Back into the hot, irradiated desert landscape we go (though in California this time): Prime Video has renewed Fallout for a second season. The show is (according to Amazon) one of the three most-watched series ever for that streaming platform, and "the most-watched season globally since Rings of Power." We just love our franchise stories, don't we!
Fallout is based on the video game series of the same name, and stars Ella Purnell as a sheltered Vault Dweller who leaves her underground home to discover a world gone very weird. Said weird world includes Aaron Moten as a soldier and Walton Goggins as the noseless Ghoul. A whole pile of interesting actors play secondary characters, including Kyle MacLachlan, Sarita Choudhury, Michael Emerson, Leslie Uggams, Frances Turner, Zach Cherry, and Xelia Mendes-Jones.
Response to the first season has been generally quite positive, from video game fans and newbies alike; writing for Entertainment Weekly, Kristen Baldwin said, "The eight-episode season exists in a vivid and captivating universe that will be familiar to gamers — though knowledge of the franchise isn't required to enjoy its darkly comic dystopian pleasures."
In a press release, co-creators and showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner said, “Holy shit. Thank you to Jonah [Nolan], Kilter, Bethesda and Amazon for having the courage to make a show that gravely tackles all of society's most serious problems these days -- cannibalism, incest, jello cake. More to come!"
The first season of Fallout is available on Prime Video.[end-mark]
Just want to remind everyone today that they have worth. For no reason, of course.
Summary
The former Dean, now the Archchancellor of Brazeneck, meets up with Ridcully and the two of them snipe back and forth until Ridcully almost agrees to a match against Brazeneck that could result in his Archchancellor hat being wagered. Ponder talks him down on account of being an entire committee’s worth of important positions at the university. The two men head off to eat while Nutt brings up how the wizards might go about learning to actually play football effectively. Ponder is astounded at Nutt’s acumen, and wonders how he became a polymath, but remembers something vague about how he ended up at the school and instead asks for his help. Nutt agrees and tries to get Trev on the team, but Trev promised his mother that he wouldn’t, so Nutt simply asks for his expertise. Ponder puts Nutt in charge of the football, and the next day Ridcully finds the team practicing ballet to increase their agility and grace. The university’s Master of Music presents them with his first (overwrought) football chant. Glenda realizes that she’s been adhering to rules that don’t really exist, and decides that she will serve at the banquet that evening.
As the banquet begins, Nutt tells everyone what he’s been working on with the team and leaves to get them ready for a demonstration while Glenda inserts herself into the banquet server crew. She notes that the attendees are all being given food that is likely too much for their palates. Vetinari arrives and winds up suggesting that Unseen and Brazeneck should have a football match for the Archchancellor hat, feeling that it will be a healthy challenge between institutions. Nutt creates a very impressive display in the lighting of the chandelier, using dwarfish techniques that he essentially reverse engineered himself. Vetinari introduces the Unseen Academicals team and requests that another team of football enthusiasts play them, according to the ancient (but modified) rules they have discovered. By getting the city’s team captains drunk, this all goes off without a hitch—apart from the point where Swithin, captain of the Cockbill Boars, gets so drunk that he tries to slap Vetinari on the back and drunkenly rants to him. The next day, Glenda decides that she is very angry with how Vetinari manipulated things and bribes her way into the palace to complain about it.
Vetinari deduces a number of things about Glenda because her grandmother used to be the cook for the Assassin’s Guild. However, he is unrepentant about the changes he has made to football, and thanks her for being kind to Nutt. Glenda heads back to the university and runs into Pepe, who is still looking for Juliet because everyone is at the moment. Glenda brings him in through the back and finds that Juliet has been baking (half decent) pies. She realizes that she’s been holding the girl back and tells her that she can either leave and see the world and model, or stay and figure things out with Trev, but that she needs to make the choice now and get out. Juliet leaves with Pepe, and Concrete finds Glenda; he’s looking for Trev because Nutt is sick. Trev and Glenda find Nutt ill in the vat area and, at his request, they chain him down and help him to hypnotize himself so that he can figure out what has been wrong this whole time. There is a cupboard in his mind that he promised Ladyship he would not open, but when he does he finds out the secret of his heritage: He is not a goblin, he is an orc. The birdlike guards (Furies from Ephebe) assigned to Nutt come down to warn Glenda and Trev, but they shoo them away, insisting he is their friend.
Glenda tells Trev what Juliet isn’t saying, about her new job as a fashion model. Trev knows that the right thing is to let Juliet go, and he and Glenda go to Nutt’s room to try and convince him that he’s still capable of training the football team and generally being around people. Glenda then heads to the library. The Librarian shows her a terrible woodcutting from a book on orcs, which then leads her to the necromancy department where Professor Hix brings up the information he showed Ridcully on orcs when Nutt arrived at the school. The image from the past show orcs in battle, but Glenda notices they’re being driven by whip. Mister Ottomy tells her that he plans to complain to Ridcully about an orc being at the school, and Glenda threatens him for it. Trev and Juliet can’t find Nutt anywhere, and the group decide that he may have tried to run away, back to Uberwald, so they board a coach to Sto Lat to track him down. They find him on the side of the road being attacked by the Furies, and the passengers in the coach help Glenda chase them off. They all make it to Sto Lat, talking the whole way about what gives a person “worth,” as Ladyship directed. The coach stops behind the Lancre Flyer because its horse has thrown a shoe; Nutt offers to fix the problem.
Commentary
This whole section is philosophical musings end-to-end, starting with Glenda’s thoughts on the “invisible hammer.” Essentially, she’s made braver as the story progresses by the realization that most people are controlled by the belief that something bad will happen if they don’t follow rules—and the people enforcing the rules are counting on that. It’s amazing to realize the things people can be convinced of, just by the vague suggestions of a consequence around social orders and hierarchies. The more she pushes back, the more often she realizes that no one is willing to call her on infractions so long as she’s confident. (It’s very similar to the rules of the con, in fact.)
Glenda’s learning a lot of things throughout, and while most of them are putting together truths about the world that she’s always half-known, some are helpful revelations about how she treats Juliet. Pratchett would talk about how he couldn’t manage to write “soppy” women as protagonists, but the real thing I give him credit for is never entirely blaming women who are a bit soppy by acknowledging that a person becomes that due to how they're treated. When Glenda sees Juliet tried to bake pies and bemoans that Juliet’s never been any good at the task, she has a moment of pause—and notes that Juliet never got good at it because any time something was difficult for her, Glenda simply took over. And then she notices that Juliet’s pies aren’t even half bad.
It’s a microcosm of a very common problem with the hyper-competent female characters of the ’90s and early aughts that used to drive me batty; if you spend all your time doing for others because you can’t stand the idea of things not being done to your exacting standards, then who’s to blame for the fact that you have to do everything yourself? Glenda is the victim of her own competence, and more to the point, the way that she treats Juliet is no longer aiding her friend—it’s preventing her from growing up.
And then… we come to that banquet.
I can’t help but think there’s a very deliberate jibe at Harry Potter (again) when Ridcully admits that he doesn’t wear the Archchancellor hat too often because it nags him, and Vetinari’s response is that he cannot possibly own it because if the hat speaks and thinks, it is a sentient being and therefore cannot be owned because that would make it a slave. *gestures frantically* It’s hilariously pointed in a way that feels too on-the-nose not to be intentional.
We then come to the inevitable philosophical musings from Vetinari about… the nature of morality? These thoughts do feel as though they were appended to this story for lack of a better place to drop them, not that I mind in the slightest. It’s bemusing mostly for the fact that the Patrician tells us about his discovery of evil in childhood: Happening across a mother otter and her young, who eat a salmon filled with roe. In Havelock Vetinari’s mind, this is an example that proves evil is built into the fabric of the universe because mother and child ate mother and child in the “natural order.” It’s full Hobbesian state-of-nature discourse.
Of course, this is immediately complicated by proffering even a few messy additions to these observations; that we cannot be sure that the otters are aware (in the fully sentient sense) of what they’re eating, or that applying human morality to animals is a weird exercise in any scenario, just to start. Again, it suggests a tenderness to Havelock Vetinari’s person that I don’t think he’s aware he is revealing in that moment. (He’s drunk, too, which is certainly another factor in this entire discussion.) The fact that this observation emotionally affected him to such a degree is telling us far more about him than it is about the nature of evil. And even more important is his takeaway from this formative moment:
“If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”
That feels incredibly thoughts-of-the-author to me. And, you know… I can get down with that.
And then we move to the question of Nutt’s ability to live among people. We’re supposed to stick with that phrase, the question he keeps asking: Do I have worth? Which sounds so innocent on its face, the thought that all people want to have some form of worth, to be sure of it. But as the story continues, we find that’s it’s not so simple, that the concept of worth has been instilled in Nutt by Lady Margolotta as a defense mechanism to keep him alive—if he’s personable, if he’s helpful, if he’s useful, that might be enough to save him, to keep him from harm.
