Welcome back to the Short Fiction Spotlight, a weekly column co-curated by myself and the inestimable Brit Mandelo, and dedicated to doing exactly what it says in the header: shining a light on the some of the best and most relevant fiction of the aforementioned form.

Last time I directed the Short Fiction Spotlight, we discussed two terrific novelettes in which image was everything. Both were nominated for a Nebula. By now, the winners of that award—and all the others on the roster, obviously—will have been announced, and much as I might have liked to look at those this week, these columns aren’t researched, written, submitted, formatted and edited all on the morning of.

So what I thought I’d do, in the spirit of keeping the Nebula news alive a little longer, was turn to a pair of tales whose authors were honoured in 2012 instead. To wit, we’ll touch on “What We Found” by Geoff Ryman in short order, but let’s begin this edition of the Short Fiction Spotlight with a review of “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu.

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“Read My Lips”
Story by Alan Burnett, Michael Reaves
Teleplay by Joe R. Lansdale
Directed by Boyd Kirkland
Episode #064
Music Composed by Shirley Walker
Animation by Tokyo Movie Shinsha Co.
Original Airdate—May 10^th, 1992

Plot: Batman discovers the mastermind behind a string of perfectly planned heists is a ventriloquism dummy, Scarface

[Evil doll and evil dolls]

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: promises are made to be broken. In truth, trust exists to be tested.

We’re often called upon to give our word, for what it’s worth, but keeping it is never so simple. Of course it can be done, and indeed, we should endeavour to honour as many of the bonds we form as possible. But sometimes, circumstances arise; unavoidable, inescapable circumstances that require us to behave badly in service of the greater good. To do something we have sworn not to, or say what someone else would rather we wouldn’t.

I’m sure I sound like someone with a guilty conscience, and perhaps I am. I’d argue that we all are, to a greater or lesser extent. Thankfully, the consequences of betraying a vow in our world are in nothing compared to what we’d face if we came from Kharein, the capital city of Darhan.

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In the lead-up to this year’s BookExpo America, BEA is publishing a series of author inteviews called “BEA In Your Space." We’re excited to reveal that one of the first ones is an interview with notable comics creator Paul Pope, author of the upcoming First Second graphic novel Battling Boy.

Paul Pope will be autographing and speaking at BEA courtesy of First Second Books. Check out when and where, and see what other creators from the MacKids stable will appear! You can find them at Macmillan’s booth #1557.

[MacKids BEA schedule]

The power of the Wheel of Time Re-read compels you! Hopefully!

Today’s entry covers Chapter 14 of A Memory of Light, which features unexpected villainesses, unsolicited movie reviews, and surprisingly lethal applications of standard cartoon gags.

Previous re-read entries are here. The Wheel of Time Master Index is here, which has links to news, reviews, interviews, and all manner of information about the Wheel of Time in general. The index for all things specifically related to the final novel in the series, A Memory of Light, is here.

Also, for maximum coolness, the Wheel of Time Re-read is also now available as e-books, from your preferred e-book retailer!

This re-read post, and all posts henceforth, contain spoilers for the entire Wheel of Time series. If you haven’t read, read at your own risk.

And now, the post!

[“Behind every wall, every window. The world behind the world, and we’re smack in the middle.”]

DC Comics recently debuted a prequel comic for the new Superman movie Man of Steel, in theaters on June 14, which focuses on Krpytonian society and its efforts to explore the galaxy and better itself as a species. It also offers some overt and thematic hints about what we might ultimately see in Man of Steel.

[Man of Steel prequel comic]

A special five story preview of Shawn Speakman’s epic fantasy anthology Unfettered will be released at Phoenix Comicon this Memorial Day weekend. This week, we’re taking a look at all five stories, many featuring new glimpses of our favorite fantasy worlds.

There’s something incredibly engaging about the Arthurian story of the knight-errant. I always perk up when I know that a knight is leaving court, the location of his target unknown, with the commandment to quest, to do right, to slay evil and maintain his honor. I grew up on T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, and have long loved the mystique of the isolated knight questing through less civilized lands. That’s the structure Kevin Hearne chose for “The Chapel Perilous,” his new short story in the Unfettered anthology. Although it stars Atticus O’Sullivan, the star of Hearne’s urban fantasy Iron Druid Chronicles, “The Chapel Perilous” sees O’Sullivan looking back on days long gone in Britain, days when there were more knights, and more druids, too. Indeed, he looks back to the most Arthurian tale of all, the quest for the Holy Grail. Apparently that was O’Sullivan’s quest, he’s the one who found the thing. Who knew?

[Read more. Some spoilers for the story below.]

It occurs to me that this year I’ve spent plenty of time on fantasy, while neglecting science fiction. A trend likely to continue until 2014 at least....

So for today, let’s spend a little time redressing the balance, and talk about hard SF by women.

Defining hard science fiction, rather like defining epic fantasy, is a tricksy business. (Or hobbit.) The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction itself acknowledges the potential impossibility of any rigorous definition, concluding only:

“[T]the most important thing about it is, not that it should include real science in any great detail, but that it should respect the scientific spirit; it should seek to provide natural rather than supernatural or transcendental explanations for the events and phenomena it describes.” [Link.]

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Good news! The new trailer for The Wolverine, which hits theaters on July 26, is all about being driven insane by your own life while having to fight huge samurai robots and snake women anyway. In fact, we hear that the working title for this movie was Wolverine: Goin’ Crackers.

