But before we get to the Dragons, I want to link to my latest article at Galactic Journey, where I discuss the protests against paragraph 218 of the (West) German Criminal Code, which restricts abortion. The debate erupted in the summer of 1971, when (West) German or Austrian 374 women told the magazine Stern that they had had an abortion – even though abortions were almost entirely illegal at the time in West Germany. This led to widespread protests and is considered the birth of second wave feminism in (West) Germany. Fifty-five years later, Paragraph 218 is still on the books and Germany still has one of the most restrictive abortion laws in all of Europe, though somewhat liberalised in comparison to 1971, and the demands of the women protesting in 1971 still haven’t been fulfilled.

Back to Dragon Con and the various awards handed out at that convention.

For starters, the winner of the 2026 Eugie Foster Memorial Award is “Wolf Moon, Antler Moon” by A. C. Wise, originally published in Reactor. “Wolf Moon, Antler Moon” also won the Bram Stoker Award and was a Locus Award finalist.

The winner of the 2026 Mike Resnick Memorial Award for the best unpublished science fiction story was announced at Dragon Con as well. I can’t say anything about the winning story itself, since it is unpublished, but that’s a lovely trophy.

The 2026 Julie Award, named after Julius Schwartz, went to video game developer Richard “Lord British” Garriott.

The recipient of the 2026 Hank Reinhart Georgia Fandom Award is Dan Carroll.

The winners of the 2026 Emmy Awards were also announced last weekend, though not at Dragon Con. Widow’s Bay, something called DTF St. Louis and Spider-Noir got lots of love – ironically on the same weekend that Spider-Noir was cancelled. I remember when winning an Emmy was enough to save a show from cancellation – that’s how we got seven seasons of Hill Street Blues. But it seems those days are past, which is a pity, because I’d much rather have more Spider-Noir and Wonder Man than seven seasons of bloody Hill Street Blues, a show that was so disliked that it was pulled from German TV after a handful of episodes and replaced with reruns of The Persuaders.

Finally, let’s get to the 2026 Dragon Awards. The full list of winners may be found here, my comments on the 2026 finalists may be found here and for my coverage of the past ten years of Dragon Awards, go here.

Best Science Fiction Novel 

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel is Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman.

This isn’t exact a surprising win, since Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl books are hugely popular, even though I can’t for the life of me understand why. LitRPG just really isn’t my thing. Though Dinniman won this category last year as well.

I have to admit that of the the finalists in this category, I find Operation Bounce House probably the least interesting, though there was one finalist I wasn’t familiar with at all.  Clearly, many others feel differently. My own vote was for Radiant Star by Ann Leckie BTW.

That said, Matt Dinniman is exactly the sort of author the Dragon Awards are intended, hugely popular, but not really recognised by more literary SFF awards. And indeed, Matt Dinniman winning a Dragon Award is less of a surprise than the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book being shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award of all things.

Best Fantasy Novel

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel goes to Twelve Days by Jim Butcher.

Once again, this isn’t a huge surprise, because Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, in which Twelve Days is the latest instalment, is hugely popular. Plus, Jim Butcher is a Dragon Con regular.

Unlike with Operation Bounce House, I do understand why the Dresden Files books are so popular, because I read them, too, though I am a few books behind.

Besides, like Matt Dinniman Jim Butcher is exactly the sort of author that the Dragon Awards were made for, hugely popular but overlooked by other genre awards. I’m actually surprised that Jim Butcher never got a Best Series Hugo nomination for the Dresden Files, but I guess Hugo voters just don’t read Jim Butcher in sufficient quantities. Plus, being used as Puppy hostage, when the Puppies pushed one of the weaker Harry Dresden books onto the ballot in 2015, might have harmed him.

Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel

The winners of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel is Ride or Die by Delilah S. Dawson.

This is Delilah S. Dawson’s second Dragon win in this category, so she’s clearly popular with the Dragon Awards crowd. Plus, Ride or Die sounds like a lot of fun.

Delilah S. Dawson was also in Atlanta to pick up her Dragon Award trophy in person and posted a picture on BlueSky.

Those who have been following the Dragon Awards for a while will immediately notice that this year’s trophy looks different than it did in past years. Yup, the Dragon Award trophy is blue now, whereas it used to be red. But then, the Dragon Awards trophies are hand-blown glass, so they always look slightly different, though a complete colour change is new. At any rate, the Dragons have always had gorgeous trophies.

Best Alternate History Novel 

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best Alternate History Novel goes to The Winds of Fate by S.M. Stirling.

S.M. Stirling is an author who has been writing for a long time and who’s very popular, but with whose works I am completely unfamiliar for some reason. Coincidentally, this is also the only Dragon win for Baen Books this year. Baen Books has traditionally been doing well at the Dragons, because they have a strong presence at Dragon Con and they actively campaign for the award.

That said, The Winds of Fate is the only finalist in this category that’s not twentieth century (WWI, WWII or Cold War) alternate history, but set during Roman times, which has to count for something.

Because honestly, I’m so tired of WWII alternate history. It’s so overdone (and WWI and Cold War alternate history aren’t far behind) and there’s very little new to say. If there’s a universe or a dozen out there, where the Nazis really won WWII, are they as inundated with alternate history books about the Allies winning as we were with the opposite? Okay, so Philip K. Dick kind of answered that question all the way back in 1965.

It’s not that you can’t write interesting alternate history set during the twentieth century (I have a long simmering idea for an alternate history tale set in the early 1980s), but why must writers always mine the same three periods?

Best Horror Novel

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel is King Sorrow by Joe Hill.

The Best Horror Novel category of the Dragon Awards was extremely strong this year and indeed, the horror category at the Dragons has always been one of the strongest categories with very good winners throughout – except for the very first year, where a Catholic space opera won the horror category for some reason.

So in short, there were no bad choices in Best Horror Novelo category this year, though my personal vote was for The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Best Illustrative Book Cover

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best Illustrative Book Cover goes to Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher. The Dragon Awards credit the cover to T. Kingfisher as well, but according to ISFDB, the cover artist is Christina Mrozik .

But whoever created it, it’s definitely a good cover and probably the strongest finalist in this category. This was also my personal choice.

Best Comic Book/Graphic Novel

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Comic Book/Graphic Novel is Something is Killing the Children by James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera.

This is certainly an interesting choice, because Something is Killing the Children was the only finalist in this category that’s not a mainstream DC or Marvel superhero comic. Unfortunately, I haven’t read it – I don’t read a lot of comics anymore – though it sounds interesting.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV or Streaming Series

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best SFF TV or Streaming Series goes to A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

This is a highly deserved win, because A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is an incredibly enjoyable and well made series – unlike the other Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon, which is just a mess. This was also my choice. And yes, I voted for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms over Foundation, if only because A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms actually sticks to the book it adapts.

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie is Project Hail Mary. The novel by Andy Weir that the movie was based upon won the Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2021.

I have to admit that I never much cared for Project Hail Mary or any other of Andy Weir’s novels, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie. I guess it’s largely because of Ryan Gosling’s performance.

So in short, it’s a worthy winner and also a very popular movie. Though my personal vote was for The Sheep Detectives.

Best Digital Game

The 2026 Dragon Award for Best Digital Game goes to Hollow Knight: Silksong.

I’m not a gamer, so I can’t say anything about this one, except that it looks cute.

Best Tabletop Game

The winner of the 2026 Dragon Award for Best Tabletop Game is Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerûn.

Wizards of the Coast winning this category is nothing new – they have won eight times in this category. However, this is the first Dragon win forn Forgotten Realms. All other wins were for Magic the Gathering.

***

And that’s it for the 2026 Dragon Awards. The winners are not all to my taste, but overall this year’s winners confirm the trend that ten years into the award, the Dragons are doing what they were supposed to do all along, namely honour highly popular SFF works that are overlooked by other awards.

My good pal and fellow Dragon Award chronicler Camestros Felapton also weighs in on the 2026 Dragon Award winners and notes that even though the Dragons don’t release detailed nomination and voting data, participation in the Dragon Awards seems to have gone down from a height of more than 11000 votes cast in 2018 to nearly 6000 votes cast in 2025 and 2026. I wonder whether this drop in participation is due to various groups of authors campaigning for the Dragon Awards losing interest. On the other hand, the Dragons also fixed the issue of earlier years where one person could vote with multiple e-mail addresses, which would account for a drop in votes.

Cam also points out that even though the finalists had pretty gender parity, the winners are still eighty percent male (and all white Americans), which means that the Dragons are still a very male and very white award. However, SFF books by male authors still get more promotion outside maybe YA – and note that the winner in the YA category was written by a woman. Of course, there are SFF subgenres where the bestselling authors are mostly woman such as romantasy. However, the Dragons don’t have a dedicated romantasy category and there isn’t that much overlap between con-going SFF fans and romantasy readers.

I haven’t seen any reactions from the right side of the genre spectrum yet, though Brian Niemeier, whose misclassified religious space opera Souldancer won the Dragon Award for Best Horror Novel in its first year, is currently using his Dragon win to promote a Kickstarter campaign for a tenth anniversary special deluxe edition of Souldancer. Which is fair, he did win the award after all and the fact that the Dragon Award has become a respectable part of the annual SFF awards circuit rather than the puppy participation trophy it was in its early years also helps to raise the profile of early winners like Brian Niemeier.

At any rate, the Dragons continue to chug along after ten years, which I suspect most of us who have been following the Dragon saga since the beginning would never have expected.

I didn’t attend Worldcon this year, because the US government has unfortunately gone even more mad and the risk of being refused entry to the US or – worse – getting thrown into some ICE jail is too big, especially since Worldcon already falls into the gray area between business and leisure travel for me. What is more, travelling to Anaheim would likely also have been very expensive, considering people talked about Uber (i.e. not even a proper taxi) rides from Los Angeles airport to Anaheim costing more than a hundred dollars, horrendous parking fees, etc…  Though I participated virtually and will eventually write a con report about my virtual LACon experience.

Before we get to the Hugos, let’s take a look at the other important election the results of which were announced at Worldcon, namely the results of the site selection vote for the 2028 Worldcon. There’s also a video of the 2026 site selection business meeting here, complete with site selection administrator Tim Szczesuil trying and in at least one case failing to read out the write-in votes. The bid for Brisbane in Queensland, Australia, won and has now been rebranded as Aussiecon 5. This was not exactly a surprise, since the competing bids for Kigali in Rwanda and Nuremberg in Germany both dropped out some time ago. Nonetheless, this result makes me happy, since I am part of the Brisbane bid committee and promoted the bid at the 2026 Eastercon and Eurocon.

Since the Hugo ceremony was so very late at night or rather very early in the morning, I did not watch it live. A recording of the 2026 Hugo ceremony may be found here and I will probably watch it eventually, though it is three hours and fifteen minutes long. However, the people who did watch the whole ceremony, whether online or on site in Anaheim, generally were full of praise for the ceremony, toastmaster Ursula Vernon, who entertained the audience with fabulous hats and fascinating biological facts and for the acceptance speeches.

There were some issues, because no Hugo ceremony is without issues. One issue was that the autocaptioning software used throughout the con is still pretty terrible and turned Hugo finalist Effie Seiberg into “Every Cyborg”, which Effie actually found quite funny. Though I suspect the moderator who introduced their “fellow panelists”, only for the autocaptioning software to claim they introduced for “fallow penis” probably found the whole thing less funny.

A more serious issue was that some of the slides listing the finalists contained mistakes. This was most notable in the Best Fan Writer category, where the slide somehow mashed finalists James Davis Nicoll and Roseanna Pendlebury together, creating Frankenstein’s Hugo finalists James Davis, Nicoll Roseanna (who became her own character and a joke in the Hugo finalist Discord as an annoying and bitchy person) and Pendlebury, while finalist Örjan Westin was reduced to Örjan Wes. There really is no excuse for this sort of thing happening, especially since “Someone screwed up the names of Hugo finalists – again” keeps happening over and over.

Finally, Best Poem finalist Mari Ness, who happens to be a wheelchair user, reported that a volunteer at the Hugo ceremony told her that “backstage is only for walking participants”. We all know that the world, including convention centers and hotels, is not always as accessible as it should be. However, such remarks are completely inacceptable and LACon owed Mari an apology.

So let’s get to the individual categories.

Warning: I will discuss the voting and nomination statistics, so if you don’t want to know this (cause I know that quite a few finalists don’t), then consider yourself warned.

Best Novel

The winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novel is The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow. This was also my top vote and a most excellent choice it is, too. This is Alix E. Harrow’s second Hugo win after winning Best Short Story in 2019.

If you look at the rankings, The Everlasting led from the first round onwards and won with a pretty notable distance to the runner-up. It’s also notable that all other finalists got a very similar number of first preference votes.

A look at the longlist reveals that Katabasis by R.F. Kuang just missed the ballot by three votes, which is also what I theorised in my finalist analysis. In general, the longlist consists of lots of good and popular SFF novels. What’s interesting is that Stephen Graham Jones made the longlist with The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. Which is an absolutely deserving work. However, Stephen Graham Jones is primarily a horror writer and traditionally, Hugo voters don’t particularly care for horror.

Best Novella  

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novella goes to The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. It’s a good novella and got a lot of positive buzz, though I ranked it somewhere in the middle of my ballot. This is a personal preference, since I’m somewhat weary of fairy tale inspired stories and there were three of those on this year’s Best Novella ballot.

If you look at the voting and nomination data, The River Has Roots not only received the most nominations in this category, but also led from the first voting round onwards.

Looking at the longlist, I realise that I have zero overlap with any novella on the entire short- and longlist except Automatic Noodle.

Best Novelette

The winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novelette is “Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak, which once again was in the lead from the very start. I had it in third place on my personal ballot.

Catherynne M. Valente’s Dolly Parton inspired novelette “When He Calls Your Name” finished in second place in a case of cosmic serendipity, since Hugo voting closed well before the world lost Dolly Parton.

Best Short Story 

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Short Story goes to “In My Country” by Thomas Ha. Once again, it was in the lead from the first round onwards. It’s notable that most of this year’s winners got significantly more vote than the runner-ups.

I guess “In My Country” is also one of those stories that resonates with our moment in time, since it’s a story about censorship, free speech or the lack thereof and the power of art to make people think.

Best Series 

The winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Series is Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. This was not my top choice in this category, but it’s a highly deserving win and also something of a capstone honour for the Old Man’s War series, which is one of the most notable science fiction series of the 2000s where most individual books made the Hugo ballot back in the day. Plus, Old War Man’s won John Scalzi the then Campbell (now Astounding) Award for Best New Writer. And in fact, if the Best Series Hugo had been around in the heyday of the Old Man’s War series, it would have won long ago.

John Scalzi talks a bit about winning the Best Series Hugo at Whatever.

Besides, John Scalzi winning Best Series and Thomas Ha winning Best Short Story should appease those jerks who complain that too many women are winning Hugos these days. Though of course they won’t be appeased. And in fact, John Scalzi winning Best Series will make puppies cry, which is always excellent.

Best Graphic Story or Comic

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story goes to A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel, written by Ursula K. Le Guin, adapted and art by Fred Fordham.

This is the ninth Hugo win for Ursula K. Le Guin, three of which were posthumous, and the first Hugo win for Fred Fordham. It marks the return of what I used to call the obligatory Ursula K. Le Guin releated Hugo Award, cause for a few years in the late 2010s, there was something Ursula K. Le Guin related on the Hugo ballot every year, usual in Best Related. This phenomenon ended as publishers ran out of previously unpublished or uncollected Ursula K. Le Guin writings.

The graphic novel version  of A Wizard of Earthsea is certainly a worthy winner. It is well adapted and the art is good and I’m happy for Fred Fordham. What is more, A Wizard of Earthsea is a fantasy classic that ironically was not even nominated for the Hugo upon first publication, the Hugos being a lot more biassed against fantasy back then. Meanwhile, the graphic novel was in the lead from the first round on with a huge distance to the runner-up.

That said, it was pretty far down on my personal ballot. It’s not that I didn’t like it, I just liked other finalists in this category better. I never really connected with A Wizard of Earthsea, probably because I just didn’t encounter it at the right time in my life. Besides, just as with Dune, I get weary if the same story is nominated for and wins Hugos over and over again in different adaptations.

Best Related

The winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Related Work is Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, which upset some people who claimed that it was not SFF-related enough. Which makes me respond, “Honestly, of all the Best Related finalists and winners in the past ten years or so, this is the one that bothers you rather than the ninety-second acceptance speech or the fanfiction archive, which – while a wonderful project – is probably the biggest edge case in the history of the category.”

I have repeatedly said that in Best Related Work, I have a strong preference for well-researched non-fiction books over all other types of finalists that have been shoehorned into this category. And therefore, I am very happy about Ada Palmer’s win. Besides, we have had popular science books and books about space travel nominated in this category several times, which are not SFF either, so why is a non-fiction book about history and how it is constructed a bridge too far for some?

Ada Palmer shares her acceptance speech on her website, where she also explains what is science ficitonal about Inventing the Renaissance. What is more, Ada Palmer also explains why having a category for SFF-related non-fiction books is important. I’ll quote the whole thing, because I would co-sign it as it is:

I want to use the moment this platform to many have made that we should split “Best Related” into Best Related Nonfiction Book” and “Best Related Other Work.” It’s wonderful that we have recently broadened our definition to nominate and celebrate essays, blog posts, archives, and more, but when Best Related mostly showcased books it meant every year five or six scholars got to add that CV line item, which, for academics who study SFF and often have trouble justifying their work in the academy, that could make the difference between job and no job, or tenure and no tenure. As we celebrate a wider diversity of works, I hate to see that take away from celebrating books when making the ballot can make the difference between a university having one scholar who studies the work we love and having none. So I strongly urge our community to consider splitting the category in future, so books and non-books that study our work can both be celebrated and supported as richly as they deserve!

As I said above, I totally agree with what Ada Palmer says here. The grab bag category that is Best Related Work should be split into Best Non-Fiction Work and what I tend to call Best Fannish Thing. Because things like AO3, the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom, the r/fantasy bingo, the Mexicanx Initiative, etc… deserve recognition, but not at the expense of non-fiction books that may have taken years to research and write. Besides, as Ada Palmer says, university hiring committees do take note of Hugo nominations and wins, because it means that a scholar’s work has gained recognition.

Looking at the longlist, we see a mix of anthologies, essays, non-fiction books both about SFF and science topics as well as the r/fantasy bingo. So out of fifteen works on the longlist, only two – the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom and the r/fantasy bingo – are edge cases. Everything else is still a book and sufficiently book-like object.

Best Dramatic Presentation Long

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation Long goes to Sinners.

This is not surprising, since Sinners was a very popular and well received film, which got a record number of Oscar nominations, though in the end it only won a fraction of them. Besides, Sinners is also a really great movie and a most deserving winner. It also got the most nominations and won with a comfortable distance to the runner-up Andor.

Talking of which, I was a bit surprised that season 2 of Andor was the runner-up rather than KPop Demon Hunters, as I expected. But then I am the odd Star Wars fan out who doesn’t like Andor all that much, while I enjoyed KPop Demon Hunters so much more than I expected.

Guillermo Del Toro’s take on Frankenstein, a movie I keep forgetting exists for some reason, ended up in fourth place, Superman in fifth and Mickey 17 finished in sixth. I have to admit I’m a bit surprised that Frankenstein beat what was the best Superman film since Superman II.

Looking at the longlist, Murderbot would have made the ballot, except that individual episodes gained more nominations and so Murderbot ended up in Best Dramatic Presentation Short. There are two more TV show season on the longlist, namely Pluribus and Severance. The rest are all popular and well received movies. I’m surprised Bugonia did comparatively well, but then I hate Yorgos Lanthimos’ work and would almost certainly have no awarded it, if it had been nominated. I also wonder why Hugo voters keep wasting nominations on the Dan Trachtenberg version of Predator, since they made it very clear when they declined a nomination for Prey in 2023 that they don’t care about the Hugos.

Best Dramatic Presentation Short

The winners of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation Short is the penultimate episode of season 1 of Murderbot “All Systems Red”.

This episode was a runaway winner, gaining more than twice the number of first preferences in this category than the runner up. The second place went to the other nominated Murderbot episode “The Perimeter”, followed by episodes of Pluribus, Severance, Doctor Who and The Wheel of Time.

Uncommon for the Dramatic Presentation categories, Murderbot showrunner Chris Weitz was actually at the ceremony with several other crewmembers, actor David Dastmalchian as well as Martha Wells. Of course, the fact that this year’s Worldcon happened very close to the center of the US film and TV industry probably helped. but it is always nice to see Best Dramatic Presentation winners actually bothering to show up and pick up their Hugos.

A look at the longlist in this category reveals that a third Murderbot episode would have made the ballot, but was removed due to the “only two episodes per series” rule. There is yet another Murderbot episode further down the ballot. We also have three episodes of Andor in the upper nominee ranks, which were disqualified because season 2 of Andor as a whole was a finalist in Best Dramatic Presentation Long. Indeed, without the disqualifications, the finalists in this category would have been three Murderbot episodes, two Andor episodes and one episode of Pluribus. The disqualifications allowed episodes of Severance, Doctor Who and The Wheel of Time to move up, giving us a much more varied ballot.

All in all, the longlist has a whopping four episodes of Murderbot, three episodes each of Andor, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Severance as well as single episodes of Pluribus, Doctor Who and The Wheel of Time. Which shows that multiple episodes of popular TV series continue to dominate this category, though thanks to the “no more than two episodes per series” rule we have a more varied ballot than in the days when almost the entire ballot consisted of Doctor Who or Star Trek episodes.

Best Game or Interactive Work

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Game or Interactive Work goes to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which also gained the highest number of nominations and was in the lead throughout the voting.

As I’ve said several times, I’m not a gamer and find this category extremely hard to judge. That said, a member of the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 team was at the Hugo finalist Discord. In general, the game developers actually do care about the Hugos, which helps the category a lot to be accepted

Best Editor Short 

The winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form is Neil Clarke, who is a most deserving winner and also delivered a pointed acceptance speech about the issue that some semiprozine finalists are actually prozines.

ETA: Neil Clarke points out that his remarks about semiprozine and prozine were actually made when he presented the semiprozine category.

Sheila Williams of Asimov’s, who suffered a brain aneurysm combined with a stroke in December, finished in second place. There is a GoFundMe for the medical and care expenses for Sheila Williams and her disabled husband here.

In third place, we have a tie between Jennifer Brozek and Michael Damian Thomas, followed by Lee Harris in fourth place and Scott H. Andrews in fifth. All of these editors do great work, but Scott H. Andrews is someone I really wish got more recognition.

Best Editor Long

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Editor Long Form goes to Diana M. Pho, who is another worthy winner.

Looking at the nominations, it’s notable that Lee Harris, who eventually finished in second place, got almost twice as many nominations as the next finalist.

Best Pro Artist 

The winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist is John Picacio. This is John Picacio’s fourth Hugo win, but then he does excellent work.

Looking at the nominations, the most striking thing is how comparatively few nominations it took to get on the ballot in this category. John Picacio, who gained the highest number of nominations, had only twenty-eight nominations, which wouldn’t even have gotten him anywhere near the ballot in many other categories. The lowest number of nominations to make the ballot was ten, while the lowest number of nominations on the longlist was six. Of course, part of the problem here is that there is a wide spread of nominees in this category. 228 nominations were cast for 220 artists, which means that there are a lot of artists who only get one or two nominations.

Looking at the actual names on the longlist, there are a lot of very good artists listed. However, one name that makes me happy is that fellow German Simon Eckert, who does wonderful packaging artwork for Masters of the Universe as well as game art, just squeezed into the longlist in fifteenth place. I’ll very likely see Simon at Toyplosion in Castrop-Rauxel in two weeks and will ask him if he’s already seen that he made the Hugo longlist.

Best Semiprozine

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine goes to Uncanny Magazine.

Now don’t get me wrong, Uncanny is a great magazine. However, it’s not the only great magazine out there. And since this is already Uncanny‘s ninth Hugo win, I really wish that some of the other great semiprozines out there would win once in a while as well.

In particular, I feel sorry for On Spec, which shut down last year, so this was their last and only chance at Hugo glory.  Escape Pod, khoreo (sorry for mangling the name, but WordPress hates diacritics) and The Deadlands also have never won at all and Strange Horizons have won only once in spite of many, many nominations.

Looking at the longlist, we see that Beneath Ceaseless Skies actually received enough nominations to make the ballot, but since Scott H. Andrews recused Beneath Ceaseless Skies some years ago, he declined the nomination. Clarkesworld also made the longlist, even though they have been a prozine and no longer eligible for years. Which points at the problem that a lot of Hugo nominators aren’t entirely sure what a semiprozine is.

That said, we have several new names on the longlist such as Augment Magazine, Radon Journal, Small Wonders and New Edge Sword and Sorcery. The last one makes me particularly happy and not just because I appeared in the pages of New Edge Sword and Sorcery several times, but also because it’s a really good magazine that deserves the attention. In fact, I was the one who told New Edge editor Oliver Brackenbury that New Edge made the longlist.

Best Fanzine

The winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Fanzine is nerds of a feather.

nerds of a feather is a highly deserving winner and I’m happy for them and consider them friends, though once again, it’s not the only great fanzine out there and nerds of a feather have already won three times, while several other finalists have never won in spite of multiple nominations.

ETA: nerds of a feather share their reactions to winning the Best Fanzine Hugo and their acceptance speech here.

It’s also interesting that while most winners were the lead from the first round of counting onwards, nerds of a feather and An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog had a head-to-head race. An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog (who are also friends) was actually in the lead until the penultimate round.

I’m also sad that Galactic Journey finished in last place, because come on, we do great work, and have a niche that’s different from all the other fanzine finalist.

Looking at the longlist, we see several e-mail newsletters, a reddit subforum and even a traditional print fanzine mixed among blogs. I’m also happy to see that the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow Blog of the Seattle Worldcon, to which I contributed, made the longlist, though they were hammered by EPH, probably because there was a lot of overlap with nominations for Galactic Journey and Speculative Fiction in Translation. Even File 770 still made the longlist, even though Mike permanently recused himself in 2018, i.e. eight years ago.

Best Fancast  

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Fancast goes to Hugo, Girl!

I’m very happy about this, because a) Hugo, Girl! is a great podcast, and b) I consider them friends like many of the fan category finalists. What is more, Hugo, Girl!’s other win was in Chengdu in 2023 with all the issues that entailed, so I am glad they finally have a baggage-free win.

If you look at the voting data, you’ll see that this was another very tight race and that Worldbuilding for Masochists, who are also friends, was actually in the lead until the final round.

A look at the longlist shows a mix of longtime favourites such as The Skiffy and Fanty Show or Hugos There along with names that are new to me. But then, one of the great things about the Hugo longlists is that they provide you with new writers, magazines, podcasts, artists, etc… to check out.

Best Fan Writer

The winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer is Jason Sanford.

This makes me very happy, because Jason is a friend and because his Genre Grapevine column is invaluable for SFF writers. Plus, Jason suffered some harassment in the past year. In fact, Jason and I were on a virtual panel about the fan categories Hugos together on Thursday and I wished him good luck for the Hugos.

Jason Sanford shares his acceptance speech here and discusses how SFF saved his life as a neurodiverse kid growing up in rural Alabama.

Jason had a pretty comfortable lead throughout the voting process, though he did not have the highest number of nominations, Roseanna Pendlebury, Alex Brown and Örjan Westin all had more. Meanwhile, there was a tight race for second place between Roseanna Pendlebury and James Davis Nicoll with Roseanna only taking the lead on the final round.

If you look at the longlist, the biggest surprise, at least to me, is that I not only made the longlist, but missed the ballot by two votes and was knocked out by EPH. Now if I had made the ballot, I wouldn’t have declined the nomination. I also want to thank the 25 people who liked my work enough to nominate me. However, I already have a shiny rocket at home and I’m more than happy to let someone else have a go. Besides, if the nominations were decided by simple majority, as up to 2017, and not by EPH, I would have made the ballot at the expensse of Jay Brantner a.k.a. “Tar Vol”, a first time finalist. And I would have hated to knock out a first time finalist. Besides, looking at the other names on the longlist, there are several where I believe that several people nominated me as well as them, whereas I don’t think I have a lot of overlap with Jay’s nominators. So in short, EPH is working as it should.

The rest of the longlist includes lots of good people and as with all fan categories, many friends. What is interesting is that Nicholas Whyte just squeezed onto the longlist in fifteenth place. Now Nicholas wasn’t Hugo administrator or part of the Hugo administration team this year, but should Nicholas get enough nominations to make the ballot in a year when he is Hugo administrator, it would be an interesting conundrum. Now we have had Worldcon chairs nominated for Hugos before and there is no conflict, as long as the Hugos are kept completely separate, but never a Hugo administrator.

Nicholas comments on making the Best Fan Writer longlist here and also analyses which of the other nominees on the longlist got his votes, when he was eliminated by EPH. Apparently, three people nominated both of us.

Best Fan Artist

The 2026 Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist goes to Yuumei. It’s a highly deserved win, because their work is beautiful. They were also in the lead from the very start and gained the highest number of nominations. Meanwhile, Terri Ash had the third highest number of nominations, but sadly finished in sixth place, most likely because many Hugo voters didn’t know how to judge fibre art.

Looking at the longlist, I see lots of fan artists I’m familiar with and whose work I like and a few new names. I’m particularly happy to see many fellow Galactic Journey contributors Lorelei Esther and Jessica Holmes on the longlist.

This is also the category where EPH had the biggest impact. For example, many people who nominated Jessica Holmes also nominated Lorelei Esther, so once Jessica was eliminated, Lorelei gained several points. Another nomination cluster involved Alison Scott, Iain Clark and España Sheriff and it’s notable that España gained several points once Alison and Iain had been knocked out.

Best Poem

The winner of the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Poem is “Hex Supply Customer Support Log” by Elis Montgomery.

Looking at the longlist, it’s notable that the nomination count in what is the newest Hugo category (so new that it was still run as a special category this year) is very low. “Care for Lightning” by Mari Ness got the highest number of nominations with thirty-five, the lowest number of nominations needed to make the longlist was only five. The number of votes cast was pretty good and higher than all of the fan categories, but nomination numbers could be improved.

Brandon O’Brien and Angela Liu, both of whom made the ballot, also reappear on the longlist. We also have a poem by Haley Zapal of Hugo, Girl! and nerds of a feather, that Haley originally published on her blog, on the longlist. There’s also a poem by a Chinese author named Xue Mo, which is the only non-English work to make the longlist in any category.

And now we get to the two not-a-Hugos…

Lodestar

The 2026 Lodestar Award for Best YA or Middle Grade Book goes to Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee.

It’s a deserving winner, but what’s notable that it started out in fourth place, just a few votes ahead of Oathbound and Among Ghosts and remained in fourth place until the fourth round of voting, when it overtook Holy Terrors. In the fifth round it overtook They Bloom at Night and only beat Sunrise on the Reaping, which had been in the lead from the beginning, in the very last round. Meanwhile, Among Ghosts started in fifth place and clawed its way up to second place.

If you look at the nomination data, you’ll see that the eventual winner Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe not only got the lowest number of nominations (Sunrise on the Reaping got the highest number by far, because it’s part of the massively popular Hunger Games series), but wouldn’t even have made the ballot if not for EPH. Is this the first time that a work which went on to win a (not-a)Hugo only made the ballot at all due to EPH?

What happened here is that several Hugo voters discovered Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe due to it being Lodestar finalist, liked it and placed it fairly high on their ballots. And this is actually what happened to me as well, because I wasn’t familiar with Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe before, but enjoyed it (whereas I did not like Sunrise on the Reaping all that much) and actually put it in first place on my ballot.

In general, it’s notable that aside from Sunrise on the Reaping and Oathbound, all other works on the ballot and the longlist got nomination counts between twenty and only five. I guess Sunrise on the Reaping and Oathbound were books that even people who are not regular YA readers were familiar with and thus put them on their ballots.

By the way, it makes me happy to see North by Ann Marie Harris just squeezed onto the longlist, cause Ann Michelle is great and I hope we’ll see her on the ballot eventually.

Astounding 

The 2026 Astounding Award for Best New Writer goes to Antonia Hodgson.

This is a highly deserving win. And indeed Antonia Hodgson was in the lead from the very start and also gained by far the most nominations. Plus, her novel The Raven Scholar was also a finalist for Best Novel.