When the trio track him down on the side of the road and the people in the Sto Lat stagecoach are good to Nutt after learning that he’s an orc, Glenda has a moment where she is shocked by the kindness of this crowd, who are not terribly educated (in the bookish sense), are not by and large very clever but, in a strange “democratic” way, choose to accept Nutt in that moment. But then we move on to this thought:
It was heartwarming, but Glenda’s heart was a little bit calloused on this score. It was the crab bucket at its best. Sentimental and forgiving; but get it wrong—one wrong word, one wrong liaison, one wrong thought—and those nurturing arms could so easily end in fists. Nutt was right: at best, being an orc was to live under threat.
Which is a perfect distillation of the plight of any “othered” person and, I think very intentionally, far more direct in its point than any of the Discworld books have ever been about identity and how it can shape people’s lives. And yet there’s hope, of course. The hope that we find in how the stagecoach driver interprets Nutt’s words:
“Of course, all he’s saying is you’ve got to do your best,” said the driver. “And the more best you’re capable of, the more you should do. That’s it, really.”
As always, being able to distill profound thoughts into shorter, more direct terms is a gift. It doesn’t get much more profound—or useful—than that.
Asides and little thoughts
Admittedly, I’m not going to get most of the sport references throughout this book, but when the UU’s Master of Music started in on the chant using Bengo Macarona’s name as a placeholder, my brain went “oh, Diego Maradona,” and I felt just a little bit good about my brain ability to hold onto trivia for something that I know nothing about whatsoever.
Ridcully “felt his grandfather kick him in the heredity” and that one is gonna stick with me for a while as a way of describing ancestral memory.
Who bought Vetinari the “To the world’s Greatest Boss” mug? Who?? I accept three options for this mystery. 1) It was Drumknott, and Vetinari feels the need to display it out of respect for his hard work and the need for his best clerk’s psyche to remain intact; 2) it was Vimes, he did it as a mean joke, and Vetinari displays it happily to get back at him; 3) Vetinari bought it for himself to confuse and upset everyone.
Pratchettisms
Perhaps it was the look of someone permanently doing sums in his head, and not just proper sums either, but the sneaky sort with letters in them.
There followed the menacing silence of a clash of wills, but Ponder decided that as he was, technically, twelve important people at the university, he formed, all by himself, a committee, and since he was therefore, de facto, very wise, he should intervene.
“Oh, I take an interest,” said Vetinari. “I believe that football is a lot like life.”
“Only people who are very trustworthy would dare to look as untrustworthy and me and Madame.”
She’s be a little happier if, even, the lovers could be thrown into the mixing bowl of life. At least it would be some acknowledgment that people actually ate food.
Since then, the eBay seller removed the listing and brought it to Heritage Auction for authentication, with the intent of sending it on a voyage to its rightful home. The experts there confirmed the model was legit and reached out to Rod Roddenberry Jr., the son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.
“After five decades, I’m thrilled that someone happened upon this historic model of the USS Enterprise. I remember how it used to adorn my dad’s desk,” Rod Roddenberry, CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment said in a statement. “I am tremendously grateful to Heritage Auctions for facilitating the return of this iconic piece of Star Trek history to my family. I can’t wait to figure out how we are going to share it with my extended family, Star Trek fans around the world. We look forward to making that announcement.”
The model was designed by the art director Walter “Matt” Jefferies, who worked with Gene to create what they thought could be a believable starship, which Jefferies said in the 1968 book The Making of Star Trek was founded “on fairly solid scientific concepts, projected into the future.”
The result was the NC-1701 model we’ve all come to know and love, which will now live long and prosper under Roddenberry’s protection.
If you want to see some images of the model, check out the image at the beginning of this post as well as the photos below. [end-mark]
We don’t know the plot for Aang, but we do know its voice cast: Dave Bautista and Eric Nam are set to star in the film in undisclosed roles, though it was confirmed that Bautista will be playing a villain of some sort. They will be joined by Dionne Quan, Jessica Matten, and Román Zaragoza, also in undisclosed roles.
Originally, the film was supposed to premiere on October 10, 2025. Varietyreported today that Paramount, who is developing the film along with Nickelodeon Studios, has pushed the feature out to a January 20, 2026 release date.
How will Aang: The Last Airbender compare to the live-action remake? It’s hard to say for sure, but the fact that the feature is being co-directed by William Mata and Lauren Montgomery, the latter of whom is an alum of the original series, bodes well. What bodes even better is that creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are executive producers on the project. (The live-action series originally had DiMartino and Konietzko on board, but they left the production due to creative differences, something that critics have said hurt the remake.)
We’ll have to withhold judgment, of course, until Aang makes its way to our eyeballs in 2026. [end-mark]
We're thrilled to share an excerpt from Oliver K. Langmead's Calypso, a wildly imaginative work of eco-fiction written in verse—available from Titan Books.
Rochelle wakes from cryostasis to take up her role as engineer on the colony ark, Calypso. But she finds the ship has transformed into a forest, populated by the original crew’s descendants, who revere her like a saint.
She travels the ship with the Calypso’s creator, the enigmatic Sigmund, and Catherine, a bioengineered marvel who can commune with the plants, uncovering a new history of humanity forged while she slept.
She discovers a legacy of war between botanists and engineers. A war fought for the right to build a new Earth – a technological paradise, or a new Eden in bloom, untouched by mankind’s past.
And Rochelle, the last to wake, holds the balance of power in her hands.
Prologue
The Calypso is a grand cathedral; When the sun is out, a hollow eclipse, And after dusk, a glittering circlet, Crowning the dark heavens; crowning the stars.
She is ordinary to my children; Another satellite like our bright moon. They were born and raised beneath her shadow, And they will feel her absence when she leaves.
Benson collects patterned, coloured pebbles, Ordering and categorising them By which he judges worthy of keeping And taking home as precious mementos.
Ciara creates castles in the gold sand, Digging rivers and moats for the warm sea Washing in waves over her feet and hands, Erasing her fledgling kingdoms quickly.
I tell them to be careful, to stay close, To make sure they avoid the jellyfish, And let me know if they need more sunscreen. All the things I think a mother should say.
I will never see my children again, At least in this life. I will leave them soon, I will sleep, and when next I awaken, They will have lived their lives and passed away.
This holiday, to the Caribbean, Is my way of trying to fix myself In their memories, so that when they die, They will know to wait for me in heaven.
I have been blessed enough to give birth twice, And now I must pass that blessing along. When I wake next, I will be a midwife, Because the Calypso is expecting.
The Calypso will soon be a mother. She is ready, and expecting to birth Skies, and rivers, and trees, and animals. The Calypso will birth a whole new world.
The Calypso feels like a new nation. The crew are so young, it surprises me That they have learned enough to keep us safe; To navigate the perilous expanse.
I have always admired the stellar maps The same way that I admire works of art; All those curving lines, by which gravity Informs flights. There are no straight lines in space.
Most of the engineers have chosen Earth To look down upon, but I choose the stars, As if I might catch a glimpse, in the dark, Of glittering Luna, or distant Mars.
“Is this your first time off world?” asks Sigmund. I don’t think he’s ever spoken to me Before, and I’ve never seen him up close. He looks much older than in the posters.
I am so nervous that I spill my charts And our skulls nearly meet as we gather The clear plastic sheets—a muddle of stars And the elegant routes plotted through them.
I am clumsy in the new gravity Of the Calypso, but so is Sigmund. We lean up against the viewing window And laugh together. He sounds nervous too.
“She will take some getting used to, I think,” He says.“Is this your first time, too?” I ask. “No. I’ve taken trips to Mars three times now. She wears her green coat well, these days. Come see.”
Doctor Sigmund leads me to his office By the hand, and I can feel him trembling. There is a large brass telescope set up And he bids me to see Earth’s greatest work.
In the dark between the stars I find Mars, Her moons, all the shining ships in orbit; And in a crescent of sunlight I see A mirror of Earth: green and blue and white.
“Life, in abundance,” I say, and notice Sigmund smiling in pride. He is old, yes, But I think that his eyes are still youthful, Set in among the deep lines of his face.
“Why do you think I chose you?” asks Sigmund. “I’ve been wondering about that,” I say. The rest of the engineers are different: They don’t have the same kind of faith as me.
“You are my golden compasses,” he says, And I don’t know what he means, but I smile. “You must have read my articles,” I say, “My research on colonial ethics.”
“I’ve read everything you’ve ever written. You are an able theorist, Rochelle, And I look forward to debating you. I asked for you because we disagree.”
“About what?” “About almost everything.” Sigmund leans, looks out through his telescope. “You will be a voice of dissent, I hope. You will have the courage to tell me ‘no’.”
The noise of the new crew echoes loudly Through the corridors of the Calypso, And I find myself wordless – uncertain.