Seriously, the premise is that X-Men: The Last Stand was so bad that it drove him crazy, which actually sounds like a pretty solid premise. Check out the trailer below.

[New trailer for The Wolverine]

Tor.com’s ongoing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey-esque attempt to define Neil Gaiman and/or his work has read his most well-known epic, made a mixtape out of another, and looked at his habit of creating his own world inside of the worlds of others. Now, we look at his penchant for constant collaboration with other artists, writers, and musicians. Collaborations that more often than not end up further honing the author’s unique style.

They say that behind every great writer, is that writer’s bro. And by “bro,” we mean an artistic equal whose work brings new definition to yours and a friend who otherwise has your back. A bro can be any gender and the bonds between you can feel like they were always meant to be. Neil Gaiman has a lot of bromances, and though we love the man and his writing, where would he be without these seven essential bros?

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Is there anything Sherlock wouldn’t do...for...a new...violin? The above image was of course inevitable, and may somehow spoil Sherlock and Star Trek Into Darkness, and maybe is also your future nightmares. 

Your daily collection of offsite links contains stuff you may or may not want to know about your favorite fictional worlds. Oh, whatever. The summer has been spoiled!

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Hi-ho, Tor.com! Leigh Butler here, of The Wheel of Time Re-read!

As dictated by my accidental semi-cornering of the hilariously specific niche market of Commenter on All Things Wheel of Time, it is my pleasure to bring you a spoiler-free advance review of “River of Souls”, Brandon Sanderson’s (and Robert Jordan’s) contribution to the epic fantasy anthology Unfettered, due out this month.

Pretty cool, eh? Why, yes, yes it is. Click the jump to find out what I thought of the story in particular, and why this anthology is awesome in general. Hooray!

[DO EEEET]

It would seem that River Song’s arc on Doctor Who has come to an end in “The Name of the Doctor” (Although as always that will remain to be seen.) so Doctor Who Online’s senior art editor Will Brooks put together this nifty infographic that illustrates how her twisty timeline matches up with the Doctor’s. The full hi-res version is up on Photobucket (it’s gigantic, so follow the linky-link to see the whole chart) but we’re not sure we’re convinced yet. Does this timeline work for you? Can we ever be certain if we don’t get direct confirmation from the characters? After all, those season 6 “First Night / Last Night” minisodes were never given precise dates....

Space.

The final frontier?

For now, that searching question stands an unfortunate fact. We want to know more, of course, but there is no clear need for the revelations we may or may not gain from our desired endeavours, or none that we can easily see.

And so we wait, painfully aware that—even if the Powers That Be see reason—we are lamentably unlikely to see a man on Mars in our lifetimes.

Maybe our children will. I want that for them.

But neither you nor I nor they, in their day, will find out what awaits on the other side of the interstellar space NASA’s lonely Voyager probe is on track to chart; the odds are simply not in our favour, I’m afraid. But we can wonder, can’t we? We can imagine. We can read and write and damn it, we can dream.

So for the foreseeable future, space may indeed be the final frontier in fact, but fiction, by its very definition, need not be held back by what is. Instead, its pioneers ask: what if? And occasionally, incredibly, what if is what is.

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My standard spoiler warning for this series: Antiagon Fire is the seventh novel in L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s Imager Portfolio series, and the fourth one following the adventures of Quaeryt Rytersyn. The first three novels in the series had a different protagonist and were set in the same fictional world but several centuries after the events portrayed in the Quaeryt novels.

In other words, you may want to stop reading this review if you haven’t at least read the first three Quaeryt novels: Scholar, Princeps and Imager’s Battalion. If you’d like a refresher, you can find my reviews of those novels here, here and here. (You can also find my look at the initial Imager trilogy here.)

So, in summary: if you’re not familiar with this series yet, please check it out because it’s excellent—but stop reading this review here to avoid spoilers.

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“Spiral,” by Steven S. DeKnight

“Spiral” is one of those episodes that starts right where its predecessor left off. Dawn’s secret has been exposed, and so Buffy scoops her up and runs like a terrified antelope. It shouldn’t work, but Willow slows Glory briefly. Then, after running at super-blurry cheetah speed to catch up with them, she foolishly pauses for the traditional pre-victory exchange of taunts... in the middle of a busy road.

This turns out badly for Glory when a big truck smashes right into her, and very well indeed for Buffy when the impact then causes Ben to take over custody of the shared BenGlorious bod. It’s nice for us because we get Ben in a dress again. There are worse things, though it’s not a fabulous dress.

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A special five story preview of Shawn Speakman’s epic fantasy anthology Unfettered will be released at Phoenix Comicon this Memorial Day weekend. This week, we’re taking a spoiler-free look at all five stories, many featuring new glimpses of our favorite fantasy worlds.

I read Terry Brooks’s Shannara trilogy when I was pretty young, and if I’m being honest, I don’t remember them all that well. But I do remember how much I enjoyed reading them. I remember liking Allanon best and imagining that he would appear at my house one day and tell me that I was descended from a magical line of elves. I remember being inspired by the idea that a magical world could be our distant future, rather than a mythic past, and using colored beads as my elfstones.

I wish I had gotten my hands on Terry Brooks' short story “Imaginary Friends” back then, too, because I would have adored it.

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