Of course, Antonia Hodgson is only a new writer in speculative fiction, since she published four very good historical crime novels (my Mom was a fan) and actually won the CWA Historical Dagger for her debut novel The Devil in Marshalsea in 2015, which also made the shortlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. However, the Astounding rules explicitly exclude prior publications in genres other than SFF, so Antonia Hodgson was absolutely eligible under Astounding rules. Nor is she the first writer with prior publications in other genres to win the Astounding. David Anthony Durham and Lev Grossman both had novels published in other genres, before they won the Astounding Award, then still known as the Campbell Award.

Two other writers, Barbara Truelove and Silvia Park, who gained enough nominations to make the ballot were disqualified because of prior publications in SFF, allowing Molly O’Neill and Sophie Burnham to make the ballot.

***

And that’s it for the 2026 Hugo and not-a-Hugo Awards. Overall, we had some excellent winners this year. And while not every winner was my personal top choice, there is none that I would consider undeserving.

As for other comments on the 2026 Hugo winners, Camestros Felapton digs into the nomination statistics here and here.

Regarding the usual deplorables, the self-styled leading voice of nuissance claims that the 2026 Hugo winners prove that the Sad Puppies were right, because the Best Novel winner is not science fiction. Well no, it’s fantasy, but then fantasy works have always been eligible for the Hugos and the first fantasy work to win in a fiction category was “That Hell-Bound Train” by Robert Bloch back in 1959, while the first fantasy novel to win a Hugo was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix back in 2000. Meanwhile, he also claims that Worldcon is dying, illustrated with a photo of John Scalzi goofing about with his Hugo trophy.

Vox Day is surprisingly silent about his personal nemesis John Scalzi winning another Hugo, so he is upset that Nancy Kress was named the latest SFWA Grand Master, since he claims no one knows who she is.

Christopher Chiu-Tabet reports about the 2026 Hugo winners at Comics Beat, focussing unsurprisingly on the winner of the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.

2026 is shaping up to be another annus horribilis with an uncommon wave of much beloved celebrities. Indeed, someone said on Discord “I thought 2016 was the rapture, but it seems we’re having another one.”

2026 already took Bonnie Tyler, Chuck Norris, James van der Beek, Anthony Stewart Head, Hayden Panettiere, Jon Cypher, James Tolkan, Sam Neill, Roger Sweet, Michael Halperin, Marcia Lucas, Gerry Conway, Sal Buscema, Dick Matena, Mario Adorf, Rita Süssmuth, Jürgen Habermas, Jesse Jackson, Michael Wright, Brenda Fricker, Catherine O’Hara, Marjane Satrapi, Tatjana Wood, Sam Kieth, Len Deighton, Valerie Perrine, John Crowley, Reggie Bannister, Ann Blyth, Daveigh Chase, Eric Dane, Robert Duvall, Michael Keating, Phyllida Law, Hal Williams, Wai Ching Ho, Kjell Nilsson, Victor Willis, Anne Schedeen, Michael Pennington, Patrick Muldoon, Sid Krofft, Mary Beth Hurt, Barry Caldwell, Robert Carradine, Bud Cort, David Hockney, Angelica Domröse, Alexander Held, Günther Maria Halmer, Georg Baselitz, Christian Schwarz-Schilling, Alexander Kluge, Cees Noteboom, Valentino, Jane Yolen, Rosemary Edghill, Ian Watson, Ted White, Erich von Däniken, James Sallis, Dafydd ab Hugh, R.S. Belcher and whoever I have forgotten.

And now, we got three punch of beloved celebrities dying that is very much like George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds all dying within four days over Christmas 2016.

Regular readers will know that I was in a car accident on Tuesday, August 25. When I finally made it home, I took a nap, because I really needed it, and literally woke up to the news that Dolly Parton had died aged 80.

My first and main exposure to Dolly Parton was as a singer. Country music was popular in West Germany in the 1970s and all the big country singers performed on Musikladen, even though Musikladen was actually a rock and pop program. However, they were open to all kinds of music and so lots of country musicians appeared on the show, including of course Dolly Parton.  Her music was also played on the radio – and at least “Jolene” is still in regular rotation on the various oldie stations – and I very likely also saw her on The Muppets Show.

By the time, I was a teenager in the 1980s, country music was very much not cool anymore, at least not in Germany. I remember that my friend Dagmar told me that a boy she liked had told her his favourite singers were Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and someone else I forgot. Being a country fan as a teenager was very unusual at the time and I remember that Dagmar and I snarked that the boy primarily liked those singers because they had big tits – well, Dolly Parton and the one I forgot at least, since neither of us had any idea what Linda Ronstadt looked like. As an adult, I have a strong suspicion that Dagmar’s country-loving crush was actually gay.

Then there was my near-encounter with Dollywood. The year was 1988 and I was visiting relatives in Kentucky. They took me on a multi-day roadtrip further south. I remember that we spent the night in Knoxville, Tennessee, and then drove onwards across the Great Smoky Mountains. My aunt asked me, if I wanted to go to Dollywood or Gatlinburg, cause we could only visit one. I was confused, since I’d never heard of either of those places. “What’s Dollywood?” I asked. “It’s a theme park owned by Dolly Parton?” my aunt replied. “Dolly Parton? The country singer? Why does a country singer have a theme park?”

Anyway, I picked Gatlinburg, which was described to me as a beautiful mountain resort. It was very much not that. Instead, Gatlinburg was an agglomeration of the weirdest attractions imaginable – the sort of thing you only find in touristy towns in North America. Though I did have fun. My cousin and I visited Ripley’s Believe It Or Not and I wrote home to my friend Dagmar that I had just visited the weirdest town imaginable. Would Dollywood have been a better choice? I guess I’ll never know.

I knew that Dolly Parton also was an actress, but I haven’t seen a lot of her movies and TV shows. For example, I’m not sure if I ever actually saw what is probably her most famous acting role in Nine to Five, even though that movie was on German TV a lot in the late 1980s and early 1990s – under the far more appropriate title “Why don’t we just kill the boss?”, one of the rare examples of the German title being better than the original. I suspect Nine to Five suffered from my aversion to workplace and office comedies, which stems from a very bad West German office comedy called Büro, Büro (Office, Office). That said, I’m surprised that my Mom, who watched Büro, Büro and always told me that once I had a job, I would understand that show, which probably did more to make steadfastly avoid typical office jobs than anything else, never watched Nine to Five.

The screen appearance of Dolly Parton I definitely saw, in the theater even, was Steel Magnolias. At the time in 1989 (though it probably was 1990 by the time the movie reached our shores), a dramedy about rural Southern women and their relationship problems with one of them tragically dying wasn’t at all the sort of thing I wanted to watch. It was very much a “mother movie”, the sort of movie my Mom liked and would bawl her eyes out over, when someone died tragically. Interestingly enough, while I had faint memories of Steel Magnolias, I’d completely forgotten Dolly Parton was in it, until I chanced to run across the movie on TV a year ago or so. I mainly remembered that it was Julia Roberts’ breakout role.

Indeed, the screen appearance of Dolly Parton I found most memorable was her late career appearance in The Orville, where she plays a hologram of herself, offering advice and encouragement to a female leader of the Moclans, an alien species that suppresses women to the point that they make sure there are none by surgically altering female babies, after the female Moclan leader finds inspiration in Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five”. It’s a beautiful episode (and The Orville was a really good show that deserved more attention than it got) how something as seemingly silly and inconsequential as a country/pop song (though I would argue that “Nine to Five” is not silly at all, because those lyrics hit pretty hard) can inspire others to greatness. There’s even a fight scene set to “Nine to Five”.

It was only when I got on the internet that I learned that Dolly Parton’s was also a genuinely good person, a philanthropist, literacy advocate, supporter of science and someone who respected everybody regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. That’s also why her death was such a blow and what she will be remembered for, though if The Orville is anything to go by, her songs will live on and continue to inspire for a long time as well.

Barely a day later, the news dropped that Tim Curry had died, also aged 80. Unlike Dolly Parton, who seemed healthy and active until very recently, I knew that Tim Curry had been disabled since suffering a stroke back in 2012, so his death was less of a surprised. That said, it hit me hard.

My first exposure to Tim Curry was probably as Rooster Hannigan in Annie, which I remember seeing in the theater at age nine. I possibly even saw him in Clue and Legend, though I saw neither in the theater, but once they came to TV in the late 1980s/early 1990s. However, the first time I truly noticed Tim Curry was – as for so many people – in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It was in the summer of either 1989 or 1990. A girl called Andrea, who knew my best friend Dagmar from the church choir (and is now her sister-in-law), wanted to go to an open air cinema performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and invited Dagmar and somehow I ended up tagging along, even though I was not overly keen on watching a movie called The Rocky Horror Picture Show, because with a title like that, how could that movie be anything other than terrible?

The open air cinema was on the grounds of the Weserstadion, though not in the big stadium, but on one of the smaller adjacent sports grounds. There were no costumes, at least not that I remember, but there were props and we were handed rice, a newspaper, toilet paper and cookie among other things, to be deployed at the appropriate times. This was clearly very, very weird.

The lights went off and the movie started with very big lips singing “Science Fiction Double Feature”. Now I hate looking at lips and mouths in close-up, I always have, so I closed my eyes. But damn, that song was amazing. Plus, the lyrics mentioned The Day the Earth Stood Still. And Flash Gordon. And Forbidden Planet. And When Worlds Collide. And It Came From Outer Space. And Tarantula. Plus, the actors who appeared in those movies.

Now at the time, I was in the middle of my teenage cineast phase, which mostly expressed itself as looking at and buying books about movies, preferably science fiction movies, though general movie books were good, too. I initially just looked at those books in the store and eventually bought them, because there were lots of pages about Star Wars and Star Trek. However, after reading the bits about Star Wars about a hundred times, I eventually read the rest of those books – most big coffee table books – as well and learned a lot about 1950s science fiction movies, though actually getting to see most of them was not easy in the three TV channel landscape of the 1980s.  Come to think of it, I’m surprised that none of my movie books mentioned The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

What is more, no one in my school or my family knew any of those movies nor did they care. Not even Dagmar cared, when I tried to show my treasured movie books to her. Yet here was a movie with a terrible title that mentioned all of those movies that I thought no one except me had ever heard of.

Then the movie proper started and the music continued to be great. “Damn it, Janet”, “There’s a Light at the Frankenstein Place” – where we deployed the newspaper, the rice having already been deployed – and of course “The Time Warp”. And then finally Tim Curry entered as Frank ‘N Furter, singing “Sweet Transvestite”.  Since I took Latin in school, I felt the need to inform Dagmar and Andrea, that transvestites and transsexuals had nothing to do with Transsylvania, but that “trans” was simply Latin for “cross”. Because obviously, a grammar lesson is what everybody wants in the middle of “Sweet Transvestite”.

Now I have heard from many, many people that The Rocky Horror Picture Show in general and “Sweet Transvestite” in particular were their first encounter with cross-dressing and gender fluidity and that such things were even possible. This was not the case for me and likely not for Dagmar and Andrea either. There was a popular drag queen program called Mary and Gordy on West German TV, NDR 3 occasionally broadcast shows from the Schmidt Theater in Hamburg, which included drag performances. So I knew that sometimes, men dress up as women and give some great performances. I also knew that trans women existed, because in the late 1970s and 1980s there was a popular singer who was rumoured to be trans. I’m not naming her, because she has come out, though I’m pretty sure she is. Oddly enough, I didn’t know trans men existed until I saw a documentary in the 1990s, though I always assumed that if there were trans women, there had to be trans men as well.

So Tim Curry strutting about in fishnets and corset wasn’t overly shocking to me, but I mentally filed it as “Oh, it’s like Mary and Gordy.” Instead, I was just enthralled by the absolutely magnetic performance Tim Curry gave. Then  we got to “In just seven days, I can make you a man” with a Charles Atlas reference – something else I thought no one but me even knew about (I had only just started reading Marvel comics, which had Charles Atlas ads in every single issue) – and Peter Hinwood as Rocky, looking more like a real life He-Man than Dolph Lundgren.  And of course, we shredded the toilet paper and threw it around Weserstadion in a glorious mess.

And then came the dinner scene. We ate our cookies and – once everybody on screen and in the audience realised just what or rather who was for dinner – Dagmar spat out her cookie all over the place. To this day, I cannot watch that scene without thinking of Dagmar spitting out the cookie.

By the time the movie came to its conclusion at a swimming pool underneath the RKO logo – another thing I assumed no one but me knew about – I was not only a fan, but I was convinced that this movie was speaking directly to me, since it knew about Charles Atlas and 1950s B-movies, and that had been made for me and me alone and not for Andrea or Dagmar or all of those other people in the audience, though they clearly seemed to enjoy it. And yes, there were people of both genders wearing fishnets and corsets and there was some of what I’d have called “weird sex stuff” at the time, but somehow this movie knew about and referenced all the things I was into and the music was amazing, too. By now I know that many, many people felt as if The Rocky Horror Picture Show was speaking directly to them. But as far as I know, I’m the only person who felt seen and understood because of the B-movie references.

From that moment on, I was a fan. I bought the soundtrack album and “The Time Warp” in particular was a staple at parties, which got me and my friends on the dancefloor. I remember a birthday party sometime in the early to mid 1990s, when my friends Britta, Annette, Ina and myself (I had a different friend group by then, since Dagmar and I had developed in different directions) were all doing the Time Warp and Annette jumped in the wrong direction, bumping into the rest of us. Somewhere in a pre-digital photo album, there’s a photo of us doing the Time Warp in a suburban living room.

It wasn’t just me and my friends either. Seemingly everybody of my generation loved The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The musical group at my high school integrated “Touch Me” into their performance Little Shop of Horror. And as for “Touch Me”, when Susan Sarandon became a serious actress in Oscar bait movies, I would always say, “Well, I liked her better in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when she ran around in her underwear and sang ‘Touch me, I wanna feel dirty’. Even if she wants to forget it, I know where she came from.”

Of course, I also tried to persuade my parents to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show with me, but somehow I could never get them to watch the film to very end. They inevitably bailed after fifteen minutes or so. I guess Tim Curry and his fishnet stockings were just a little too weird for them.

In the years that followed, I saw Tim Curry in many other roles. I watched him as Pennywise in It on TV and in Hunt for Red October and Home Alone 2, both of which I saw in the theater. I clearly remember seeing him in the 1993 Three Musketeers as Cardinal Richelieu with my friends Britta, Annette and Ina. “It’s Frank N Furter”, we whispered to each other. I must also have seen him in Loaded Weapon, also in 1993, though I have zero memory of that movie beyond the fact that I have seen it in the theater, because Britta wanted to watch it, cause she liked parody movies. Coincidentally, Loaded Weapon also features an early pre-stardom Samuel L. Jackson performance.

I very definitely saw Tim Curry in Muppet Treasure Island in the theater with the same friend group. Of course, we all considered ourselves too old for children’s films, but we were willing to make an exception for the Muppets, because you’re never too old for the Muppets.

And then there was The Shadow, a movie I love, since I love vintage pulp fiction, and which influenced a very early version of what would eventually become The Silencer,  but which none of my friends wanted to see, so I went to see it with my Mom. Tim Curry played a Farley Claymore, assistant to Ian McKellen’s mad scientist Reinhardt Lane, who betrays him and allies himself with the villain Shiwan Khan. The Shadow is another case of a big budget movie that flopped and really deserved to do much better. So many of those. Particularly the 1930s pulp inspired action/superhero movies that came out in the wake of the huge success of the 1989 Batman movie – Dick Tracy, The Shadow, The Phantom, The Rocketeer – flopped one and all and they all deserved so much better. Honestly, we had a mini-boom of 1930s set pulp adventure movies and audiences blew it.

Tim Curry also popped up on TV in show like Monk or Psych or in a memorable turn as a Night Stalker inspired serial killer in Criminal Minds. Tim Curry mostly played villains or at least somewhat shady characters, but whatever role he played, he was always memorable. And though I knew he wasn’t well and hadn’t been for more than ten years, losing him still hurts.

But it’s the third in this trifecta of celebrity deaths which hit me the hardest, harder than I expected.

Thursday was a busy day for me. I finished a bigger translation job and then went shopping at the Famila Einkaufsland mall in Oldenburg-Wechloy, which is fifty kilometers away. However, I needed something I could only find there – or at the Weserpark mall in Bremen, which is closer, but harder to get to due to the near permanent traffic jam on Autobahn A1. Because I wanted to finish my latest translation job first, I got started later than I wanted, then got held up by a traffic jam on Autobahn A28 and got home later than I’d planned. Then, just when I got home, I ran into two neighbours I needed to talk to, so it was pretty late by the time I got home and I was exhausted. What was more, it was the first day of LACon V, the 2026 Worldcon, and I had two virtual panels the evening.

So I decided to take a nap, though I slept uneasily, because I was worried about missing my panel. Then my alarm went off, I looked at my phone and saw that Peter Cullen had died, aged 85. And I started to cry spontaneously, even though I had to get up and get ready, because I had two Worldcon panels in an hour.

If you’re a child of the 1970s and 1980s, Peter Cullen’s voice was part of your childhood, whether you knew his name or not. I certainly recognised his name, because I would always watch the credits of the cartoons I loved and read and memorised the names of the people who made the magic happen, though I didn’t usually know which name provided the voice for which character, because the credits didn’t usually list individual roles.

The role that Peter Cullen will forever be identified with is of course, Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots in the Transformers franchise. There is no way that giant robots that transform into vehicles will ever not be cool, but Peter Cullen’s amazing performance as Optimus Prime is a large part of why Transformers are still beloved and remembered, when other 1980s cartoons and toylines are forgotten.

Peter Cullen has frequently recounted that his take on Optimus Prime, a character he initially found weird (and who can blame him, cause being asked to voice a heroic truck that’s also a robot is weird), was inspired by his brother Captain Larry Cullen of the US Marine Corps, who told him that if he was going to play a hero, he should be a real hero, strong enough to be gentle. And that’s very much what Optimus Prime is: strong but gentle, a leader, a parent figure, someone who commands respect and whom other follow, not because he is the strongest one in the room, but because he is gentle and caring and a good person, even though he is a robotic truck. Besides, Optimus Prime is huge – bigger than most other Autobots (and they’re not exactly small) and you know he could easily crush a human being or an animal in his hand or under his gigantic feet or run them over in his truck form, yet he is kind and gentle. In the wake of Peter Cullen’s passing, I’ve seen some wonderful fan art of Optimus Prime with birds or butterflies or with Dolly Parton and Tim Curry or cradling Eeyore in his hand, a huge hulking robot truck who gentle and a friend to small beings.

The cartoons of the 1980s are often accused of being nothing more than twenty-five-minute toy commercials and to a certain degree that’s true. And they were damn good commercials, so good that they keep selling toys and comics and movie tickets to adults forty years later. However, those cartoons sold us much more than just toys. They taught us how to be a good person and do the right thing. They taught us that a true leader isn’t the one who shouts the loudest, but the one who’s gentle and kind. They showed us what good parents and good relationships and good families looked like and that mother, father and biological kid isn’t the only kind of family out there (honestly, in retrospect it’s stunning how many obviously gay couples raising kids together can be found in 1980s cartoons). They taught us that everybody can be a hero, if you only do the right thing. They gave us strong women and men who weren’t afraid to cry and robotic trucks with more heart than many people had. They also gave us great role models and examples of positive masculinity, even though some of them were not human at all. And the reason is that the writers, directors, animators and voice actors took those “silly toy commercials” and weird characters seriously and gave it their all.

Over the past forty-two years, Optimus Prime uttered many a memorable line: “Freedom of the right of all sentient beings.” – “One shall stand, one shall fall” – “There is a thin line between being a hero and being a memory” – “Hang on to your dreams. The future is built on dreams.” – “We can’t stand by and watch the destruction of this beautiful planet.” – “Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing.” – “Do not forget what you have learned of our past. From its lessons, the future is forged.” Yes, Optimus Prime is a truck, but he’s also wise and a great role model.

In school, I remember that teachers repeatedly asked who our role models were. And the kids, at least the smart ones, always gave what were deemed respectable answers. Albert Schweizer and Mother Theresa were popular. Some kids said Mom and Dad, which was also deemed a respectable answer. Some kids named a sports star, actor or singer, which was not deemed respectable – though Dolly Parton would have been a much better answer than Mother Theresa. I usually tried to avoid answering and when I couldn’t avoid it, my answer usually was, “I don’t have any role models. I want to be myself, not someone else” and, when prompted, I would add, “Well, I don’t want to be like any one person, but I want to have certain skills like certain people.” Come to think of it, I should probably just have said Albert Schweizer or Mother Theresa or whoever won the Nobel Prize for Peace that year, but for some reason I didn’t want to. Even though I obviously had people I admired. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Isaac Asimov would have been at the top of the list and personally, I don’t either is even remotely disrespectable. Okay, Asimov with all the groping, but I at least had no idea about that at the time.

However, my true role models – the ones I didn’t even dare to admit to myself, because it was just so embarassing and clearly meant I was stupid and uncultured – were far less respectable. They were the heroes and heroines of my favourite movies and TV shows. They were characters like Princess Leia Organa, Mr. Spock, Commander Cliff Alister McLane, Prince Adam/He-Man, Princess Adora/She-Ra, Duncan/Man-at-Arms and yes, Optimus Prime, too. Generation X is very much the neglected generation. The latchkey kids, the children of divorce, the children of mass unemployment, the children who were pretty sure they would eventually all be burned to crisp by a nuclear war anyway. These kids needed role models and good parent figures, because all too often, their own parents were inadequate. And those silly toy commercials on TV provided just that. That’s why these characters and the actors who brought them to life matter.

In many ways, this harkens back to Dolly Parton’s guest appearance in The Orville, showing that even seemingly silly and frivolous works of art can inspire people and have a much greater impact that anybody ever expected. Whether it’s Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” inspiring a revolution on an alien planet or a robotic truck from a cartoon made to sell toys teaching kids how to be a good person, a good leader and good parent.

Along with Artax from The Neverending Story, the death of Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie is our generation’s Bambi’s Mom, a collective generational trauma (and we got to see Bambi’s Mom die, too). Transformers: The Movie is also a clear example of the cyniscism of the toy companies who viewed these shows as pure commercials and didn’t even realise that their kid audience was genuinely attached to those characters.  Because the reason for the bloodbath that is Transformers: The Movie is that Hasbro wanted to retire the first wave of Transformer toys and introduce a new wave of toys with new characters. The reason Optimus Prime and all the others had to die is because Hasbro wanted to discontinue those toys and wanted us to buy Ultra Magnus and Rodimus Prime instead. Hasbro executives were supposedly genuinely stunned when they heard about kids sobbing in the theater, because to them Optimus Prime was an outdated toy, to be replaced by a newer, better model, and not a role model, father figure and friend.

Hasbro, of course, realised their mistake and brought Optimus Prime as well as many other beloved characters back. As for Transformers: The Movie, it is currently in theaters again for its fortieth anniversary as what Hasbro themselves have dubbed “The Apology Tour”. This time around, Transformers: The Movie is also playing in German theaters, whereas it never had a theatrical release in (West) Germany in the 1980s, because animated movies not by Disney had a very hard time getting into theaters here. I actually have a ticket for a special showing of Transformers: The Movie in September. And yes, I’m pretty sure I will cry, though I’m not normally one who cries at movies, at least not at the movies that are supposed to make you cry. For example, I didn’t cry when Julia Roberts’ character died in Steel Magnolias, though my Mom did. But I will cry at Transformers: The Movie, for Optimus Prime and for Peter Cullen, the man who brought him to life.

When I woke up from my nap on Thursday to the news that Peter Cullen had died and started crying, I said to myself, “How stupid! I’m crying for a truck.” But first of all, I was not crying for the truck, but for the man who had brought him to life and turned him into an amazing character. Peter Cullen was so identified with the role of Optimus Prime that Michael Bay brought him back for the live action Transformers movies, though there likely was pressure to get a celebrity voice. But even though the live action Transformers movies are highly variable, they got one thing right. Peter Cullen embodied Optimus Prime in a way no big name actor ever could.

However, Peter Cullen was more than just Optimus Prime. He also voiced another Autobot, Ironhide. And he was Eeyore in the Winnie the Pooh cartoons, which was likely my first exposure to his voice. He was Venger in the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, one of the great and genuinely scary cartoon villains of the 1980s. He was Eddie Spencer Jr. in the underrated Filmation Ghostbusters cartoon (not to be confused with The Real Ghostbusters). He voiced the Predator and King Kong and a Gremlin. He was K.A.R.R., K.I.T.T.’s evil older sibling in Knight Rider.  He was Ramrod and Commander Eagle in Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs. He was the Red Skull in the 1980s Spider-Man cartoon. Most recently, he voiced Thaedus in Invincible.

When Chris Hemsworth voiced a younger Optimus Prime, then still known as Orion Pax, in the vastly underrated Transformers One in 2024, it became clear that we were headed for a passing of the torch or the matrix of leadership (even though Garry Chalk also voiced Optimus Prime in some of the many Transformers cartoons over the decades).  And Chris Hemsworth did a great job and I wouldn’t mind at all, if he were the voice of Optimus Prime going forward. But losing Peter Cullen, the voice of so many heroes and villains of my childhood – and a depressed donkey, too – still hurts a lot.

After Peter Cullen died, I saw lots of people posting photos of their Transformers collection and their Optimus Prime figures, sometimes entire shelves of Optimus Primes. And that’s when I realised that I don’t actually have an Optimus Prime in my collection, though I always wanted one. As a kid I only ever had one Transformer and that one was a knock-off, a neon-green version of Sideswipe/Sunstreaker (the Lamborghini twins). As knock-offs went, this was a good one and it took me years to realise that he wasn’t just a weirdly coloured Sunstreaker. My Dad gave him to me – a rarity, since Dad usually wasn’t the one to buy me toys, let alone cool ones – and he clearly liked him, because that knock-off Transformer resided on a shelf in his basement office until he died. He’s in vehicle mode – Dad’s doing, since I always had him in robot mode. And since the instructions are long lost and he’s a knock-off, I can’t transform him back. Dad occasionally watched cartoons with me – he loved Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote and I’m so sad I can’t go watch Coyote vs. Acme with him – though I don’t recall him watching Transformers with me. That said, the fact that he bought me that knock-off Transformer suggests that he did watch the cartoon with me and liked it.

Anyway, since I’m an adult now, I did some research about what the best option is, cause there are so many out there, and ordered myself an Optimus Prime.

Even though Dolly Parton, Tim Curry and Peter Cullen were the most memorable deaths of the past days, the Grim Reaper kept busy and also took King Harald V of Norway at age 89. Meanwhile, Germany lost actor Andreas Hoppe, who is best known for his role as Inspector Mario Kopper in the long-running crime drama Tatort, aged 66. Among many others, Andreas Hoppe also starred in one of my all-time favourite Tatorte, “Death in Space” from 1997.  Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic also died aged 84, unlamented by anybody except possibly his family, and proved that sometimes, the Grim Reaper does get the right people, after all, even if he took a lot of bad swings with his scythe.

Considering that 2026 is only two thirds over, I shudder to think whom else this year may still claim.

Here is my schedule and where you can find me:

The Fan Hugo Categories

Thursday, August 27, 12:00 PDT, Virtual 2

Fannish Hugo Award categories are as old as the Award itself. Over the years their number and scope have changed, and currently we are voting on four fannish statuettes: Best Fanzine, Best Fancast, Best Fan Writer, and Best Fan Artist. What is the meaning and importance of those categories for both the winners and fandom as a whole? Why do we need them? Let’s discuss the importance of Hugo Awards for fans.

Panelists: Jason Sanford, Cora Buhlert, Randy Smith, Trish Matson

A Long Time Ago: Oral Traditions

Thursday, August 27, 13:30 PDT, Virtual 1

Before writing existed, we spoke our truths. How has oral storytelling influenced the written word, and how has the resurgence of oral storytelling and bards impacted the way we are recording history?

Panelists: Ada Palmer, Andrea Hairston, Cora Buhlert, Sean Mead, Sonia Sulaiman

Is Worldcon Finally Becoming a World SF Convention?

Friday, August 28, 09:00 PDT, Virtual 2

As Worldcon becomes more global, expanding to new areas of the world’s genre community, what does the current landscape look like? What have been some of the challenges in expanding? And what do we have to look forward to?

Panelists: Tammy Coxen, Brian Nisbet, Carl Fink, Cora Buhlert, Kat Kouberti

Foundational Fantasy You Should Read

Saturday, August 29, 15:00 PDT, Virtual 1

As fantasy has shifted over time, we still refer to some staples of the genre. If you’re entering the fantasy genre for the first time, what old-school fantasy books should you read? Panelists explore ways to find foundational fantasy that holds up to a modern lens.

Panelists: Cora Buhlert, Dave Hook, David Bratman, Heather Fawcett, Ronald W. Kaiser

Virtual Table Talk: Cora Buhlert

Sunday, August 20, 06:00 PDT, Virtual Table Talks

Cora Buhlert is a writer and translator from Bremen in North Germany and also the winner of the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. Come and virtually chat with her about science fiction and fantasy from the 1930s to today, self-publishing, blogging, translation, renewable energy, the Brisbane in 2028 Worldcon bid, toy collecting, Masters of the Universe and anything else that catches your fancy. There will be (virtual) coffee and cookies.

***

If you’re a virtual member of LACon V, drop by at the panels and the my table talk. I will also be hanging out at the LACon Discord server at least part of the time.

In other news, I have a new article at Galactic Journey about two botched police operations in the summer of 1971 in West Germany, which left three people, including two young women of nineteen and twenty respectively, dead. This was initially supposed to be a movie review with the shooting of Red Army Fraction member Petra Schelm as an intro, but it turned into a true crime piece, when I came across contemporary news articles with amazing details and also stumbled upon that bank robbery in Munich, the first ever bank robbery with hostages taken in postwar West Germany, and the complete and utter police incompetence.

LACon V also starts today and while I’m only participating virtually, I am on the program, so all this happened at a really bad time as well.

But back to the accident. So let’s start in the beginning:

Hiking on the Heath

Yesterday was a beautiful late summer day, clear, sunny and not overly warm. And since I had nothing pressing to do, I decided to take the opportunity and drive out into the Lüneburg Heath, a large nature park that sits smack in the middle between the cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Hannover. It’s a lovely region, great for hiking at any time of the year. However, for a few weeks in late summer, the Lüneburg Heath becomes something very special. Because that’s when the heather blooms and covers the land in tiny pinkish purple blossoms.

For a taste of what it looks like, see below. This is the so-called Klein Bünstorfer Heath near the town of Bad Bevensen at the eastern edge of the nature park.

Klein Bünstorfer Heath near Bad Bevensen in bloom

Close-up of the blooming heather with a stray dandelion.

Since the Lüneburg Heath is only about a hundred kilometers away from where I live, I try to go hiking during heath bloom at least once. And yesterday was the perfect opportunity: Sunny, dry, not too warm, plus I didn’t have any translation work or an article to hand in for once.

The official tourist website of the Lüneburg Heath nature park has something called a heath bloom barometer, where you can see how the heath bloom has progressed over all and which parts of the heath are already in full bloom and which are still developing, because they don’t all bloom at the same time. I usually use this heath bloom barometer to determine where to go, because the Lüneburg Heath isn’t one single big field of heather, but there are mutliple patches of heath scattered around the nature park, nestled between towns, woodlands and agricultural land.

According to the heath bloom barometer, the entire nothern half of Lüneburg Heath is pretty much in full bloom, so there were multiple options. One was driving to Buchholz in the Northern Heath (yes, that’s the full name of the town, since there are multiple towns named Buchholz in Germany, including several in North Germany), which has the advantage of being close to Autobahn A1 and thus easy to get to.

The other option was driving into the heart of the nature park. Now I did want to avoid the region around Wilseder Berg, the highest elevation on the Lüneburg Heath and in North West Germany with a whopping 169 meters above sea level.  Not because it isn’t lovely – it is – but because it’s also the busiest part of the heath. The parking lots in Ober- und Niederhaverbeck (the immediate area around the Wilseder Berg is car-free and has been since it became a nature preserve in 1921) are full of tourist busses, camper vans and cars. And other patches of heath are just as lovely, but much less busy. So I looked at at towns like Schneverdingen, Bispingen or Behringen and the multiple patches of heath in their surroundings.

It’s Road Trip Time

On Tuesday morning, I set off very early at shortly after six AM, because I wanted to get through the construction zone at the Weser Bridge on Autobahn A1 before the morning rush hour. The daily traffic jam was already piling up, but at this early hour,  it only took me five minutes or so to get through.