“Thank you,” I tell Sigmund, eventually. “Thank you,” I tell Sigmund, eventually.
I go out among the crew, and they sing Songs about hope, about leaving Terra, And I sing with them, and help where I can, Because when I next wake, they will be gone.
I try to learn their faces and gestures, So that I might see some semblance of them In their descendants – the remnants of them Passed down through the years and generations.
Soon, myself and the other engineers Will go to our sarcophagi and sleep, And God willing, we will wake and look down Upon the face of a barren new world.
There is a kind of cleansing ritual And we perform it alone, or in groups, Undressing and washing away the Earth, Rubbing the sacred oils into our skin.
When we are cleansed and ready, we’re led through, Unashamed to bare all before the crew, Because we will never see them again. They sing what sound like hymns, or lullabies.
I go to my chamber, my small alcove, Where awaits my bespoke sarcophagus, Its smooth hollow the height and breadth of me. There, I go down on my knees. One last prayer.
Today, I do not ask for anything. I am simply grateful, and give my thanks For the world I leave behind, its people, Who, together, dreamt the great Calypso.
When I stand, the other sarcophagi Are dark, their owners already asleep. I am the last to leave the Earth behind. A congregation of crew watch me rise.
They help me into my sarcophagus, Smiling, reflecting the hope filling me Like the preserving fluids through my veins; Needling and burning and making me sleep.
Before the sarcophagus lid closes, I think one last time about my children. I hope they remember to wrap up warm; It will be winter soon, and cold outside.
There's good news and bad news, Witcher fans: The Netflix adaptation has been renewed for a fifth season, but that's the last you're going to get. And if you're keeping Witcher-score, that means three seasons for Henry Cavill, and two for Liam Hemsworth, who steps into Geralt's shoes for the currently-in-production fourth season.
The last two seasons will, according to Netflix, be filmed back-to-back, so presumably you won't have to wait a number of years for the grand finale. And they will cover three of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books: Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow, and Lady of the Lake.
At this point, season four has a typically vague summary:
After the shocking, Continent-altering events that close out Season 3, the new season follows Geralt, Yennefer, and Ciri, who are separated and traversing the war-ravaged Continent and its many demons. If they can embrace and lead the groups of misfits they find themselves in, they have a chance of surviving the baptism of fire — and finding one another again.
Are there ever events in this show that aren't shocking and Continent-altering? Creator and showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich gave a few clues about what to expect, pointing at Vilgefortz and his betrayal. She told Tudum, “We want people to go back and start looking at all of the clues and breadcrumbs that we have laid out to see how these two people align. Because, clearly, there’s a lot more going on with Emhyr, Vilgefortz, and their past—and their future.”
Quite a few new faces are set for the upcoming season, including Sharlto Copley as Leo Bonhart and Laurence Fishburne as Regis, "a world-wise barber-surgeon with a mysterious past." No premiere date has been announced just yet.[end-mark]
Our world is changing. We currently live in a world in which climate change poses a very real existential threat to life on the planet. The new normal is change. And it is within this changing climate that eco-fiction is realizing itself as a literary pursuit worth engaging in.
Many readers are seeking fiction that addresses environmental issues but explores a successful paradigm shift: fiction that accurately addresses our current issues with intelligence and hope. The power of envisioning a certain future is that the vision enables one to see it as possible.
Eco-fiction has been with us for decades—it just hasn’t been overtly recognized as a literary phenomenon until recently and particularly in light of mainstream concern with climate change (hence the recently adopted terms ‘climate fiction’, ‘cli-fi’, and ‘eco-punk’, all of which are eco-fiction). Strong environmental themes and/or eco-fiction characters populate all genres of fiction. Eco-fiction is a cross-genre phenomenon, and we are all awakening—novelists and readers of novels—to our changing environment. We are finally ready to see and portray environment as an interesting character with agency.
The relationship of humanity to environment also differs greatly among these works as does the role of science. Some are optimistic; others are not, or have ambiguous endings that require interpretation. What the ten examples I list below have in common is that they are impactful, highly enjoyable works of eco-fiction.
Climate change and its effect on the monarch butterfly migration is told through the eyes of Dellarobia Turnbow, a rural housewife, who yearns for meaning in her life. It starts with her scrambling up the forested mountain—slated to be clear cut—behind her eastern Tennessee farmhouse; she is desperate to take flight from her dull and pointless marriage to run away with the telephone man. The first line of Kingsolver’s book reads: “A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.” But the rapture she’s about to experience is not from the thrill of truancy; it will come from the intervention of Nature when she witnesses the hill newly aflame with monarch butterflies who have changed their migration behavior.
Flight Behavior is a multi-layered metaphoric study of “flight” in all its iterations: as movement, flow, change, transition, beauty and transcendence. Flight Behavior isn’t so much about climate change and its effects and its continued denial as it is about our perceptions and the actions that rise from them: the motives that drive denial and belief. When Dellarobia questions Cub, her farmer husband, “Why would we believe Johnny Midgeon about something scientific, and not the scientists?” he responds, “Johnny Midgeon gives the weather report.” Kingsolver writes: “and Dellarobia saw her life pass before her eyes, contained in the small enclosure of this logic.”
The Overstory is a Pulitzer Prize winning work of literary fiction that follows the life-stories of nine characters and their journey with trees—and ultimately their shared conflict with corporate capitalist America.
Each character draws the archetype of a particular tree: there is Nicholas Hoel’s blighted chestnut that struggles to outlive its destiny; Mimi Ma’s bent mulberry, harbinger of things to come; Patricia Westerford’s marked up marcescent beech trees that sings a unique song; and Olivia Vandergriff’s ‘immortal’ ginko tree that cheats death—to name a few. Like all functional ecosystems, these disparate characters—and their trees—weave into each other’s journey toward a terrible irony. Each their own way battles humanity’s canon of self-serving utility—from shape-shifting Acer saccharum to selfless sacrificing Tachigali versicolor—toward a kind of creative destruction.
At the heart of The Overstory is the pivotal life of botanist Patricia Westerford, who will inspire a movement. Westerford is a shy introvert who discovers that trees communicate, learn, trade goods and services—and have intelligence. When she shares her discovery, she is ridiculed by her peers and loses her position at the university. What follows is a fractal story of trees with spirit, soul, and timeless societies—and their human avatars.
This trilogy explores the premise of genetic experimentation and pharmaceutical engineering gone awry. On a larger scale the cautionary trilogy examines where the addiction to vanity, greed, and power may lead. Often sordid and disturbing, the trilogy explores a world where everything from sex to learning translates to power and ownership. Atwood begins the trilogy with Oryx and Crake in which Jimmy, aka Snowman (as in Abominable) lives a somnolent, disconsolate life in a post-apocalyptic world created by a viral pandemic that destroys human civilization. The two remaining books continue the saga with other survivors such as the religious sect God’s Gardeners in The Year of the Flood and the Crakers of Maddaddam.
The entire trilogy is a sharp-edged, dark contemplative essay that plays out like a warped tragedy written by a toked-up Shakespeare. Often sordid and disturbing, the trilogy follows the slow pace of introspection. The dark poetry of Atwood’s smart and edgy slice-of-life commentary is a poignant treatise on our dysfunctional society. Atwood accurately captures a growing zeitgeist that has lost the need for words like honor, integrity, compassion, humility, forgiveness, respect, and love in its vocabulary. And she has projected this trend into an alarmingly probable future. This is subversive eco-fiction at its best.
Dune chronicles the journey of young Paul Atreides, who according to the indigenous Fremen prophesy will eventually bring them freedom from their enslavement by the colonialists—The Harkonens—and allow them to live unfettered on the planet Arrakis, known as Dune. As the title of the book clearly reveals, this story is about place—a harsh desert planet whose 800 kph sandblasting winds could flay your flesh—and the power struggle between those who covet its arcane treasures and those who wish only to live free from slavery.
Dune is just as much about what it lacks (water) as it is about what it contains (desert and spice). The subtle connections of the desert planet with the drama of Dune is most apparent in the actions, language and thoughts of the Imperial ecologist-planetologist, Kynes—who rejects his Imperial duties to “go native.” He is the voice of the desert and, by extension, the voice of its native people, the Fremen. “The highest function of ecology is understanding consequences,” he later thinks to himself as he is dying in the desert, abandoned there without water or protection.
Place—and its powerful symbols of desert, water and spice—lies at the heart of this epic story about taking, giving and sharing. This is nowhere more apparent than in the fate of the immense sandworms, strong archetypes of Nature—large and graceful creatures whose movements in the vast desert sands resemble the elegant whales of our oceans.
This is an eco-thriller that explores humanity’s impulse to self-destruct within a natural world of living ‘alien’ profusion. The first of the Southern Reach Trilogy, Annihilation follows four women scientists who journey across a strange barrier into Area X—a region that mysteriously appeared on a marshy coastline, and is associated with inexplicable anomalies and disappearances. The area was closed to the public for decades by a shadowy government that studies it. Previous expeditions resulted in traumas, suicides or aggressive cancers of those who managed to return.
