A man had a television show he could not sell. The networks did not want science fiction. So he stopped calling it science fiction and told them it was a Western.

They bought it. Then they cancelled it.

Also: a drought shuts a national park, and the leopards get it to themselves. Four paintings out a window in the south of France, and two of them nobody alive can buy. A volcano called the Child, and what its parent did in 1883. An island in the dark with ninety one percent of the lights out. Bears down among the houses. A driveway in Malibu that went into the sea. A seventy nine year old on a mountain, and the Black Hawk that came for him. And a boat that turned toward the fire instead of away from it.

Tuesday, September 8th, 2026. The Sterling Report. News and comment.