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    Lifelong ‘Star Trek’ Fan Leaves Behind a Massive Trove of Memorabilia

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    Troy Nelson and his younger brother Andrew were almost inseparable.The two youngest of six, they were born two years apart. They lived together in their childhood home in Bremerton, Wash., for more than half a century. Near their home, there is a park bench on which they carved their initials as young boys.The Nelson brothers never married or had children. They worked together at the same senior home. They even once, as teenagers, dated the same girl at the same time while working different shifts at the same pizza shop. This lasted a week until they realized it.“Two parts of one body,” Evan Browne, their older sister, said of their relationship in an interview.On Feb. 28, Andrew Nelson, who had been treated for cancer for years, went to feed the chickens and ducks that were gifts from Ms. Browne to her brothers. He had a heart attack and died. He was 55. Just hours later, Troy Nelson, who was stricken with grief, took his own life. He was 57.“He had talked about it before,” Browne, 66, said, tearfully. “He said, ‘Hey, if Andrew goes, I’m out of here. I’m checking out.’ Andrew would say the same thing, and then it really happened.”The collection of “Star Trek” memorabilia left by Mr. Nelson is among the largest known, according to the president of a nonprofit that focuses on the franchise.Connie Aramaki for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Five Science Fiction Movies to Stream Now

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      Time loops in Japan, a seductive interface for agoraphobes and artificial intelligence battles make up this month’s science fiction streaming picks.‘River’Rent or buy it on most major platforms.In this Junta Yamaguchi film, the staff and clients of a quaint Japanese inn find themselves stuck in a short time loop: Every 120 seconds, they all rewind. This premise makes it sound as if Yamaguchi himself is stuck on repeat since his previous feature, “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” (2022), was about a loop of the same length. But “River” — once again made in collaboration with the Kyoto theater company Europe Kikaku and the writer Makoto Ueda — feels very different. The often broad humor is still present, but the new movie also effectively creates a wistful mood that can make it feel as if you’re watching a live-action Studio Ghibli feature. Dominating the ensemble is Riko Fujitani’s Mikoto, a young employee who eventually convinces herself that she may have caused the temporal disturbance. After kicking off as a goofy comedy as we meet all the characters and watch them try to process their situation in exactly two minutes, “River” slides into a bittersweet romance. Even the intervention of a deus ex (tempus) machina to resolve the plot doesn’t spoil the film’s whimsical charm.‘Sight: Extended’Stream it on Tubi.The agoraphobic Patrick (Andrew Riddell) hasn’t left his apartment in over a month, working remotely and ordering delivery food. Stepping outside to pick up a prescription sets off a near-meltdown; an invitation to a high school reunion triggers feelings of inadequacy. So when Patrick is offered a miracle new app called Refresh, he jumps on the opportunity. He finds himself immersed in an enhanced reality in which his field of vision essentially becomes a screen on which prompts are overlaid, as well as bonuses and rewards. He can even buy booster packs for things like X-ray vision. Overnight, his life becomes a video game in which he is a triumphant He-Man instead of a loser. He even wins over his old crush, Emily (Nova Gaver).Daniel Lazo and Eran May-Raz’s “Sight: Extended” suffers from an affliction plaguing many of the free fare streaming on Tubi: The acting is perfunctory at best, so don’t go in expecting Actors Studio fireworks. But the movie makes up for it by offering a scarily convincing version of an interface so seductive and so toxic that surely it must be just a few days away from becoming available in real life.‘Ozma’Rent or buy it on most major platforms.“What if dreams are rehearsals?” Jeff (Ferdy Roberts) ponders. “Rehearsals for experiences that are too strange for us to accept.” You can see why Jeff is questioning the fabric of reality, because he is in a film named after a “hyper-evolved, shape-shifting jellyfish” that talks in unmistakably feminine tones (voice by Eva Magyar).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Dune: Part Two’ Draws Biggest Opening Since ‘Barbie’ at the Box Office

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      The science-fiction sequel sold an estimated $81.5 million in tickets in the United States and Canada, the biggest opening for a Hollywood film since “Barbie.”“Dune: Part Two” and its A-list cast jump-started moviegoing in North America after a dismal start to the year.The science-fiction sequel sold an estimated $81.5 million in tickets in the United States and Canada from Thursday night to Sunday, the biggest opening for a Hollywood film since “Barbie” in July. (Taylor Swift’s concert documentary arrived to $93 million in October.) “Dune: Part Two,” directed by Denis Villeneuve, collected an additional $97 million overseas. IMAX screenings were especially strong.Legendary Entertainment and Warner Bros. spent $190 million to produce “Dune: Part Two,” not including a megawatt marketing campaign that found Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Austin Butler, Anya-Taylor Joy, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Florence Pugh trotting red carpets in Mexico City, London and New York.The movie had originally been scheduled for November, but Legendary pushed back the release date because of the actors’ strike: Without the buzzy young cast promoting the movie — Zendaya’s bottom-baring robot suit at the London premiere arrived on the internet as a sonic boom — Legendary feared that “Part Two” would not turn out audiences in big enough numbers to warrant the high budget. Sci-fi fans were likely to come one way or another. But Legendary also needed to sell the film’s more delicate story — a boy becoming a man, a guy falling in love — which would be more difficult without cast interviews.“It was a tough decision because I knew moving the movie out of the fall was going to cause a lot of pain for exhibition,” said Josh Grode, Legendary’s chief executive, using Hollywood jargon for theaters. “But when you have a cast like this one, you use it.”“We’re really, really happy,” Mr. Grode added.Ticket sales in North America had been down 20 percent this year compared with the same period last year. “Dune: Part Two” narrowed the decline to 13 percent. Theaters have struggled partly because studios have not released a steady flow of films; moviegoing begets moviegoing, analysts say, with trailers playing before titles on one weekend helping to fill seats the next. Marquees will be less sparse in March. “Kung Fu Panda 4,” “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” and Legendary’s “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” are all expected to be hits.Second place for the weekend went to “Bob Marley: One Love” (Paramount), with about $7.4 million in ticket sales, lifting its three-week domestic total to $82.8 million. The faith-based drama “Ordinary Angels” (Lionsgate) collected $3.9 million, for a two-week total of $12.6 million. More

