Faith Erin Hicks (of Tor.com fame) and Prudence Shen’s new graphic novel, Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong, has a bit of everything: nerds, jocks, robots, friendship, drama, and, of course, wanton destruction. It is essentially everything you could want out of a high school story, and perhaps a little bit that you didn’t realize you wanted.

The story begins with a scenario we have, at this point, all encountered in some way or another: a text message break-up. Charlie—the protagonist and gentle, well-meaning basketball star—is in shock. After all, by the natural order of things, he is supposed to be dating the head of the cheerleading squad, but instead, he is being whisked away by his next-door neighbor and childhood best friend, Nate, and harangued for something he has no control over. In fact, Charlie doesn’t have control over much in his life; his parents are divorced and emotionally distant, his closest friend is a lunatic, and now—well, now he’s single.

[Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong… right?]

Newcomer Mette Jakobsen’s Vanishing Act begins with the discovery of a dead boy, frozen and dusted with snow. An act with the potential for trauma, grief, and a whole range of reaction, is quickly harnessed to its context and changed, gradually and subtly, throughout the 217-page novel. Minou, the boy’s 12-year-old excavator, lives secluded on an island with 3 others. Their habits are repetitive, their lives peaceful and quaint. In the inner lives of each of the island’s inhabitants, however, a war for meaning is waged, and so the dead boy becomes as much a symbol as the island they inhabit.

The Vanishing Act is, on its surface, a study of the popular “reason vs. emotion” dichotomy, embodied by the opposing forces of Minou’s mother (an artist and, later, a circus performer) and father (a philosopher and descendent of Descartes). It is not, as I assumed when I bought it on impulse, a novel about circuses, magic, or mysterious acts (though they each make an appearance). In fact, it just barely hovers on the border of speculative and mainstream literary fiction. It is, however, a defense of the fantastic, of life, of the unknown magics that we face everyday. It erases dichotomy and praises an age in which, for the first time, not having an answer became an answer in itself.

[Read more]

“Once upon a time,” the upcoming novel Dreams and Shadows begins, “there were two people who fell very much in love.” In a novel described as the meeting of Gaiman and Del Toro, this is not a happy beginning, but one filled with inevitable horrors. In this regard, newcomer Cargill does not disappoint. The happy couple mentioned in the opening line die within fifteen pages, tricked and bested by a changeling sent from the fairy court. The changeling—Knocks, a revolting mirror version of his human counterpart—revels in his adopted parents’ fear, disgust, and finally death. And he only gets more charming as the story progresses.

Told with shifting points of view, excerpts from fantastical encyclopedias, and fairy tale narration, this novel is anything but traditional. Dark, comedic, and unsettling, Dreams and Shadows is everything an urban fantasy sets out to be.

[Read more]

Richard Blanzac works in salvage and demolition—or at least, that’s what he tells Sophia Greenwald when he travels back in time to destroy her life’s work. Mere hours before that, he had read Greenwald’s manuscripts alongside Ginsburg and Kerouac, but the beats are the least of his worries when he arrives in 1957; Blanzac must stop a mythic organization from using Greenwald’s work to open up the proverbial wormhole that will suck all of mankind into non-existence. That’s right—not destruction or even death, but to the state of never having existed in the first place.

Tim Powers’ upcoming novella, Salvage and Demolition has all of the elements of an entertaining, rainy-afternoon read: time travel, evil religious sects, action, romance, and enough whiskey and cigarettes to give Mad Men a run for its money. It lacks a heap of essential development, though, so if you’re looking for plot and character growth, you’d best go elsewhere for your two hours of reading. For hijinks and entertainment, however, do read on.

[Read more]

When Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain arrived at the palace of Versailles in 1901, nothing initially seemed amiss. Being good English spinsters, they had never toured France before, and were properly charmed by the place. When they walked further into the grounds, however, they were struck by a strong sensation of melancholy, and by the time they reached Marie Antoinette’s palace, the Trianon, they had begun to encounter strange phantom sounds, men and women in anachronistic fashion. They saw a woman with a little girl, and thought her stitched from an old tapestry. It was not until they left the place, a week later, that they confirmed with one another what they had experienced: a walk through the memories of Bourbon Queen Marie Antoinette.

Their story, published under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont, seems straight from fancy, but it’s true (or, at the very least, as true as these stories can be). The women compiled their story and researched the events for their veracity in a book called simply, An Adventure. Skeptics since the incident have attempted to debunk their story, but it remains at least famous enough to warrant a Wikipedia page and a small press reprint.