What follows is a bizarre exploration of how our own mutating mental states and self-destructive tendencies reflect a larger paradigm of creative-destruction—a hallmark of ecological succession, change, and overall resilience. VanderMeer masters the technique of weaving the bizarre intricacies of ecological relationship, into a meaningful tapestry of powerful interconnection. Bizarre but real biological mechanisms such as epigenetically-fluid DNA drive aspects of the story’s transcendent qualities of destruction and reconstruction.
The book reads like a psychological thriller. The main protagonist desperately seeks answers. When faced with a greater force or intent, she struggles against self-destruction to join and become something more. On one level Annihilation acts as parable to humanity’s cancerous destruction of what is ‘normal’ (through climate change and habitat destruction); on another, it explores how destruction and creation are two sides of a coin.
Barkskins chronicles two wood cutters who arrive from the slums of Paris to Canada in 1693 and their descendants over 300 years of deforestation in North America.
The foreshadowing of doom for the magnificent forests is cast by the shadow of how settlers treat the Mi’kmaq people. The fate of the forests and the Mi’kmaq are inextricably linked through settler disrespect for anything indigenous and a fierce hunger for “more” of the forests and lands. Ensnared by settler greed, the Mi’kmaq lose their own culture and their links to the natural world erode with grave consequence.
Proulx weaves generational stories of two settler families into a crucible of terrible greed and tragic irony. The bleak impressions by the immigrants of a harsh environment crawling with pests underlies the combative mindset of the settlers who wish only to conquer and seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource. From the arrival of the Europeans in pristine forest to their destruction under the veil of global warming, Proulx lays out a saga of human-environment interaction and consequence that lingers with the aftertaste of a bitter wine.
Memory of Water is about a post-climate change world of sea level rise. In this envisioned world, China rules Europe, which includes the Scandinavian Union, occupied by the power state of New Qian. Water is a powerful archetype, whose secret tea masters guard with their lives. One of them is 17-year old Noria Kaitio who is learning to become a tea master from her father. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, coveted by the new government.
Faced with moral choices that draw their conflict from the tension between love and self-preservation, young Noria must do or do not before the soldiers scrutinizing her make their move. The story unfolds incrementally through place. As with every stroke of an emerging watercolour painting, Itäranta layers in tension with each story-defining description. We sense the tension and unease viscerally, as we immerse ourselves in a dark place of oppression and intrigue. Itäranta’s lyrical narrative follows a deceptively quiet yet tense pace that builds like a slow tide into compelling crisis. Told with emotional nuance, Itäranta’s Memory of Water flows with mystery and suspense toward a poignant end.
This trilogy is set on an Earth devastated by periodic cataclysmic storms known as ‘seasons.’ These apocalyptic events last over generations, remaking the world and its inhabitants each time. Giant floating crystals called Obelisks suggest an advanced prior civilization.
In The Fifth Season, the first book of the trilogy, we are introduced to Essun, an Orogene—a person gifted with the ability to draw magical power from the Earth such as quelling earthquakes. Jemisin used the term orogene from the geological term orogeny, which describes the process of mountain-building. Essun was taken from her home as a child and trained brutally at the facility called the Fulcrum. Jemisin uses perspective and POV shifts to interweave Essun’s story with that of Damaya, just sent to the Fulcrum, and Syenite, who is about to leave on her first mission.
The second and third books, The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, carry through Jemisin’s treatment of the dangers of marginalization, oppression, and misuse of power. Jemisin’s cautionary dystopia explores the consequence of the inhumane profiteering of those who are marginalized and commodified.
This is a work of mundane science fiction that occurs in 23rd century post-food crash Thailand after global warming has raised sea levels and carbon fuel sources are depleted. Thailand struggles under the tyrannical boot of predatory ag-biotech multinational giants that have fomented corruption and political strife through their plague-inducing genetic manipulations.
The book opens in Bangkok as ag-biotech farangs (foreigners) seek to exploit the secret Thai seedbank with its wealth of genetic material. Emiko is an illegal Japanese “windup” (genetically modified human), owned by a Thai sex club owner, and treated as a sub-human slave. Emiko embarks on a quest to escape her bonds and find her own people in the north. But like Bangkok—protected and trapped by the wall against a sea poised to claim it—Emiko cannot escape who and what she is: a gifted modified human, vilified and feared for the future she brings.
The rivalry between Thailand’s Minister of Trade and Minister of the Environment represents the central conflict of the novel, reflecting the current conflict of neo-liberal promotion of globalization and unaccountable exploitation with the forces of sustainability and environmental protection. Given the setting, both are extreme and there appears no middle ground for a balanced existence using responsible and sustainable means. Emiko, who represents that future, is precariously poised.
The classic dystopian novel set in 21st century America where civilization has collapsed due to climate change, wealth inequality and greed. Parable of the Sower is both a coming-of-age story and cautionary allegorical tale of race, gender and power. Told through journal entries, the novel follows the life of young Lauren Oya Olamina—cursed with hyperempathy—and her perilous journey to find and create a new home.
When her old home outside L.A. is destroyed and her family murdered, she joins an endless stream of refugees through the chaos of resource and water scarcity. Her survival skills are tested as she navigates a highly politicized battleground between various extremist groups and religious fanatics through a harsh environment of walled enclaves, pyro-addicts, thieves and murderers. What starts as a fight to survive inspires in Lauren a new vision of the world and gives birth to a new faith based on science: Earthseed.
For years, now—years and years and years—the people have been crying out, not for more origin stories, but for them to stop. We have been origined half to death out here.
And if—if!—for some reason another origin story were necessary, you know what it wouldn't be necessary for? Robots from the last century. Robots that are more than meets the eye. Robots that are going to say that tagline out loud in the trailer for the animated origin story Transformers One.
Hey, did you know Optimus Prime and Megatron were buds once? (What is this, the X-Men?) Did you know that they didn't always know how to transform? Did you need to know that they were once lowly worker bots just like everyone else? Well. Someone thinks you ought to find out.
If your humble writer's frustration with this inane commercial for robot toys seems a touch outsized, please consider this: The makers of this film saw fit to spend some unspecified but obviously quite large amount of money to shoot this movie trailer into space. Remember when space exploration meant something? Remember when we were curious about what was out there? You know what's out there now? Transformers junk.
The actors providing the voices for this commercial film include Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm. Yes, despite the fact that we're no longer in the ’80s, there is one token woman. Love that. Love that for all of us. Josh Cooley (Toy Story 4) directs.
For some reason, this movie is in theaters on September 20th.[end-mark]
In its seventh and final season, Star Trek: Voyager did an episode entitled “Shattered.” The episode, with its title reminiscent of a Rolling Stones song, had Voyager split into different timeframes, where each section of the ship was in a different time, and only the present-day Chakotay and a past iteration of Janeway were able to move freely among the different time zones. It was little more than an excuse to visit bits of the show’s past (and one possible future), and even be reunited with a crew member who died (Martha Hackett’s Seska). Scientifically, the show made nothing like sense.
It its fifth and final season, Star Trek: Discovery has done something remarkably similar to “Shattered.” In this latest episode, with its title that is borrowed from a David Bowie song, only instead Burnham and Rayner are bouncing around to Discovery in different times and places, also visiting bits of the show’s past (and one possible future), and being reunited with a crew member who died. However, the science in this one actually takes a stab at plausibility (as plausible as time travel can possibly be). It even takes into account that Discovery is in totally different places in each time that Burnham and Rayner visit!
Okay, before we start, I have to mention something that I somehow completely missed last week at the very end of “Jinaal.” I managed to completely not notice that Moll (disguised as a Trill Guardian) slipped some kind of bug onto Adira.
However, I did notice it in the “previously on Star Trek: Discovery” re-showing of that scene at the top of “Face the Strange.” My initial thought was that it was a listening/homing device, but it was much more than that: it freezes Discovery in time, which apparently has effects throughout time and space.
(We see Moll and L’ak acquiring the bug from a dealer who tries to cheat them, but they anticipated that and poisoned the latinum they gave him and he dies. It shows that our bad guys are definitely very bad guys, but doesn’t really do anything to make our Bonnie-and-Clyde-in-space pair interesting, something that needs to happen soon.)
Discovery has two advantages, one inherent, one due to fortuitous timing. The latter is that Burnham and Rayner were trying to transport to the bridge right when the bug activated. Yes, after being reminded last week that, even in the thirty-second century, a “buncha rocks always beats centuries of technological progress,” this week we’re reminded that the transporter can seriously fuck shit up.