On the radio, I heard that Autobahn A1 was completely closed between the exits Bockel and Elsdorf due to an accident that had happened around five thirty AM. The warning signs on the Autobahn promised a one hour delay. So Buchholz in the Northern Heath was out, because Buchholz is just south of Hamburg, well beyond Bockel and Elsdorf.

At the time, I was very confused why there had been an accident serious enough to close down the entire A1 between Bockel and Elsdorf of all places. Now Autobahn A1 is wide, straight and flat between Bockel and Elsdorf, there is no speed limit here and there are no construction zones, so it’s about the least likely place for a serious accident. I later learned that the accident was caused by a driver having a sneezing attack, which caused him to crash into another car, and then a third car crashed into both. Three people injured, one of them seriously. I guess this one can be filed under “Shit happens”, which would appear to be something of the motto of the day.

So I only had two options. The first was drive onto Autobahn A27 towards Hannover and change onto Autobahn A7 at juntion Walsrode and leave at either exit Bad Fallingborstel or Soltau or Schneverdingen or Bispingen and approach the Lüneburg Heath from the East. However, this option wasn’t very tempting, because there is a construction zone at junction Walrode which tends to cause traffic jams. And the stretch of Autobahn A7 between junction Walsrode and Hamburg is also prone to traffic jams and accidents, because the Autobahn hasn’t been fully expanded to six lanes here yet, even though it’s very busy. The reasoning is that the Lüneburg Heath is sparsely populated, so four lanes are deemed sufficient for now. However, Autobahn A7 not only connects Hamburg and Hannover, two large cities with lots of traffic, but it’s also one of the main north-south routes for not just Germany, but all of Europe, along with Autobahn A1.

The other option and the one I picked was leave Autobahn A1 at exit Stuckenborstel, i.e. one exit before the Autobahn closure between Bockel and Elsdorf and the resulting traffic jam and drive through the Zeven geest on smaller country roads. So that’s what I did. I left Autobahn A1 at exit Stuckenborstel and drove on Bundesstraße B75 towards Rotenburg on Wümme. Bundesstraßen, literally federal roads, are two lane roads that are a step below Autobahnen. Below them are Landesstraßen, state roads, and Kreisstraßen, county roads.

Breakfast in Sottrum

Just off the Autobahn, there is a village called Sottrum. Since it was still very early in the morning, about seven AM, I stopped for breakfast at a place called Hedgehog Bakery Holste. As for why it’s called that, I intially envisioned hedgehogs baking bread. But it’s really named after a type of organic whole grain bread called “Hedgehog” that’s a specialty of the bakery.  The entire bakery is organic BTW and a really good one.

I ordered a tomato and brie sandwich and a latte macchiato and also bought a bag of chocolate chip cookies and a tasty looking pizza roll, which I planned to have for dinner.

I also took the following picture. I took some action figures along, because the Lüneburg Heath is also a great place for outdoor toy photography.

Breakfast of Champions of Grayskull: Adam, Teela and Cringer are enjoying a tomato brie sandwich, chocolate chip cookies and a latte macchiato at Hedgehog Bakery Holste in Sottrum.

“So is this what they have for breakfast on Earth, Adam?”

“Uhm, sometimes. Sometimes it’s also cereal or waffles or müsli or pancake.”

“I have no idea what any of that is, though I do like this brownish drink.”

“That’s coffee.”

“I approve. It’s good strong warrior’s brew.”

“It helped me survive many a difficult day in the off… – ahem, many a difficult day of combat training.”

“This bread looks hearty and will give us plenty of energy for a long of training. And you will need the energy, cause I’m planning to wear you out, Adam.”

“I can’t wait. At least, if you mean what I hope you mean.”

“May I have one of those round things with dark sprinkles, Adam? Cause they’re tasty.”

“Those are chocolate chip cookies, Cringer. And no, you can’t have any, because the cookies are after training snacks.”

“Could we just skip the training and get right to the snacks?”

***

After breakfast, I set off again. It was just before eight AM now and since the local school was close to the bakery, I passed lots of kids heading to school. One teen boy going to school with his younger sister even politely wished me a good morning, when I stepped to the side to let a bunch of kids pass. The new school year started two weeks ago in my state.

I was planning to head to Schneverdingen about 45 kilometers away. There are two patches of heath near Schneverdingen, the Höpener Heath and Eastern Heath as well as another patch of heath in a nearby village called Heber. And if I didn’t like either of those, I could drive onwards to Bispingen and Behringen.

Just after Sottrum, I got a brief shock, because a deer crossed the road just ahead of me. Accidents with deers are very common in my region and drivers are urged to be careful, usually with mixed results. There was a speed limit of 70 kilometers per hous on this part of the road and though I had to brake, there was no danger of hitting the deer. Nonetheless, the incident with the deer spooked me a little and I drove even more carefully.

What is more, I was headed straight east, towards the rising sun. As a result, visibility wasn’t great, because the sun was blinding, since it was still fairly low in the sky, and also casting weird shadows on the road.

I followed Bundestraße B75 to Rotenburg on Wümme, which is the county seat and the largest town in the region. In Rotenburg, I changed onto Bundestraße B71. The B71 mostly passes through fields and woodlands, though there also are a few villages on route and so I drove through the villages of Hemsbünde, Brockel (not to be confused with Bockel, which is further north) and Hemslingen.

In Hemslingen, I changed onto a smaller road, which I later learned was called Landestraße L170, towards Schneverdingen. However, the roadsign pointed not just towards Schneverdingen, but also towards a village called Grauen, which is the German word for horror. I probably should have taken this as a bad omen, but instead I just viewed it as a really weird town name of which there are a few in the region.

Horror in Grauen

While driving along the L170, I passed an accident that had happened in the opposite direction. A van was lying in the ditch, another car had stopped along the road, a woman was standing and another woman was sitting in the grass. Initially, I thought that the two cars had crashed into each other.

So I stopped my car, half on the shoulder and half on the road. There was a ditch on both sides of the L170, so I could not park fully on the grassy shoulder. I switched on the warning lights, grabbed my phone and walked over to the accident site to ask, if they needed help.

The woman who was on her feet told me that she had driven past just before I came along and found the van in the ditch. So the two cars had not crashed into each other, but the van had crashed into the ditch at what appeared to be a pretty high speed (there is no speed limit on this stretch of L170, so the maximum speed in one hundred kilometers per hour). The van was completely smashed and debris was strewn all over the road, the ditch and a cornfield for about ten meters. The woman sitting in the grass had been the driver.

The woman who was first on site told me that she had already called the police and an ambulance and also the husband of the driver. The couple lived in nearby Hemslingen and the husband was already on the way. I offered to stay, until the police and the ambulance arrived. For while the driver was – miraculously – physically unhurt except for a bleeding nose and some scratches, she also was distraught and clearly in shock and we couldn’t leave her alone. And two people are better than one.

I told the driver that the most important thing is that she’s okay. The car is just piece of metal. She was still completely distraught and crying and kept saying she had no idea what happened. We asked if there was a deer or if the sun blinded her. She said that she suddenly lost control and didn’t remember anything else. Most likely, one of her tires had blown.

The driver had managed to grab her bag, but she said something of hers – a white plastic bag – had been thrown into the cornfield. I offered to fetch it, but had to give up, because there was still the ditch next to the road and I didn’t really want to wade through a ditch to fetch a shopping bag. A large chunk of metal – I think it was a headlight, was lying in the middle of the road, so I kicked it onto the shoulder, lest it cause another accident.

I have wet wipes in my handbag and went back to the car to fetch them, so the driver could clear herself up. The other woman got the warning triangle from the trunk of her car and I went to set it up at a distance from the accident site.

Other cars passed the accident and slowed down. A few stopped and asked if we needed help. We said, “It’s okay, the driver isn’t badly hurt and police and ambulance are on the way.

The driver’s husband arrived first. He rushed to his wife to comfort her and told her that it was okay, the important thing was that she was safe, never mind about the car. Clearly a prime example of a good husband. In the rush to get to his wife, he had forgotten his phone, so I offered to calls his employer on my phone. The employer turned out to be a funeral parlour of all things. So I called the funeral parlour and handed my phone over to the husband, so he could tell his employer what had happened and that he would be late or not come in at all.

The husband parked his car on an agricultural sideroad (which in retrospect I should have done as well) and also placed his warning triangle on the other side of of the road, so the accident site on the L170 was secured in both directions. What is more, both my car and the other woman’s car had their warning lights on. The L170 is a very straight road in this spot and everybody should be able to notice from a safe distance that there is a problem here.

We spotted the flashing blue lights of the ambulance arriving from the direction of Schneverdingen. The other woman and I said, “Once the ambulance is here, we can probably leave, unless the police needs us for a statement.” Though none of us had witnesses the actual accident, only the aftermath.

The ambulance arrived, stopped on the road, blue lights still flashing, to see to the driver. The other woman and I asked the paramedics if it was okay if we left now or if we were still needed. We also wished the driver and her husband all the best.

And then it happened.

The Crash 

While the two paramedics, the husband, the other woman and I were all standing around the driver next to the crashed van, a taxi drove past at a significant speed. I estimate that the taxi was going about fifty to sixty kilometers per hour – past a secured accident site with warning triangles and an ambulance with flashing blue lights standing on the road. In short, there were plenty of indicators to slow the fuck down and drive carefully and in fact, other cars and even a truck had done just that, slowed down and driven carefully past the accident site.

The taxi, however, barely slowed down and instead decided to drive past an obvious accident site at fity to sixty kilometers per hour. The taxi swerved past the ambulance and crashed directly into my car, which was still parked on the shoulder with warning lights on.

I yelled, “Oh fuck! That fucking idiot just crashed into my car!” One of the paramedics reacted like, “Really? What an idiot!”

I ran over to my car. At this moment, I was understandably angry at the driver and would have probably have yelled at him. But by the time I reached the taxi, I saw that every single airbag in the taxi had been triggered by the crash. The driver was still in the driver’s seat and it occurred to me that he might have been hurt, so I asked him, if he was okay, instead of yelling at him. Though I did say, “By the way, you just hit my car.” Thankfully, there was no passenger in the taxi, which makes me wonder why he went so fast.

One of the paramedics also came over to check on the driver, while his colleague was tending to the woman from the van. The taxi driver got out of the car on his own and seemed unhurt, though he was shaking. He lit a cigarette, which in retrospect wasn’t a great idea, since there might have been a fuel leak. The paramedic examined him and found no visible injuries, though he told the taxi driver to call an ambulance, if he should feel dizzy or sick. He also said that there was no need to call the police, because they were already on the way.

I told the taxi driver: “I’ll need your insurance information.” I also realised I needed to call my insurance as well as the Mercedes-Benz helpline to check on my car and see if it was safe to drive with the damage. As I went around the car to take photos of the damage for the insurance, I saw that the rear tire on the driver’s side was flat, damaged by the crash.

“Fuck, my tire is flat”, I exclaimed, “This car isn’t driving anywhere.”

Note that I was about seventy kilometers from home, with a damaged car that wasn’t driving one more centimeter and I had no idea how to get home.

You can find the photos I took below. I blurred out the name of the taxi company as well as the licence plate except for the first two letters, which indicate the county where the vehicle is registered (DH stands for County Diepholz, HK for County Heidekreis, literally Heath County). The black car is mine, the cream-coloured car is the taxi.

The front of the taxi where it hit the rear of my car. Note the flattened tire. There’s also a part of my tail-light lying on the ground, even though it looked okay at first glance. Note that the brand logo of the taxi has fallen off due to the crash. I think it was a Volkswagen. You can also see that the passenger side airbag was triggered.

A look at the damaged rear of my car. The bumper is damaged and the tailgate is badly dented. The crash also ripped off the exhaust pipe, which probably punctured the tire. The moisture on the road is cooling liquid from the taxi.

A closer look at the crash damage and the dented tailgate. The shards are from the headlights of the taxi. You can also see that the taxi’s hood was pushed up and the engine is exposed.

Another close-up look at the crash damage. Note the exposed engine of the taxi. My warning lights are still on an flashing. I left them on throughout, lest some other idiot crash into my car as well.

I was going to call the Mercedes-Benz helpline first, so they could send someone to tow the car. Now the number of the Mercedes-Benz helpline is printed clearly visible inside the car in the glove compartment. However, I was so nervous and shaking that I couldn’t find it, since the stuff in the glove compartment – manual, service booklet, old receipts, all spilled out. However, I found the card with the insurance information in the glove compartment. So I decided to call the insurance company first. I had just started the call and was directed to the “Press 1 to report a damage, Press 2 to…” robot, when I spotted the flashing blue lights of a police car approaching, so I hung up for now. I could call the insurance later.

Aftermath

The police stopped their car at some distance from the double crash site and one paramedic went to meet them and explain what happened. Most likely, it was something along the line of “No one is seriously injured, we just have a lot of twisted metal and distraught drivers here.”

Meanwhile, traffic was piling up on both sides of the L170 behind a tractor in one direction and a truck in the other, both of whom were wise enough not to try to pass. Between the ditch and the cornfields, there is a bike path and several cyclists drove past. Some of them stopped to take a look at the accident or ask if anybody needed help and one older woman on a bike stopped to talk to the woman who had been at the accident site first. I suspect they knew each other.

The police first went to look at the van in the ditch, which was in considerably worse condition than either of our cars, and to talk to the driver, while the taxi driver and I waited. The taxi driver also called his boss to inform her about the accident, while smoking his third cigarette or so.

The drivers of one of the cars waiting came over to me and said that the taxi had overtaken him just before the crash and that the driver had been driving recklessly and said he would give a statement to the police, if necessary. I thanked him. Though in the end, I don’t think the man had to give a statement, since the crash had happened in full view of two paramedics.

After the police officers had examined the van and questioned the driver (if she was able to answer questions by this point), they came over to me and the taxi driver, informed us we had the right to remain silent and asked for our ID-cards, driver’s licence and the vehicle licence. I got my papers and gave them to the officer and the taxi driver got his. The officers than took the papers to their car to log the information and probably run some kind of ID check.

Then one of them came over to me and asked me what I believe happened. I explained that I’d seen the accident on the other side and stopped to help, that I switched on the warning lights, that I had to stop partially on the road because of the ditch, that we set warning triangles on both sides and that the taxi swerved past the ambulance and crashed into my car. The officer asked me if I was inside the car. I replied that I was standing near the crashed van, maybe ten or fifteen meters away from the car.

The officer also asked when the crash happened. I said, “I’m not sure. I heard the weather report on the radio at twenty past eight and then I saw the accident a bit later and stopped and I’d been here for a while, when the taxi crashed into my car. So maybe it was eight forty-five or nine.” The taxi driver claimed it was nine twenty. Though according to my phone, I first tried to call the insurance company at a minute past nine, so the taxi driver was mistaken.

I also told the officers that there was liquid on the ground at the crash site. It didn’t look like oil or fuel to me, but they might want to check it out. At the time, a potential explosion risk didn’t even occur to me nor that the taxi driver might have blown us all up with his smoking. However, if there was oil or fuel on the road, the police would have to call the fire brigade to clean it up and prevent pollution of the environment. The police officer did take a look at the puddle and said it was cooling liquid from the taxi and not dangerous.

The officers then asked the taxi driver for his version of the story. He basically said that he drove past the accident site, didn’t see my car and couldn’t brake in time. They asked him at what speed he was going, though I don’t know what he said. One officer also took the taxi driver away for an alcohol test. I’m not sure if this is standard procedure in such cases or if they suspected the taxi driver might have been drunk. He was clearly nervous and shaken – which is understandable – and he did seem a little shady. He also had what looked like ex-con tattoos on his lower arm.

The police officers didn’t test me for alcohol, because I wasn’t even in the car, when the crash happened let alone driving. They also gave me back my papers and told me I should call the police station in Schneverdingen later that day, so they could give me a file reference for the police report, since the insurance would likely want it.

Once the police were finished with me, I decided to try calling the Mercedes-Benz helpline. But I still couldn’t find the number, so I called my local dealer/garage, whose number I have programmed into the phone, and asked them to give me the number of the helpline. I then tried to call the number they gave me, only to get “We’re sorry, but you can only call this number from a landline connection”, which made me exclaim, quite loudly, “What the fuck! I’m in the fucking middle of nowhere, so where the fuck should I find a landline?” That outburst caused one of the police officers to come over and asked what the matter was.

I apologised and said that I had problems reaching the Mercedes-Benz helpline and that cellphone reception was really bad in the area. I also asked the police officer where we even were, because there was no roadsign or anything, just fields and trees. And all I could have said at this point is, “I’m somewhere between Rotenburg on Wümme and Schneverdingen”, which is not exactly precise and the Mercedes-Benz helpline would need a more exact location to send help.

The police officer said that we were on the L170 between Nersum and Grauen in Heidekreis county and that there was an exact location given on one of the roadside guide posts. “Well, Grauen is certainly an appropriate name,” I said.

I finally got enough cellphone reception to google the number of the Mercedes-Benz helpline and called it.  I got connected almost right away and said, “I had an accident and I need help.”

Now Mercedes-Benz offers what they call a mobility guarantee, i.e. if you take your car to be serviced whenever recommended, they will help you free of charge, if you ever have a breakdown and accident. I have only ever needed that service, when my battery gave out and I couldn’t start the car.

The guy on the other end of the line asked me all sorts of questions. What model of car, what licence plate, when first registered, what is the regular garage? He also remarked that the mobility guarantee was still in the name of my Dad, whereupon I explained that he died and the car was now registered in my name, but I forgot to update the information. He also asked what the car’s mileage was and I said, let me check the dashboard if it’s still displayed. Since the warning lights were on, the dashboard was active as well and the mileage was displayed.

The man also asked me if the car could still roll onto a tow truck or if they needed a crane. I replied, “Well, the rear driver’s side tire is flat, but it should still be able to roll onto a tow truck.”

Explaining to the fellow where exactly I was turned out to be a bit more difficult, because the Mercedes-Benz helpline is a Frankfurt on Main phone number and someone in Frankfurt is as familiar with small towns and villages in the Lüneburg Heath as I am with small towns and villages in the Taunus region, i.e. not at all.

The conversation went something like this:

“I’m on the L170 between Grauen and Nersum. Grauen as in horror. This is in Heidekreis.”

“Do you mean Heidkrug?”

“No, Heidekreis as in Lüneburg Heath. That’s what the county is called.”

“Okay, I found Grauen. What’s the other town? Neuenkirchen?”

“Neuenkirchen is somewhere hereabouts [I happened to know that there is a town called Neuenkirchen in the Heidekreis, because I drove through it last year], but not that close. Nersum is the name of the other village and the nearest bigger town is Schneverdingen.”

I later learned that though Neuenkirchen is further away than Schneverdingen, the villages of Nersum and Grauen are part of Neuenkirchen thanks to the bloody 1974 Lower Saxony community reform.

The guy at the Mercedes-Benz helpline finally found Nersum and could pinpoint where I was. He told me that they would be sending a tow truck to take the car to the nearest Mercedes-Benz dealer, but that it would take about half an hour for the tow truck to arrive.

He also told me that the Mercedes-Benz mobility guarantee covered the costs of a rental car for three days and that the Mercedes-Benz dealer where they were taking my car would get me a rental, though I would have to show them my driver’s licence and bank card. I said, “That’s okay. I have everything here. And I don’t need a rental car for three days, cause I have another car. I only need one to get home. Also, while I can drive a car with a manual shift, I haven’t actually driven a car with a manual shift in ten years or so and I don’t really feel up to it right now.” In fact, I didn’t really want to drive home in an unfamiliar car at all, but there was no other option. The Mercedes-Benz guy assured me that they would give me an automatic car.

Why I Have Two Cars

Now I really do have two cars. Back when my parents were still alive, we had two cars in the household, because both my Dad and I were driving regularly, namely the Mercedes and a Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid. Nominally, the Mercedes was Dad’s car and the hybrid mine, though we both used them interchangeably, depending who was going where. Basically for shorter trips within the battery range, we used the hybrid, because it was much cheaper, since we can recharge the hybrid at home. But the hybrid’s battery is only good for fifty to sixty kilometers, less in winter, then you have to use the regular engine. So for longer trips, we used the Mercedes, because the diesel engine is more efficient than the gas engine of the hybrid.

As for why I kept both cars, Dad barely said anything about what he wanted to happen after he died. He never even said where he wanted to be buried, so I made that decision for him. However, when Dad was already pretty sick, I said, “Well, if you’re not going to the office every day anymore, we can maybe sell the Mercedes.” And he said, “No. Put it in the garage and use it, when you need to.” And since this was pretty much the only wish he ever uttered, I kept the Mercedes and used it for longer trips and the hybrid for short trips, just like we had done when Dad was still alive.

That’s also why possibly losing the Mercedes hurts. Yes, it’s just a car. But it was Dad’s car and it was my companion on all my roadtrips. It’s the car that took me to cons in the Ruhrgebiet and Hanau and Heidelberg and Berlin and Antwerp, the car I took when I had to interpret in court in Bremerhaven or Verden or Zeven, the car I took to go to Hamburg for a day on the town or to visit my friend Michael near Hildesheim or to drive across the Dutch border. Meanwhile, the hybrid, much as I love it, is the car I use to go grocery shopping.

Besides, the Mercedes is a great car. It passed the biannual technical and safety inspection with flying colours last year and it got new tyres last fall, one of which is now punctured. And Mercedes tyres are expensive. I estimate that the Mercedes, though fifteen years old, had at least another ten years of service life ahead, if not more. And I tend to drive my cars until they fall apart or repairs are no longer feasible. I managed to keep my Mom’s old Volkswagen Jetta going for twenty-eight-years, only two years before it would officially be designated a historical vehicle. And though the car that replaced the Jetta was lightyears better, part of me is still sour that I did not get the official historical vehicle designation. I kind of hoped the Mercedes would be the car that lasts long enough to finally get the historical vehicle designation.

The plan was to keep the Mercedes and the hybrid for as long feasible. Then, when I need a new car, the next one will be fully electrical, because while battery technology and charging infrastructure wasn’t yet sufficient, when we got the hybrid, it is sufficient now.

At one point, the husband of the woman in the van came over to me to thank me for stopping to help his wife and said he was sorry that my car was hit. I said, “Well, it’s silly to be upset, because it’s just a car, but this was my Dad’s car and it also took me on so many trips. Only last month, we were in Berlin and earlier this summer, we were in Heidelberg” He said that he understands and that the reason his wife was so distraught about the van was all the memories connected with it of holidays in Norway and Croatia, all with the van that was no lying trashed in a ditch along the L170.

I asked if his wife was okay and he said the paramedics were still examining her for possible internal injuries.

Waiting 

While I was talking to the Mercedes-Benz helpline, the boss of the taxi driver showed up. She examined the damage, talked to the driver and drove off again. She never even talked to me, which I find kind of rude.

Once I was finished with the Mercedes-Benz helpline, I called the insurance to report the accident. I said I’m really sorry, but I don’t know my insurance number. It is on the card that was in glove compartment, but the card was Dad’s insurance number, not mine. The person in the other end of the line that that’s okay, if I give them my name, birthdate and licence plate, they would find it.

They found the policy and asked questions and once again asked what had happened, what the licence plate of the other car was, what the name of the taxi company and the driver was. The name of the taxi company was on the car, but I had to ask the driver for his name. They also asked for the file reference of the police report and I said, “There is none yet. The police are still here, directing traffic. I was told I can call the station this afternoon, then I will call you back.”

The police was indeed still there and the officers were directing the traffic that had piled up, including a tractor and several trucks, past the crash site. One police officer also cleared debris from the road. Meanwhile, the husband of the woman in the van busied himself picking up all sorts of parts of the van and what had been inside. He actually did wade through the ditch to pick up some stuff from the cornfield.

Once I finished with the insurance company, I went over to the driver and asked him if he was in trouble with the police. He said he’d have to pay a fine, but since no one was injured in the crash, it was only considered a minor offence. I said I was glad to hear that, for even though the guy trashed my car, I don’t want him to lose his licence or his job because of that. He gave me his card and I gave him my name, address and the name of the insurance company and said I didn’t know the number. Meanwhile, he showed me his insurance information and I took a photo of it with my phone.

A Ride in a Big Yellow Tow Truck

After some more waiting, we finally spotted the first tow truck arriving. I said to the husband of the woman in the van, “Well, I wonder if that one is for you or for me or the taxi.” The husband said, “This one’s probably for us, since it has a crane.” Almost immediately after the first tow truck, another one arrived. That one turned out to be for me. Meanwhile, the taxi driver was still waiting to be towed. He said his boss had called someone, but he didn’t know when they would arrive.

I went over to my car and picked up my handbag, the bag with the Masters of the Universe action figures I’d taken along for outdoors toy photography, my water bottle, the automatic garage door opener and the charge cable for my phone. There was a still a shopping basket with the cookies and the pizza roll I’d bought in the trunk, but I didn’t want to open the trunk, because I wasn’t sure if it would make the damage worse.

The two tow trucks stopped and the drivers took stock of the situation. The truck with the crane headed for the van, while the other driver came over to me. He asked for my car keys, which I gave to him. The driver then told me I should get into the tow truck, while he took care of the car.

Now this was a really big yellow tow truck. The cabin was maybe one and half meters above ground level and in order to get inside, I had to climb up two very narrow steps. So I put my bags on the bench first and then clambered. Thanfully, there were handgrips to hold on to, because falling from a tow truck was about the last thing I needed.

Somehow I managed to climb into the truck and settled down. The truck shook a few times, which I assume was from my car being moved onto the truck bed. Once I was inside the cabin, I realised that the police had blocked the entire road and that there was once more traffic piling up on both sides once again. The reason was that the other tow truck was blocking the entire road, while trying to pull the van from the ditch.

Meanwhile, the driver of my truck hadn’t come back yet, even though we could theoretically have left. I waited and wondered whether they had problems disentangling my car from the taxi, though it later turned out the driver was just helping his colleague with the van. I got out my phone and saw that reception was enough for phone calls, though the internet barely worked. So I called my neighbour Vladimir to tell him that I had a car accident and that I was okay, but the car was not. He asked if I needed help to get home. I said, “I think they’re giving me a rental, but if not I’ll call you again.”

The sun was higher in the sky by now and the cabin of the tow truck was getting warm and stuffy, so I lowered the window. The window was still operated by a manual crank, something I haven’t seen in decades. But then trucks don’t always have the amenities passengers cars have. I was also really glad I took my water bottle, because I hadn’t drunken anything since the coffee I had at the bakery and was thirsty.

After even more waiting, the tow truck driver finally returned. Except that it wasn’t the driver to whom I’d given my car keys. Turned out the drivers had switched trucks. I asked if everything was okay or if they were problems disentangling my car from the taxi. He replied, “No, your car wasn’t the problem. But we had issues getting the van out of the ditch.”

It was after ten AM when we finally drove off.  Meanwhile, the taxi driver was still waiting to be towed. The tow truck drove through the village of Grauen, which did not at all look horrible. The truck then turned onto another road and passed through a village named Tewel that I’d never heard of. We also passed some of the beautiful purple heath where I had wanted to go hiking.

When the truck reached Neuenkirchen, the town I knew was somewhere in the area, but not that close, I asked the driver. “Where are you taking me? Schneverdingen.”

The driver replied, “No, Soltau. Schneverdingen doesn’t have a Mercedes-Benz dealership.”

Now Soltau is more than twenty kilometers from the accident site – in the wrong direction. Rotenburg on Wümme would have been closer and in the right direction. But Rotenburg is in another county, so Soltau it was.

If you live in North Germany, you mainly associate Soltau with the Heide Park theme park, cause pretty much everybody has been there at some point in the past 48 years.  Of course, I was there as well, but only once with my Aunt and Uncle. My parents didn’t much care for theme parks – which is why I am grateful they did give me the opportunity to experience Disney World – and the school took us to Magic Park in Verden, which is closer and cheaper.

The Lüneburg Heath may be thinly populated, but because it’s only about an hour away from Hamburg, Bremen and Hannover and their respective metro regions with some three million people, it also has a remarkable number of theme parks and similar attractions. Heide Park is the biggest and most famous one, but there’s also the Bird Park in Walsrode, the Serengeti Park in Hodenhagen and the attractions Iserhatsche and Snow World and the Center Parc resort in Bispingen.  There are also several zoos, animal parks, cart race tracks, minigolf courses and other attractions. The Lüneburg Heath tourist website lists a whopping eighteen theme parks and attractions in the Lüneburg Heath. It’s a strange mix of beautiful nature and weird attractions that often seem more suited to Las Vegas than the Lüneburg Heath.

The tow truck driver and I somehow started talking about Heide Park and how Heide Park is no longer what it once was. The tow truck driver said that they even closed down the log flume ride, which back in the day was the one attraction that Heide Park and Disney World didn’t – at least not, when I was there with my parents.

Soltau and More Waiting

The tow truck finally arrived at the Mercedes-Benz dealership in Soltau.  I clambered out of the truck again and went inside with the driver. It turned out that the Mercedes-Benz helpline had not informed the dealership, but only called the tow truck, so I explained once again explained to the receptionist what had happened and answered the same questions I had answered several times before. Meanwhile, my car was unloaded on the yard of the dealership.

The receptionist took me to the lounge and asked me to wait, while a mechanic examined the car. I said that the service booklet and the last technical and safety inspection report were in the glove compartment. They were happy to have those. I’m not sure what they will make of the rest of the jumble in the glove compartment.

I got myself a coffee from the coffeemaker in the lounge and settled down. I got out my phone, but though I was in a city of 22000 people, I still still didn’t have a decent data connection and couldn’t connect to the internet. I suspect the problem might have been the WiFi at the dealership.

So I waited. The receptionist returned after a while and took me to see the head mechanic for commercial vehicles, because the head mechanic for passenger vehicles was not in the office. He told me that they looked at the car and that they would call in an appraiser the next day, who would write an official report for the insurance. I asked if the car could be saved and the mechanic said that the damage is repairable, but they have to see if it’s feasible, considering the car is fifteen years old. I also told them that I had an official estimate what the car was worth from my dealership, because after Dad died, I needed for the estate. If the insurance or the appraiser needed it, I could get them a copy.

As what happens next, once the appraiser has finished his report, we would decide what to do next. I’ll definitely get compensated by the taxi driver’s insurance, either for the repairs or for the value of the car. I’ll also get some compensation for every day I can’t use the car. I told them that I have another car at home, but they said I’ll still get compensation. As for how long everything will take, it might be a few weeks.

I said that my shopping basket was still in the trunk and if it was possible to get it out. The mechanic said it’s okay and I should get what I want from the car. So the receptionist took me to the car. The tailgate still opened, even though it was damaged and I saw that a chunk of plastic, most likely from the fender, had landed in the trunk. I picked up my shopping basket with the pizza roll and the bag of cookies and also the emergency shopping bag and the umbrella I keep in the trunk. Then I got some stuff from the passenger compartment: my old road atlas (cause when I have no phone reception and no GPS, I still have the atlas), a few receipts from the glove compartment that I need for the taxes, the chocolate and the aspirin I always keep in the car. I left stuff like towels, tissues, the parking disk, the ice scraper as well as my emergency underpants and sanitary pad behind, because should I never see them again, it’s no huge loss. Besides, my shopping basket was already full of random stuff, including an umbrella.

As for how to get me home, the receptionist told me that they didn’t have a car available for me and would have to get one from a rental company. But since I have another car, would it be okay if one of their employees would drive me home. I said, “Yes, that would be great.” Cause I was still shaken and didn’t particularly want to drive, let alone an unfamiliar rental car.

Unfortunately, the employee who was supposed to take me home had gone to lunch, so I would have to wait another twenty minutes or so. I said, “That’s okay.” The receptionist also told me that if I was hungry, there was a supermarket with a bakery in the vicinity. I said, “No, I’m fine. Besides, I have a pizza roll I bought dinner and some cookies.”

So I went back to the lounge – with my shopping basket and the umbrella, which got me some odd looks from the other customers – made myself another coffee and waited. I still couldn’t get an internet connection. After some time, the receptionist reappeared and said her colleague had returned from lunch and was ready to take me home.

The Drive Home 

The employee who took me home was a very nice man in his 60s, theoretically retired, but working beyond retirement, cause otherwise he’d get bored. He told me he’d been a truck driver and a school bus driver before he ended up at the Mercedes dealership.

He also told me he was Russian-German, i.e. a descendant of German immigrants who settled in Russia at the invitation of Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century. Some two million Russian-Germans came to Germany in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. They live all over Germany, but there are clusters of Russian-Germans in certain regions, including the Lüneburg Heath. The man who took me home had been born in Kazakhstan, where Stalin banished a lot of Russian-Germans after WWII. I told him that my neighbour Vladimir was also Russian-German and had also been born in Kazakhstan, but came to Germany as a kid.