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      It’s Alive! EC Comics Returns

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      Oni Press will revive the beloved horror and sci-fi name with new stories starting this summer.EC Comics, which specialized in tales of horror, crime and suspense, and was shut down in the “moral panic” of the 1950s, is making a comeback.Oni Press will publish two new anthology series under the EC Comics banner. The first, Epitaphs From the Abyss, coming in July, will be horror focused; Cruel Universe, the second, arrives in August and will tell science fiction stories. Hunter Gorinson, the president and publisher of Oni Press, said the new stories will interpret the world of today, much as EC Comics explored the American psyche of the 1950s. The cover designs will feel familiar to EC Comics fans: Running down the top left is a label declaring the type of story — “Terror” or “Horror” or “Science-Fiction” — and the logo evokes the bold colors and fonts of past series like “Tales From the Crypt” and “The Vault of Horror.”The series are a partnership between Oni and the family of William M. Gaines, the original publisher of EC Comics, who died in 1992. Gary Groth, the editor of The Comics Journal, told The New York Times in 2013 that EC Comics was “arguably the best commercial comics company in the history of the medium.”Cathy Gaines Mifsud, a daughter of William M. Gaines, who is also president of the family company, William M. Gaines Agent, said, “We’re very excited it is coming back for a whole new generation.” The new stories will be written by comics all-stars like Jason Aaron, Rodney Barnes, Cecil Castellucci and Matt Kindt. EC’s original subversive content brought it to the attention of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1954 and its hearings on whether comics were linked to moral decay. Gaines testified: “The truth is that delinquency is the product of the real environment in which the child lives and not of the fiction he reads.” The hearings resulted in comic book publishers founding the Comics Code Authority, to self-impose standards on what comics could depict. Gaines soon closed down EC and shifted his focus to his humor publication, Mad.EC has remained highly revered, and collected editions of its stories have been sold by various publishers over the years. The original art for one EC story, “Master Race,” about a postwar encounter between a Nazi war criminal and a Holocaust survivor, sold for $600,000 at Heritage Auctions in 2018.Along with the top-notch writers, the artists of the new stories include Peter Krause, Malachi Ward and Dustin Weaver. Covers will be drawn by Lee Bermejo, Greg Smallwood, J.H. Williams III, among others. More

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      Some Authors Were Left Out of Awards Held in China. Leaked Emails Show Why.

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      When some books, including best sellers, were conspicuously absent from the science fiction Hugo Awards last year, writers and fans became suspicious.The Hugo Awards, a major literary prize for science fiction, have been engulfed in controversy over revelations that some writers may have been excluded based on their perceived criticism of China or the Chinese government.Suspicions in the science fiction community have been building for weeks that something was amiss with last year’s awards, which rotate to a different city each year, and in 2023 were hosted in Chengdu, China. Now, newly released emails show that the awards were likely manipulated because of political concerns.Here’s what we know.What are the Hugo Awards?The awards, first established in 1953, are given annually at a gathering hosted by the World Science Fiction Convention. Writers are nominated and awarded prizes by members of the World Science Fiction Society, which includes science fiction fans. Each person can nominate five works for each category. Those entries are then tallied so that the six works with the most votes become finalists. Previous winners have included luminaries like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson and Philip K. Dick.Why were writers, and fans, upset?In January, the Hugo Awards revealed which writers had been nominated for last year’s awards, and by how many people. The information made clear that multiple authors who had enough nominations to be finalists were shut out of the process; award administrators had marked them as not eligible, without specifying a reason. Among the excluded authors were two Western writers of Chinese descent: R.F. Kuang, who is Chinese American and who was widely expected to be recognized for her novel “Babel,” a historical fantasy set in mid-1800s Oxford, and Xiran Jay Zhao, a Chinese Canadian author whose novel “Iron Widow” is a sci-fi reimagining of China’s female emperor.“I assume this was a matter of undesirability rather than ineligibility,” Kuang posted on Instagram in January. “Excluding ‘undesirable’ work is not only embarrassing for all involved parties, but renders the entire process and organization illegitimate.”What did the leaked emails reveal?The exclusion of popular authors of Chinese descent led to speculation that the awards’ administrators had weeded out those whose political views might prove controversial in China. Those suspicions were confirmed recently, when emails leaked by Diane Lacey, a member of last year’s Hugo administration team, were published in a report by Chris M. Barkley, a science fiction fan and journalist, and Jason Sanford, a journalist and science fiction writer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More