The inherent advantage, however, is a benefit, as Stamets, thanks to having tardigrade DNA, has a much more peculiar relationship with time and space than everyone else. This has already saved the crew’s asses on another occasion when they went on a wacky time-travel adventure, to wit, the Harry Mudd-induced time loops in “Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad.” What’s more, Burnham knows this, and so she and Rayner seek out Stamets. Unlike Burnham and Rayner, Stamets is actually inhabiting his own body in each time jump, and going through whatever he happened to be going through at the time—including one occasion when he was really badly injured and about to go into a coma.
Credit: CBS / Paramount+
And when they go several decades into the future, everyone’s dead, because the Progenitors’ technology has been unleashed on the galaxy, and Burnham and Rayner show up to an empty Discovery, a slightly crazy Zora, and a destroyed Federation HQ.
This was the first of several minor disappointments I had with the episode. When Burnham and Rayner went to a future version of Discovery, I was really really really hoping that it would cross over with the Short Trek “Calypso,” maybe even with an Aldis Hodge appearance! But, alas, it was the “possible future” where Discovery doesn’t save the day and everyone dies. Which was another disappointment, because one of the things I liked about the quest for the Progenitors was that it wasn’t a Big! Major! Thing! That could destroy! Everything!
Except now it is. We got a hint of this when Jinaal told Burnham and Book last week that the tech killed one of his fellow scientists, and this week we get confirmation that if L’ak and Moll get the tech, it will destroy the heart of the Federation. It’s not quite the major threat that Control or the DMA were, but it’s still too fucking big a threat. It’s just tiresome, is all…
This episode’s reason for existing is mainly to get Burnham and Rayner to have their buddy movie, and for Rayner to come around to understanding how things work on Discovery and what kind of captain Burnham is. Because Rayner is an experienced captain in his own right, it’s a difficult transition for him. And it’s understandable. It’s incredibly hard to go back to being second-in-command after you’ve been the person in charge for so long. Plus, Rayner’s also adjusting to post-Burn life. The Federation was a different place during most of Rayner’s lifetime.
And, like “Shattered,” it’s also here to revisit some past storylines. We get them going back to the third season, when Burnham and Book are still a happy couple, and Burnham has to fake being someone who is still smitten with Book before she found herself forced into a place where she couldn’t trust him. And she’s reminded of the good times and that she loves him (and that David Ajala looks very good with his shirt off). We get them arriving when the Emerald Chain has taken over the ship, giving both Burnham and Rayner a chance to beat up some of Osyraa’s thugs. (One gets the impression that this is far from the first time Rayner has beaten up some Chain cannon fodder.)
During that bit, Rayner encounters Reno (Burnham hides at the sight of her). Rayner bluffs that he’s a temporary crew member, and Reno gives him a pep talk and makes him promise to buy her a drink at Red’s. Another minor disappointment: the episode didn’t end with Rayner buying Reno that drink.
The heart of the episode, though, is when they wind up on Discovery very shortly after Burnham came on board. She’s still a prisoner, trying to work off her mutiny conviction by helping Lorca. This is the longest they’ll be in one time zone, and it’s their best chance to destroy the bug (which is protected by a temporal force field, because of course it is).
Between them, Stamets and Burnham come up with a technobabble solution that requires Discovery to go to maximum warp and break through the warp bubble and then Rayner has to deactivate it as they break out of the bubble. It has to do with relativity and temporarily losing the protection against relativity that the warp bubble provides so that they can get through the temporal force field.
The problem is they have to convince the bridge crew to do it. Lorca, Saru, and Landry are off on a mission (because that would require getting Jason Isaacs and Rekha Sharma back, plus apparently this was an episode Doug Jones got off from having to be made up, as Saru only appears vocally over an intercom), so Airiam is in charge of the bridge.
Before Burnham can get to the bridge to convince the crew—including the one she saw die—to do her batshit plan, she bumps into herself.
Credit: CBS / Paramount+
Which leads to another disappointment, as Prisoner Michael Burnham sees Captain Michael Burnham and assumes she’s a shapechanger or some other kind of violent life form, and fisticuffs ensue. And ensue, and ensue. It’s bad enough that the episode is riffing on the stupidest scene in Superman III, but it just goes on for-bloody-ever…
It’s fun seeing folks in the old uniforms, and in some cases in their old hairstyles—Burnham, Owosekun, and Tilly all get their first-season hair back for some scenes. And it’s especially nice to see Hannah Cheesman return as Airiam, and also Ronnie Rowe Jr. as Bryce. And you can tell that we’re back on Lorca’s Discovery (and they’re in the middle of a war), because everyone is angry and trigger-happy. When Burnham explains that in her future Airiam is dead, Bryce whips out a phaser and points it angrily at Burnham, refusing to believe that nonsense.
But Burnham is able to convince Airiam herself, which is what matters. They do the thing, the day is saved, and the timelines all reset thanks to plot-convenient-itis! That same plot-convenient-itis is how Burnham and Rayner manage to wander iterations of Discovery they don’t belong on with impunity and without being detected. At least they’re able to have privacy with Stamets mostly by Stamets declaring a “spore breach” and needing to clear engineering. Though early-first-season Stamets can just clear the room by being a grouch, as he was a lot snottier then…
Besides giving Burnham, and the viewer, a chance to indulge in some nostalgia, the episode also gives Burnham and Rayner a chance to do their little buddy movie, and Rayner starts to get the hang of the crew. In particular, he appreciates Burnham’s more free-spirited bridge more by the episode’s end. (My favorite is when he uses his knowledge of Rhys’ nerdity over starships in general and the twenty-third Constitution-class in particular, gained during his twenty-word meeting last week.)
My final disappointment with this episode is that we were told last week that they’d be going to Tzenkethi space, and I hoped that meant we would actually see the Tzenkethi for the first time onscreen. Alas, it was not to be.
Still, minor disappointments notwithstanding, this was a fun episode that didn’t exactly move things forward in terms of plot, but did fantastic work in doing it for character.[end-mark]
The trailer for Man and Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps suggests that the film is a fun fantasy romp, where a man goes to a witch to ask her to give him a wife, and the witch gives him three impossible tasks to do before she grants him his wish (which, I'm guessing, is that the two get together).
Here’s the official synopsis:
Tami Stronach, the iconic Childlike Empress in The NeverEnding Story (celebrating its 40th Anniversary this year), makes her long-awaited return to the big screen in the new fantasy film Man and Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps. When a lonely goatherd discovers that he has been cursed at birth to never take a wife, he makes a bargain with a reclusive witch to reverse the spell, only to find that if he can't complete her three impossible tasks, he will never find true love.
In addition to Stronach, Man and Witch stars her real-life husband Greg Steinbruner as her co-lead, as well as Sean Astin, Christopher Lloyd, Eddie Izzard, Jennifer Saunders, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Michael Emerson, Bill Bailey, Daniel Portman, Stuart Bowman, and Martha West. It’s directed by Michael Hines and written by Steinbruner.
That's quite an A-list supporting cast!
The film will be in theaters nationally only for a short time, on July 28 and July 30, 2024. You can learn more about the movie by heading to ManAndWitch.com.
Neon, the distributor of the upcoming horror film Longlegs, is going all in on enigmatic marketing for the movie. Today, the company sent out a press release that was purposefully confusing and undoubtedly holds some secret code or something for people more motivated and/or clever than me to figure out.
Below is exactly what was shared in that email. Make of it what you will!
First, they shared this poster, titled “Sweet Part One”:
Then, they shared this teaser video, titled “Sweet Part Two”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORe5cAnpTFQ
The clip is short, full of spooky scare vibes, and has a voiceover of a woman saying she never said her prayers because she was afraid to. There’s more there, of course, including some enigmatic phrases that I'm sure Mean Something and I invite you to watch it yourself and take notes.
Lastly, the email had the following “checklist":
What does this mean? I have no idea! It seems like it’s a list for those who want to join or be recruited into… something? What that something is I have no idea, but I bet it's spooky af.
Here’s what I do know about Longlegs. It stars Maika Monroe (It Follows) and features Nicolas Cage in an unknown role. It comes from writer-director Osgood Perkins, who is also the person behind the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s short story, “The Monkey.”
The film will hit theaters on July 12, 2024. Hopefully (probably) we’ll get more disturbing clues before then! [end-mark]
Suppose for the moment that you were a hard-working speculative fiction author with a lengthy backlist of short fiction. Further suppose that you wanted to package some of that short fiction into a collection that readers might buy. Imagine your consternation on discovering that collections weren’t selling well and that no publisher wanted to gamble on your work. What is a hard-working author to do?
One solution to a temporary shortage of funds is to don a garish costume, adopt a memorable nom de crime, and launch a series of unnecessarily complex schemes to rob banks. But there is an even easier solution! Simply take those unsellable short works, apply narrative spackle, and transform them into what A. E. Van Vogt called a “fix-up” novel. Readers will barely notice the seams as they enjoy your latest novel1. You will enjoy extra income. Everyone wins—especially your bank manager.