The drive home took one and a half hours and we had a pleasant chat throughout. The guy drove onto Autobahn A7 at exit Soltau and then changed onto Autobahn A27 at junction Walsrode. There was some lovely blooming heather next to the Autobahn.

I told the guy driving me that the traffic jam at Weser Bridge in Bremen would likely extend beyond the intersection of Autobahn A1 and A27 and that I would recommend leaving the A27 before hitting the traffic jam. My driver agreed and asked which exit to use. I replied that I usually left the A27 at Langwedel, but Verden or Achim would work as well. So the man consulted his GPS – which is better than mine, because the van we were using is newer – and it recommended leaving the A27 at exit Achim-East, so that’s what we did.

We crossed the Weser via the Ueser Bridge in Achim. I told the driver that the bridge was actually used as a filming location for Richard Lester’s anti-war film How I Won the War in 1967, standing in for the Rhine Bridge of Remagen, even though the Weser looks nothing like the Rhine and the Ueser Bridge nothing like the Remagen Bridge. Some scenes of How I Won the War were also shot in the Lüneberg Heath, at the Bergen military base (which still exists). How I Won the War is still fondly remembered in our region, especially since John Lennon himself filmed on the Ueser Bridge and lots of local young men appeared as extras in the film, though it’s mostly forgotten in its country of origin.

The driver then turned onto a very small road that runs directly behind the Weser dyke. “Oh, you’re going this way,” I exclaimed. The driver said that’s the route the GPS recommended and if it was all right. I said, “It’s fine. My Dad used to take this route a lot, when he was still working in Hamburg.” However, I once got terribly lost, while taking the road behind the dyke (that was in the days before GPS and Google Maps), so I usually go via Thedinghausen.

The road behind the dyke crosses the river Eiter, a tributary of the Weser, at the weir in Eißel. Soon afterwards, we reached familiar territory again. Normally, I would have driven home via Syke or Riede, but the driver went via Dreye, cause that way is slightly shorter, and then drove back onto Autobahn A1 at Arsten for the last two kilometers or so. The traffic jam in the other direction was extending well beyond exit Bremen-Brinkum and I said to the driver that it probably goes all the way to junction Stuhr.

“I don’t want to be stuck in that”, the driver said, “I’m going back the way we came and will just program the GPS for Thedinghausen.” I told him that Bundestraße B6 is closed between Erichshof and Melchiorshausen and has been for months (they’re laying now water pipes) and he would have to drive around the closure. “But it’s not very bad”, I said, “Only takes a few minutes longer.”

Once we left the A1 at exit Bremen-Brinkum, I directed the driver to my house and also told him how to get around the closed stretch of the B6, because chances are that his GPS would direct him right back towards the closed road. He dropped me off and I thanked him.

Turned out that the decision not to take Autobahn A1 was exactly the right choice, because that afternoon the entire Autobahn A1 was closed in both directions due to two serious accidents. In the first accident, a truck crashed into two cars and another truck – one driver died, two others were injured. In the other accident in the opposite direction, a cattle transport crashed into a van and another truck. This time around two drivers were injured and two cows died, but the remaining cows could be rescued from the cattle transport. The A1 was closed for fourteen hours or so with lengthy traffic jams and some drivers trapped for hours. It really seems to have been a bad day all around.

Home at Last

I finally made it home by two PM. I didn’t feel like cooking, but I also didn’t want to go out again to eat something, so I just ate the pizza roll I’d bought earlier that day and some of the cookies.

Then I called the police station in Schneverdingen to ask for the file reference to the police report and then I called the Mercedes dealership where my car was and the insurance to pass on the file reference. And since I wasn’t going out again that day, I also finally had the alcoholic drink I’d wanted since the crash. Then I took a nap.

The appraiser has since been there, but hasn’t written up his report yet, so I’m still in waiting mode. Besides, Worldcon kicks off today, but I’m not really in the mood at all.

In my part of Germany, the coverage was about 84 percent, i.e. as solar eclipses go, this one is pretty impressive. Almost as impressive as the 1999 solar eclipse (total in southern Germany, but only partial in northern Germany) would have been, had I actually been able to see it. Alas, I wasn’t able to see it, for while that day started off clear, dense clouds decided to gather just at the crucial moment, so all I saw was the sky getting darker than usual in the middle of the day, as if a really nasty storm was rolling in. I even wrote a poem about it at the time and sold it to a long defunct magazine of speculative poetry.

Unlike the massive excitement accompanying the 1999 solar eclipse, the response to this one was initially muted. There was very little in the way of media coverage ahead of time and when someone started talking about a solar eclipse on the radio some time ago, I initially thought they were talking about the 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia, which we’d been using as a selling point for the Brisbane Worldcon bid. But then I realised that they were talking about a solar eclipse happening here in Germany in a few weeks time and I thought, “We’re having a solar eclipse this year? Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

The lack of excitement and media hype also meant that solar eclipse glasses, so common in 1999, were surprisingly hard to come by. Very few shops sold them and those that did sold out quickly. Some people tried ordering solar eclipse glasses online, but they didn’t always ship in time. And then there were the lucky ones who still had their solar eclipse glasses from 1999. Indeed, Pilar Marie Stein asks in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung why solar eclipse glasses were so difficult to come by in Germany, even though we have known for decades that there would be a solar eclipsed on August 12, 2026. She doesn’t really have an answer either beyond the fact that the respective vendors did not buy enough solar eclipse glasses. I guess the vendors understimated the degree of interest in the solar eclipse, since it was not a total one in Germany.

As for myself. I didn’t much worry about solar eclipse glasses, because I was planning to view the 2026 solar eclipse like I had viewed two partial eclipses in the 1990s and early 2000s and had planned to view the 1999 eclipse, namely through my Dad’s welding mask. Cause a welding mask or welding goggles do much the same thing as solar eclipse glasses do.

The Case of the Missing Welding Mask

As August 12 rolled around, I decided to get the welding mask out of basement, so I would have it at hand for the eclipse in the evening. Alas, I got an unpleasant surprise, because while the welding machine was where it had always been, in a specific cupboard in my Dad’s basement workshop, the welding mask was gone.

“Okay, maybe Dad put it somewhere else”, I thought. So I checked the garage, but no welding mask. I even checked the annex, which was supposed to become an indoor pool one day, but never grew beyond a pit filled with random building materials. There were vague plans to turn that annex into a proper storage space or a small apartment, indoor pools being too expensive to operate these days, but those plans never came to anything. I may do something with that space someday, but that would cost a lot of money, so for now I leave it as it is, as Dad’s weird mess. I hardly ever go in there anyway, because I usually have no reason to.

I did not find the welding mask in the annex. However, I found Mjolnir:

When you find Mjolnir in your Dad’s messy annex, next to a fire extinguisher, a set of random prongs, an orange nylon thing I think might some kind of sun shelter and random steel constructions.

Okay, so it’s not really Mjolnir, just a very big hammer, but it was still funny to stumble upon that thing, especially since I had no memory of ever seeing it before. And yes, I can lift it. I tried.

It’s not the only weird thing I stumbled upon in Dad’s mess either. In the past I found a sauna oven from the 1970s, still in original packaging (there was supposed to be a sauna adjacent to the indoor pool), old radios, ammunition for my Dad’s old air gun (I’m still wondering, if the air gun ever resurfaces), old bicycles I thought had been thrown out long ago, my old bicycle basket, a toilet bowl (there was supposed to be a toilet next to the indoor pool), a lifetime supply of XPS foam insulation plates (hurray, free crafting material!) and two beautiful gothicky stained glass windows that I really want to do something with one day.

In addition to Mjolnir, I also came across a kind of wall hanging/wind chime made of wooden beads. It must be almost fifty years old and I think we had it in our home or possibly on the balcony, when we lived in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1978. I had no idea that thing still existed and was surprised to find it randomly hanging on a wall over the entrance to the duct with the service lines for the pool.

What I did not find, however, was the welding mask. I suspect it may be in Dad’s mess somewhere, but then the Ark of the Covenant is probably in there somewhere as well. Or maybe Dad took it to work. He was at a building site just a day before he went to the hospital, so maybe he just left it there or at the office of the company he freelanced for. Or maybe he lent it to someone who didn’t give it back.

I obviously couldn’t ask Dad. For starters, I don’t have a ouija board and even if I did, considering how much my parents hated everything even remotely occult due to falling for some stupid Satanic Panic shit, they wouldn’t reply anyway out of spite. Talking of which, I recently realised that I no longer have to hide what occult stuff – runes stones, a pendulum, tarot cards, etc… – I have, because my parents are gone.  I can also actually buy myself a ouija board, if I want one, and no one would bat an eyelash.

I tried calling my neighbour Vladimir, cause he helps me around the garden and also helped to partly clear out the annex (the ten meter long wooden beams in the “pool” are now his garden shed), so he might know where the welding mask is. Alas, I couldn’t reach him.

ETA: I have since asked Vladimir and he has no idea where the welding mask is or that Dad even had a welding machine. “Dad was a shipbuilder”, I said, “And he had a welding certificate. Of course, he had his own welding machine.” I also asked Vladimir, if he wanted the welding machine, since Dad no longer needs it and I am never going to use it, because welding machines are not something you use without proper training, which I don’t have.

And of course, it was way too late to buy solar eclipse glasses, cause they were sold out everywhere. I briefly considered going to a DIY store and buying a welding mask. However, I have no idea how expensive welding masks are and I only need it for the eclipse – I don’t actually know how to weld. In the end, I decided to head out anyway and hope a friendly person would let me take a peek through their solar eclipse glasses.

For I couldn’t have watched the eclipse from my own home anyway. The eclipse was set to reach its maximum coverage at 20:08. Sunset is just before nine PM, so the sun would already be hanging very low in the western sky. So low that my view would be blocked by trees and houses.  So I had to go somewhere else to watch it.

The “Mountains” of the North German Lowlands

Heading to Wulfhooper Straße was my initial plan. It’s a quiet country road and passes through lots of fields. Except for the occasional farmhouse, the view is usually clear all the way to the horizon. Plus, you can park by the roadside without impeding traffic. And if I had the welding mask or solar eclipse glasses, that’s probably where I would have gone.

However, since I didn’t have any protective equipment, I needed to go where there would be other people watching. And so I decided to head to Hoher Berg (high mountain) in the village of Gessel-Leerßen near the town of Syke. The name “Hoher Berg” is a bit of a joke, since it’s a whopping 58.5 meters above sea level. However, it is the highest natural elevation in the area and offers a really nice view across the Weser glacial valley. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Bremen some twenty-five kilometers away.

For more about the Hoher Berg and its history as a US army radar and missile station, see this post from 2012 and this one from 2015. You can also visit the official website or read this article by Jan-Paul Koopmann from the leftwing newspaper taz, who not only relocates the Hoher Berg to Bremen but also complains that there isn’t enough documentation or memorial plaques that there were once nuclear missiles stationed there. I hate to disappoint Mr. Koopmann, but the fact that there were nuclear missiles stationed on Hoher Berg isn’t exactly a secret. Locals have known or at least suspected (cause we didn’t know for sure just what US army was doing on Hoher Berg until after the base closed in 1989) for a long time. The distinctive radar domes were visible from afar, everybody knew them and we also knew that this installation on Hoher Berg would make us a target. But then, Bremen was also a target and nobody expected to survive a nuclear war anyway. That said, the fact that the burned out first stage of the Nike-Hercules missiles once stationed there would might well have wiped the villages of Ristedt and Gessel-Leerßen off the map was new to me. However, if those missiles had ever been used, the Hoher Berg and the surrounding villages would be a nuclear crater some four minutes later anyway.

As for higher elevations in my very flat part of the North German lowlands, so there is also Bassumer Utkiek (Bassum Look-out), a former garbage deposit site turned nature preserve and adventure playground that reaches up to a whopping 88.7 meters above sea level. However, Bassumer Utkiek is further away and the view is less clear, because there are a still active garbage deposit site as well as trees in the way.

North of Bremen, you also have the Weyerberg in Worpswede, another relic of the last ice age, which lies 54.4 meters above sea level. However, Weyerberg is not only an hour’s drive away, the view would probably also be impeded by trees. It does have a really cool expressionist  WWI memorial on top of the “mountain”, though that’s currently undergoing renovations and not visible.

I should also mention the highest elevation in the city and state of Bremen, namely Metalhenge, an art installation on top of another former garbage deposit site. This one is 51 meters above sea level. Yes, I live in an extremely flat area. Metalhenge is cool, but it would also have taken me about an hour, maybe more depending on the traffic, to get there. And since Metalhenge is partly marketed as a place for astronomicaly observations, it also was overcrowded with eclipse watchers to the point that parking cars blocked the roads leading to garbage deposit site. Some people even tried to park on the adjacent Autobahn A27 or tried to reverse their cars on the Autobahn, which is just idiotic.

The Mystery of the Lost Cyclists

Of all these natural and unnatural elevations in my region, Hoher Berg is the closest, only about ten kilometers away. It’s also popular with the local astronomy community, because there is comparatively little light pollution here. So of course, there would be people on Hoher Berg whom I could ask if they would let me take a peek through their protective devices.

When I hopped in my car and drove to Hoher Berg, the eclipse had already started, though without protective glasses, you couldn’t tell. The sun was hanging fairly low in a mostly cloudless sky, glaringly bright.

As I drove along Wulfhooper Straße, I spotted cars or bikes parked by the side of the road and small groups of people gathered to watch the eclipse. I guess like me, these folks also realised that the wide open fields along Wulfhooper Straße would be a good spot to watch the eclipse. I also saw a hot air balloon hanging in the sky. Hot air balloons used to be a very common sight in summer in the 1990s and early 2000s, but high fuel prices drove many of the hot air balloon operators out of business.

Where Wulfhooper Straße meets the broader Ristedter Straße, I encountered a group of cyclists in full sports cycling get-up. Now cyclists aren’t unusual in this region, but whole groups of them cycling on the road and not on the bike lane in sports outfits is unusual. You only see that sort of thing during bicycle races or triathlons and then they normally close the roads to all other traffic. Nor was that group of cyclists the only group I saw. I passed two more groups of cyclists, also riding on the road rather than the bike path, also dressed in sports outfits. Did some participants of the Tour de France get lost and somehow ended up racing through the North German lowlands?

The solution to the mystery is more prosaic. There is a local cycling club, which hosts regular cycling meet-ups and rides on Sunday morning and Wednesday evenings, so that’s where the cyclists came from. And come to think of it, several weeks ago, while I was on my way home from Hamburg and had to drive through the countryside to avoid the everpresent traffic jam at the Weser Bridge on Autobahn A1, I also encountered a group of cyclists in the vicinity of Syke. Unfortunately, those cyclists were going in the same direction as me and since they were using the road, I had no chance of safely overtaking them, unlike yesterday’s cyclists who were going in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, rude and entitled cyclists are a massive problem in Germany and the government is enabling their behaviour, because cycling is considered good for the environment. In the Netherlands, where there are even more cyclists for cultural reasons, the problems are actually less severe, because there are more attempts to create separate and safe spaces for cars, cyclists and pedestrians.

Solar Eclipse on Hoher Berg

Eventually I came to the place where Ristedter Straße meets Leerßer Straße. If you turn right, you get to the farm where I used to buy pumpkins and then – when you drive a bit further – you get to Westermark Woods, which was always my family’s favourite hiking spot. If you turn left, you get to Hoher Berg.

As soon as I got to Leerßer Straße, I spotted cars parked along the side of the road. Now Gessel-Leerßen is a tiny village and I’ve never seen so many cars parked there. In fact, I don’t think there are as many people living in Gessel-Leerßen, as there were cars parked alongside the road. Apparently, a whole lot of other people apparently the same idea as me to watch the eclipse from Hoher Berg.

I drove past the line of parked cars, looking for a spot to leave my car. I actually found one, but then opted not to park there, because parking there would mean blocking the bike lane and that would be just rude, not to mention illegal. And I can’t complain about rude and entitled cyclists and then block the bike lane. So I drove onwards.

The road leading up to Hoher Berg was lined with cars and motorbikes on both sides. No chance of finding a spot there. So I drove onwards, determined to turn around where possible and find a spot in Gessel-Leerßen proper, perhaps at the war memorial or in front of the carpentry company which was closed by now or maybe in front of the pumpkin farm. Yes, it would mean more walking, but walking is healthy.

But then, just beyond the last houses Gessel-Leerßen, where there are just fields all the way to Barrien, the parked cars petered out. At this point, the bike lane is no longer directly next to the road, but separated from the main road by a strip of grass. Some cars parked on this strip of grass and I did the same. That way, I was neither blocking the road nor the bike lane. And indeed, two cyclists chanced to ride past on the bike lane as I got out of the car. I asked them if they could pass or if I was blocking them and they said, “Don’t worry. It’s fine. We can pass.”

Hoher Berg during the 2026 solar eclipse viewed from Leerßer Straße. Note the cars parked all along the road to Hoher Berg.

I snapped the photo above from where I parked my car on Leerßer Straße. You can see the glare of the sun as its hanging low in the western sky with no sign of the eclipse. However, over the actual Hoher Berg, there is a crescent shaped spot, which I suspect is some kind of reflection of the partially eclipsed sun. I didn’t notice this, when I took the picture, only when I uploaded it to my blog. But the phenomenon shows up on several of the photos I took.

Another look at Hoher Berg during the 2026 solar eclipse, viewed from Leerßer Straße. And yes, there is the reflection or whatever it is of the eclipsed sun again. On the right, you can also see the town sign of Gessel-Leerßen.

A look towards Hoher Berg during the 2026 solar eclipse. Note the cars lining the street. If you look closely, you can also see some of the outbuildings of the old military base and the observation tower.

Even from Leerßer Straße, I could see that the observation tower was full of people, silhouetted against the twilight sky. Some of them seemed to have telescopes. I guess those folks were astronomy geeks who had prepared and waited for this moment for weeks.

A closer look at the observation tower on Hoher Berg during the 2026 solar eclipse. Also note the wind turbine. Some of the first wind turbines in our region were set up on Hoher Berg more than thirty years ago. I shot a documentary about those wind turbines for the Bremer Umland public access channel in the 1990s.

Tiny Koala also came along to watch the 2026 solar eclipse on Hoher Berg, in preparation for the 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia.

Here is a look along the street leading to Hoher Berg with cars parked on both sides. And since I happened to have the Tiny Koala from the Brisbane in 2028 Worldcon bid in my handbag, I took a photo of Tiny Koala heading to Hoher Berg to watch the 2026 solar eclipse in preparation for the 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia.

Unfortunately, they don’t make solar eclipse glasses for Tiny Koalas, so this Tiny Koala turned away from the sun, because better safe than sorry. Also note that the weird reflection of the eclipsed sun can be seen over Hoher Berg again.

Tiny Koala watched the 2026 solar eclipse on Hoher Berg. Note the other eclipse viewers standing in the field.

Note that I did not gaze directly into the sun for more than a second or so. You also couldn’t really look at it any longer than that, because the light was so blindingly bright. Nor did I point the camera at the eclipse for longer than the second or so it took to snap the pictures, since I did not have a filter for the camera either and didn’t want to wreck my phone camera.

Along the street that led up to Hoher Berg, there were small clusters of people standing in the field and watching the eclipse. I passed a small group of several men and a woman. The guys were wearing band shirts and armbands from a local music festival. They seemed cool and they were also watching the eclipse through the dark glass inserts of a welding mask just I had planned to do. So I stopped and asked them if I could take a look, cause I couldn’t find my Dad’s welding mask. They let me take a look and told me that they tried to buy solar eclipse glasses, but they were sold out, but one of them had the idea to use welding glass. We also chatted about the 1999 eclipse that wasn’t visible in our region due to the weather being a spoil sport. “And then there was another one…” one of the guys said, “…early in the morning.” “I remember that one”, I replied, “It was very early in the morning, five AM or so at the height of summer. I watched it from our terrace through my Dad’s welding mask.”

The 2026 total solar eclipse viewed through welding glass.

I tried to take a photo of the eclipse proper through the guy’s welding glass, but it didn’t come out very well, as you can see.

By this point, the eclipse had reached the point of maximum coverage. Through the welding glass, you could see the sun reduced to a thin crescent. With the welding glass, you couldn’t make out anything – the sun was still glaringly bright. Though the temperature dropped notably and the light became positively strange and the shadows long. We all noticed this and commented on it and the woman with the group – probably the girlfriend or wife of one of the guys – started to shiver. I took a photo, though it doesn’t really capture what it looked like in person.

Strange light and long shadows at the point of maximum coverage of the 2026 solar eclipse.

I first read that the light and the shadow turn strange just before a solar eclipse reached totality (and note that we reached 84 percent of coverage) in Douglas Coupland’s famous generation defining book Generation X. I read the book in the early 1990s, shortly after it came out, because I’d heard that this was the book about my generation, only to find I had very little in common with a bunch of Californians that were more than a decade older than me. Douglas Coupland was born in 1961 and ironically isn’t even considered part of the generation whose name he coined. However, I vividly remember the desciption of one of the characters going to see a total solar eclipse, most likely the one on February 26, 1979. And indeed, it was Coupland’s description of that solar eclipse that always made me want to witness one. It only took me roughly thirty-five years to get there – sort of, since this eclipse wasn’t actually a total one.

Someone said that the next total solar eclipse in Germany will be in 2081, when most of us will probably be dead. I said, “Well, there’s one in two years, but that one will be in Australia.” Some jokes about, “Okay, we can fly there.” I said, “There’s an event happening in Australia a week after that eclipse that I’m planning to visit, so I might as well stay a week more and watch the eclipse, too.” “Maybe someone will sell you their glasses for cheap or give them to you”, one of the guys said.

In the end, I never actually got all the way to Hoher Berg. But then, the eclipse was actually easier to see from the street than from Hoher Berg itself. Because the trees planted on Hoher Berg after the US Army left have grown pretty tall by now and would have blocked the view, unless you got a spot on the observation tower. And I was happy to leave the tower to the serious astronomy geeks.

After half an hour or so, when the eclipse was already receding, though the sun was still steadily sinking towards the horizon, I bade good-bye to my eclipse buddies and thanked them again for letting me take a look through their welding glass. The I walked back to my car. I met an elderly couple – elegant, expensive but boring clothes – who’d parked their S-class Mercedes behind my car. We briefly talked about the eclipse and the once in a lifetime experience. Then I got into my car and drove off, the sun still partially eclipsed behind me.

I had put my shopping basket in the trunk before leaving, so I could buy some groceries on the way home. Initially I wanted to drive to the Famila supermarket in Syke, cause it’s the nicest supermarket in the area and they have small flatbreads I love.  Alas, Famila closes at eight PM, which is ridiculously early for a supermarket, and it was twenty past eight by now. There is an Edeka store in Barrien, but I don’t know that store at all, so I decided to just go to my local Rewe.

By the time, I’d finished my shopping and drove home, it was shortly before nine PM and the sun – no longer even partially eclipsed – was just setting, already an hour earlier than during the solstice about six weeks ago. The sunset looked nice and I considered stopping on Wulfhooper Straße to take a photo, but there was a car behind me, so stopping would have been awkward.

And that’s how I experienced the 2026 partial solar eclipse. I really hope that I will get to experience the 2028 total solar eclipse in Australia ahead of the 2028 Worldcon in Brisbane. Talking of which, site selection voting is still open, so if you’re a member of LACon (attending, virtual or WSFS only), head over there and vote in site selection, even if there isn’t actual race anymore, since Nuremberg bowed out to try again another year.

For those who are new here, what are the Dragon Awards? They are a popular vote SFF award handed out at Dragon Con, a large SFF media con in Atlanta, Georgia. They are in their tenth year now and have a chequered history, moving from participation trophy for puppies and Kindle Unlimited writers in the early years to to award honouring broadly popular SFF works in more recent years, which is what they were intended to be in the first place.

The 2026 Dragon Award finalists may be found here. And for my analyses of the past ten years of Dragon Awards, go here.  In other awards new, the finalists for the 2026 World Fantasy Awards have also been announced and may be found here.

The World Fantasy finalists look good, but I have never done detailed analyses of the World Fantasy Award finalists and I won’t start now, if only because these posts are a lot of work.

However, Camestros Felapton, Doris V. Sutherland and I have been covering the saga of the Dragon Awards since their inception and are seemingly cursed to analyse them for as long as they exist, so let’s delve into the individual categories:

Best Science Fiction Novel 

The finalists for the 2026 Dragon Award for best science fiction novel are a bunch of very popular novels by very popular writers, which is exactly what the Dragon Award was supposed to honour. We also have a few finalists that will make puppies cry in the mix, which is a bonus.

John Scalzi has been nominated in this category several times and won twice. This year, he is nominated for The Shattering Peace, the latest in his Old Man’s War series.  The series as a whole is also a Hugo finalist this year.

Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, writing as James S.A. Corey, also have multiple Dragon Award nominations and wins under their belts. This year, they are nominated for The Faith of Beasts, the second book in their Captive’s War series.

Ann Leckie was a Dragon Award finalist in its very first year. This year, she is nominated for Radiant Star. Coincidentally, this was one of my nominations.

I haven’t read Slow Gods by Claire North, but it got a lot of positive buzz, though this one strikes me more as a Clarke Award than a Dragon Award candidate.

I also haven’t read Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman. However, I know that Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series is extremely popular and a book from that series also won the Dragon Award in this category last year. I tried to read the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book, but I have to admit that Matt Dinniman’s books just don’t work for me. Maybe I will enjoy Operation Bounce House more, since it’s a standalone not connected to the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and doesn’t have the LitRPG trappings that annoyed me so much. However, Matt Dinniman is exactly the sort of author the Dragon Awards are for, someone who has a huge fanbase, but whose work isn’t necessarily suited to the other genre awards. Though the reissue of Dungeon Crawler Carl (the book was originally self-published) actually made the Clarke Award ballot this year to the surprise and bafflement of pretty much everybody, since it’s very much not a Clarke Award book.

I haven’t read God’s Junk Drawer by Peter Clines and to me, this is the most unexpected finalist in this category, though upon second thought, it isn’t that unexpected, because Peter Clines’ Ex-Heroes series and his tie-in work are the sort of thing that appeal to Dragon Award voter.  Coincidentally, I just realised that I had Peter Clines mixed up with Peter James, the distinguished British crime fiction writer who also writes SFF and horror on occasion.

Diversity count: 2 women, 5 men (James S.A. Corey is two people), 1 international writer, 1 writer of colour

Best Fantasy Novel 

There are a few more surprises in this category, but once again we have a lot of broadly popular writers here.

Martha Wells is not only a great writer, but also hugely popular these days for her Murderbot Diaries series. This year, she is nominated for the Dragon Award for her novel Queen Demon. The previous novel in the series Witch King won in this category in 2023. I think I nominated this novel, but I’m not one hundred percent sure.

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books are exactly the sort of series the Dragon Awards were made for, hugely popular and good, but not really that suitable for the Hugos and Nebulas, because the individual books don’t stand alone all that well. Of course, the Hugos now have a Best Series category, but Hugo voters don’t seem to like The Dresden Files very much. However, Jim Butcher has been a Dragon Award finalist several times and is also a regular at Dragon Con. This year, he is nominated for Twelve Months, the latest Harry Dresden novel

Sherrilyn Kenyon is both a somewhat unexpected Dragon Awards finalist as well as a exactly the sort of writer the Dragons were made for. Just like Jim Butcher, Sherrilyn Kenyon came up during the urban fantasy and paranormal romance boom of the early 2000s. Her Dark Hunters series was hugely popular at the time and probably outsold most Hugo finalists of the era. However, the SFF community of the time studiously ignored the urban fantasy and paranormal romance writers, mostly women, even though they were selling millions.

At the time, now twenty years ago, I burned out badly on science fiction after finishing my MA thesis and found refuge in the urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels of the era. As a result, I read a lot of them, including several books by Sherrilyn Kenyon. However, as time went on, the urban fantasy and paranorma romance boom faded and I moved on to other subgenres. As a result, I haven’t really thought about Sherrilyn Kenyon in years except as someone I used to read and enjoy twenty years ago. So I was surprised to see her on the Dragon Ballot with Hell to Pay, though in retrospect Sherrilyn Kenyon is exactly the sort of writer the Dragons are for, very popular but mostly ignored by other genre awards. Hell to Pay is the start of a new series about the son of the devil who is exiled to Earth, where he solves crimes, which sounds right up my alley actually. So congrats to the Dragon Awards for actually making me find a book I might enjoy.

Marie Lu is a very popular author mainly of YA fantasy. She is nominated for Red City, an (adult) urban fantasy novel set in an alternate Los Angeles. I haven’t read the book yet, but it did get quite a bit of buzz. It also sounds like something I might enjoy.

Former puppy-in-chief Larry Correia has several Dragon Award nominations and wins under his belt, all of them in the fantasy category. He also has a big fanbase and is apparently a Dragon Con regular, so I’m not surprised to see him on the Dragon Ballot again. His nominated novel Academy of Outcasts is the first in a new series and is billed as a Dungeons & Dragons inspired fantasy about a guy who desperately wants to go to magic school. Definitely not a book for me, but clearly for lots of other people.

The Lost Reliquary by Lyndsay Ely is the “What the hell is this?” finalist in this category, since I don’t recall ever having heard of the author or her novel before. Some googling revealed that Lyndsay Ely has written a weird west novel as well as some media tie-ins. The Lost Reliquary is the first in a dark fantasy series and has been compared to Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir and Godkiller by Hannah Kaner, which is high praise indeed.

The Best Fantasy Novel category at the Dragon Awards is usually strongly dominated by epic fantasy. But interestingly, this year’s Dragon Awards finalists in the Best Fantasy category are evenly split between epic and urban fantasy. So does this mean that urban fantasy is about to make a comeback?

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

Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel

This is a category where I haven’t read a single finalist and am not familiar with several of them, but then I’m very much not the target audience for YA and middle grade books.

Delilah S. Dawson is one author in this category I have heard of. She is nominated for Ride or Die, a middle grade horror novel about some kids hanging out in a scary amusement park by night.

I have also heard of The Executioners Three by Susan Dennard, largely because it has such a great title. Though the books isn’t about three executioners, but it’s a 1990s set teen horror mystery about spooky going-ons in a small town. I do sense a pattern for somewhat retro spooky small town teen stories. Might be the influence of Stranger Things making itself felt.

Sky on Fire by E.K. Johnston is billed as a fast-paced queer space opera that combines Arthurian myth and the history of North Atlantic fisheries, which sounds really cool actually.

Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews is billed as a gorgeously gothic queer YA horror novel, which sounds really cool as well.

Make Me a Monster by Kalynn Bayron is billed as a horror romance which also offers a twist on Frankenstein and sounds something that might be fun.

I have never heard of Queen of Faces by Petra Lord, but apparently it was a number 1 New York Times bestseller. It’s about a girl stuck in a boy’s body who goes to magic school, for of course she does, and has to become an assassin. Not for me, but I can see how it would appeal to others.

All in all, this is an interesting range of very different novels. It’s also notable that there are no less than three LGBTQ novels nominated in this category.

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

Best Alternate History Novel 

This category is a holdover from the early days of the Dragon Awards when there were lots of separate categories for every subgenre under the sun, unless it was urban fantasy or paranormal romance, which had to compete with epic fantasy in the Best Fantasy category.

As for why Best Alternate History survived, while the likes of Best Military Science Fiction or Best Postapocalyptic Novel rode off into the sunset years ago, I suspect it’s out of deference for the late Eric Flint, who was instrumental in getting the Dragon Awards off the ground and who made his name with alternate history.

Harry Turtledove is a frequent finalist and winner in this category. This year, he is nominated for Powerless. It’s a story about a person attempting to resist in a US that’s a Communist dictatorship.

S.M. Stirling is another frequent finalist in this category. This year, he is nominated for The Winds of Fate.

John Birmingham is an author I mainly associate with his space opera series The Cruel Stars, though he apparently also writes alternate history. He is nominated for World War 3.2, which does what it says on the tin and is about the Cold War turning hot.

No Man’s Land by Richard K. Morgan is apparently a novel about a WWI veteran killing fae and rescuing kidnapped children in an alternate Britain. This one seems to be borderline alternate history, but I guess it fits in this category.

The Unnecessary War by Brian C. Thompson is actually alternate history, where WWII begins – completely unnecessarily – almost a year early. I’ve never heard of author nor book before, but Thompson apparently specialises in WWII alternate history, inspired by his WWII veteran great-uncle. Very much not for me, but clearly for someone.

