News of the (Prior) Day

In past years, I've gathered up links to the various rare and amazing stories announced at the beginning of April -- see my posts from 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008. (There was a similar post in 2007, on the blog I wrote for my then-employer, but the Internet has since eaten it. I 2006, I was, tangentially, the subject of such a news story and issued a statement.) But, this year, since the Glorious First fell on a Sunday, I was not sitting at my computer all day, plugged into my feeds, and so I'm only seeing most of these now.

So, with the hopes that they will be just as entertaining -- and precisely as truthful -- as they were yesterday, here are some stories from this notable holiday:

• Warren Buffet announces "Tax It Forward" movement
• Amazon.com achieves sentience, takes over governance of the corporation, and so forth
• SFWA's battle for the Nebula Award takes an unlikely turn in 2018
• Margaret Atwood's new SF magazine to launch

More will certainly follow as I discover them -- please feel free to e-mail or comment with notable examples.

Update 1: IDW, not quite getting how this works, sent out a release a few days before April 1to say that the popular 1962 Topps card set Mars Attacks! (and the subsequent, not nearly as popular, Tim Burton film) would be turned into a Broadway musical, and then took it back on the 1st. As Jas. Hook would say: bad form.

Update 2: There seems to be substantially less frivolity than prior years; the weekend has dampened more than my spirits:

• Cheryl Morgan uncovers a betting scandal among Clarke judges
• John Scalzi's epic fantasy trilogy Shadow War of the Night Dragon to be adapted into manga
• The shocking truth of how every plot detail of the second season of Game of Thrones was leaked
• When Jane Austen met Robert E. Howard
• Jay Lake turns to nurse novels for his next project
• Scott Lynch picks a feud with John Scalzi
• Jo Walton reviews Oscar!, in which Grouch meets Wilde
• The amazing Lego Brick Sorter
• ...and there were so many variant XKCD comics that it took Reddit to keep track of them all.