While Van Vogt’s own fix-ups were (to put it charitably) of variable quality, the form has produced legitimate classics that are well worth readers’ time and money. Herewith, five truly glorious fix-ups you might want to read.
Miller’s only novel published during his lifetime, Canticle details the efforts of the pious brothers of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz to preserve scientific knowledge following the Flame Deluge and subsequent Simplification. The results are mixed at best, but the brothers’ hearts were pure.
The novel Canticle began as "A Canticle for Leibowitz," “And the Light is Risen,” and “The Last Canticle,” all published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1955 and 1957. Each was substantially reworked before appearing as the fix-up Canticle for Leibowitz in 1959. The result was an instant, Hugo Award-winning classic. In fact, Canticle was so successful that it eclipsed Miller’s other work; I have encountered people who are entirely unaware Miller wrote other stories.
Following Queen Elizabeth I’s assassination, the Reformation is crushed. Spain remains ascendant. The Catholic Church remains the Church and technological and social innovation is discouraged. The consequences (and ultimately, the true cause) of this historical alteration are detailed over generations from the perspective of England’s Dorset region.
The novelettes that became Pavane began as “The Signaller,” “The Lady Anne,” “Brother John,” “Lords and Ladies,” “Corfe Gate,” and “The White Boat,” all published in 1966, all of which save “The White Boat” were first published in Impulse. “The White Boat” first appeared in New Worlds. As with Canticle, the result was an instant classic. While Pavane did not win a Hugo, it was featured in the first Ace SF Specials and is still in print over half a century later.
Alaric the Minstrel (bard and teleporter) gains employment in the Red Lord’s court. The mysterious screams heard from the Red Lord’s tower lead Alaric to question the prudence of working for the lord. A man who can teleport need not worry overmuch about imprisonment…but is Alaric the sort of man who will simply walk away from injustice?
Red Lord began as “The Land of Sorrow,” “The Mountain Fastness,” and “Beyond the Red Lord's Reach,” all of which first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction between 1977 and 1988. Annoyingly, despite Eisenstein’s talent as a writer, both this volume and 1978’s Born to Exile are long out of print2. Alaric-curious readers can seek out Eisenstein’s more recent Alaric tale, 2014’s “The Caravan to Nowhere,” which may be found in the Rogues anthology edited by Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin.
A mishap en route to an exoplanet cost the hopeful pioneers the index that was key to a cutting-edge biotechnological tool. Lack of index did not prevent genetically-engineered animals and plants from occasionally producing dissimilar, sometimes dangerous, offspring. It falls to Annie Jason “Mama Jason” Masmajean to deal with the resulting “Dragon’s Teeth.”
Mirabile’s composite parts—“The Loch Moose Monster,” “The Return of the Kangaroo Rex,” “The Flowering Inferno,” “Getting the Bugs Out,” “Raising Cane,” and “Frankenswine”) first appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine between 1989 and 1991. As fix-ups go, the efforts to transform the original short pieces into a novel are perfunctory to the point that for years I thought it was a collection. Nevertheless, the result entertains. It’s too bad that Mirabile is currently out of print. Perhaps a letter-writing campaign to Mirabile’s publisher Tor could change that!
As was foretold by techno-optimistic futurists, the Singularity utterly transforms the world. A trifling side effect barely worth mentioning is that intellectually out-classed humans are swiftly reduced from Earth’s dominant thinkers to cognitive archaea. As detailed over generations, the post-Singularity era is an exciting time to be alive…or to be consumed by ruthless, super-intelligent AIs.
Accelerando’s component chapters (“Lobsters,” “Troubadour,” “Tourist,” “Halo,” “Router,” “Nightfall,” “Curator,” “Elector,” and “Survivor”) were all first published in in Asimov's Science Fiction between 2001 and 2004. Accelerando was very well received; I don’t have the spare word count to list every award nomination that the fix-up and its parts earned. One wonders how Stross finds the mantlepiece space for all the awards. Accelerando can be downloaded here. Try not to burn out the servers.
Fix-ups are a venerable, respectable approach to writing and publishing speculative fiction. The five examples above are only a very small sample of a very large body of work3 [3]. No doubt I’ve missed some very notable examples. Feel free to lambast me for my omissions and correct my oversights in comments below.[end-mark]
Seams are less obvious in fix-ups that were planned to become fix-ups from the beginning. One thinks of the many Victorian novels that were serialized and later collected into books. ↩︎
As far as I can tell, anthologized stories aside, Eisenstein is completely out of print. I am astonished there hasn’t been A Complete Alaric, at least. The world found space to keep They’d Rather Be Right in print. Why not Eisenstein’s far superior books? ↩︎
I seriously considered mentioning a certain fix-up first serialized in Analog way back in 1963 and 1965. However, the resulting fix-up was so unappealing to SF publishers that the author eventually settled for a publisher specializing in automotive repair manuals (an acquisition for which the purchasing editor was subsequently fired). Ultimately, I reluctantly deleted my discussion of that fix-up. After all, would 21st-century readers have even heard of Dune? ↩︎
We're thrilled to share an excerpt from The Silverblood Promise by James Logan, an epic fantasy debut publishing with Tor Books on May 28th.
Lukan Gardova is a cardsharp, academy dropout, and—thanks to a duel that ended badly—the disgraced heir to an ancient noble house. His days consist of cheap wine, rigged card games, and wondering how he might win back the life he threw away.
When Lukan discovers that his estranged father has been murdered in strange circumstances, he finds fresh purpose. Deprived of his chance to make amends for his mistakes, he vows to unravel the mystery behind his father's death.
His search for answers leads him to Saphrona, fabled city of merchant princes, where anything can be bought if one has the coin. Lukan only seeks the truth, but instead he finds danger and secrets in every shadow.
For in Saphrona, everything has a price—and the price of truth is the deadliest of all.
A sharp rap at his cabin door jolted Lukan from sleep.
“Go away,” he said—or tried to say. His tongue was gummed to the top of his mouth. He worked it free, grimacing at the sour aftertaste. Another rum-filled night. There had been plenty of those during the second week of his voyage. The ship’s captain—a jovial bear of a man by the name of Graziano Grabulli—had taken to inviting Lukan to his cabin each night for a glass or two (or several) of rum. Like most men from the Talassian Isles, he liked to talk, mostly about himself and his various exploits and escapades— of which there were many. Lukan felt inclined to believe some of them (such as the captain’s encounter with a black shark; the man had the teeth marks on his forearm to prove it) but was sure that others (like his claim to have seen the fabled ghost ship the Pride of Prince Relair) were little more than tall tales. Still, a lack of truthfulness was to be expected from a man who had—courtesy of the Tamberlin Trading Company—a brand on his left wrist that marked him out as a former pirate. Fortunately Grabulli was even more generous with his rum than he was with his lies.
A second knock at the door, slower and more deliberate.
“Piss off,” Lukan shouted. He shifted in his hammock, not enjoying the way his stomach lurched. An ache was slowly building at his temples.
The door creaked open.
Lady’s mercy.
He opened his eyes, squinting against the sunlight that poured in through the solitary porthole, illuminating the tiny cabin that had been his home for the past two weeks. Grabulli had promised him quarters fit for a king, but the cabin was barely fit for the rats that lurked in its corners. Lukan had seen bigger broom cupboards. Cleaner ones too.
He blinked at the figure standing in the doorway, recognizing the slight figure of the ship’s cabin girl.
“Thought I told you to get lost,” he said.
The girl shrugged and made an I didn’t hear you gesture.
“Yeah, you did. You might be mute, but I know you’re not deaf.”
The girl ignored him and moved to his dresser, which along with a stool was the cabin’s only furniture. She picked up a dagger that Lukan had won from one of the crew, in the early days of the voyage before they had started refusing to play with him, and turned it over in her hands, staring at the garnet set in its pommel.
“Put that down.”
The girl obliged, placing the dagger back down on the dresser with exaggerated care.
“You’ve got some nerve, kid, I’ll give you that. What the hells do you want?”
The girl made a shape with her hands: thumbs pressed together, fingers steepled. Captain.
“Grabulli? What about him?”
She pointed at Lukan—you—and formed a beak with her right hand, opening and closing it. Talk.
“What, now?” Lukan winced as he rubbed a thumb against his right temple; his headache was growing worse, and the girl wasn’t helping. “Tell him I’ll be up in a bit… it’s too damned early.”
The girl traced a circle in the air, then held up nine fingers.
“Yeah, well that’s early for me.” She made a cutting gesture. Now.
Lukan swore under his breath. “Fine, have it your way. Tell the bastard—uh, tell the captain—that I’ll be up shortly.”
The girl nodded and turned back to the dresser, a smile playing across her lips.
Lukan raised a finger. “Don’t you even think about—”
She snatched the dagger and darted through the door.