A Resistance of Witches by Morgan Ryan is another book I’ve never heard of. It’s a WWII with magic story about Nazi witches infiltrating a magic school. Another one that’s not for me, because I dislike both WWII settings and magic schools and would be happy never to have to read about either again.

Also, with millennia of history to choose from, why are five of six nominated novels set in the the twentieth century? Only the S.K. Stirling book is set in Roman times, everything else is WWI, WWII or Cold War. It’s just so boring.

Diversity count: 1 woman, 5 men, 1 international author, 3 indie/small press books

Best Horror Novel 

Unlike best alternate history, which mostly consists of books that aren’t for me, this category actually looks really good. I also am familiar with all of the authors and books.

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas are two great novels and I’m thrilled to see them on the ballot. These nominations also prove that 2026 is a great year for Mexican set horror by woman writers.

For some reason, I had Rachel Harrison mixed up with Kim Harrison, author of the Rachel Morgan urban fantasy series. However, Rachel Harrison is a horror writer and has been a Stoker Award finalist. Her nominated novel Play Nice is a haunted house story.

It Was Her House First by Cherie Priest is another haunted house novel. Cherie Priest has multiple Hugo, Nebula, Stoker and Locus Awards nominations under her belt and needs no introduction.

I mainly know Wendy N. Wagner as the editor of Nightmare Magazine, but she’s also a horror writer and her nominated novel Girl in the Creek is also a Stoker finalist this year.

Joe Hill needs no introduction either. He’s the oldest son of Stephen and Tabitha King and an excellent horror writer in his own right. He is nominated for his most recent novel King Sorrow.

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

Best Illustrative Book Cover

This is a newish category in the Dragon Awards and one that is also kind of underwhelming. Not that the nominated covers are bad, but they’re often quite average and also kind of old-fashioned. A lot of the novels whose covers are nominated in this category are also rather obscure, which suggests that the authors or artists have been urging their fans to nominate them, which is perfectly acceptable in the Dragon Awards.

Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher, cover by the author, and Pretenders to the Throne of God by Adrian Tchaikovsky, cover by Joe Wilson, are the best of the bunch.

The Sapphire Heart by the mother and daughters writing team of Sandra Mead Miller, Abigail Bender and Victoria Hungria, does have a very nice cover by Jeff Brown, but it’s also a fairly obscure indie fantasy novel, so I wonder how nominators even found this one.

I enjoy Travis Baldree’s cozy fantasy novel a whole lot, but the US cover for Brigands & Breadknives by Carson Lowmiller doesn’t do a whole lot for me. It looks very old-fashioned, like a fantasy cover from the 1980s. But maybe that’s the appeal.

The Ishtar Deceptation by James L. Cambias, cover by Dominic Harman, is a Baen book. By Baen standards, it’s fine, not overly eye-searing or “What the fuck even is this?”, but it’s also very generic. However, Baen actively campaigns for the Dragon Awards.

I have to admit I had never heard of The Second Death of Locke by V.L. Bovalino, cover by Anna Moshak, before and assumed it was an obscure indie fantasy, but it’s apparently a very popular book that passed me by for some reason. And the cover art itself is very nice, but the author’s name is awkwardly placed and the font used for the author’s name is bad, which initially made me assume this was an indie cover.

Diversity count: 2 women, 4 men. I didn’t check race or nationality, because two of the artists have extremely common names.

Best Comic Book/Graphic Novel

With one exception, this category is full of popular mainstream superhero comics.

DC is represented by Absolute Batman, Absolute Superman and Absolute Wonder Woman, the latter of which is also a Hugo finalist. Marvel is represented by Daredevil and X-Men: Elsewhen, which is the first time in ages I’ve seen an X-Men book nominated for anything. But then, this one is by John Byrne, who did the art for the most famous X-Men story of all time, the Dark Phoenix Saga.

Talking of which, since Marvel is now bringing the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and have introduced a new Jean Grey, I wonder whether they will get the Dark Phoenix Saga right on screen on the third try. And considering the previous attempts to do the Dark Phoenix Saga on screen both failed, because Jean’s turn to the dark side just wasn’t given the space the story needed to develop, I suspect the Marvel Cinematic Universe might do a better job, simply because they can let the story develop over several movies. And indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dark Phoenix is their next big saga after Dooomsday and Secret Wars. Also, can we get [actress redacted] in the Black Queen’s black corset, something that neither Famke Jansen nor Sophie Turner ever got to wear. Cause honestly, if Diana Rigg could wear it in the 1960s, why can’t an actress wear it today? I also hope we will see Dark Phoenix roasting the Asparagus People, another thing we never saw on screen that I’ve been waiting to see for more than thirty years now.

Back to the Dragons. The one finalist in this category that’s not a mainstream superhero comic is Something is Killing the Children, a horror comic by James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera. I haven’t read this one, but it sounds interesting.

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

Best SFF TV Series

As usual with the Dragons, this ballot is basically a list of SFF TV series that came out during the nomination period with little to no surprises.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, The Boys, Alien Earth, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Pluribus and Widow’s Bay are all popular and well received series and I’m not surprised to see them here. Fallout is a bit of a surprise, because the second season doesn’t seem to have been nearly as popular as the first.

Season 3 of Foundation is also a surprise, because seasons 1 and 2 were not nominated for a Dragon. And while season 3 started off well, it completely – and I mean totally and utterly – fumbled the Mule storyline and also character assassinated one of the best characters in the entire series. Oh, and it ruined potential future seasons, too, because you can’t make a major change without ripple effects down the line. Honestly, I’m almost angry I paid for a month of Apple TV to watch this show.

As for what’s missing, I’m surprised Wonder Man didn’t make the ballot, since it was the best Marvel TV show in ages. But perhaps it’s a little too obscure for Dragon Award nominators.

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

Best SFF Movie

Once again, this is mostly a list of popular SFF movies with some surprise and a couple of notable omissions.

Starting with the omissions, where the fuck is Masters of the Universe? It’s not only my favourite SFF film of 2026, but it’s also the sort of movie that would seem perfect for the Dragons. And it was definitely eligible, though maybe the issue is that it came out on streaming after the nomination deadline and more people seem to have watched it on streaming than in theaters.

Also conspicuous by its absence is Supergirl, which was also definitely eligible, though it came out close to the nomination deadline. It was also a good film, though the usual jerks hated it. Though at least her cousin made the ballot, because James Gunn’s take on Superman is a Dragon Award finalist. Though Superman wasn’t really on my radar, because it came out a year ago shortly after the nomination deadline for the 2025 Dragon Awards.

Guillermo del Toro’s take on Frankenstein is another 2026 Dragon Award finalist (and Hugo finalist) that wasn’t on my radar. It’s actually a good movie, but for some reason I keep forgetting that it exists. I have no idea why.

Predator: Badlands is another movie whose existence I had completely forgotten. I also find that even Dan Trachtenberg makes pretty good Predator movies, I resent him for rejecting a Hugo nomination for Prey – the first time anybody has ever refused a Hugo nomination in Best Dramatic Presentation. As someone who nominated Prey – a fucking Predator movie of all things – that one stung, since it made no sense. However, Trachtenberg is apparently happy to accept a Dragon nomination (and the Dragons supposedly do inform finalists to give them the possibility to withdraw), so screw him.

I’m a bit surprised that Disclosure Day made the Dragon Awards ballot. Yes, it’s a Steven Spielberg movie about aliens, but it also got middling reviews, didn’t do well at the box office and seemed to sink without a trace. Honestly, it seems to me as if Disclosure Day came out thirty years too late. At the height of the X-Files mania of the 1990s, this film would have done much better.

Toy Story 5 is another surprising finalist for me, because I just don’t understand the popularity of the Toy Story movies and have no idea why we needed five of them. Yes, the original Toy Story was the first ever full length CGI animated movie and a technical feat. Yet I never cared about the movie itself. I was way out of the target audience, when it came out, and to me Toy Story is mainly the movie during which my poor cousin, who worked long hours as a chef, fell asleep in the theater, when he tried to do right by his young son and took him to see the film (and that right there is the reason kiddie films keep doing well, because guilt-ridden parents keep taking their kids to see them). At the time, I bought a Woody action figure for my cousin’s son, only to be told that he’d rather have Buzz Lightyear (whom I didn’t buy, because I found him incredibly ugly).  And now, it’s thirty-one years later. The kid for whom I bought the Woody figure is thirty-nine, his little brother is thirty, my cousin has been dead for years (he didn’t even make it to fifty, succumbing to addiction and hereditary heart disease), but there’s still a fucking Toy Story movie in theaters and the same stupid Woody action figure I bought thirty-one years ago is still in stores, ditto for the same ugly Buzz Lightyear.

But that personal story isn’t the only thing that bugs me about the Toy Story movies. The usual jerks complained that supposedly no one under forty even knew what Masters of the Universe was, let alone played with the toys. However, I never knew anybody who played with cowboy dolls or Mr. Potato Head or astronaut figures or who had a Little Bo Peep lamp. That’s stuff from the 1950s and 1960s, stuff that the much disliked boomers played with (and American baby boomers at that). It’s nothing that my generation has any connection to nor the millennials who were taken to see the original movie by their weary parents. That’s part of the reason my cousin fell asleep, because nothing on screen meant anything to him. So Masters of the Universe is supposedly bad and underperformed at the box office because it’s nostalgia for the kids of the 1980s, but the boomer nostalgia of Toy Story is somehow deep and meaningful and makes a shit ton of money? I’m sorry, but that makes no sense.

But the Toy Story movies also irk me on another level. All five of the blasted things basically have the same pot: Children are fickle and forget all about their beloved toys, though the toys will continue to love them forever and have their little hearts broken as they are discarded and move from owner to owner, if they’re lucky (and end up in a landfill or waste incinerator, if not). And I’m sorry, but this was never my experience. I never stopped loving toys and I still have a lot of my childhood toys. Yes, I lost a few of them along the way, because they were damaged or I was badgered into giving them away to some other kid (the above mentioned cousin, his twin brother and his kids got several of them, more the pity), but I still have a lot of them and have also replaced some toys that were lost or that I wanted and never had. And yes, to me my toys were alive and sentient, but not in the way that Toy Story characters are. To me, they weren’t toys that happen to be sentient, but living, feeling breathing beings that just happen to look like toys, physical avatars for my imaginary friends.

In the real world, Woody, Jessie, Buzz and the rest of the Toy Story gang wouldn’t be the playthings of a first-grader. They would be in someone’s collection or for sale in a collectibles store like the delightful Fright Zone shop in Masters of the Universe (which has some Major Matt Mason 1960s space toys that probably inspired Buzz Lightyear) or they would be eliciting Ohs and Ahs at Toyplosion.  Because you don’t give collectible vintage toys to a young kid.

Back to the Dragons: I enjoyed The Mandalorian and Grogu a lot and thought it was a very sweet film, so I’m glad to see it on the Dragon ballot, especially since it supposedly underperformed at the box office, even though it grossed twice its production budget, which isn’t a flop by my standards, but apparently by the standards of the box office analysts that suck all joy out of movies.

I did not like Andy Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary very much (nor any other of Andy Weir’s novels, since I just don’t care for his work), so I was surprised how much I enjoyed the film adaptation. I guess it’s because Ryan Gosling is just so damn likeable and a very good actor, too.

Finally, we have The Sheep Detectives, a movie that was just delightful, though it did take some liberties with the source material, including changing whodunnit, probably because the ending of Leonie Swan’s novel would be a hardsell for a Hollywood film. And since Masters of the Universe is not on the ballot, this is the finalist I will be voting for.

Also conspicuous by their absence, though definitely eligible, are Obsession and Backrooms, the two indie horror films by extremely young directors that only two months ago were supposed to be the future of cinema. I guess Dragon Award nominators no more care for those films than I do.

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

Best Digital Game

Once again, I can’t say much about this category, because I’m not a gamer. However, I have heard of all but one of the finalists, which suggests that they must be popular.

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

Best Tabletop Game

As above, I can’t really say much about this category, since I don’t really play tabletop games either. That said, this category tends to get stale with the same games nominated again and again via their latest expansions. I think we’ve seen Magic the Gathering on the ballot every year since there have been Dragon Awards (and they’ve won several times). Warhammer 40000 and Forgotten Realms tend to show up over and over again as well. The remaining three finalists are new, at least to me.

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

***

All in all, this is a pretty good ballot with none of the weirdness (weird categories, miscategorised finalists, dead authors) that characterised the early years of the Dragons. Ten years in, the Dragon Awards finally do what they were supposed to do in the first place, namely honour SFF works with big fanbases that tend to be overlooked by other genre awards.

That said, the Dragons still aren’t great with regard to transparency. Finalist announcements happen randomly and we still don’t know how many nominations and votes have even been cast, let alone do we have detailed nomination and voting data.

But considering how the Dragons started out, they’ve certainly come a long way.

My good pal Camestros Felapton also shares his thoughts on the 2026 Dragon Awards ballot and there is some discussion going on in the comments as well.

I haven’t found any other reactions to the Dragon Award ballot so far, but I will add them, as they show up.

So do you want to know what I think of the new Masters of the Universe toys revealed at San Diego Comic Con – illustrated with photos of my toys from my own collection which were not revealed at San Diego Comic Con, at least not this year? If yes, then you’re in luck. And if no – well, then I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to skip this post.

Here’s a nice round-up of all the newly revealed toys at Planet Eternia. There’s also a video by Pixel Dan of the Mattel booth on preview night (i.e. Wednesday) as well as a video walk-through of the Mattel booth with closer looks at the various figures here.

Finally, here is a video of the Mattel Masters of the Universe design panel, where even more upcoming toys were revealed and several members of the Mattel design team talked about the plans for 2027. I’ve heard some folks complain that the Mattel panel felt badly prepared and to be honest, it was something of a mess. There was no information when and where many of the toys shown off would be available, which is actually crucial, since you’d assume Mattel wants us to buy them. At one point, the moderator even got two characters mixed up, which honestly shouldn’t happen. I guess the lesson here is that people who are great at designing toys aren’t necessarily good at presenting them to a live audience (and a lot of people find speaking in public difficult) and that Mattel needs to put someone on that panel who is good at presenting and selling the figures to a live audience.

In fact, at the German Masters of the Universe podcast Das He-Manische Quartett, one person said that the messy 2026 San Diego Comic Con panel made them wish for the days of the Classics toyline, when then-brand manager Scott Neitlich used to do these presentations at San Diego Comic Con. Considering what a controversial figure Neitlich is in Masters of the Universe fandom, people wanting him back is really something. And just in case you’re wondering what Scott Neitlich is up to these days, he’s gloating that the movie underperformed, complains about the meagre Masters of the Universe toy selection at his local Target and is predicting the imminent end of all Masters of the Universe toylines… again. It’s really sad, considering that he actually did good work with the Classics line.

There are currently several different lines of Masters of the Universe toys available, so let’s go through them one by one, starting with…

Masters of the Universe Core

The Core line was introduced earlier this year as an inexpensive line of movie figures and vehicles aimed mainly at kids. I was initially going to skip the Core line altogether, but then I caved in and thought, “Okay, I’ll only get He-Man and Teela.” And then I bought Skeletor and two Skel- Knights, so He-Man and Teela have someone to fight. And then I got Beast-Man, cause he looked really good, and Roboto, so the family would be complete. And if I had them, I might as well get Mekaneck, too. And now I’ve got pretty much all of them, cause they’re cheap – 12.99 EUR for a standard figure and 17.99 for a deluxe figure – and actually very nice figures. I have a Roton and Battle Cat, too, though I waited until the price dropped for those.

At San Diego Comic Con, the Core figures were set up in a nice diorama with the Battle for Eternia playset (one half is a movie Castle Grayskull, the other half is Snake Mountain) from the Core line. It looked very nice and quite similar to how I plan to eventually display my Core figures (and yes, I’ll get the playset, once the price drops). However, it was notable that there were no new Core figures on display. We did see a Core Ram-Man and Tri-Klops, both of whom aren’t yet available, in the display, but those have been announced a while back and we have seen pictures of them.

At the Mattel Masters of the Universe toy panel, we did get another reveal for the Core toyline, namely a four-pack including Adam and Teela in their outfits from the final scene of the movie as well as Roboto with the transparant chest as she looked at the end of the movie as well as Man-at-Arms. So in short, we have the core family together. Adam and Teela in their final looks have been much requested by fans, including me. Also note that this is the only movie Prince Adam figure in any toyline except for a single Funko Pop. However, there already is a Roboto figure in the Core line, though she looks more how Roboto was depicted during the bulk of the movie, whereas the Roboto figure in the four-pack looks like she did in the final scene of the film, after Duncan rebuilds her with the transparent chest and red and blue legs. The Man-at-Arms, meanwhile, seems to be the same figure we already got twice in the Core line, once as a single-carded figure and once in another four-pack with He-Man, Skeletor and Goat-Man. His armour is supposedly a bit shinier, but otherwise it’s the same figure. Now Man-at-Arms is one of my favourite characters, but I don’t need two nigh identical figures of him, even if one has shinier armour than the other. They really could have included a different character here (maybe Dian or Fisto, neither of whom have figures in the Core line so far) or at least a different version, e.g. Duncan in his down and out look.

That’s it for the Core line, though I do hope that Mattel will make more figures in this line, since they’re inexpensive and a lot of fun. At the very least, they should complete the movie cast in this line.

Which brings me to…

Masters of the Universe Origins

The Origins line kicked off the Masters of the Universe revival of the 2020s and is still very much the bread and butter of Masters of the Universe. The original appeal of Origins was similar to that of the Core line, because the figures were initially very inexpensive, 15.99 EUR for a regular figure. Plus, the figures were deliberately modelled after those of the 1980s, i.e. in the 5.5 inch scale with the overly muscled bodies and the squat pose. They basically looked like the figures you had as a kid, though they have better articulation and a modular body system, which allows for easy customization.

That said, the Origins line hasn’t been getting a whole lot of love in recent years and many collectors feel that Mattel is stretching out Origins, by increasingly mixing in repaints and new characters with the characters from the vintage 1980s toyline that many collectors wanted.

In 2023 with several characters from the vintage Masters of the Universe line still go, Mattel announced that they would sell the remaining vintage characters only via Mattel Creations and that the retail Origins line would pivot towards a Filmation inspired line called the Cartoon Collection. They released a fair amount of Filmation inspired designs, including even a couple of She-Ra characters, in 2024 and 2025, before pivoting again, this time to the characters in their looks from the 200X cartoon. The 200X Origins figures were nice representations of the way the characters looked in the 2002 cartoon – unlike the actual 200X figures – but the prices continued to climb upwards, while the figures were notably cheaper with fewer accessories and no more mini-comics.

In parallel with the various cartoon lines, we also got weird crossover lines like Turtles of Grayskull, Masters of the Universe x Thundercats and Masters of the Universe x Transformers. Regarding those crossovers, there were some figures from the relaunched Masters of the WWE wrestling crossover on display at the Mattel booth at San Diego Comic Con. I have also seen those figures for sale at Smyths Toys here in Germany, though I have zero interest in them. I’m not a huge wrestling fan and have never felt the slightest desire to own any wrestlers in action figure form.

On Mattel Creations, Mattel also released characters from the Powers of Grayskull line that was planned in the 1980s, but never released. We also got a trickle of newly designed characters, mostly the brainchildren of amazing artist Axel Gimenez. There’s also the Sketchbook Collection, which is based on vintage concept art. I like the Powers of Grayskull figures, the Sketchbook figures and the Axel Gimenez designs, but a lot of collectors are vintage purists and only want the characters they had as a kid.

In 2026, Mattel also started releasing movie figures in the Origins style and scale, which does make a lot sense, since many people who have an existing Origins collection will want to integrate the movie figures into that collection. However, the prices for the Movie Origins figures have gone up even further to 25.99 EUR for a basic figure and 29.99 EUR for a deluxe figure. That’s a ten Euro price increase in five years.

In short, there were a lot of Origins or Origins scale figures released, but Mattel took their sweet time getting to the last few figures of the vintage toyline that many collectors wanted. There are now seven figures remaining from the vintage line that still haven’t been remade plus the two giant figures Tytus and Megator. The fact that they kept relaunching Origins first as a Filmation and then as a 200X line and released the main characters over and over again, but never actually completed any of these lines, so you were always missing key characters, didn’t help either. And yes, I understand that He-Man and Skeletor sell better than Rotar and Twistoid (and I can live without Rotar and Twistoid), but I do want some other characters, too.

So I guess everybody expected that the retail Origins line would pivot again, but towards what? Some people were expecting a pivot towards the New Adventures of He-Man, which would have been great. but was never going to happen, because New Adventures is probably the least popular part of the Masters of the Universe franchise. A lot of the New Adventures designs are actually very cool, particularly those of the villains, and I do think a New Adventures reboot could work, because there is a lot of potential there. But yeah, it’s not going to happen, at least not in a retail line. Maybe at Mattel Creations.

I guess many of us expected more Movie Origins, because it is an easy way to release the main characters again with updated designs. But while there were Movie Origins figures on display at San Diego Comic Con, none of them were actually new. They were all characters we’d seen before. They did show off an Origins Movie Teela and Skeletor at the Mattel panel, but again we already knew these were coming, though I don’t think we’ve seen them before.

However, I think nobody expected what the Origins line is really pivoting to, namely they’re just doing vintage style Origins again. Yes, they’re basically starting Origins all over again. I suspect the reason is that they want to appeal to lapsed fans who came back to Masters of the Universe via the movie and who want figures that look like the ones they had as kids. And the nostalgia factor has always been the main appeal of Origins. There’s only one problem. There are also a lot of collectors who already have all of these figures.

When I first saw a photo of that display case with the Origins figures, I thought they had just put regular Origins figures that came out a couple of years ago in that case for reasons unknown. But no, that’s a brand-new Origins relaunch line, which will do all of the main characters yet again, looking very much like the figures you already have. Yes, there are some slight differences, e.g. Faker has magenta armour now like he wears on the vintage cross-sell image, Zodac’s loincloth is very pale grey now, Stratos is a lot more pale as well, Beast-Man has a nicer paintjob, He-Man now has the H-logo rather than the iron cross on his harness, because Mattel has been trying to make the H-logo happen for more than forty years now (the H-logo can be trademarked, while the iron cross can’t be, since it’s a public domain symbol. Plus, the German army has first dibs on it, since it’s their symbol), Battle Armour He-Man has a wider drum in his chest and Beast-Man has a different whip. There also are some new versions of familiar characters such as a Faker Teela, i.e. an easy repaint, and a Battle Armour Man-at-Arms, which is such an obvious concept I’m surprised that they didn’t already do it years ago.

At the Mattel panel, they said that the idea was to relaunch Origins with figures based more closely on the vintage cardback and cross-sell art, which often did not match how the actual figures looked, i.e. Faker’s armour was magenta rather than orange, Mer-Man had a completely different head and Man-e-Faces body/suit (it has never been confirmed whether that’s his skin or a suit) looked paler and salmon rather than orange. Come to think of it, I wonder if the colour differences on the cardback art are simply due to fading, since a lot of characters look paler, and print issues. But while many fans have long wanted those vintage cardback versions of the figures, we already got a cardback Mer-Man and a paler Man-e-Faces in Origins for those who want them.

But regardless of what Mattel says, mostly the new Origins are the same figures I already bought years ago, only with new packaging and slight tweaks. But since I’m not an in-box collector, there really is no reason to get most of those figures. And Mattel of course knows this, so they came up with a gimmick to make you buy them. Namely, they included a build-a-figure part. Build-a-figure is a concept that (I think) Hasbro came up with for Marvel Legends, though many other companies have copied the idea. Basically, every figure in a wave includes an extra body part, which can be put together to create an additional, often oversized figure. It’s an easy way to persuade you to buy the entire wave to get the builder figure.

There were two Origins build-a-figures shown off at San Diego Comic Con. The first is a Shadow Beast, a type of Eternian monster that was introduced in the Filmation cartoon and has since appeared in many iterations of Masters of the Universe. They’re aggressive and not very intelligent and often used as muscle by Beast-Man, Count Marzo or Scare-Glow, depending on the version of the story. Shadow Beasts are cool monsters and actually make a good builder figure, since they are larger than the normal characters. Though Shadow Beasts traditionally travel in packs and making them a builder figure makes it difficult to build an army of Shadow Beasts without buying multiple figures. What is more, Mattel already released a great Shadow Beast in the Classics line. And considering the price of a new Origins figure, the Origins build-a-figure Shadow Beast will probably cost as much, if not more, than the Classics version, which is a lot bigger and more detailed.  You can see my Classics Shadow Beast below. And come to think of it, I kind of want a second one. I should probably keep an eye out, if one pops up for a decent price.

The Masters of the Universe Classics Shadow Beast looks very menacing.

The second Origins build-a-figure is even more interesting, because it’s the grren Masks of Power demon. So who are the Masks of Power demons? Masks of Power was a vintage Masters of the Universe mini-comic from 1983 with art by Alfredo Alcala. You can see a dramatised reading of the story here.

Masks of Power has always been one of the most popular mini-comics, because it is a good story and the art is gorgeous. Plus, the demons are a genuine threat that force the Heroic and Evil Warriors to work together to defeat them. The comic was particularly popular in Germany, because not all of the vintage mini-comics were translated into German. The first four mini-comics were only released in very limited quantities and the entire second wave of mini-comics was never released here at all. However, the third wave of mini-comics, including Masks of Power, was released in Germany, so lots of German fans are familiar with them.

As a result, German fans are also very vocal about requesting characters from that third wave of mini-comics as action figures. The fact that Geldor, a villain from the third wave mini-comic The Secret Liquid of Life, received not only one, but two action figures over the years is largely due to the fact that a German fan really liked the character and rallied the troops, so to say.

The two Masks of Power demons are also much requested action figures and once again, it seems that German fans are particularly vocal in requesting them. I think they were supposed to come out in the Classics line at some point, but then plans changed and they were never released. So on the one hand, it’s great that at least one of those highly demanded demons is finally coming out in Origins (and the second one is probably going to come out eventually as well), but it sucks that fans have to buy several figures they probably already have to get it.

I didn’t have the Masks of Power mini-comic as a kid and I was never one of those fans who desperately wanted the two demons as action figures. Of course, I would have bought them, if Mattel chose to make them, but there are several other characters I’d rather have. And frankly, I don’t find the Masks of Power demon builder figure particularly good. At least not good enough to buy a bunch of figures I don’t really need just to get him.

If you look at the original Alfredo Alcala artwork, the demons don’t wear loinclothes or bracers. The green demon has spikes down his back. The demons are also the same size as He-Man and Fisto, they’re not oversized. As for why the build-a-demon has He-Man’s Power Sword, that’s actually the Sword of the Ancients, the mythical artefact the demons are seeking for in the comic. Alfredo Alcala deliberately modelled the Sword of the Ancients after the Power Sword, so kids could play the story of the comic with their action figures. Never mind that two of the main characters, the demons, never had any figures in the vintage or any other toyline.

And indeed, the German fan podcast Das He-Manische Quartett, who have been lobbying for the Masks of Power demons to be released for years, are not at all happy about the build-a-figures in general and the choice of the Shadow Beast, i.e. an army builder, and the much demanded Masks of Power demon in particular.

German fan and customiser Masterölli is also not at all happy with the Origins relaunch and particularly including a Shadow Beast and a Masks of Power demon as a build-a-figure either. Coincidentally, he also says that the Classics Shadow Beast is so good that the Origins version can’t really compare. Furthermore, he says that there really is no need for an Origins relaunch, because pretty much every figure is easy to get these days, even those that were initially rare, because lots of people are selling off their collections, so the secondary market is flooded. Which is true, of course, except that a) Mattel isn’t making any money of the secondary market and b) someone who came back to collecting via the movie may not even be aware of the secondary market, but will be aware of figures sold at retail.

At the Mattel panel, they also showed off two more figures from the vintage line finally coming to Origins, namely Two-Bad, who’s probably the last heavy hitter left. Mattel did release Two-Bad as he appeared in the Filmation cartoon in the Cartoon Collection, but they never did a regular Two-Bad. I have honestly no idea why it took them so long to get to Two-Bad, since he’s a very popular character. Quite possibly it’s because he’s expensive to make, since there’s almost no parts reuse possible. That said, if they could make a Filmation Two-Bad, who was a great figure and even could be divided into Tuvar and Baddrah, the two characters who were magically combined to make Two-Bad (even though the Tuvar/Baddrah story wasn’t even from the Filmation cartoon, but only showed up in 200X), they could have made a regular Two-Bad as well.

The other vintage character announced was Laser Light Skeletor, one of the rarest and most obscure of vintage Masters of the Universe figures, since he only had a very limited release in Europe, mainly Italy, Spain and France. The figure had a light-up gimmick where his hand, Havoc Staff and eyes would light up. I have seen original Laser Light Skeletors at toy conventions here in Europe, but he is very expensive and the Origins figure is the only way most people will ever be able to own one. Besides, Mattel already released his heroic counterpart Laser Power He-Man, so this was really a no brainer

An original Laser Light Skeletor, Silverhawks and Horde Trooper set for sale at Los Amigos in Neuss in 2024. Note the price tag. Yes, this figure will set you back by 1600 Euros and he even has a broken arm.

With Two-Bad and Laser Light Skeletor announced that means that there are only five regular figures remaining from the vintage line, namely Rotar and Twistoid, two weird spinning top characters that hardly anybody likes, as well as the three action figures based on characters from the 1987 movie, namely Blade, Saurod and Gwildor. I’m actually surprised that Mattel hasn’t announced the movie figures, since next year will be the fortieth anniversary of the 1987 movie, i.e. the perfect time to release the movie figures. What is more, in the interview with Pixel Dan, Mattel designer Damon Nee said, when asked about the movie figures, that Mattel promised to complete the vintage line except for the movie figures, which is not what they said three years ago. So is there some kind of rights issue with the movie figures? It’s possible, but unlikely considering that Mattel has released several figures based on the 1987 movie in the Masterverse line in recent years. They also made the three movie characters that had figures in the vintage line in Classics, so I don’t understand why the movie figures are suddenly a problem. What is more, the 1987 movie is currently experiencing something of a renaissance in the wake of the new movie.

My shelf with figures based on the 1987 Masters of the Universe movie. The heroes are clearly outnumbered by the villains (I even have two Skeletors and two Blades, though one Blade is hiding in the back), while I have a whole lot of different cosmic keys.

There are two more figures remaining from the vintage toyline, namely the two giants Tytus and Megator. Pixel Dan actually asked about them and was given a vague answer, so I suspect we won’t be getting them in Origins. Which is fair, because they would clearly be pretty expensive to make. Besides, we did get them in the Classics line.

Tytus versus Megator

Regarding the Filmation and 200X Cartoon Collection figures, Pixel Dan also asked about those and once again only got very vague answers, which seems to be Mattel‘s modus operandi these days. So while we may still get more Filmation and 200X Cartoon Collection figures, I wouldn’t bet on it. Which sucks, because once again, we are left with an incomplete line.

There was one more Origins announcement made during the Mattel panel, namely that an updated version of the Snake Mountain playset for the Origins line would be reissued. The first version of Snake Mountain came out in 2024 and has since sold out, because it was produced in much smaller quantities than the Origins Castle Grayskull, so reissuing it makes sense. As for the updates, the new Snake Mountain will include the lavafall with a space for an LED light, since the lavafall is a popular 3D printed accessory for Snake Mountain. Though they didn’t even show off the new and improved Snake Mountain, just a pencil sketch of the box art, which is certainly a choice. As with the reissued Castle Grayskull last year, it does feel as if they’re trying to get us to buy the same playset again to get some accessories we should have gotten in the first place.

That’s it for the Origins line, so let’s go on to…

Masters of the Universe Chronicles, Part 1: Movie Figures

Masters of the Universe Chronicles is the new highly articulated collector toyline from Mattel that debuted along with the movie, replacing the previous collector line Masterverse. Initially a lot of collectors including myself were sceptical about the Chronicles line, because the figures are smaller than Masterverse and don’t really fit in very well with your existing collection. However, many of us have since been won over by the quality and detail of these figures. And yes, Pixel Dan actually asked about Masterverse and was given – quel surprise – a non-committal answer.

Chronicles started off as a pure movie line, though there have also been two non-movie figures, Scare-Glow and King Grayskull, released so far. Apparently, going foreward, the Chronicles line will consist of a mix of movie and non-movie figures, so let’s delve right in, starting with the movie figures.