[Read more]

Katamari Damacy is, as many of the franchise’s followers might tell you, more than just a game. The premise—wherein the player rolls a sticky ball around the screen to collect all of Earth’s objects to turn them into stars (while chipper Japanese pop music encourages you to do so with love and cheer in your heart)— is as bizarre as it sounds. A good friend of mine introduced the delightfully eccentric video game to me as a life philosophy, as a means of rolling everything in your life—good and bad—into a ball, and throwing it back to the space from whence it came.

It was, therefore, not much of a surprise when I happened upon a book of poems loosely based on the concept. Ander Monson’s collection, The Available World offers up a delectable sample of contemporary poems with an eye to language, space, technology, and, of course, the ever-rolling katamari. Despite hailing from a non-speculative press, the collection, and Monson himself, is rife with science, science fiction, and science fiction references. Just imagine if Douglas Coupland had a literary boner for Wil Wheaton and video games, and go from there.

[Read more]

I was sold on newcomer Magnus Flyte’s recent novel when I looked at the clock and realized that I’d been reading for four hours without pause. Ironically, City of Dark Magic dedicates itself to time travel, and, what’s more, Magnus Flyte is actually a composite pseudonym for author Meg Howrey, and television writer and journalist Christina Lynch. If there’s anything this novel taught me, it’s that two people can be one and that present time is all the time.

If you’re not sold on that description, here’s one from the back cover of the novel: “Rom-com paranormal suspense novel.” When music student Sarah Weston is called to Prague to study dusty Beethoven manuscripts and instead discovers political intrigue, love, and time-bending hallucinogens, Flyte’s readers are left with their own discovery: meta-fiction can be fun and rom-coms can, indeed, be smart, sexy, and self-aware.

[Read more]

It was only a matter of time before DC’s beloved Batman-meets-Robin-Hood franchise made its way to the long list of contemporary film remakes; comic book movies and television are all the rage, after all, and with a presidential campaign and the effects of a recession on our heels, we can all use some good old-fashioned tales of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.

The CW’s Arrow premiered on Wednesday, October 10^th at 8/7c. to much surprisingly-not-awful-style fanfare (Esther Inglis-Arkell at iO9 even said that the pilot, “all mostly worked,” and if that’s not a compliment for a CW series, I don’t know what is). Though much of this praise can certainly be chalked up to Oliver Queen’s badassery and thoroughly scarred-pecs, let’s not forget that part of our joy stems from the original Green Arrow’s themes of vigilante justice and ambiguous morality. Watching Ollie (Stephen Amell) thwart the status quo just feels… right.

[Read more almost-praise for the CW]

American Horror Story’s second season premiered last week in perfect synchronization with the Halloween season. The FX series did not fail to perplex and scare in its original run, but with a new cast of both characters and genre tropes to explore, the series had its work cut out for it in the recent debut. Gone are the classic haunted home and broken family angst, and in its place the same actors and writers must create a world that is equally believable and equally traumatic to behold.

[Read more American horror, unrelated to the US election.]

Beauty & the Beast premiered last Thursday at 9/8c. in traditional CW style – with high doses of melodrama and just enough viewers to keep it alive for the rest of the season. The first five minutes of the pilot managed to appeal to me – a diverse cast, a “hot new Ivy-educated bartender” protagonist (college graduates across the country sigh in sympathy), and a sweet, believable mother-daughter relationship. 

Some mysterious assassins set the plot in motion and it all goes downhill from there. 

[Read more]

When MTV’s Teen Wolf first premiered in June of 2011, I prepared myself in equal parts for angsty teenage romance and 80’s-esque shenanigans; the MTV name undoubtedly loaned the production a certain set of credentials, as did its 1985 predecessor. I began watching it this summer and by the end of season two in August was hooked – for better or worse.

Teen Wolf thwarts its namesake at every turn. Gone are the days of car-surfing lycanthropes and “all in the family”-style hijinks. Like Stephanie Meyers’ hit Twilight franchise, Teen Wolf feeds our generation’s lust for amorous, supernatural young people and, like Twilight, is an unending train wreck that you’ll be unable to tear your eyes from (though you may find its fan base considerably more tolerable and its religious undertones considerably further “under”).

[Read more about Teen Wolf. You know you want to.]