John is ready, Alison had forgotten, and Liz is surprised. An uncorrected transcript of this episode is available here. Please email your letters of comment to comment@octothorpecast.uk, join our Facebook group, and tag @OctothorpeCast (on Bluesky or on Mastodon) when you post about the show on social media. Content warnings this episode: Animal torture (letters of comment) Letters of comment Chris Garcia (email) Ed Morland (BlueSky) Farah Mendlesohn (Facebook) Pictcon 2026: PictCon 2 in Perth, 17 October Finbarr O’Reilly (email) Kev McVeigh (Facebook) Kin-Ming Looi (Facebook) Paul Weimer (BlueSky, email) Tammy Coxen (Facebook) Terry Gibbs (Facebook) Raj (Mastodon) We also heard from Mike Scott, Neil Ottenstein and Tammy Coxen 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Ebon Moss-Bachrach on the red carpet Event broadcast on YouTube LAcon V opens Hugo Awards Base Contest 36th Galaxy Awards Roderick Leeuwenhart Tianwen Awards Ersatz Culture on Mastodon BKK Comics Art Festival #4 The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF Belgian comics Asian Board Games Festival (ABGF) “Walking The Walk With RPGs In Malaysia” (paywalled on Rascal) Picks John: The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship Shut Up & Sit Down’s review Board Game Arena The dice tower Alison: The Word for World exhibition at the Architectural Association Secret Maps at the British Library Liz: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman Star Wars is being properly remastered? Credits Cover art: “Nepal Spotter’s Guide” by Paul Weimer (text by Alison Scott) Alt text: A photograph of the mountains of Nepal with text overlaid, reading “Octothorpe 147 Official Octothorpe Nepal Identification Guide* (*apparently never gets old)** (** Liz might like to go to a comics con there)”. Theme music: “Fanfare for Space” by Kevin MacLeod (CC BY 4.0)