The Chronicles display at the Mattel booth at San Diego Comic Con showed off two brand-new movie figures in addition to those that have already been released or announced, namely Mekaneck and Goat-Man. Goat-Man looks suitably impressive and is wielding the double-bladed axe he used in the movie. According to Pixel Dan‘s interview with Mattel designer Damon Nee, Goat-Man will also be larger than your average Chronicles figure, because Goat-Man is also a bigger character in the movie, mostly because actor Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson is a very big guy. I’ve seen a behind the scenes photo where Björnsson in his full Goat-Man get-up is standing next to Alison Brie in her Evil-Lyn costume (the actors became friends on set) and Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson is almost twice as tall as Alison Brie.

It’s wild that we have now had two Goat-Man action figures appear in the space of a year (He already came out in the Core line and has been announced for Chronicles), since Goat-Man is about as obscure a Masters of the Universe character as you’ll find. He only appeared in a single Little Golden Book back in the 1980s and also had a cameo appearance, voiced by Kevin Smith, in Masters of the Universe Revelation. Until this year, Goat-Man only ever had a single action figure in the Masters of the Universe Classics toyline, based on his Little Golden Book appearance. You can see that Goat-Man below:

Goat-Man, wielding a very big hammer

I do like the Classics Goat-Man, which is why I bought him after all, but the movie Goat-Man looks a lot more savage and positively demonic. The Little Golden Book Goat-Man looks like a regular person with a horned helmet/mask, whereas the movie Goat-Man is clearly some kind of alien creature.

I’ve heard that selling devil or devil-like looking toys and action figures is an issue in the US. This even includes characters like Marvel’s Mephisto, which is why it took ages for Hasbro to get around to making him in the Marvel Legends line. This is weird to me, because toy versions of the devil have never been even remotely problematic here in Europe. In fact, the devil is a character in the traditional Kasperle puppet theater and every line of Kasperle handpuppets ever includes a devil puppet. The line of classic horror monster PVC figurines from Comic Spain also had a devil figure – I own it – and I also remember my classmate Madeleine winning a rubbery devil head that could extend its tongue at a fairground. The tongue looked more like a penis and generated a lot of giggles among a bunch of teen girls.

I suspect that reason devil toys are difficult to sell in the US is due to the influence of Christian fundamentalism. Though there have been devilish toys made by US manufacturers as well. For example, the Mythic Legions toyline from Four Horsemen Studios has great demon figures, some of which look very devilish indeed. But I guess large companies like Mattel or Hasbro are more reluctant to piss off Christian busybodies who see Satanism everywhere, including Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter and even Masters of the Universe.  So I’m glad that Mattel made Goat-Man in both the Chronicles and Core toyline. especially since Goat-Man is not actually the Devil – he just happens to be an alien creature that looks a lot like the Christian Devil.

The other brand-new Chronicles movie figure shown off at San Diego Comic Con is none other than Mekaneck, everybody’s favourite Heroic Human Periscope. Mekaneck’s gimmick is that he can extend his neck to ridiculous proportions. The vintage figure had an action feature where his neck would extend, when you turned his waist. The 200X version of the character recreated that action feature, but every subsequent iteration of Mekaneck had neck extension pieces you could attach to the figure to mimic the vintage action feature. Personally, I prefer this, because if you want to display the vintage and 200X Mekaneck with his neck extended, you have to twist him into an unnatural position.

In his limited but memorable appearances in the Filmation cartoon, Mekaneck’s extending neck was stiff and not overly long like that of the vintage toy. However, in the 200X cartoon Mekaneck could not only extend his neck to ridiculous lengths, but he could also bend and twist his neck. However, the action figures continued to have a stiff neck, until the Masterverse Mekaneck, whose neck is articulated due to multiple neck extension pieces plugged together. You can see the Masterverse Mekaneck in action here.

In the movie Mekaneck is played by James Wilkinson. His powers work similar to how they are depicted in the 200X cartoon, i.e. he can extend his neck to enormous proportions and fully articulate it. In the movie, we see him use his neck to knock down the Evil Forces of Skeletor. At one point, he even wraps his neck around a Skel-Knight.

The Chronicles action figure not only looks like the Mekaneck does in the movie, he also has a neck extension that’s not only impressively long, but also bendable via a wire inserted into the neck. It’s a great update, though those wired figures have a tendency to break, so you should probably pick a pose you like and leave him like that. Once again, the neck is an extension piece that can be plugged in and the figure also comes with a regular sized neck, should you prefer to display him that way.

There were also two sort of, but not really new Chronicles movie shown off at the Mattel booth, namely the Chronicles Evil-Lyn action figure, which was one of the very first Chronicles figures show back at Nuremberg Toy Fair in January, but which for reasons unknown still hasn’t come out and supposedly won’t be out until November. which is frankly crazy, because she is a main character in the movie and should have a figure available by now.

The other sort of new Chronicles figure on display at San Diego Comic Con was Fisto. Now we already have a Movie Fisto in the Chronicles line, who came out in a two-pack with Ram-Man and he is a good figure, though IMO his hair colour and headsculpt are somewhat off and don’t really resemble actor Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, which is odd because most of the movie figures have very good headsculpts that do look like the actors. However, the Chronicles Ram-Man action figure was also released as a single-carded/boxed figure (and indeed, he is already available), so it was to be expected that Fisto would be released as a single-carded/boxed figure as well. And the Movie Fisto action figure shown off at San Diego Comic Con was not the figure from the two-pack, but the single release. The difference between the two is that while the two-pack had an interchangeable open hand and fist for Fisto’s signature iron fist, the single-carded Fisto will have articulated fingers in his iron fist. Not all five fingers are articulated, but the thumb is articulated, while the fore and middle finger and the ring and pinkie finger repsectively can be articulated together. Note that this makes it impossible for Fisto to give someone the middle finger – something I have seen done with the actual prop gauntlet in a behind the scenes photo – though he can still fist bad guys to his heart’s content. Of course, an action figure with articulated fingers is cool – and so far I have only seen this on some Spider-Man figures – but it’s not cool enough for me to buy yet another Fisto figure, when I already have a nigh identical one.

I understand why Mattel is releasing single-carded versions of Fisto and Ram-Man, of course, but honestly they should have released characters like Teela and Evil-Lyn, who aren’t yet available in the Chronicles line, first and held Fisto and Ram-Man back for a later release. Especially since the two-pack is still readily available for anybody who wants it.

And talking of figures re-released with minor changes, Mattel is also re-releasing the Chronicles Movie Skeletor figure, though this time they corrected an issue with missing teeth at the back of his mouth and in addition to the Havoc Staff, they also added the goblet from which Skeletor drinks in the scene where he abuses Beast-Man and Evil-Lyn. Not that the goblet isn’t cool, but it’s not cool enough to buy a nigh identical version of a figure I already have. Especially since the Chronicles figures aren’t cheap. Besides, the goblet was already shown off, when the Chronicles Skeletor was first presented to the public either at Nuremberg or New York Toy Fair, so why on Earth wasn’t it included with the first run of Skeletor figures, when it was always supposed to come with the figure?

Talking of Skeletor, Mattel also announced two Movie Skeletor variants, both from the dream sequence near the end of the movie, where Skeletor’s invades Adam’s subconscious to torment him. In that dream sequence, Skeletor shows up in Adam’s earthly surroundings – the gym where he trains and meets Dolph Lundgren, the restaurant where Adam had a disastrous date at the beginning of the movie and the office where Adam works – still sporting his skull face, but dressed in snazzy Earth clothes. This scene was an immediate hit for the sheer surrealism of Skeletor popping up in everyday earthly surroundings and people started clamouring for Skeletor’s Earth outfits in action figure form.

And Mattel obliged and offered Gym Bro Skeletor as their 2026 San Diego Comic Con exclusive. He was also sold via Mattel Creations and sold out very quickly, though I was lucky and managed to snag one. He’s currently on his way to me and I will review him, most likely at File 770.

The other Skeletor variant from the dream sequence that was revealed shortly before San Diego Comic Con is Skeletor in his elegant purple suit from the restaurant scene dubbed “Dream Date Skeletor”. He comes with a Havoc Staff inspired walking stick and a small purple cat that could be an earthly version of Panthor. Dream Date Skeletor was actually shown off in a display case at one of the red carpet premieres of the Masters of the Universe movie before it was even officially out, which is one hell of a way for Mattel to spoil their own movie. I have to admit that when I first saw photos of Dream Date Skeletor on display at the premiere, I assumed it was a custom.

The “Dream Date” name has a long history with Mattel by the way and first showed up as the name for a set of Barbie, Ken and P.J. (Barbie’s platinum pig-tailed hippie friend from the late 1960s turned gorgeous brunette by the early 1980s) dolls all the way back in 1982 at the height of the so-called Superstar era. Mattel tends to reuse names in order to maintain the trademark, so they don’t have to re-register it (or risk losing it) and I guess this is what happened here. Though I now imagine Skeletor knocking out Ken and going on a dream date with both Barbie and P.J.

There is no word yet when and where Dream Date Skeletor will be sold, though I suspect it will be via Mattel Creations. I also suspect that the third dream variant of Skeletor, Human Resources Skeletor, will also eventually be made, especially since that’s the version people seem to want the most. I hope they will release him with Adam in the pink shirt he wears for most of the movie, especially since we don’t have any Prince Adam figure at all in Chronicles so far.

At the Mattel panel, some more Movie Chronicles action figures were revealed. The first of these reveals was the Sorceress of Grayskull as portrayed by Morena Baccarin in the movie. For starters, I’m thrilled that Mattel is making a movie Sorceress at all, because most Masters of the Universe toylines take some time getting to her, probably because she doesn’t have a lot of parts that can be reused and her wings are not easy to engineer. Plus, there is the stupid prejudice that female figures don’t sell. Even better, the figure looks gorgeous. They nailed Morena Baccarin’s look in the movie. Her skirt and cape are fabric, which is honestly the best way to handle her movie costume. She also comes with wings – since she does have wings in the scene where Adam first transforms – and even her Zoar form. I don’t think this is the rubbery vintage style Zoar which Mattel released with the Origins line, which I never liked very much, because the wings drooped almost immediately out of the package. It might be the Classics Zoar, which was more realistically sized (the original Zoar was intended for the Big Jim line and therefore too big for the smaller Masters of the Universe figures) and doesn’t have drooping wings or an entirely new sculpt. At any rate, this is a great figure and I will absolutely be buying her.

At the Mattel panel, they also showed some renders of a Chronicles Movie Beast-Man, who will certainly be a great figure. Coincidentally, that means that Beast-Man will be available in all three movie toylines. They also announced a Movie Spikor in Chronicles, though no pictures yet.

So we’re getting a nice range of movie characters in Chronicles. On the heroic side, we have He-Man, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Battle Cat, Fisto, Ram-Man, Mekaneck, the Sorceress and Orko, which means that Roboto, Prince Adam, Moss-Man, Dian, King Randor and Queen Marlena are still missing. I’m pretty sure we will eventually get Roboto, Adam and Moss-Man, though I do hope we’ll get Dian as well as the King and Queen, too.

On the evil side, we have Skeletor (plus his Gym Bro and Dream Date variants), Evil-Lyn, Trap-Jaw, Beast-Man, Tri-Klops, Spikor and Goat-Man, which means that Karg, the Skel-Knights and Pig Boy are still missing. Coincidentally, Karg hasn’t yet come out or been announced in any of the movie lines, which is interesting, since he does get quite a bit of screentime in the film. This makes me wonder again if there are any rights issues with the 1987 movie characters, especially since Karg looks pretty much like he did in 1987, only with less big hair. I hope we’ll eventually get Pig Boy, too, especially since he never had a figure in any line,but he is probably the longest shot of the Evil Warriors.

Masters of the Universe Chronicles, Part 2: Non-Movie Figures

As I mentioned above, there have already been two no-movie figures in the Chronicles line, namely King Grayskull and Scare-Glow.

The Masters of the Universe Chronicles King Grayskull rides the Classics Battle Lion.

The Masters of the Universe Chronicles King Grayskull fights the Masterverse Emperor Hordak:
“Begone, vile one. Leave my planet! Eternia will never bow to the Horde” – “Who’s going to stop me? You, barbarian? Don’t make me laugh.”

At the Mattel panel, they announced that starting in 2027, each Chronicles wave would consist of one movie and two non-movie figures, which seems sensible. They also said that Chronicles will encompass all eras of Masters of the Universe. This was also the mission of the previous collector lines, Masterverse and Classics, though only Classics actually fulfilled it, while Masterverse started a lot of sublines  – Revelation/Revolution, New Eternia, Vintage Collection, Princess of Power, New Adventures, He-Man ’21, Rulers of the Sun – but most fizzled out after a handful of figures, until only the Vintage Collection (looks like the figures you had as a kid) and New Eternia (updated designs) remained.

The non-movie Chronicles seem to continue where the Masterverse New Eternia subline left off, namely with updated looks for familiar characters. At the Mattel booth, they showed off a more armoured up version of Teela that looks gorgeous. They also showed off a new He-Man variant, for of course they did. He, too, is more armoured up and sports blue-ish chest armour with a translucent H-logo, loin/thigh armour, armour on one arm and even a helmet with wings and a translucent face plate. The helmet is interchangeable with an unhelmeted head which actually has a good face sculpt. Considering that pretty much every He-Man face sculpt in the Masterverse line had issues, this is really amazing.  This He-Man variant is dubbed Flight Armour He-Man and the idea is that this is the armour He-Man is wearing when he is flying the Sky Sled. It does make sense, too, for even though He-Man is the most powerful man in the universe and nigh invulnerable, it can’t be very pleasant for him to get bugs in his face or splattering against his chest. And just so Flight Armour He-Man has something to fly, they also revealed a new Chronicles sized Sky Sled, which is a mix of Mark Taylor’s original design from 1982 and the movie Sky Sled.  Considering that the Masterverse line never had any vehicles at all, this is certainly interesting. I guess the fact that the Chronicles figures are slightly smaller means that vehicles are more viable. Besides, Hasbro’s GI Joe Classified line, which is about the same size, has lots of vehicles and even diorama sets.

They also showed off a Chronicles Panthor at the Mattel booth. Considering they already have a great movie Battle Cat in the Chronicles line, releasing Panthor as well is a no-brainer, since they’re mostly the same sculpt. And the Chronicles Panthor looks amazing. He is wearing the horned helmet that first showed up in the Classics line and his saddle is padded with fur.  I know some people don’t like Panthor wearing a helmet, but I prefer him that way. And in fact, I didn’t even remember that the vintage Panthor did not have a helmet. I never had one and when I saw him with other kids, I just assumed he’s lost his helmet. Though considering that the regular Chronicles Skeletor has a plastic cape, I wonder if he can even ride on Panthor. You’d figure action figures being able to ride their intended mounts would be a low bar to clear, but it’s remarkable how many action figures Mattel has released over the years that could not ride their respective mounts. Of course, Gym Bro or Dream Date Skeletor could always ride Panthor, though that would be weird. Or maybe Mattel will release yet another Skeletor variant, since we have so few of them.

Finally, Mattel showed off the Chronicles versions of two characters that did not appear in the movie, namely the aquatic Evil Warriors Mer-Man and Clawful. Both have extremely detailed sculpts and mostly new parts, which shows that Mattel is investing in this line. Mer-Man looks more fishy than he usually does and also quite grumpy. He has a slightly hunched posture, a back-fin and translucent membranes between his fingers and toes. He’s wearing a loin-cloth, but no chest armour and he’s armed with a sword. I initially was a bit sceptical about him, but the more I see him, the more I like him.  The crab-like Evil Warrior Clawful has his signature giant claw as well as his carapace. Once again, he is wearing thigh armour and a loin cloth, decorated with some beads, and he’s got a leather strap to holster his club. He doesn’t have chest armour, but then Clawful traditionally doesn’t wear chest armour. The head is more crab-like than Clawful usually looks and he has some vicious looking teeth as well as bushy black eyebrows. The eyebrows look a bit off, but then they are taken straight from the vintage figure which had bushy eyebrows, even though it makes no sense for a crab person to have eyebrows.

At the Mattel design panel, they showed off some beautiful Simon Eckert box art for the Chronicles Flight Armour He-Man and Clawful as well as preliminary renders of a Chronicles non-movie Man-at-Arms and Buzz-Off. The non-movie Man-at-Arms is white again, which will comfort the usual racists, and looks more grizzled. He’s also sporting a full beard along with his signature mustache. The closest comparison is the older, grizzled Duncan we saw in Masters of the Universe Revelation and Revolution. Buzz-Off looks more insectoid than he usually does. The closest comparison is probably the Buzz-Off from the 200X cartoon.

In general, I liked pretty much all of the non-movie Chronicles designs revealed, some more than others. Which is why I was surprised to see quite a few negative sentiments particularly from German fans. The most common complaints were “These don’t look like Masters of the Universe and depart too far from the vintage looks.” Which is baffling, because if you want the vintage looks in the 6/7 inch scale, then Masterverse and Classics has you covered. We don’t need yet another reiteration of the vintage figures with slightly more detail. But then, I have never understood the whole “Only the vintage line counts” sentiment either. Yes, the vintage Masters of the Universe toyline was great and without it, we wouldn’t be here. But those figures also came out more forty years ago and it’s good to update the designs, because time has moved on. And yes, it’s also great to include new characters who never had a figure in the vintage line. Besides, the more detailed Classics, Masterverse and Chronicles figures look like the vintage figures look in my memory, but never really looked in reality.

The most baffling comment about the non-movie Chronicles figures I heard was, “These don’t look like Masters of the Universe, but more like Mythic Legions.” To which my response is, “And that’s a bad thing?!” Because honestly, the Mythic and Cosmic Legions figures from Four Horsemen Studios are amazing and the degree of detail is much greater than even the Classics line. I have a lot of Mythic Legions in my collection, they sometimes interact with my Masters of the Universe figures, particularly when I want them to fight Legions of the Undead, because Mythic Legions has a ridiculous amount of Skeleton Warriors.  I’d happily mix Mythic Legions with Chronicles figures. In fact, I just bought a Cosmic Legions accessory set for my Chronicles movie figures to outfit the Eternian rebellion’s underground headquarters. And since an upcoming Mythic Legions wave includes several aquatic creatures such as fish and crab people, they would fit in perfectly with Mer-Man and Clawful. In fact, I might buy the one fish warrior who’s already available and on whom I passed the last time I ordered something from the Four Horseman Store after all and use him as Mer-Man’s lieutenant.

Mondo, Hot Toys and Statues

Mattel is not the only company producing Masters of the Universe figures. There also are several Masters of the Universe offerings in the high-end collectible market.

Hot Toys, a Hong Kong based manufacturer of high-end collectible action figures, showed off He-Man and Skeletor in their movie looks. They’re very detailed, but also look a bit uncanny valley to me, particularly the He-Man. Besides, as is frequently the case, these high-end figures look more like statues than action figures.

However, the biggest producer of high-end, hyper-detailed Masters of the Universe figures is Mondo, a subsidiary of Funko of all things.  Mondo has been offering Masters of the Universe figures in 1:6 scale (i.e. about 30 centimeters) for years now and they also recently started offering figures based on the 200X cartoon and toyline in 1:12 scale, i.e. the same 6/7 inch scale as the Chronicles, Classics and Masterverse line. You can see a video of their booth here, a walk-through and interview with the designers here and a video of their panel here.

In the 1:6 scale line, Mondo showed off the Snake People King Hiss and Kobra Khan and during their panel, they also announced Stratos, the Sorceress and a deluxe Skeletor in 1:6 scale. Mondo also had a San Diego Comic Con exclusive in the 1:6 scale, a flocked Panthor that sold out very quickly.  My feelings about the Mondo 1:6 scale figures are that they are very nice to look at – and I have seen some of them in person – but that I have no desire to buy them. They’re just too big, too expensive, especially with shipping and import duties, and the character selection is not wide enough. Mondo are branching out a bit into the wider Masters of the Universe cast by now, but for years, they basically made He-Man, Skeletor and Scare-Glow over and over again.

Last year, Mondo surprised everybody by announcing that they would launch a line of 1:12 scale figures based on the designs from the Masters of the Universe 200X cartoon. These figures might actually have been of interest to me, since they were at roughly the same scale as the Classics and Masterverse figures and since Mattel for reasons best known to themselves refused to make 200X style action figures in the 6/7 inch scale for years.

Thankfully for my wallet, when Mondo actually showed off the first figures in the 200X line, I didn’t really love them. Particularly the He-Man looked off – too bulky and the face sculpt was too grim. The Mondo figures also look very stiff, more like statues than action figures. The fact that those figures are expensive and that shipping is really expensive as well, plus you can’t combine shipping for more than one figure, made it easy to pass on them. I did like the 200X Teela and Orko figures Mondo offered some time ago and might have caved in, except that they sold out very quickly.

At San Diego Comic-Con, Mondo showed off a 200X style Mer-Man as well as two He-Man and Skeletor variants, Ice Armour He-Man and Fire Armour Skeletor. The 200X line was infamous for its many weird variants – Ice Armour He-Man was actually one of the less weird ones (and yes, I have an original Ice Armour He-Man). But while the Mondo Ice Armour He-Man and Fire Armour Skeletor look good as does the Mer-Man, it once again shows that the character selection will probably not be as broad as I’d like. At their panel, Mondo also showed some concept sketches for a 200X Trap-Jaw. Finally, they also offered a 1:12 Keldor figure as a San Diego Comic Con exclusive. I do like that Keldor, but not enough to buy him.

Finally, there were also some Masters of the Universe statues shown off at San Diego Comic Con, namely a stunning She-Ra statue and a not-so-stunning 200X style He-Man statue. As with the Mondo figures, I like many of these statues – and again, I have seen them in person – but I have no desire to buy one.

Which brings me to…

The Surprise Return of Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution

The filmic renaissance of Masters of the Universe was kicked off by the animated series Masters of the Universe Revelation back in 2021. Coincidentally, Masters of the Universe Revelation also reignited my dormant love for Masters of the Universe, since it was the more adult quasi-continuation of the Filmation cartoon that I didn’t know I needed.

The second series Masters of the Universe Revolution followed in 2024 and finished with a post-credits scene featuring Despara a.k.a. evil buzz-cut Force Captain Adora. The team behind Revelation/Revolution has repeatedly said that they had plans for three series, so everybody expected that the third series, telling the story of Adora/Despara, would be announced a few months later.  But then the Barbie movie came out and made a billion dollars and suddenly, the basically dead live action Masters of the Universe movie was revived and also actually made and it seemed that Revelation/Revolution were forgotten as Mattel focussed fully on the movie.

“I am glad to see you restored, Mighty Hordak. Horde Prime has been merciful.” – “Your concern is noted, child. And now go and conquer Eternia for the glory of the Horde.” – “As you command, my Lord. They’ll never know what hit them.” – “Or who…”

Don’t get me wrong I’m glad that we got the movie and that it was actually good, but what I really wanted was for the story begun in Revelation/Revolution to be completed and for more than two years, it seemed as if the only way we would ever get the third series would be maybe in comic form.

Sadly, the Masters of the Universe movie did not perform as well as hoped for at the box office, because cheap horror movies on the one hand and the bloody Odyssey on the other sucked all the oxygen out of the room. However, once the movie hit streaming, it has done very well indeed and sits at No. 1 of the Amazon Prime charts worldwide and even pulled the 1987 movie into the global top ten after 39 years.

Masters of the Universe Revelation/Revolution did not stream on Amazon Prime but on Netflix, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it received a boost of  renewed interest as well in the wake of the live action movie.  And knowing Netflix, I’m certain they noticed.

At San Diego Comic Con, Revelation/Revolution showrunner Kevin Smith did a king of “Ask me anything” panel. And in the course of that panel, a young fan asked if Smith would do more He-Man and if we would see She-Ra, too.  Kevin Smith replied, “The short answer is yes” and that there were plans to finish the trilogy and tell She-Ra’s story, but that he couldn’t say more at this point.

Note that part of the problem with the third series of Revelation/Revolution likely were the notoriously complicated She-Ra rights. Basically, He-Man and She-Ra were treated as two separate properties by Mattel back in the 1980s. And since She-Ra was developed together with Filmation, the rights were shared between Mattel and Filmation. Filmation was sold to L’Oreal in the late 1980s and shut down (and fuck L’Oreal) and the rights to the Filmation library bounced around from owner to owner until they ended up with Universal. Who, when Mattel tried to buy the She-Ra rights back from them, apparently said, “Nope, sorry.” That’s the reason why making Filmation only characters in toy form or using them in a film or series is difficult and why the Eternian twins of power haven’t been seen together on screen in forty years. Despara, who is Adora, but not the Filmation Adora, is something of a workaround that Mattel can use, since they have the full rights for Despara.

Now She-Ra – actually She-Ra, not Despara – appeared in the post-credits scene of the movie to much applause and cheers. That means that Mattel and Amazon made some kind of deal with Universal, probably by throwing money at the problem. And a by-product might be that Revelation/Revolution can use She-Ra and her supporting cast, too.

At any rate, this is great news. It also demonstrates why even if a certain incarnation of a favourite franchise may not be your cup of tea (even though I did like the movie a lot), you should still support it, because it increases the chances of getting more, including versions of the story that you do like.

I also really hope that other fans take this to heart, including fans of the 2018 She-Ra and the Princesses of Power series, who are passionate, but often only like that particular incarnation and are downright hostile to any other version. Cause if series 3 of Revelation/Revolution or a potential live action She-Ra movie or series is successful that might well mean that She-Ra and the Princesses of Power may get a continuation – which apparently was planned, but not greenlit – too.

Other Cool Toys

Of course, there was a lot more shown at San Diego Comic Con then just Masters of the Universe.

Marvel returned to Hall H with several casting announcements, including the announcement that even more characters will be in Avengers: Doomsday – a movie that already includes everybody and their sister. I kind of wish I would be more excited about this than I am. I’m also surprised how completely I’m over the X-Men – and I used to love the X-Men comics during their 1980s and early 1990s heyday and read them for years even after they started to decline notably. But now with X-Men ’97 back on TV and the X-Men finally entering the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I find that I no longer care. It’s weird how your love for a property can just die. I’m also bummed that that they cancelled Wonder Man, one of the best Marvel TV shows in years which also gained two Emmy nominations, soon thereafter and cancelled the proposed Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali, which has been in development hell for years, as well. And yes, if you’d told me thirty years ago that I’d be more upset about the cancellation of a Wonder Man TV show than the fact that we will likely be getting more X-Men movies and that they may actually get it right this time around, I’d have called you crazy.

The notoriously reclusive Rick Moranis came out of retirement and onto the Hall H stage to standing ovations during the Spaceballs 2 panel. This is another film I’m kind of torn about. Now I love the original Spaceballs and have seen it umpteen times. However, I’m not sure if I want to revisit Spaceballs forty years later, even though I no longer have to deal with a mother who doesn’t understand parody and found the movie stupid and talked all over the German TV premiere, because my shitty cousin decided to pick that day to announce her second pregnancy and I got attacked for caring more about the movie than about shitty Jeanette’s pregnancy, and a friend who didn’t want to watch the movie, even though I watched all sorts of terrible crap with her. I’m pretty sure I will watch Spaceballs 2 eventually, but not necessarily at the theater.

One thing that did excite me were the reveals by Factory Entertainment, a company that normally specialises in full-size prop replicas. If you ever wanted a Power Sword or Havoc Staff that looks like the real thing, Factory Entertainment has you covered.

However Factory Entertainment are also moving into action figures and vehicles, more precisely 3.75 inch (i.e. vintage Star Wars scale) figures of various late 1970s and 1980s TV heroes, as seen in this interview/booth walk-through video by Pixel Dan. They showed off Michael Knight from Knight Rider, Thomas Magnum from Magnum PI, Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice, The Bionic Man and The Bionic Woman and Stringfellow Hawk and Dominic Santini from Airwolf plus a full scale Airwolf helicopter with other iconic vehicles possibly to follow. And they all look just like they’re supposed to look. If you’re a 1980s kid like me, these toys will have you going “Wow”.

Even better, they also have Battlestar Galactica vehicles and action figures, both in the style of the 1978 original and the early 2000s reboot, and they look amazing. Wave 1 of their 3.75 inch figures consists of Apollo, Starbuck, Boomer as well as a silver and a gold Cylon, while wave 2 will have Commander Adama, Athena, Baltar and Lucifer. They also showed off other potential figures, including Colonel Tigh, who was my Mom’s favourite. Plus, they also have a Colonial Viper and a Cylon Raider. That’s a very nice selection of characters, more than we ever had in any Battlestar Galactica line, and gives me hope that we might eventually get characters like Cassiopeia, Selina, Sheba, Boxey, Jolly, Bojay, Commander Cain, Count Iblis, the Imperious Leader or maybe even poor doomed Zack.

These figures are likely not cheap, because it’s a small company and I will have to import them, but damn, they’re tempting, because I absolutely loved the original Battlestar Galactica. Back in the day, I wanted nothing more than to actually watch the Star Wars movies. However, we did not have a VCR (and wouldn’t have one, until I bought one with my birthday money in the early 1990s, because my parents considered VCRs a waste of money), the movies were out of theaters and I had been too young to see the first two, when they actually were in theaters. And in an article clipped from a TV magazine, some public TV bigwig said that they would never ever show movies like Star Wars or Indiana Jones on TV, because they were too violent and too expensive. Of course, Star Wars did air on German TV within two years of that article, but of course I had no way of knowing that at the time. As far as I was concerned, the chances of ever seeing the movies I most wanted to see in the foreseeable future were nil.

However, what we did have was the original Battlestar Galactica. Those were the versions that had been edited into movies, not the actual TV series, which I did not see until much later. The movies aired once a week, always in late night graveyard slots, when I wasn’t actually supposed to be up and watching them, so I hoped and prayed for my parents to finally go to bed and then got up and watched them in secret. Then, when Dad was away, I introduced to Battlestar Galactica and she liked it, too, and thought Colonel Tigh was hot (well, he was), whereas I harboured a crush on Apollo. Even at the time, I knew Battlestar Galactica wasn’t Star Wars and I also realised that the naming patterns made no sense, but it was the next best thing that I could actually watch.

Besides – and I think a lot of people forget this – particularly the pilot of the original Battlestar Galactica was groundbreaking for its time. There is Rick Springfield as Zack – hot, handsome, a pop star, famous. Everything leads you to believe that he will be the star of the show. And then he’s killed off maybe ten minutes into the movie and another ten minutes later, most of humanity is killed off as well. Shocking doesn’t begin to describe it, cause TV shows simply did not do this in the 1970s and 1980s.

In fact, I was so shocked and stunned and literally glued to the screen that I bled through my pad and pyjama (I had my period at the time) onto the floor and didn’t notice until the movie ended. Of course, I frantically tried to remove the blood stain, but you can still see the faint outline on the floor, if you look closely.

There’s other things about Battlestar Galactica that were revolutionary for the time as well. Boxey is not Apollo’s biological kid – we see Boxey’s biological father get killed early on during the Cylon attack, well before Selina and Boxey even meet Apollo. And yet not just Apollo, but everybody else treats Boxey like they would Apollo’s biological kid. Coincidentally, Apollo would have been a most worthy recipient of the Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year Award, had it existed back then. Cassiopeia is introduced as a prostitute – twenty-five years before Firefly – though they later chicken out and turn her into a nurse. Athena initially has a crush of sorts on Starbuck, but when Starbuck starts a relationship with Cassiopeia, Athena is implied to have a relationship with Boomer, though once again they chicken out. The original Battlestar Galactica had many flaws, but it was also revolutionary for its day. Plus, take a look at the sheer star power of that cast. It’s as if every actor from the golden age of Hollywood who was still alive and active showed up in Battlestar Galactica at least once.

When the new Battlestar Galactica started in the early 2000s, I hated every single thing about it. Remember all those people who complained that the George Lucas raped their childhood with the Star Wars prequels? Well, Ron D. Moore raped mine with the new Battlestar Galactica or “Battlestar Craptastica”, as I used to call it. Even worse, while pretty much everybody agreed that the Star Wars prequels were not even remotely as good as the originals, the new Battlestar Galactica was heaped with praise and was deemed the “best TV show ever” (TM) – right between The Sopranos and The Wire being “the best TV show ever” (TM) – while the original was dismissed at disco era crap. The fact that the new Battlestar Galactica leant so very hard into the whole early 2000s “war on terror” and “you must make hard choices, even if people get killed” stuff didn’t help either, since I fucking hated all that early 2000s “war on terror” stuff and didn’t want any of it in my entertainment. And in fact, I remember the early 2000s as the most miserable TV era I ever lived through. The US just stopped making good shows overnight and started bombarding us with war on terror propaganda to the point that I stopped watching US shows altogether and instead turned towards British and even German shows, since German TV was having a high point at the time.

