriented Programming. Since FreeBSD’s NSF server is already so secure, the AI pseudo-attacker was not able to insert its own code. So it caused the server to selectively re-execute its own code, code it already contained at the tail ends of a series of 20 different existing subroutines. This enabled it to manipulate the internal state of the NFS file server to grant root access to an unauthenticated remote attacker who was unknown to, and had no account on, the machine.

Let me be very clear: This capability is truly nothing short of terrifying. If Project Glasswing has the side-effect of launching Anthropic’s forthcoming IPO into the stratosphere then as far as I’m concerned they’ve earned and deserve it. 

And this:

 And this admits to the MUCH bigger problem. I suppose we should have seen this coming. But it’s here: We all know that only a small fraction of the world’s already deployed code can and will ever be made “Mythos safe”. It’s great that AWS, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Palo Alto Networks will all get to have access. And apparently some 40 others who are equally deserving, or who are presumably the owners of many of those thousands of other bugs that Mythos found. But what of everyone else?

We could truly be poised upon the precipice of some seriously rough times. As I said, I suppose we should have seen this coming. The biggest surprise is that everything about this brave new AI world is coming at us much faster than we expected, or even still now expect. 

I've only touched on some of what he discussed in the podcast. For me, the biggest worry is all of the IOT and embedded devices that either can't or won't be upgraded and which may now be at risk because they contain embedded code libraries that are now insecure.

Interesting times indeed.

Photo of the Week - April 19, 2026

This week's photo is of a stand of e-scooters ready for someone to hop on. I think this is a project of the City, and no, it doesn't compenste for the lack of public transit. I have no urge to try one; my eyes and my balance preclude that. 

An addition to public transit

Saturday Sounds - Stan Rogers - Rebecca Cohn Halifax 1982 Concert

This week's musical treat features the great Canadian singer-songwriter, Stan Rogers, who tragically died in an Air Canada airplane fire in Cincinnati in 1983. The recording is of a famous concert at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax, NS in 1982 that was broadcast nationally on CBC radio. I remember listening to it when I was living in Alberta. 

I knew Stan from when I was living in Hamilton in the early 1970s and was lucky to see him perform many times as his career developed from performing in coffee houses to becoming a national folk music icon. Most of the concert was released after his death on the album, Home in Halifax though the version here has several songs not on the album. 

1:25 Witch of the Westmoreland

6:26 White Collar Holler

9:10-13:21 Field behind the Plow

16:41-19:45 Night Guard

22:59 - 25:40 The Idiot

26:24 - 32:00 Lies

32:52 - 36:19 Workin' Joe

39:25 - 42:47 The Giant

45:50 - 49:31 Dark Eyed Molly

49:43 - 55:10 Northwest Passage

57:25 - 1:02:04 The Last Watch

1:05:12 - 1:10:00 The Mary Ellen Carter

1:11:16 - 1:15:17 Barrett's Privateers

1:17:00 - 1:22:27 Sailor's Rest

If you don't know Stan's music, you're in for a treat. I particularly recommend "Lies", a song that still makes me weepy, and the anthemic "Northwest Passage". 

We're Toast 65

It's well past time for another one of these posts. 

This post is a collection of links that support my increasingly strong feeling that the human race (or at least our technological civilization) is doomed. 

Our toasting Earth

• Global warming is making the strongest hurricanes stronger. "Recent studies link human-caused warming to more powerful, more destructive storms worldwide."
• Anthropic’s new AI tool has implications for us all – whether we can use it or not. "Mythos, the company claims, has found vulnerabilities in every major browser and operating system. In other words, this new AI model might be able to help hackers disrupt much of the world’s most important software."
• The emerging danger of post-hurricane heat waves. "With global warming making people increasingly dependent on air conditioning, power failures from hurricanes followed by heat waves are creating increasingly hazardous risks to health."
• Key ocean current is slowing at locations around the Atlantic (archive link). "Measurements by buoys at four latitudes in the western Atlantic provide the strongest evidence yet that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weakening,"
• MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science. "When a political movement believes that ignorance is strength."
• Sustaining the Unsustainable. "Trump’s spectacle of force cannot hide the truth: America is meeting the appetites of the present by stripping future generations of stability, dignity, and hope."
• Earth's Population Has Surpassed The Planet's Capacity, Study Suggests. "Based on more than two centuries of population data, a team led by Corey Bradshaw of Flinders University in Australia found humanity is living well beyond the bounds of what our planet can support long-term."
  
• Scientists issue warning on concerning phenomenon observed in food chain: 'Urgent need for us to take action'. "Scientists studied the presence of microplastics along Goa's coast, finding that every animal in the food chain was affected."

Featured Links - April 15, 2026

Things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Docks waiting for summer

• The Cascadia Subduction zone isn’t shutting down – but it’s more complicated than we thought. "But while the discovery is real, the interpretation that the subduction zone is winding down gets ahead of the science. What the new research actually shows is far more complex — and more interesting. But before we can understand what this tear means, we need to go back to plate tectonic theory."
• Helium Is Hard to Replace. "One such supply chain that’s suddenly getting a lot of attention is helium. Helium is produced as a byproduct of natural gas extraction: it collects in the same underground pockets that natural gas collects in. Qatar is responsible for roughly 1/3rd of the world’s supply of helium, which was formerly transported through the Strait of Hormuz in specialized containers. Thanks to the closure of the strait, helium prices have spiked, suppliers are declaring force majeure, and businesses are scrambling to deal with looming shortages."
• 5 takeaways from NASA’s biggest test in decades. While successful, there are a lot of things that will have to be addressed before the next Artemis mission. 
• Bad as Trump Is, What Follows Him May Be Worse. "The fight to define MAGA’s future is turning ugly—and more extreme."
• Trump, Pope Leo and the Lessons of 1933. "There is no way that in this new age of fascist threat, the Church is going to forget the lesson of the Reich Concordat."
  
• Solar panels are creating an unexpected effect by forming rainfall clouds and thriving oases in the middle of the desert. 
• Yellowstone's magma source may be closer than thought, reshaping hazard models. "Now, a research team from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) has developed a comprehensive three-dimensional geodynamic model of western North America that simulates the present-day dynamics of both the lithosphere and the underlying convecting mantle, revealing a mechanism for magma generation beneath supervolcanoes."
• This founder helped build SpaceX’s most powerful rocket engine. Now he’s building a ‘fighter jet for orbit.’ "The company is developing a technology called solar thermal propulsion. Today’s standard satellite engines either burn chemical fuel or convert the sun’s energy to electricity, using that to power efficient but low-powered thrusters. Portal’s engines would instead concentrate the heat of the sun, using that to heat propellant and move the spacecraft along at high speed."
• How AI Is Turbocharging the War in Iran (archive link). "Intelligence, targeting and damage assessments are accelerating thanks to military versions of software now remaking business and daily life."
  
• Chinese Electrotech is the Big Winner in the Iran War. "An energy-hungry world is being pushed away by America and into China’s arms."
• This Experimental Drug Could Be a Game Changer for Pancreatic Cancer. "In a Phase III trial, Revolution Medicines' daraxonrasib almost doubled the survival length of people with advanced pancreatic cancer." 
  
• Members of neo-Nazi ‘active clubs’ join combat events at secretive Virginia compound. 'A network of militant neo-Nazi active clubs from around the US has been participating in riot-style combat events with other white nationalist groups in Virginia as part of what their founder called a “tip-off point for a fascist cultural revolution."
• SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites. Here's how that could impact the atmosphere and the night sky. "'These launches affect everyone,' says one astronomer."