“You cheeky little…” Lukan managed to get one foot out of the hammock, only for his left leg to get tangled up as he tried to lunge forward. The room flipped and suddenly he was lying on his back, the hammock swinging above him as the patter of the girl’s feet disappeared down the passage. He tried to rise, only to abandon the attempt when the rum in his stomach gurgled a warning that it was considering making a swift, explosive exit. With a groan, Lukan sank back down to the floor and closed his eyes.
Grabulli could wait a little longer.
* * *
“Ah, friend Lekaan!” Grabulli called from where he stood at the Sunfish’s prow, butchering the pronunciation of Lukan’s name in his usual fashion. The captain was unmistakable in the red velvet coat that he claimed had been a gift from some prince or other, though Lukan suspected—judging by the faded stains and poor quality of the lacework—he’d actually picked it up at a flea market in some far-flung port. “So good of you to join us. A beautiful day, no?”
Perhaps, if you’re not hungover. As it was, the sun was a little too bright, the blue sky a little too vibrant. Still, the breeze that slapped at Lukan and ruffled his hair was proving effective at driving away his headache. He gave a lazy wave in response and picked his way across the deck, doing his best to avoid the crew as they hauled on ropes and called to each other in their peculiar singsong dialect that seemed comprised almost entirely of insults. The sailors of the Sunfish were a creative bunch when it came to invective, as they’d demonstrated when Lukan fleeced them at cards. He glanced around but didn’t see any sign of the cabin girl. No doubt she would reappear later—without the dagger, of course. Not that it matters, Lukan thought as he climbed the steps to the prow. Damned garnet was fake anyway…
“The morning’s sun to you, friend Lekaan,” Grabulli said, grinning through his black snarl of a beard.
“And the evening’s stars for yourself,” Lukan replied, completing the traditional Talassian greeting as he joined the older man at the railing. He still wasn’t sure when it was that he’d revealed his true identity to Grabulli—no doubt it had been during one of their late-night drinking sessions, the rum loosening his tongue and lowering his guard. Perhaps that’s what Grabulli had intended all along, his own tall tales merely serving as cover while the liquor did its work. Or maybe all the liquor is making me paranoid.
“You seem thoughtful,” Grabulli said, slapping the back of his left hand against Lukan’s chest. “And even paler than usual.” He frowned. “You are well, yes?”
“I’m fine.”
“Come, tell me what’s on your mind.”
I’ve told you too much already. “I’m just wondering what’s so important that you woke me up at this ungodly hour.”
The captain grinned and gestured at the horizon. “See for yourself.”
Lukan shielded his eyes against the sun and squinted at the expanse of ocean. Not just ocean, he realized—in the distance were the dark shapes of mountains.
“Land, friend Lekaan!” Grabulli clapped Lukan’s shoulder. “We’ll dock in Saphrona within the hour. And we’ve arrived two days ahead of schedule, just as I promised you.”
“You said three days.”
“I must beg your forgiveness, but I said two.”
“You said three and then banged the bottle of rum on the table three times, just in case I didn’t quite get your point. And then shouted it again when I didn’t look convinced.”
“Two days, three days… ” Grabulli puffed out his cheeks and shrugged. “What does it matter? There’s hardly any difference, no?”
Lukan smiled as he imagined the captain taking the same approach with customs officials. No wonder the Tamberlin TradingCompany left their mark on him. “You,” he said, turning his gaze back to the horizon, “are a scoundrel.”
Grabulli barked a laugh. “Now that is something I can agree with!”
* * *
As the Sunfish’s captain prowled the deck, barking orders to his crew as they began final preparations for making port, Lukan remained at the prow and watched the distant mountains draw closer. A half hour passed before he finally caught sight of Saphrona’s famous Phaeron landmark. The tower rose from the sea in the middle of Saphrona’s bay, a dark edifice constructed from the mysterious black material that the Phaeron had used in all their architecture.
As the Sunfish drew closer, Lukan had to crane his neck to take in the tower’s full height, which must have exceeded two hundred feet. Its surfaces seemed smooth as glass, save for the uppermost stories, which had splayed outward like black, broken fingers, as if something within had exploded.
“The Ebon Hand,” Lukan murmured. “It’s more impressive than I imagined.”
“Best behave yourself in Saphrona, friend Lekaan.” Grabulli spat over the railing. “You don’t want to end up in that place.”
“What do you mean?”
The captain pointed. “See for yourself.”
As the Sunfish sailed past the tower, Lukan saw several rowing boats bobbing beside a ramshackle wooden jetty. Two figures in uniforms of black trimmed with silver were dragging a third figure between them—a man in a rough-spun tunic, his hands bound. He struggled as they climbed a flight of steps that rose from the end of the jetty, leading to an arched doorway. The man threw back his head, mouth wide, but his scream didn’t reach the Sunfish as he was dragged inside the tower. Lukan’s gaze moved to the banner that hung above the entrance, crossed silver keys on a black background.
“Whose symbol is that?” he asked.
“The Saphronan Inquisition,” Grabulli replied, his expression darkening. “Protectors of law and order in this fair city, or so they would have you believe.” He spat over the side again. “You do not want to tangle with them, friend Lekaan.”
“I don’t plan to. So they use the Ebon Hand as a prison?”
“Just so. And a nasty one it is, too. The stories I’ve heard… ” The Talassian shook his head. “Anyway,” he continued, his grin returning as he gestured to the approaching city. “Behold the Jewel of the South, the Mother of Cities!”
Lukan turned his attention back to Saphrona. The city sprawled across the crescent-shaped bay and the foothills of the mountains beyond, a hazy tapestry of red-tiled roofs and countless bronze domes gleaming in the morning sunlight. Grabulli pointed to the largest dome, near the center of the city.
“The Lady’s House,” he said, adopting a tone of mock reverence. “Where the Lady of Seven Shadows judges us all.” He belched. “If you believe that sort of thing.”
“You’re not one of the faithful, then? Color me shocked.”
“I believe in the strength of steel, friend Lekaan! In the color of courage, in the—”
“Language of lies?”
Grabulli punched his arm, a little harder than necessary. “Just so! You’re a smart boy.”
Lukan winced as the liquor in his stomach churned another warning. Not so smart. “What’s that place?” he asked, pointing to a grand, turreted building that crowned a promontory at the eastern end of the bay, looming imposingly over the city.
“That’s the ducal palace atop Borja’s Bluff,” the captain replied. “But the Duke rules Saphrona in name only. You see those towers?” He pointed to seven stone towers rising from the foothills of the mountains behind the city. “They belong to the Silken Septet—the most powerful merchant princes. The Septet dominate the Gilded Council, which is the true political power in Saphrona.”
“So I’ve read,” Lukan replied, recalling Velleras Gellame’s Gentleman’s Guide to Saphrona. He’d managed to read nearly two-thirds of the booklet before hurling it across his cabin after one flowery metaphor too many, and had no intention of picking it up again. Grabulli was still talking, but Lukan wasn’t listening, staring instead at Saphrona’s sprawling expanse. Somewhere in there lay the answer to the question of who, or what, Zandrusa was. And why my father wrote that name in his own blood.
“You have gone quiet, friend Lekaan,” Grabulli said, scratching at his black beard. “You are lost for words, I think.”
“It’s an impressive sight,” Lukan admitted.
Velleras Gellame claimed that Saphrona was the greatest center of commerce in the Old Empire, and, while the buffoon had written his treatise nearly fifty years prior, the number of vessels crowding the waters of the bay suggested his claim still rang true. As they drew closer to the city’s docks, Lukan saw trade ships from various cities of the Old Empire—Deladrin, where he himself had sailed from, Tamberlin, and even distant Korslakov. There were also dhows from the Southern Queendoms, most of which bore the flag of Zar-Ghosa, three silver circles on a pale blue background. He even caught a glimpse of a sleek, crimson-sailed vessel from one of the ports of the Mourning Sea, its black, lacquered hull bearing intricate carvings. Countless flags and banners rippled in the breeze as gulls wheeled overhead.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many ships,” Lukan said.
“I have,” Grabulli replied nonchalantly. “Though half of them were on fire. Including my own.” He shrugged. “No doubt most of these are here for the celebrations. Just like us, eh?”
“What celebrations?”
The man threw him a sharp look. “The Grand Restoration, of course.” His dark eyes narrowed at Lukan’s blank expression. “The symbolic exchange of the Silver Spear… Truly, you don’t know of what I speak?”
Lukan grinned. “I don’t have a clue.”
“Then what brings you to Saphrona, friend Lekaan?”
“Personal business,” he replied, determined not to give anything else away. “But I never say no to a good knees-up. What are we celebrating?”
“You surely know of the great war between Saphrona and Zar-Ghosa, yes?”
“Uh, vaguely ”
“A naval conflict like nothing the world has ever seen!” the captain continued, quickly warming to his subject. “Hundreds of ships destroyed, thousands of gallant sailors lost on both sides! And then, during what promised to be the decisive battle—”
“The Corsair Lord of the Shattered Isles arrived with his fleet, hoping to kill two enemies with one stone,” Lukan said, recalling one of the few lectures he’d bothered attending at the Academy. “And so the Saphronans and Zar-Ghosans joined forces to defeat the corsairs. An act that ended the war.”