BTW, when the new Battlestar Galactica finally made its way to German TV, I watched the premiere with my Mom, who loved the original. And when it was said early on that Adama and Apollo were estranged, Mom said, “What nonsense! The real Commander Adama would never let that happen.” After half an hour, Mom asked if we could switch that shit off now. I said, “No, I need to watch it to see how awful it really is.” After forty-five minutes, Mom went to bed. After the pilot, I think lasted two more episodes before I was satisfied that it’s crap and I didn’t need to watch anymore to make sure of it. I sort of watched a third episode, but I fell asleep early on and don’t remember a thing.

Coincidentally, back at the time I said that the whole “war on terror” stuff and the debates about who is the legitimate leader (shades of the US taking weeks to figure out who won the 2000 presidential election) in the new Battlestar Galactica would look more dated than the original show in ten years time. At the time, no one believed me, but it’s true. In fact, the new Battlestar Galactica faded a lot quicker from the public consciousness than even I expected. The new Battlestar Galactica is as much as product of its time as the original show. And yes, the original show was also influenced by the politics of its day – all that stuff about how disarmament is a bad thing and peace is not possible – but by the time I watched it, the politics had retreated so far into history that I didn’t really notice. Never mind that the Cylons genuinely were a genocidal threat. The Soviet Union was not.

Of course, now twenty years have passed since the Battlestar Galactica reboot, I’m not longer as salty about it as I once was. I will never like the reboot or ever watch it, but I don’t hold any grudges against anybody involved, since all of the actors have done good work elsewhere and Ron D. Moore went on to make a very good Outlander adaptation.

That said, my fondness for the original Battlestar Galactica has never faded, unlike my love for the X-Men, so having at least a few figures of my favourite characters would be great. I don’t really need a Viper or a Cylon Raider, but I’d love to get Apollo, Starbuck, Boomer, Adama and Athena. And Colonel Tigh for Mom.

Anyway, that’s it for the 2026 San Diego Comic Con.

However, Stadthalle Neuss, the venue of the 2024 and 2025 Los Amigos con, is currently undergoing renovations, so the organisers had to find a different venue. And the venue they found, the Luxor Film Palace, is located in Heidelberg, which is a lot further away than Neuss, 536 kilometers to be exact. That’s further than my trip to Hanau in December 2024 and further than my trip to Antwerp last year and in fact it would be the longest road trip I have ever done on my own.

Nonetheless, I decided to go, because I always enjoy the Los Amigos con. And besides, I have an aunt in Heidelberg who always asks me to visit and this was the perfect excuse. Besides, I several long road trips, I have become much more confident. That said, because the trip was so long, I would stay at a hotel for two nights. Basically, I was planning to drive to Heidelberg on Friday, go to the con and visit Aunt Irmtraud and Uncle Gerd on Saturday and drive back on Sunday. And because it’s such a long trip and I wanted to have some time to explore Heidelberg, a city I have no memory of ever visiting, I was planning to leave very early, at four AM or so. That way, I could also make my way through the three construction zones between Bremen and Hannover (at the Weser bridge in Bremen, at exit Langwedel and junction Walsrode) and hopefully even through the construction zones at Hildesheim before the rush hour traffic and the related traffic jams. Of course, there would probably be construction zones and traffic jams further down the line, but at least I could get the ones I knew would be a problem out of the way before rush hour traffic starts. And since Germans start work almost ridiculously early, rush hour traffic can start as early as six or six thirty AM.

So the plan was made. On Thursday afternoon, I packed my overnight bag, a box of action figures for my pal and fellow toy collector David from Cork in Ireland as well as some chocolate for Aunt Irmtraud, put my water bottle in the fridge and went to bed very early (late afternoon rather than early evening) so I could get enough sleep. I was planning to get up at 3 AM, take a shower and wash my hair and then set off towards Heidelberg.

An Urgent Call

But like all good plans, this one didn’t survive contact with reality. For after about two and a half hours, I was woken by my mobile phone ringing. I decided to ignore it – whoever it was could wait. But then the landline phone started ringing as well, so I reluctantly got up to answer it.

On the other end, there was the owner of a translation agency with whom I sometimes collaborate. He apolised for the time, but the District Court Bremerhaven urgently needed an interpreter for a deportation detention hearing. Could I do it?

I said, “Under ordinary circumstances, yes. But I’m leaving for Heidelberg  at 4 AM tomorrow morning and I want to get some sleep beforehand, so this is really bad timing.” The translation agency owner asked if I was travelling by car or by train. “By car”, I replied and he agreed that this really was bad timing. I said that I would do it, if there’s no one else – this hearing is about a real human being and the question whether he will have to go to deportation jail or whether he can go home to his family – but I’d prefer not to. We can agreed that the agency would try to find someone else and if there was no one, they’d call me back.

Since I was awake already, I decided to go to the toilet. And lo and behold, I had barely finished my business, when the translation agency called back. Unfortunately, all the other interpreters either didn’t answer the phone or really, really couldn’t do it. So I sighed and said, “Okay, I’ll go.”

Now remember that the opening ceremony and match of the 2026 World Cup were supposed to take place that evening. And I suspect that this may have a lot to do with the fact that no other interpreter wanted to take the job. Which is rather annoying, because a World Cup match that didn’t even involve Germany IMO is less of a reason not to take the job than having to get up at 3 AM or so.

But things couldn’t be changed, so I got up and got dressed. Which promptly caused another issue, for while I had already laid out my clothes for the trip to Heidelberg, a He-Man t-shirt really isn’t an appropriate outfit for a court hearing. So I hunted in my closet for a more appropriate top, grabbed my purse and set off for Bremerhaven.

Even though I’d been fast asleep and it was just before seven PM, it was still light outside and would be for another three hours or so. After all, it’s a week before the summer solstice, which means that the sun rises at shortly before five AM and sets at shortly before ten PM.

The Road to Bremerhaven

Now you must know that Bremerhaven is 80 kilometers away – in the wrong direction. If it had been the court in Verden, which is 45 kilometers in the direction I would be driving the next day, I would have grabbed my overnight bag, too, and would have gone in search of a hotel in Verden to get an early start the next morning. Alas, it was Bremerhaven, for of course it was, which meant driving 80 kilometers there and back.

I hit the first obstacle before I even made it to the Autobahn. Because the Brinkum bypass road which takes you directly to the Autobahn exit Bremen-Brinkum turned out to be closed for the night, because the powers that be had decided to install a railway bridge just that night. They are currently using existing railway tracks to extend the Bremen tram system all the way to Brinkum – something I would really have welcomed back when I was sixteen and a direct connection to the city center from the neighbouring village would have been really useful. These days, however, I have a car and rarely use the tram. As for why they felt the need to install the bridge that night rather than any other – who knows?

However, since the bypass was closed, I had to drive through Brinkum instead. Which isn’t too bad, except that our stupid local council has set a speed limit of thirty kilometers per house on all the roads going through Brinkum. Not just the small side streets, but the main roads as well. The problem is that we’ve had an influx of people from Bremen moving into Stuhr, which meant increasing votes for the Green Party. And the Green Party hates cars and would prefer us all to ride bicycles (which has always been a thing here, even though I always hated bicycles) and use public transport (still shitty, though improving), so they slap stupid thirty kilometers per hour speed limits on various main roads. They’re really aggressive about enforcing them, too. So I had to crawl through Brinkum at thirty kilometers per hour, even though there was absolutely no one around I could have endangered. So instead of five minutes of zipping past Brinkum on the bypass, I had to spend ten to twelve minutes driving through the town to get to the Autobahn.

As explained in this post, there are three roads to Bremerhaven. Normally, the fastest way to Bremerhaven is driving onto Autobahn A1 in direction Hamburg and then changing onto Autobahn A27 at the intersection Bremer Kreuz. The A27 will take you directly to Bremerhaven. However, this route means that you’ll have to pass the construction zone at the Autobahn bridge across the river Weser and get through the massive traffic jam that always piles up in both directions before the construction zone. Getting through the traffic jam will take you thirty to forty-five minutes or more, so during the day the Autobahn is out and driving along smaller country roads and through the Wesertunnel is the fastest way to get to Bremerhaven. However, it was past seven PM, so the traffic jam at the Weser Bridge should theoretically have dissipated. I say theoretically, because in practice the traffic jam was still there, though not nearly as bad as it would have been earlier in the day. That said, it still took me an extra ten minutes to get through it. Together with the delay in Brinkum, that means I had already lost fifteen minutes.

Once I had passed the construction zone at the Weser bridge, the going got easier. At intersection Bremer Kreuz, I changed onto Autobahn A27, headed towards Bremerhaven. Now Bremen and Bremerhaven are both elongated cities stretching along the river Weser. And the A27 runs past all of Bremen except for the part called Bremen-Nord (Bremen-North), which is served by Autobahn A270, while the A27 swerves away from the river to cut through thinly populated marshlands. There are only three exits between Bremen and Bremerhaven, spaced far apart, because there is nothing to exit to here, and then the A27 runs along the length of Bremerhaven. Bremerhaven is a strange city anyway. It was only founded in 1837 to provide an alternative to Bremen’s harbour which was becoming increasingly difficult to access for larger ships due to sedimentation of the river Weser and is basically a collection of previously independent villages and small towns and a succession of ports along the river Weser, starting with the fishing port (partly touristy and partly active destination for fishing fleets and home to food processing plants), then the touristy bit with all the museum vessels, then the cruise terminal and finally the overseas port with the car terminal, where brand-new cars and other vehicles are stored on giant lots and gigantic parking garges before being shipped onwards to their new owners (the coolest part of Bremerhaven’s harbour) and the container terminal.

I left the Autobahn at the exit Bremerhaven Center, even though the District Court isn’t actually in the city center – that would be too easy. Instead, it’s in a residential neighbourhood called Bremerhaven-Lehe far from anything that is even remotely of interest. It was around quarter past eight when I arrived and the parking lot was mostly empty. I didn’t even have to pay, parking was free at this late hour.

Through the Prison Gate and into the Court House  

Of course, the district court was already closed for business at this late hour, so I had been instructed to enter via the gate of the adjacent prison. Yes, there is an early twentieth century prison (opened in 1916) next to the district court. So I walked up to the large prison gate, feeling rather apprehensive about the whole thing, because absolutely no one likes to approach prison gates, even if you know you’ll be allowed to leave again. As for what entering through the gate to the Bremerhaven prison feels like, it was very much like R2-D2 and C-3PO approaching Jabba’s palace in Return of the Jedi. You ring the doorbell, there is a camera eye, though unlike in Return of the Jedi it doesn’t pop out, and a voice from a loudspeaker asks you to state your business, though it is somewhat less unfriendly than the voice in Return of the Jedi and also speaks German.

I said “I’m an interpreter, here for a deportation detention hearing” and a buzzer opened a small door next to the big main gate. I stepped through and found myself inside an enclosed driveway with the outer gate behind me, high walls on both sides and a grated iron gate on the other side leading into the prison proper. On one side there was a guard house with the gate guards sitting behind what I assume is bullet-proof glass. The guards told me I should go through a side door into the courthouse and buzzed the door open. Alas, the door leading into the courthouse was an extremely heavy steeldoor, probably to make sure no one can escape in either direction. I had to push against it to even get it to open far enough to slip inside.

The steel door fell shut with a heavy thud and I found myself in a completely dark corridor, illuminated only by a wan emergency light. I used my phone to cast some additional light on the matter, walked up a few steps, rounded a corner and found myself on the ground floor of the courthouse proper. I spotted a police officer in full uniform, complete with bullet-proof vest, baton, pistol and handcuffs. “Are you the interpreter?” he asked. I said yes and was ushered into one of the small courtrooms that are more like classrooms or conferences rooms compared to the big, drafty main courtroom.

The Hearing

Inside the courtroom, there was another police officer, a court recorder, a lawyer and the subject of the hearing (or “the person affected” as he was referred to in all the official documents), a young man from Ghana. I had encountered this lawyer before – he handles a lot of immigration cases and criminal cases involving immigrants in Bremerhaven and always does a good job.

I turned to the young man from Ghana and introduced myself and told him I understand he is upset, but if he wants to say something, which he’s not obligated to do, he should leave some breaks to give me the chance to translate. I almost always say something like that to whoever I’m supposed to interpret for – witness, defendant, plaintiff – because being in court does tend to make people nervous and most people also don’t know how interpretation works and that I’m not a robot and can’t keep all the stuff they’re saying in my mind and produce a perfect translation. And the degree of nervousness of a civilian in court has nothing to do with how serious the case is and whether the person is runs the very real risk of going to prison or whether they are a witness in a civil case.

Indeed, one of the most nervous and upset people I ever encountered in a court house was a former competitive showjumper from South Africa who had even competed in the Olympics (he even has a Wikipedia entry) and was called as a witness in a case involving an expensive race horse not doing what it was expected to do. Verden, the location of one of the courthouses where I occasionally work as an interpreter, is Germany’s center of horse breeding, so I occasionally get horse cases. This guy had flown in from South Africa the day before, was terribly jet-lagged and also struggling with a very cold winter day in North Germany coming out of the South African summer. He was super nervous and after he had given his statement and I had interpreted, we were both allowed to leave, since the rest of the trial was in German. When we left the courtroom, I asked the guy if he was wanted to wait for his friend, a Verden horsebreeder, or if he wanted to leave the rather labyrinthine courthouse. He said he wanted to wait. He was also yawning and shivering in the cold and wet North German winter. I said, “I know where the coffee maker is. I’ll show you and we’ll get you a coffee.” He was very grateful and asked if he could buy a coffee for me. I replied, “Well, I’m theoretically not allowed to accept anything from anybody involved in this case, but if you wanted to bribe me, I hope you don’t think I can be bought for a 2.50 Euro cup of coffee.” He laughed.

While everybody else was assembled in the courtroom in Bremerhaven, the judge was still in her chambers, though she briefly appeared to swear me in, when I informed the court recorder that I only have general court approval for translation, not interpretation. “Why not?” the court recorder asked, while she and the judge debated whether orally translating an official writ on the fly counts as translation or interpretation. “Ask the state court in Saarbrücken”, I replied, “They felt I wasn’t experienced enough to be granted official court approval as an interpreter as well.” Though come to think of it, I certainly am experienced enough now, so I maybe I should go after the official general court approval to avoid these debates.

I was then handed some papers – the official request for the arrest and remanding into custody until deportation of the young man in question – and asked to translate. This is common for deporation detention hearings – there’s always a writ which I have to translate on fly. If I’m lucky, they hand me the papers beforehand. These writes are full of legalese and endless references to paragraphs, laws and precendents, which is pretty painful for me and I also don’t think very helpful for the person affected, because they usually have no idea what all this stuff is even about or what paragraph whatever of the whatever act even says. Hereby, my favourite is the German Federal Law for Family Matters and Cases of Voluntary Jurisdiction, because they decided to tack some clauses involving deportation detention to a bloody family law. The first time I had one of these judicial writs in hand, I actually interrupted my translation to ask, “I’m sorry, but does this really mean Law for Family Matters [the laws are routinely abbreviated and particularly with obscure ones, you sometimes don’t know what the abbreviation stands for]? Cause that makes no sense at all.”

Basically, what happened here is that the guy came to Germany and was sent to live in the City of Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhrgebiet. In Germany, refugees and asylum seekers are distributed throughout the country in order to prevent ghetto formation and individual cities from being overwhelmed. In theory, this is a good idea. In practice, however, it often becomes a problem, because the people are not allowed to leave the county to which they have been assigned, let alone the state, without explicit permission. In some cases, this means that even taking the bus to the neighbouring city is theoretically illegal for refugees and asylum seekers, let alone visiting a friend or family member assigned to a different city in a different state. However, many refugees don’t really know this nor do they necessarily know where the borders of the county they’re assigned to are. When I was teaching German to refugees, I had a lovely young couple from Syria who were super excited that they had the chance to get an apartment of their own. And I told them, “That’s great, but you have to ask for permission first, because that apartment is in Bremen, which is not just a different county, but a different state.” They were confused. “But it’s only a few kilometers away.” I said, “Yes, but it’s Bremen. Do you know where Mohammed [a classmate] lives?” They nodded. I said, “Well, across the road from where Mohammed lives, that’s where Bremen starts.” So in short, mistakes are really easy to make.

What happened in this case is that the young man met a young woman who lives in Bremerhaven and has a residence permit. They fell in love, had a baby and then she became pregnant again and was hospitalised with a high risk pregnancy, so he moved to Bremerhaven to be with her and take care of their child. Meanwhile, the City of Gelsenkirchen decided to send him a request to voluntarily leave the country, which he never received. So they sent the police to arrest him and couldn’t find him. Eventually, they found him in Bremerhaven and had him arrested and this is why we were all sitting in a courtroom at a quarter past eight PM.

Once I’d read out the request by the City of Gelsenkirchen, the judge came and proceedings proper started. The lawyer argued that he had actually informed Gelsenkirchen about the whereabouts of his client and also that his client had applied for asylum and that the asylum process was still ongoing, which means that he cannot be deported. Well, it turns out that the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees had – I kid you not – lost this guy’s asylum application. Which is just face palm worthy. The next morning, I heard on the news that some stricter asylum regulations were going into effect that day and thought, “Well, maybe do your job first and don’t fucking lose asylum applications.”

Waiting in a Spooky Courthouse by Night

After the lawyer had stated his case and the young man answered some questions about his life and family, the judge and court recorder retreated for deliberations. The rest of us were sent out of the courtroom and waited. And waited. And waited.

There are wooden benches outside the courtroom, but they are hard and unpleasant. Plus, the benches apparently haven’t been repainted since the courthouse opened in 1916, so the paint was flaking and came off on my hands. I checked my phone and studied the papers posted on bulletin boards inside the courthouse, which basically were some legal writs which have to be posted publicly, mostly because the court doesn’t know where the person in question lives, as well as some union posters and job openings advertised for legal clerks and prison guards. In short, super dull stuff.

The two police officers and the lawyer lamented that they had planned to watch football that evening. I said, “Well, at least it’s not a match involving the German team. Meanwhile, I have to get up and leave at four AM tomorrow.” – “Well, this whole thing should be over by then”, one of the police officers replied.

I also asked the police officers and the lawyer, if there was a coffee maker anywhere in the courthouse, but there is none, at least none that is publicly accessible. So we were stuck waiting and couldn’t even get a coffee.

After a pretty long time of waiting, the court recorder appeared and apologised for the delay, but the computer system in the courthouse had gone down and they were having problems typing up the ruling.

So we were in for more waiting. One by one, the two police officers, the lawyer and myself all went to the toilet. Now there are toilets opposite the courtroom, but those toilets were locked for the night – and they’re often locked by day as well. There is one toilet that’s always accessible – where the offices of the public prosecution are on the second floor of an annex to the old courthouse built in the 1970s. Note that we were in the main building on the ground floor.  It’s a long way, even during the day.

One of the police officers asked if I knew where the toilets were. I said, “Yes. I’ve been here a few times before.” and set off in search of the toilets in a courthouse that was completely dark except for service lights and what outside light filtered in through the hallway windows. In short, it was super spooky and I wouldn’t have been surprised to run across a ghost or two, especially since I imagine a courthouses with an attached prison would be the sort of place to attract unquiet spirits. Though as far as I know there haven’t been any executions carried out in Bremerhaven’s prison. Those would have been handled in Bremen, where the old guillotine spent decades stored away in a shed, before it was donated to the local history museum.

I also took some pictures. Normally, they don’t like you taking pictures at the courthouse, but there was no one there to stop me. Besides, it’s just photos of empty hallways by night, so no one’s privacy is violated.

A spooky hallway in the old 1916 part of the Bremerhaven courthouse by night. The illuminated emergency exit sign under the arch looks like a ghostly train barelling towards you.

Inside the 1970s annex of the Bremerhaven courthouse. Once again, the emergency exit signs are the only illumination. Also note the empty cart for transporting files.

Another reason why I took those pictures is that liminal space horror is having another moment right now – empty and abandoned spaces are kind of creepy, who could have guessed? – and that I wanted to prove that I can take better spooky liminal space photos with my phone than a certain wunderkind director.

I guess liminal space horror is one of those things every generation claims to have discovered – just like “young woman in the big city navigates career and romance” stories. And if you’ve been around the block a few times, it’s always annoying whenever one of these things comes around again and is hailed as new and never before seen. Because creepy abandoned buildings have been a cornerstone of the horror genre since its inception more than two hundred years ago. Of course the nature of the spooky abandoned place has changed from the crumbling ruined castles of the gothic novel via the haunted 19th century mansions of early to mid twentieth century traditional horror to the summer camps and holiday cabins of the slasher era to today’s abandoned malls and stores. But the idea behind it is always the same. Abandoned places are spooky.

As for that Backrooms movie, it’s just the latest incarnation of this very old phenomenon. It’s not new or special, though it may well be entertaining and put a new spin on an old phenomenon. The trailer also doesn’t make it look very good – I have literally been in spookier abandoned places myself and taken pictures of them. That said, I normally wouldn’t have any issues with that movie, except that the way Backrooms and its twenty-year-old wunderkind director are being pushed as the next big thing that will change all of Hollywood is so bloody annoying. Especially since there are doubts that the twenty-year-old YouTuber actually did direct the movie, at least not on his own.

And the fact that Backrooms and Obsession, another cheap horror movie by a young wunderkind director, though this one has already reached the ripe old age of twenty-four (and he probably actually did direct the film), are being pitted against Masters of the Universe and to a lesser degree, The Mandalorian and Grogu, as “hot new thing” versus “tired old IP for old people who should just die” has turned those movies from “films I have zero interest in, but that I also don’t mind existing” to “fuck that shit and their shitty fans and shitty directors”. Scary Movie Whatever should also be listed here, except that that there’s no way to call that a new and never before seen thing made by young filmmakers, because the youngest Wayans brother is a year older than me and I’m apparently old enough to not deserve any movies anymore, but should instead just lay down and die.

I was a little worried that I’d spent too much time going to the toilet and back and that the judge would have returned in my absence and everybody was waiting for me, but nope. Everybody was still waiting outside the courtroom and it took another fifteen minutes or so for the judge and court recorder to finally return.

The Decision

We all filed back into the courtroom and the judge proclaimed her decision that the guy who had been the subject of the whole mess would not have to go into deportation detention. There were several pages of reasoning for this decision, including references to paragraphs and precendents, but because it was so late and everybody wanted to go home, it was decided unaniminously that I would not have to translate the entire decision on the fly, but only the gist of it. Which was, “Come back, when you have an actual deportation flight booked” directed at the City of Gelsenkirchen, which also has to pay for the entire proceedings, including my fees, and “Make sure to inform the police of any address changes and get the mess about the missing asylum claim sorted out” directed at the lawyer and his client.

It was quarter past eleven when we were all finally allowed to go home. The young man was understandably extremely relieved and happy, so happy that he hugged his lawyer, me and even the police officers, though he refrained from hugging the judge. We were all let out again via the prison gate and the lawyer offered to take his client home. If he hadn’t, I probably would have offered, because the busses were no longer running this late in the evening and the poor guy is destitute and has no money for a taxi.

The Way Home by Night 

Even though it was a week before the summer solstice, the sun had set it just before ten PM and by the time we left the courthouse at a quarter past eleven, it was completely dark outside.

Now Bremerhaven has something extremely uncommon in Germany, namely a supermarket that is open 24 hours. The supermarket is in the harbour and caters to sailors whose ships don’t always arrived during normal opening hours, but lots of people go there, showing that there is a need for more 24 hour supermarkets. And if I didn’t have to get up so very early the next morning, I would have gone to that supermarket for some grocery shopping and maybe a coffee, if the bakery counter/coffee bar was still open. However, I did have to get up at four AM and I had a very long drive ahead of me the next day, so I forewent a pitstop at North Germany’s only 24 hour supermarket and just drove home.

I wouldn’t have minded a cup of coffee at all. However, at this late hour there was nothing open, at least not anywhere near where I was. There is not a single service station between Bremen and Bremerhaven – the only service station on Autobahn A27 is on the Bremen – Walsrode/Hannover leg and it’s terrible and also closes at three or four PM or so – and only two Autohöfe: Autohof Wulsdorf just south of Bremerhaven and Autohof Hemelingen in Bremen. Autohof Hemelingen is two exits from home, so there is no reason ever for me to stop there. And Autohof Wulsdorf was not only already closed – they close at nine PM, which is super early for an Autohof – but also not accessible due to construction work on the A27. In fact, Autohof Wulsdorf hasn’t been accessible from the Autobahn for months now, which must really be hurting their business.

While making my way through Bremerhaven back to the Autobahn, I passed a corner bar, a typical dive bar, that was still open. I briefly considered stopping to ask if they could make me a coffee. They probably would have done it, too, these places are welcoming. However, there was no place to park and even at eleven PM I didn’t want to illegally park on the sidewalk. Besides, I wasn’t particularly tired in spite of the late hour, so I just drove home.

All the traffic jams that has plagued me on the way to Bremerhaven has dissipated by now and the Autobahn was mostly empty, though I saw several oversize load transports headed in the opposite direction, most likely towards the harbours in Bremerhaven or Cuxhaven. Unfortunately, the Brinkum bypass was still closed and so I had to make my way through Brinkum again at thirty kilometers an hour. Luckily, the gas station in Brinkum was still open and so I filled up my tank again. My car had been fully fueled for the journey to Heidelberg, but the unexpected trip to Bremerhaven had burned up some of that fuel and I prefer setting out on long road trips with a full tank to avoid running out of fuel and having to refuel at overly high prices. So I filled up my tank in Brinkum and drove home. By the time I made it home, it was half past twelve. Normally, I would have parked the car in the garage, but I just left it in the driveway, because I would need it again in less than four hours anyway.

Once I made it home, I went to bed – well, actually not. I showered and washed my hair, which I would normally have done before setting off in the morning, typed up the invoice for my interpretation work and ate some blueberries that would have gone bad by the time I returned from Heidelberg. When I was finally in bed, it was about two AM and my alarm would go off in nínety minutes. But that’s a story for another day.

So while this detour to Bremerhaven was utterly unplanned, my pay – including a higher fee for work done outside normal work hours – would cover most of the cost of the trip to Heidelberg. Even more importantly, I made sure that a man could go home to his family rather than to jail, where he doesn’t belong (I am opposed to deportation detention and think it should only be used in extreme circumstances). And that’s a good thing.

As for why I chose this particular theatre rather than one closer to home, for starters, it has one of the largest screens in North Germany. But the main reason was that the Savoy specialises in showing international movies in their original version rather than dubbed, as is the norm in Germany. And since I have only ever watched Masters of the Universe in English – West German audio dramas of the 1980s notwithstanding and they were occasionally marred by mispronunciations – the German dub would have irritated me to no end and pulled me out of the film. So the Savoy it was.

My mostly spoiler-free review is here at File 770 and I was also on the MarkWho42 podcast, where I discussed the movie (with some spoilers) with Juan Sanmiguel and Vicky Jakubowski. There will also be a more detailed, spoilerish dissection of the movie on this blog later on, when more people had the chance to watch the movie.

I did want to get this post finished, before leaving for the 2026 Los Amigos Masters of the Universe convention in Heidelberg. However, because of circumstances beyond my control, I didn’t get it done on time, so it goes up now. Stay tuned for my adventures at Los Amigos and the long trip to Heidelberg. And yes, I will eventually blog about something other than Masters of the Universe again, too.

However, I also wanted to talk about my trip to get to Hamburg and the theater, since Hamburg is located about 100 kilometers from where I live. Normally, driving 100 kilometers isn’t much of an issue. However, Hamburg is an absolutely traffic nightmare and has been for as long as I remember. My Dad, who actually worked in Hamburg for almost twenty years or so, hated the traffic so much that he actually paid for a more expensive plane ticket, so I could fly from Bremen rather than Hamburg. He also ironically hated Hamburg so much that when the company he was working for at the time moved their headquarters from Bremen to Hamburg in 1982, he quit and instead went to work in Singapore in a move that must have made sense to him at the time, though I can’t for the life of me imagine how. Okay, I also think that he expected a promotion he didn’t get or something like that, but going to work in Singapore was still a weird and impulsive decision. But that’s a story for another day.

Unlike my Dad, I actually like Hamburg. It’s a lovely and lively city and I have probably visited Hamburg more often in the past two years than in the ten years before that. That said, getting there is still a pain.

Now the Savoy Theater is located only five minutes from Hamburg Central Station, which is a nightmare all of its own. These days, Hamburg Central Station is the busiest railway station in Germany (yes, busier than Berlin Central) and the second busiest in all of Europe after Gare du Nord in Paris and the 120-year-old station and particularly the platforms are simply too small for the amount of traffic they get. There have been times when the platforms at Hamburg Central Station were so overcrowded that I genuinely feared someone would be knocked onto the tracks. There have also been times where the police had to clear the platforms of passengers to prevent accidents.

However, in this case, driving to Bremen Central Station, hopping onto the train to Hamburg, going to the theater and taking the train back actually seemed like a good idea. There was only one problem. The last train from Hamburg to Bremen left at 11:20 PM, around the time the movie finished. And if I missed that train, there wouldn’t be another until five AM or so. Now Hamburg is one of those cities that never sleeps and you can actually spend the night wandering around St. Pauli and then head to the fishing market at dawn. However, I wasn’t really looking for the “Auf der Reeperbahn nachts um halb eins” (On Reeperbahn at half past twelve by night) experience.  Though honestly, if the Reeperbahn still looked like it does in that clip from the 1943 movie Große Freiheit No. 7, I totally would have done it. But that St. Pauli is gone, destroyed by bombing raids shortly after those scenes were filmed.

So I instead decided to follow my usual modus operandi when going to Hamburg, namely driving to Hamburg-Harburg, parking my car at a commuter car park and then taking the S-Bahn light rail in to the city proper. Cause the main reason Hamburg is a traffic nightmare is that there simply aren’t enough places to cross the river Elbe and that most of the traffic has to squeeze across the same few bridges that are more than a hundred years old by now. Okay, there is also two tunnels under the river Elbe, one of which is strictly for bike and foot traffic these days (and while you could drive through it in the past, it was an adventure, since cars were hoisted up and down by a freight elevator) and the other is chronically congested.

Since I was going to watch a Masters of the Universe movie, I of course took some action figures along. More precisely, I took He-Man and Teela along, so they could have a movie date. Though this time around, I took the small and cheap movie figures from the Core line along, because losing a 12 Euro Core figure at the cinema or on the S-Bahn wouldn’t be as much of a loss as losing a 30 Euro Masterverse figure, let alone a Classics figure that might go for 80 or 100 Euros these days.

Autobahn A1 and the first traffic jam

I set off at about three PM and immediately hit the first problem when I drove onto Autobahn A1 at Bremen-Brinkum, because the Autobahn bridge across the river Weser is currently undergoing much needed renovations, which causes nigh constant traffic jams for up to ten kilometers in both directions. It’s a nightmare for everybody living in the Bremen region, especially since the traffic also tends to spill out into adjacent towns. In the middle of the day, the constant traffic jam is usually tolerable and the exit Bremen-Brinkum is only about five kilometers from the construction zone. So I did decide to drive onto the A1 rather than around the construction zone and join the Autobahn later. That said, it still took me about twenty minutes to get through the construction zone.

Once I’d made it through the traffic jam, the road was mostly free all the way to Hamburg, though there was a the usual truck traffic (the A1 is one of the main North-South routes for all of Europe together with Autobahn A7) as well as a quite a bit of holiday traffic. Thursday is Corpus Christi Day and a public holiday in Catholic parts of Germany, so you had people using the long weekend for a short holiday. I also suspect that the Netherlands may have some kind of school holiday based on the number of Dutch cars I saw.

Now the Bremen-Hamburg leg of Autobahn A1 is pretty boring. There’s lots of fields and trees and very little else, except that you suddenly start getting hills from the exit Heidenau onwards. These hills are called the Black Mountains or Harburg Mountains and they are a terminal moraine from the last ice age. I always find them irritating, because why on Earth does Hamburg have hills, when there aren’t supposed to be any hills this far north. Though there is one spot near the parking lot Stillheide between exits Heidenau and Hollenstedt, where you reach the summit of a hill and suddenly have a lovely view of the Harburg Mountains stretching out in front of you. Here is a photo (not mine).

Afternoon Coffee in Sittensen

Unfortunately, I had run out of milk earlier that day, which meant that I needed to get milk and possibly some other groceries. However, I couldn’t get groceries on the way home, because by that time, all the supermarkets would be closed. So I had to go grocery shopping on the way to Hamburg.

Now as i said above, the area between Bremen and Hamburg consists of thinly populated heath and geest. There are some towns here, but most of them are quite a bit away from the Autobahn. The only things that are directly adjacent to the Autobahn are Autohöfe, which don’t have grocery stores, only convenience stores catering to truckers, and a few tiny villages that don’t even have a bakery. The only exception is Sittensen, a large village/small town halfway between Hamburg and Bremen that is directly adjacent to the A1. I occasionally stop there on the way back from Hamburg, because Sittensen has several grocery stores and also gas stations with reasonable prices as well as some dining options.

So I left the Autobahn A1 at Sittensen and went grocery shopping at a local Edeka store. I got milk, found the first Federweißer (partially fermented grape juice, i.e. very young wine) of the year to my delight and also picked up a bowl of fresh strawberries from a farm stall in front of the Edeka store.  The strawberries in the store were probably cheaper, but fresh strawberries from a farm stall are much better.

By this time, it was half past four. The movie didn’t start until half past eight, so I had plenty of time. So I decided to stop for the some coffee and cake at Bakery Freitag. And the café part of the bakery was completely empty, I could even snap a photo of He-Man and Teela starting off their movie date with coffee and poppyseed crumble cake:

He-Man and Teela start off their movie date with latte and poppyseed crumble cake at Bakery Freitag in Sittensen.

Autobahn A261 and the second traffic jam

After finishing my cake and coffee, I drove back onto Autobahn A1 and left it again about twenty kilometers later to change onto Autobahn A261 at junction Buchholz.

Autobahn A261 is only nine kilometers long and serves as a shortcut to connect the A1 to Autobahn A7, i.e. the other main North-South route for all of Europe. The A1 and A7 do intersect directly at the Horster junction and intersection Maschen (a Cthulhuesque mess of a highway junction), but both are chronically congested and the A261 was built to relieve that congestion as well as the small towns of Tötensen and Rosengarten, who suffered from traffic trying to circumvent the chronically congested Horster junction and intersection Maschen.

After leaving Sittensen, I heard on the radio that there was a traffic jam on Autobahn A7 before the Elbtunnel. This isn’t overly unusual. As I said, Hamburg is a traffic nightmare and the Elbtunnel is the best way to across the river – better than the ancient Elbe bridges in the city – but it is still prone to congestion, especially since pretty much all the North South truck traffic for all of Europe has to go through this one tunnel. Besides, that traffic jam didn’t affect me in the slightest, because I wasn’t even going onto the A7, let alone through the Elbtunnel. Instead, I would leave the A261 one exit before it meets the A7.  Not to mention that there are four exits and at least ten kilometers of Autobahn between junction Hamburg Southwest, where the A261 meets the A7, and the Elbtunnel.

However, it turned out that the traffic jam at the Elbtunnel was massive – ten kilometers long – and that it had spilled out onto the A261. And because the A7 was blocked, lots of drivers left the A261 at the exit Hamburg Marmstorf-Lürade to make their way across the Elbe bridges in the city. Yes, Hamburg actually has signposts that say “Elbe Bridges”, because those bridges are so important to the traffic through the city. Unfortunately, Hamburg Marmstorf-Lürade was the same exit I had to take to get onto Bundesstraße B75 for the last seven kilometers to Hamburg-Harburg. Even worse, there is a traffic light and a construction zone on the B75 almost directly behind the Autobahn exit, which further slows down traffic.

As a result, I hit the next traffic jam before I even got to the actual exit ramp. And the progress was glacial, especially on the exit ramp. Even worse, I got a cramp in my foot, while I was on the ramp and couldn’t even take my foot off the brake, lest my car roll down the ramp and into the car behind mine.

At this point, I was about seven kilometers from my destination, the Harburg commuter car park. And it literally took me twenty minutes or so for the 600 meters up the exit ramp and past the traffic light. Even worse, the B75 also passes the Hamburg-Marmstorf exit of Autobahn A7 shortly after, which brought in another flood of cars and trucks trying to escape the traffic jam on the A7. In short, this final part of the trip was absolutely painful and I was glad that I had left so early with plenty of time to spare.

Once I got past the construction zone on the B75 and the crossed the A7, the going got a little better. The traffic still piled up in front of traffic lights on occasion, but most of the time, traffic was moving. I finally made it to the commuter car park in Hamburg-Harburg, though it took me more than two hours altogether – not counting the pit stop in Sittensen – to drive 106 kilometers.

Hamburg Harburg and Hamburg Central Station

At Harburg, I parked my car at the commuter car park, which was pretty full, since it turns out lots of people are leaving their car there for a night on the town. I actually had to drive all the way up to the roof to find a spot.

As for what the view from the roof is like, here are two photos I took earlier this year during another trip to Hamburg:

The view from the roof of the Hamburg-Harburg commuter car park at the former Phoenix tire factory, now a shopping mall. Note the ICE high speed train on the railroad tracks. ICE trains regularly stop at Hamburg-Harburg.

Hamburg-Harburg railway station as seen from the roof of the commuter car park. The station was built in 1897.

The commuter car park has a direct connection to the Harburg S-Bahn light rail station, so I bought a ticket – letting two women who were also headed to a theater, but to a performance that started earlier, go ahead – and took the next train to Hamburg Central Station.

Hamburg Central Station, built in 1906.

I arrived at Hamburg Central Station at seven PM. The movie would begin at eight thirty, so I still had sufficient time for dinner.

Dim Sum in Hamburg

One of the great appeals of Hamburg for me is that it is a great foodie city and that you can find cuisines here that you don’t normally see in Germany. For example, Hamburg is one of the few places in Germany, where you can find authentic Mexican food.

However, I wanted to stay close to the station and the movie theater and I had dinner at Dim Sum Haus, a Cantonese Chinese restaurant that has been around since 1964 and used to be the only place where you could eat dim sum in North Germany, though Bremen also has a few dim sum places by now.

Due to the harbour, Hamburg actually had a Chinatown in the St. Pauli neighbourhood in the early twentieth century. You can catch glimpses of it in the 1944 movie Große Freiheit No. 7, a romantic melodrama which is set in Hamburg St. Pauli and is worth watching for a glimpse at the long lost world of St. Pauli in the 1940s alone. As for Hamburg’s Chinatown, in 1944 the Nazis rounded up and arrested the Chinese nationals living in Hamburg as well as their German wives/lovers and the children resulting from those relationships, while many of the buildings that housed Chinese restaurants, shops, laundries and boarding houses were destroyed by bombing, though at least one Chinese bar/boarding house operated until 2021, when the daughter of the original operator died.

I don’t know if the Dim Sum Haus has any connection to the pre-WWII Chinatown in St. Pauli, though it is an institution in the city (even former chancellor Olf Scholz visited at some point) and it’s also directly opposite Hamburg Central Station.

Since I didn’t really have time for an extended dinner, I opted for two different types of dim sum and a pot of tea. No He-Man and Teela romantic dinner photo, because the restaurant was pretty full, but I did snap a photo of my dim sum:

Shrimp Shumai

Buddha rolls, i.e. tofu skin filled with vegetables

Views of Hamburg St. Georg and an Digression on German Theater 

After dinner, I made my way to the theater. It was still light outside – this close to the summer solstice, the sun sets at nine forty-five PM – so I also took some photos of the St. Georg neighbourhood.

Just outside Hamburg Central Station, I stumbled upon the famous Ohnsorg Theater, which was a surprise to me, because I didn’t remember the Ohnsorg Theater being located directly next to the Central Station. Though the theater only moved to this location in 2011, so of course I have no memory of it being located so close to the Central Station.

The entrance of the famous Ohnsorg Theater in Hamburg with Heidi Kabel statue

Founded in 1902, the Ohnsorg Theater is a boulevard theater, playing mostly comedies in Low German. Thankfully, boulevard theater still is a thing in Germany and theaters specialising in performing plays in Low German are not exactly rare in North Germany and are doing a lot to keep the language (Low German is a separate language that was traditionally spoken in North Germany) alive. Bremen had its own version once upon a time, the late lamented Ernst Waldau Theater. My grandmother was an eager visitor and even had season tickets, even though she didn’t hail from North Germany and thus didn’t grow up with Low German. However, Grandma had a knack for languages and spoke Hungarian and Polish. However, since she was a woman born in rural Saxony in 1919, this talent was never really nurtured or even recognised. It wasn’t until I was an adult and Grandma long dead that I realised that “Hey, my Grandma spoke Hungarian and Polish, which she apparently picked up just by living there, and she had no problem following theater plays in Low German, which is actually awesome.”

However, among the Low German theaters of North Germany, the Ohnsorg Theater is special. If you grew up in (West) Germany in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s, I guarantee that you’ve heard of the Ohnsorg Theater and maybe even seen some of their productions, because many productions were broadcast on German TV to great success, though usually not in full Low German, but in High German with a Hamburg/North German dialect. The Ohnsorg Theater wasn’t the only boulevard theater whose productions were shown on TV. There also were similar broadcasts from the Willi Millowitsch Theater in Cologne in Cologne dialect and from Peter Steiners Theaterstadl in Munich in Bavarian dialect. My parents didn’t watch Willi Millowitsch or Peter Steiner, but they did watch Ohnsorg Theater and so did I. And to be honest, 1970s and 1980s Ohnsorg Theater productions were often hilarious.

The star of the Ohnsorg Theater during its golden years was Heidi Kabel. Born in 1914, she was a key member of the Ohnsorg Theater ensemble from 1932 to 1998, though she kept acting sporadically well into her nineties. She was also active in a lot of charities and supported homeless people, refugees and people with HIV/AIDS among others. There is a statue of her outside the new Ohnsorg Theater and the square where the theater is located is named Heidi-Kabel-Platz in her honour.

The Heidi Kabel statue outside the Ohnsorg Theater in Hamburg

I would have liked to introduce He-Man and Teela to Heidi Kabel, especially since I remember Ohnsorg Theater productions playing on the TV in the background, while I was playing with my action figures on the floor. Besides, Heidi Kabel was cool and would have taken no shit from Skeletor. But the area was busy and people were giving me weird looks as it was, because apparently younger people no longer care about Heidi Kabel.

Coincidentally, that evening the Ohnsorg Theater was playing Veer Lüüd in´n Nevel (Four People in the Fog) by Tim Firth, Low German by Frank Grube. It’s the story about four people on a team building exercise in the wilds of Schleswig-Holstein getting lost in the fog and stranded on a small island. I now imagine this happening to Adam and his dorky co-workers, though likely not in Low German.

Come to think of it, I should probably go to the Ohnsorg Theater sometime to brush up on my Low German (I can read and understand it, but don’t really speak it, since I went to school before the revival attempts really took off), since it’s so conveniently located.

The current home of the Ohnsorg Theater is the so-called Bieber House, a beautiful art noveau office building completed in 1909. The Bieber House has some lovely architectural details, some of which you can see below:

The main entrance of the Bieber House, flanked by two musclular atlantes with very strategically placed loin cloths.

The corner of the Bieber House in Hamburg with two statues above the entrance to the Café Junge on the ground floor.

The Ohnsorg Theater is not the only theater located next to Hamburg Central Station. There is also the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, built in 1900, which is Germany’s biggest spoken word theater (there are some opera houses that are bigger) with a whopping 1831 seats in the house.

The Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, built in 1900, all decked out for pride month.

The large poster is for a series of debates on “The Future of Democracy”, hosted by writer Lukas Bärfuss. Though that evening, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus was playing McNeal by Ayad Akhtar, translated into German by Daniel Kehlmann.

After a period of decline in the 1960s, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus became one of the spearheads of the Regietheater movement in the 1970s under director/manager Peter Zadek (who had gotten his start at the Bremen Goethe Theater, cause Bremen did Regietheater first – see my review of Zadek’s 1966 production of The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller at Galactic Journey).  Coincidentally, the same Peter Zadek whose production of The Robbers in 1966 caused Bremen’s greatest theater scandal caused Hamburg’s greatest theater scandal ten years later in 1976 with a production of William Shakespeare’s Othello. At the time, it was still common in Germany to use dark make-up for white actors playing black characters on stage and so actor Ulrich Wildgruber who played Othello was covered in dark body make-up, which came off under the hot stagelights of the Deutsches Schaupielhaus and smeared all over Eva Mattes who played Desdemona, when they were frolicking about near naked on stage. Director Peter Zadek claimed he was trying to make a point about racism, while the good citizens of Hamburg who had season tickets for the Deutsches Schauspielhaus were utterly outraged at a make-up dysfunction. Looking back, it all seems so very silly, plus it’s almost endearing that people once cared enough about Shakespeare and Schiller to be outraged about supposedly unfaithful stage productions. If the same Othello production were to be performed today, the fact that they used blackface at all would be the scandal and not the fact that actors were near naked on stage and that the make-up came off.  And yes, I’ve actually seen younger people assuming that the 1976 Othello scandal was about the blackface, when it definitely wasn’t. Blackface was still common and uncontroversial in Germany at the time – the issue was the nudity and simulated sex and the fact that the make-up came off.

The rise of the Regietheater in the 1960s and 1970s annoyed many long time stage actors, who weren’t keen on running around nude on stage and on younger directors trying to shoehorn some kind of political point into classical plays. And so they went looking for greener pastures, which did not require them to be naked on stage. A lot of the established actors of Hamburg’s Thalia Theater and Deutsches Schauspielhaus found those greener pastures with Europa, a recording company that produces audio dramas on cassette tapes aimed at kids.  Europa director Heikedine Körting and her husband hobnobbed a lot with Hamburg’s intellectual elite and so she was able to recruit top notch veteran stage actors to record audio dramas at kids and damn it, they gave their all. One of Europa‘s most popular audio drama series in the 1980s was Masters of the Universe BTW and many of the beloved characters were voiced by top notch stage actors.

As for why the Hamburg neighbourhood clustered around Hamburg Central Station is called St. Georg, it’s named after the parish church for this neighbourhood, the Church of the Holy Trinity a.k.a. St. Georg.

The tower of the Church of the Holy Trinity a.k.a. St. Georg in Hamburg. There has been a church here since the 13th century, but the tower was built in 1747 and is the only part of the church that survived the WWII bombing attacks. The nave of the church is a postwar building.

In order to get to the theater, I had to cross Hansaplatz, an open square at the heart of St. Georg. The Hansaplatz was originally just an open meadow where the locals could graze their cows. As the city grew, it was redeveloped into a large, representative city square in 1878, complete with a beautiful fountain at the center of the sqeare.

The Hansaplatz in Hamburg St. Georg with the Hansa fountain surrounded by linden trees.

A closer look at the Hansa fountain on Hansaplatz in Hamburg St. Georg, designed by Engelbert Peiffer in 1878. The statue on top is Hansa, a female representation of the Hanseatic League. The male statue on the front of the fountain is Emperor Constantin the Great.

Hansaplatz and the Hansa fountain are both lovely. However, while St. Georg is gentrifying, it has also long been a “problem neighbourhood” plagued by crime, drugs, homelessness and prostitution (which is ironic, because St. Pauli, Hamburg’s traditional red light district, is not far away). St. Georg is close to Hamburg Central Station, after all, and the neighbourhoods surrounding the central stations of German cities are often “problem neighbourhoods”.

And so the steps of the Hansa fountain have become a hangout for the local homeless population and drunks. I interacted with them for a bit when I took the photo above and they were friendly enough and besides, homeless people have to go somewhere, if you can’t or won’t provide housing for them. That said, St. Georg is still a dodgy neighbourhood, even if it is gentrifying. And while it was still light at this point, I would have to go across Hansaplatz to get to the Central Station after dark.

Now my Dad was the sort of girl dad who was always super worried about me and didn’t like me being out after dark, particularly in somewhat dodgy neighbourhoods. So he usually made a point to pick me up when I was out and about, even well into adulthood. If he were still around, he absolutely wouldn’t have liked me walking alone through St. Georg after dark at all and he probably would have insisted on going to the cinema with me, even if that meant braving Hamburg and its traffic hell. Not sure what he would have made of the movie, though he probably would have known a way around that terrible traffic jam on the B75, since he knew Hamburg a lot better than I do.

The Savoy Movie Theater

Directly behind Hansaplatz is Steindamm, a busy street lined with kebap shops as well as Middle Eastern restaurants and supermarkets. Steindamm is in a part of St. Georg that was badly bombed in WWII, so most of the buildings here are postwar buildings.

In the late 1960s, there were plans to completely flatten St. Georg to build a Brutalist nightmare called Alsterzentrum – after all, it was a dodgy neighbourhood and there were only poor people living there anyway. Understandably there were massive protests and the Alsterzentrum was never built to everybody’s relief. Surviving renderings show something that looks like the domed city from Logan’s Run. Alsterzentrum was one of the many projects by the fucking Neue Heimat (new homeland), a real estate company owned by the Council of German Trade Unions, who plastered West Germany with brutalist housing estates before going bankrupt due to corruption in 1982. The entire company with its more than 400000 apartments all over Germany was sold for a symbolic price of one Deutschmark in 1982, which made nine-year-old Cora very angry, because if they were going to sell the entire Neue Heimat for so cheap, why they didn’t they advertise it publicly? Because if you could buy the entire Neue Heimat for just one Deutschmark, I would have totally bought it. Hell, I would even have emptied my entire wallet, which probably contained around ten Deutschmarks. Cause my aunt and uncle lived on a Neue Heimat estate here in Bremen and I thought of their apartment, the other apartments in their high rise building, the adjacent high rise buildings full of similar apartments and all that repeated in every major city in West Germany. And all the people in all of those apartments were paying rent every single month. If I could buy all that for one Deutschmark, I would be fucking rich. So rich that I could even let me permanently cash-strapped aunt and uncle live in their apartment rent-free (and note that I didn’t actually like them) and there would probably be enough money left over to paint those ugly housing estates in nicer colours. Alas, the Neue Heimat never advertised that they were for sale and so my career as a nine-year-old real estate magnate/slumlord never got off the ground.

Thankfully, St. Georg remained the old motley mix of Victorian and postwar buildings of reasonable size. The Savoy Movie Theater is one of those postwar buildings, built in 1957 to house a cinema as well as a cheap hotel. It has had a varied history from West Germany’s most modern cinema upon opening to its decline in the 1980s and 1990s. For a while, the Savoy specialised in Bollywood and Turkish movies and for a few years, it was closed altogether and turned into a Middle Eastern supermarket, before it was restored to its former glory in 2013. The upper floors still houses a hotel and the exterior is largely unchanged from its glory days. See this photo for what the Savoy looked like in 1959. I really miss those huge handpainted posters by the way. Berlin and Bremen still have them to some degree, but the last movie poster painters are working for arthouses, so we will never see them paint He-Man or Spider-Man or Din Djarin and Grogu, more the pity.

The Savoy Movie Theater on Steindamm in Hamburg St. Georg, flanked by Middle Eastern restaurants and cafés.

The Batman Cafè next to the Savoy is named for the Turkish city Batman and not for the caped crusader BTW. Though a Batman Café named and themed after the DC superhero would be cool.

The entrance of the Savoy Theater in Hamburg St. Georg

A closer look at the neon sign of the Savoy Theater in Hamburg.

The Savoy actually has one of Hamburg’s largest screens, but since it is an old style 1950s movie theater rather than a modern multiplex, the lobby isn’t all that big. Nor were there any massive cardboard standees or statues or Skeletor’s bone throne in the lobby. Instead, we got movie posters behind glass as in the olden days. In many ways, the Savoy reminded me of the movie theaters of my childhood, where I went to see Disney movies and The Goonies and Star Wars and Indiana Jones with my Mom, before multiplexes and rising rents drove them out of business in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Posters for Masters of the Universe and The Mandalorian and Grogu along with show times and some toys on display at the Savoy.

There’s a bar in the lobby of the Savoy where you can have a pre or post-movie drink and also grab some snacks. Though sadly popcorn has replaced the classic ice cream chocolate of old here as well.

The bar of the Savoy

I don’t like popcorn and also didn’t want any messy snacks and since I still had to drive, alcohol was out, so I just got a bottle of water. I also snapped a quick picture of He-Man and Teela. I wish I could have given them snacks and drinks, but while I have snacks and drinks in my collection of miniature food for toy photos, I didn’t want to take it along, because small parts are easily lost.

He-Man and Teela are chilling in the lobby of the Savoy.

Meanwhile, the lobby of the Savoy was filling up with moviegoers. The Masters of the Universe fans were clearly recognisable by the fact that they were weaing Masters of the Universe t-shirts. But there were also a lot of casual walk-ins. The gender breakdown of the audience was roughly the same sixty percent men and forty percent women that Mattel found back in the 1980s. There were no children in the audience, because it was an eight thirty PM English language showing on a school night.

Moviegoers queuing for tickets at the Savoy

Now it must be noted that the Savoy is not your usual movie theater. Since it specialises in showing movies in the original language, it attracts students, immigrants and even the occasional sailor who wants something different than what St. Pauli has to offer. And since the Savoy only has a single auditorium, if you walked into the Savoy that night and bought a ticket, Masters of the Universe is what you’re watching rather than Scary Movie or Obsession or Backrooms or whatever.

The Savoy wasn’t completely full, but I’d estimate that it was about eighty percent full. Interestingly enough, there were two free seats on one side of me, even though the seating chart on the website showed that the entire row was sold out. I guess someone bought tickets, but then didn’t show up.

As movie theaters go, the Savoy is really nice. It’s clean, it has comfortable reclining seats and state of the art projection and sound technology. I had a very pleasant theater experience, especially compared to the Bremen theaters, where the experience is so terrible that I almost never go there anymore. The CinemaxX in the city center is the worst of the bunch. When it opened in 1996, it was a sensation – Bremen’s first true multiplex. There even was a whale skeleton from the local museum on display in the lobby. However, once the CinemaxX had driven all the other city center theaters out of business, the quality started to decline badly. Seats and carpets were dity and disgusting, half the concession stands weren’t open, lightbulbs were not replaced and the working conditions were so bad that the staff went on strike several times. The other two multiplexes, Cinestar and Cinespace are better, but both are outside the city center and not as easy to reach. And while the arthouse theaters are nice, they also don’t usually show movies I actually want to watch.

But while the Savoy is great, getting there is something of a hassle that it’s a venue where I will go for special movies – and Masters of the Universe definitely was special for me – but not for regular “This movie looks good and I’ve heard positive things” films.

Meanwhile, He-Man and Teela were enjoying themselves as well. And yes, the theater had a place to put them, though I suspect it’s intended for snacks rather than action figures.

He-Man and Teela are getting cozy in the cinema

After the usual trailers – including trailers for Supergirl, The Odyssey, Disclosure Day, Toy Story 5, Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Amazing Digital Circus as well as a special pride month showing of Portrait of a Lady on Fire – and ads and just before the movie was about to start, there was a brief break. No, not for the elderly ice cream lady who haunted the theaters of my youth and always showed up just before the actual movie to ask if anybody wanted ice cream, but for the owner of Comic Cave, a Hamburg comics and collectibles store that has gotten a lot of my money over the years. Comic Cave has got a partnership with the Savoy and they were giving away a Funko Pop Skeletor figure to a moviegoer. No, I didn’t win, but then I don’t really need a Funko Skeletor.

As for the movie itself, I once more refer you to my review at File 770 and my discussion with Juan Sanmiguel and Vicky Jakubowski at MarkWho42.

I had heard about the three post-credits scenes in advance – and the theater erupted into spontaneous applause at the second one – so I knew to stay seated till the end. Of course, I always do this anyway and have done this since long before post-credits scenes were a regular thing (and coincidentally, the 1987 Masters of the Universe had one of the earliest post-credit scenes). However, some folks did get up and I even told a few people who were seated close to me to stay put, because there was more coming. And thankfully, the theater did not turn up the lights or send in the cleaners until the last post-credits scene, cause this is often an issue.

The Savoy Movie Theater after dark.

St. Georg After Dark 

I left the theater happy and elated and made my way back to Hamburg Central Station. Initially, I considered going the long way along Steindamm and Kreuzweg, larger roads with lots of traffic, including patrolling police cars. But then I decided to go back the way I’d come, cutting across Hansaplatz and walking down the small side streets behind the Deutsches Schauspielhaus towards Hamburg Central Station.

It was half past eleven by now and completely dark. The restaurants and bars on Hansaplatz were still open, though the drunks I’d encountered earlier had apparently gone to sleep. And though I was aware that Dad would not like me walking around St. Georg at half past eleven at all, no one bothered or accosted me. In one of the streets behind the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, passed a bar called Zar & Zimmermann (Czar and Carpenter), named after the 1837 opera by Albert Lortzing. The high-brow name did not match the actual bar at all, since Zar & Zimmermann is the sort of dive bar that could once be found on every corner in every working class neighbourhood. Most of these bars are gone now, though a handful still survive, including in Hamburg. Though the traditional Hamburg dive bars I know about are found in St. Pauli, particularly on the street Hamburger Berg. Though I’m always happy to see places like this surviving St. Georg. Here is a brief article about the bar and the current owner, daughter of the original owners.

I probably should have just gone into the Zar & Zimmermann, because I would have liked a coffee and I suspect I would have gotten one there, since bars like those are usually welcoming, unless you’re a jerk. Because one huge issue in Germany is that the bakeries and cafés where you can get a coffee usually close by seven PM at the latest. Later at night, e.g. when you’re coming out of a movie theater, the only places that are still open are restaurants, which often don’t like people just dropping in for a coffee, and bars, which are focussed on alcohol and can also be unpleasant environments particularly for women. Though to be honest, these days I feel safer at dive bars like the Zar & Zimmermann than at hipper more upscale cocktail bars.

However, I walked on to Hamburg Central Station, because I assumed I could get a coffee there. Alas, all the shops at Hamburg Central Station were already closed, which is a shame for Germany’s busiest railway station. As long as there are trains going, at least some shops should be open. However, Germany all too often operates under the assumption that nobody has any business being outside after eight or nine PM and therefore cannot expect any shops to be open.

On the way to the theater, the S-Bahn train stopped at a separate subterranean platform at Hamburg Central. But for the way back, I had to go into the main hall onto one of the regular platforms that are also used by mainline trains. However, because it was so late, the platform was not very crowded.

On the S-Bahn, I wound up chatting with a rather talkative young man (I suspect he may have been high), who basically chatted with everybody in the vicinity. He told me his cousin was working at the theater in Bremen and asked me what I was doing in Hamburg. I told him I’d been to the cinema and saw Masters of the Universe, whereupon he told me his Dad was a huge fan. I told him to go see the movie and take his Dad.

I had been a bit apprehensive about wandering around the Harburg commuter car park by night, but I needn’t have worried, because I wasn’t the only person who’d come back from a night on the town. So I never felt unsafe, as I made my way up to the roof top to my car. The midnight news had just begun, when I started the engine.

Driving Home by Night

The various traffic jams that had plagued me on the way to the cinema had all dissipated by now and so the roads were clear. I was still elated from the movie and not even slightly tired. Though I’d drunk the last of my water, when I returned to the car, and I always like to have some water with me on longer drives. So I decided to stop at gas station or Autobahn service station that was still open on the way home.

I did pass a gas station on my way through the Hamburg suburbs of Harburg, Marmstorf and Lürade, but it was already closed for the night. So I drove onwards, back onto Autobahn A261 and from there onto Autobahn A1. The next exit after Junction Buchholz, where the A261 meets the A1, is Rade, where I once spent two hours with my Dad stuck in a broken down rental car.

Dad had been on the trial run of the research vessel Maria S. Merian out of Rendsburg. He returned by plane, but his car was still in Rendsburg, so he rented a car and we drove to Rendsburg about halfway between Hamburg and the Danish border. Then Dad picked up his car, while I was supposed to drive the rental car back. The rental car was a brand-new Mercedes A-class – I think the kilometer counter said 60 kilometers when we got it that morning – and it was giving me trouble from the start. I  initially thought the problem was that the Mercedes has a manual shift and my own car had an automatic shift, so I was not longer used to driving with a manual shift. But the problems with the car never got better, not even once we reached the Autobahn, where I didn’t have to change gears so often. And then, literally in the middle of the Elbtunnel, i.e. the worst possible place, the engine began to stall and no matter how hard I pressed onto the accelerator, the car just wouldn’t pick up speed but crawled along at 60 kilometers per hour on the Autobahn. I was panicking by now, because the Elbtunnel is pretty narrow and there is no shoulder to stop, should the car break down. Besides, I was terrified that I had somehow wrecked a brand-new car and would have to pay for it. I barely made it out of the Elbtunnel and stopped the car literally at the next possible spot where there was an actual shoulder and frantically called my Dad that the car just wouldn’t accelerate. Dad said that he had noticed issues with the car on the way out as well and that I should try to drive on to service station Hollenstedt and then we would call the rental company.

So I drove on at 60 kilometers per hour on the bloody Autobahn. Even the trucks overtook me and honked for good measure, too. In my memory, I only made it a few kilometers to the next exit, before the car broke down for good, but in reality I must have driven almost 20 kilometers with a broken car and passed six exits, two junctions and an Autobahn parking lot. However, I never made it to service station Hollenstedt, since the car absolutely refused to go any further at exit Rade. So I pulled into exit Rade and barely made it up the exit ramp before the car broke down for good and refused to drive even a meter further. Dad called the rental company, who were surprisingly cool about the whole thing and promised to send a tow truck. However, the rental company was in Bremen and we were just south of Hamburg, so we had to wait for two hours until the tow truck could pick up the car. And this was the era before smartphones, so all we could do was listen to the car radio and play the snake game on the non-smart phone. We also couldn’t just abandon the car and have a coffee – if there even was a place to have a coffee in Rade. Nowadays, Rade has an Autohof, but I have no idea if that Autohof already existed twenty years ago. Not mention that it is one the other side of the Autobahn and the car barely made it up the exit ramp. The tow truck eventually arrived and picked up not just our car, but another Mercedes A-class that had also broken down on the Autobahn and had literally stopped on the exit ramp. Much as I loved the Mercedes A-class I drove from 2008 to 2017, that model always was prone to issues, which is probably why Mercedes completely redesigned it.

Once the car was taken care of, we climbed into my Dad’s car and stopped at service station Hollenstedt to use the bathroom and have a much deserved coffee. And yes, I have to think of that story, whenever I drive past exit Rade or service station Hollenstedt.

This night, however, I made it past Rade without any issues and pulled into service station Hollenstedt to buy some water. Alas, the service station, which is supposedly open 24 hours, was closed and completely dark. Even the gas station was closed and the motel – Hollenstedt is one of those service stations which have a motel attached – was only accessible via keycard or code. Personally, I think that at least the gas station and shop of an Autobahn service station should be open 24 hours, because by night, these service stations literally are the only place you can stop to refuel your car or yourself.

Since Hollenstedt was closed, I drove onwards to the next service station, Ostetal near Sittensen. And while the cafè and restaurant part of service station Ostetal was closed, the gas station and shop were still open. So I got a bottle of water and a large chocolate chip cookie. There even were some sandwiches on offer, but I wasn’t that hungry. Though I did chat a bit with the guy behind the counter. He was an recent immigrant from Kosovo and didn’t speak German very well, so we talked in English. These days, the staff at German Autobahn service stations are almost all immigrants.

I drank some water and munched down my cookie at the service station and drove onwards, towards home. The radio had already switched to nighttime programming – these days many stations shift to nighttime programming as early as ten PM, when several used to run all through the night – so I was stuck with gentle, soothing easy listening type music, when I wanted something rousing, preferably “Eternia” or “Princes of the Universe”.

It was half past midnight by now and at that hour, the Autobahn belongs to the oversize load transports, which aren’t allowed to drive by day, lest they impede traffic. And indeed I saw several oversize load trucks and their escorts going in the opposite direction, most likely headed for Hamburg harbour. As for what travelling with an oversize load transport is like, I actually blogged about that back in 2012. Other oversize load transports were waiting for their police escorts at the Autobahn parking lots. At one point, a cloud of smoke drifted across the Autobahn and I wondered if a truck was on fire or if they were transporting something that generated smoke.

I made it through the construction zone on the Weser Bridge without any problems. There were no oversize load trucks here, the construction zone is too narrow and the crumbling bridge probably couldn’t handle overweight load trucks anyway. I left the Autobahn at the exit Bremen-Brinkum and made one more stop at a gas station to fill up my tank, while gas was comparatively cheap. Then I went home and since I was still too wound up by the movie to sleep, I started writing my review for File 770.

And that was He-Man and Teela’s (and my) movie date.