“And forged a newfound peace between the cities that has lasted forty years,” Grabulli finished, making a sweeping gesture. “A grand story, don’t you think?”
“Very,” Lukan agreed. “And so these celebrations… they’re to mark the anniversary of the war’s end?”
“Just so. And to mark the renewal of friendship between the cities.”
“Right. You said something about a spear?”
“The Silver Spear!” Grabulli’s eyes lit up. “A Phaeron weapon of savage beauty that once belonged to the Corsair Lord himself, and which he wielded in the final battle. The Zar-Ghosan admiral is said to have offered the spear to his Saphronan counterpart at the battle’s end as a gesture of comradeship, and so the two cities have exchanged it every decade since, when they renew their vow of peace. This time it’s Saphrona’s turn to host the celebration, hence…” He gestured to the multitude of ships in the bay.
“So the spear is handed over, someone makes a speech, and then everyone gets drunk?”
“Just so, friend Lekaan! The ceremony is in a few days. Enough time for you to conclude your business and join the party, eh?”
“Perhaps.”
Grabulli coughed into his fist. “Ah, speaking of business…” He turned and snapped his fingers. The Sunfish’s quartermaster joined them at the railing, the jaunty angle of her three-cornered hat completely at odds with the scowl on her face. She held a sack, the bottom of which was stained with what could have been wine, but Lukan suspected was something else entirely. Two other crew members—hulking brutes who looked like they’d seen their fair share of tavern fights—stood behind her, eyes alert, postures tense. As if expecting trouble.
“What’s this, Grabulli?” Lukan asked warily, wishing he’d buckled his sword on before staggering out of his cabin.
“We need to discuss the matter of payment, friend Lekaan. As you can see, I have delivered you to Saphrona, safe and sound.”
“You’ll get your seven silvers. I gave you my word.”
“Yes, well…” The captain grinned wide, gold tooth flashing. “The price just went up.”
“We agreed on seven silvers,” Lukan replied, his tone hardening. “We shook on seven silvers, though of course I should have known that means little to a pirate.”
One of the sailors stepped forward, only to freeze as Grabulli raised a hand. “We also agreed,” the captain said, “that you would keep your hands off the cargo in my hold. And yet, just the other day, Sandria here noticed that a crate had been tampered with, and that it seemed to contain a little less tobacco than when we left Deladrin.”
“A lot less,” the quartermaster put in, speaking around her scowl.
“So you see,” Grabulli continued, spreading his hands, “we have something of a problem.”
“No problem,” Lukan replied, with a sigh. He’d snuck into the hold in search of a bottle of something, anything that was better than the coarse rum he’d been drinking. Instead he’d found a cache of Purple Dragon, premium Parvan pipeweed, and… well. One cheeky smoke had turned into several dozen. “What can I say?” he continued, offering Grabulli a rueful smile. “I guess I just fancied a taste of home.”
The captain frowned. “You said you were from a town near Deladrin.”
“Ah…”
“You stole from us,” Sandria hissed, her scowl deepening.
“Lady’s mercy, you’re pirates.”
“Careful, friend Lekaan,” Grabulli warned, with no trace of his usual humor.
“All right,” Lukan said, raising his hands. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken the pipeweed. Let me make amends. I’ll pay for the amount I took.”
“Fourteen silvers.”
Lukan blinked. “I… What?”
“Fourteen silvers,” the captain repeated. “The price of your voyage just doubled, friend Lekaan.”
“I don’t have that sort of money.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
“Been spying on me in my cabin, Grabulli?”
The man’s grin returned, flashing gold. “There’s no secrets aboard my ship.”
“And if I refuse to pay?”
“We’ll toss you over the side. Nothing personal, of course.” “Of course.” Lukan glanced at the distant waterfront. Not sodistant now… “Doesn’t seem too bad,” he said, with more bravado than he felt. “I can swim that.”
“You think, eh?” Grabulli snapped his fingers again.
Sandria reached into her sack and pulled out a hunk of raw meat, blood oozing between her fingers. She stepped up to the rail and hurled it out across the water. The meat struck the waves with barely a splash. A moment later a mottled, sandy-colored snout broke the surface, and Lukan caught a glimpse of a black eye and a grinning maw of needlelike teeth, ringed by a peculiar, loose fold of skin that almost had the appearance of a mane.
The creature disappeared back beneath the waves, taking the meat with it.
“Lion shark,” Grabulli said, a glint in his eye. “The bay is full of them. Must be the guts from the fisheries that attracts them, though no doubt the Kindred sometimes throw them a tastier morsel.”
“The Kindred?”
“The criminal underworld of Saphrona.” Grabulli clapped Lukan on the back. “You still fancy a swim, friend Lekaan?”
“Not as much as I fancy keeping all my limbs.”
“Ha! Then fourteen silvers seems like a fair price for that privilege, no?”
“Fine,” Lukan said, meeting the captain’s gaze. “Fourteen silvers and you forget all about me. If anyone asks the name of the passenger you picked up in Deladrin, you tell them he was called… Dubois. Bastien Dubois.” He held out his hand. “Do we have a deal?”
“I don’t know, friend Lekaan,” Grabulli mused, tugging at his black beard. “I am renowned for my long memory.”
“Enough bullshit,” Lukan replied, with far more conviction than he felt. “If you try to screw me any further I’ll take my chances with the sharks.”
Grabulli and Sandria exchanged a look. One of the brutes behind them cracked his tattooed knuckles.
For a moment Lukan thought he’d pushed it too far.
Then Grabulli laughed and seized his hand, crushing it in an iron grip as he shook vigorously. “Welcome to Saphrona, Master Dubois.”
All roads lead to Alaska in the new trailer for the third and final season of Sweet Tooth, and it looks like things might get pretty dark for at least part of the upcoming episodes.
“Sweet Tooth showed me you got nothing to live for, until you got something to die for,” Jeppard says in the trailer. I’m sure that means that everything will be fine and nothing that makes you cry will happen.
Here’s the third season’s official synopsis:
Having defeated General Abbot in the battle at Pubba’s Cabin, Gus (Christian Convery), Jepperd (Nonso Anozie), Becky (Stefania LaVie Owen), and Wendy (Naledi Murray) embark on a journey to Alaska in search of Gus's mother, Birdie (Amy Seimetz), who has been working to uncover the mysterious origins of the deadly Sick. Along the way, they are joined by Dr. Singh (Adeel Akhtar), who may have his own dangerous beliefs about Gus and his role in reversing the virus. Meanwhile, a new threat emerges in the form of Helen Zhang (Rosalind Chao), her daughter Rosie (Kelly Marie Tran), and the ferocious Wolf Boys, who seek to restart human birth and view Gus as the solution to their plans. As they navigate through perilous terrain, Gus and his group of friends find refuge at the Outpost in Alaska, where they meet a new ensemble of characters including Siana (Cara Gee) and her hybrid daughter Nuka (Ayazhan Dalabayeva). With the clock to find answers running out, alliances are tested and destinies intertwine, all leading to a thrilling climax that will determine the fate of humanity and hybrids.
“[It’s] another road trip story like Season One, but in a very different way,” showrunner Jim Mickle told Netflix’s website, Tudum. “Season Three is an Arctic story with exciting new adventures and what we hope will be a satisfying conclusion to this epic tale. Gus is going to see a side of the world and humanity that he didn’t see in Season One or Two.”
Tudum also confirmed that season three will be darker, and Mickle added that “in Season 3, everybody is dealing with some kind of wound or emotional loss, whether that was somebody in their life or a part of themselves. Everybody is looking inward and looking to move on and ultimately learning that life doesn’t stop. You have to keep putting one foot in front of another.”
The third season of Sweet Tooth premieres on Netflix on June 6, 2024, which gives you plenty of time to stock up on tissues.
Space is still the place for Apple TV+, which has renewed For All Mankind for a fifth season. The series imagines an alternate timeline in which the Soviets won the space race—so it makes a certain amount of sense that the streamer is adding a spinoff series, Star City, that will explore the Soviet space program.
Two of For All Mankind and Star City’s three creators, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi, will showrun the new series. (Presumably Ronald D. Moore will stay busy with the original show.) In a statement, Wolpert and Nedivi said, "Our fascination with the Soviet space program has grown with every season of For All Mankind. The more we learned about this secret city in the forests outside Moscow where the Soviet cosmonauts and engineers worked and lived, the more we wanted to tell this story of the other side of the space race."
Apple's official description of the new show says:
Star City is a propulsive, paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward.
No casting or timeline has been announced for StarCity, and neither show has a premiere date. The first four seasons of For All Mankind are available to watch on Apple TV+.[end-mark]
