“Move Along Home”
Written by Michael Piller and Frederick Rappaport and Lisa Rich & Jeanne Carrigan-Fauci
Directed by David Carson
Season 1, Episode 9
Production episode 40511-410
Original air date: March 14, 1993
Stardate: unknown

Station log: Jake walks in on Sisko in his dress uniform. A Vulcan ship made first contact with a species called the Wadi, and a delegation is coming to the station. Sisko, Kira, Dax, and Bashir (who apparently forgot to pack his dress uniform, to his great consternation and Sisko’s annoyance) meet them at the docking ring. The Wadi leader, Falow, is polite about meeting Sisko and his people, but what the Wadi are really interested in is games and want to go to Quark’s. A nonplussed Kira leads them there, where they gamble, using an impressive selection of gemstones with which to wager.

Six hours later, they’re winning like crazy. Sisko is exhausted and bored from sitting around watching them play dabo for hours on end and finally calls it a night. Quark, meanwhile, has Broik rig the table so they start to lose—but Falow catches him at it. He decides to have Quark play one of their games—“an honest game”—which materializes out of a small container. It’s an inverted wireframe pyramid, with pieces placed on the second level from the top, or second shap. Quark asks why they don’t start at the beginning, but apparently only children start at the first shap.

[Choose their path.]

James Renner’s genre blurring novel—The Man From Primrose Lane—is now availalbe as an ebook for $3.99 for a limited time! The titular character wears mittens, there’s a murder, and it’s all part of a meta-fictional thriller spanning decades! Here’s what Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe, had to say about it:

“The Man from Primrose Lane is a well-told story filled with darkness, horror, humor and surprising tenderness. And that’s just the first part. There is a moment in this novel when the story moves in a way so unexpected I actually had to put it down and catch my breath. Go ahead, see what I mean. I’ll wait here for you.”

Get your 3.99 ebook until June 7th! Available at the ebook retailers below, or your preferred ebook store.

Kindle | Nook | iBooks

In publishing, as in any other industry, we scatter our days with curious and unusual words which we take for granted. But even for us, new ones pop up to surprise us every now and then. Thinking of Blippar and Wibalin here—though I thought for a while that our books were bound with wibbling. Which made me laugh! Here to entertain and explain are ten bits of jargon, don’t use them all at once....

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Being a) a wishy-washy liberal, b) British and c) made of flesh and blood, I’ve never really had much truck with guns in my fantasy fiction—I even used to get a bit twitchy whenever Batman picked up a firearm, and the Punisher just made me downright queasy.

But monkeys with guns, that’s a different matter altogether. Who doesn’t like a shooter-sporting simian? There’s something reassuringly fantastical about an ape with a weapon, yet something horribly possible. And fans of gun-toting gorillas have never been more spoiled for choice.

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Alex Bledsoe’s critically acclaimed The Hum and the Shiver is available as an ebook for only $2.99 until June 7th! This fantasy novel was named one of the Best Fiction Books of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews. Concerning magic deep in the hills of Tennessee, The Hum and the Shiver is a haunting tale of omens and hidden magic. This book’s sequel—Wisp of a Thing—releases June 18th. Get caught up beforehand!

Snag the $2.99 The Hum and the Shiver ebook from the following retailers below, or your favorite ebook provider.

ibooks | Kindle | Nook

Welcome to the Malazan Re-read of the Fallen! Every post will start off with a summary of events, followed by reaction and commentary by your hosts Bill and Amanda (with Amanda, new to the series, going first), and finally comments from Tor.com readers. In this article, we’ll cover Chapter Eleven of Toll the Hounds (TtH).

A fair warning before we get started: We’ll be discussing both novel and whole-series themes, narrative arcs that run across the entire series, and foreshadowing. Note: The summary of events will be free of major spoilers and we’re going to try keeping the reader comments the same. A spoiler thread has been set up for outright Malazan spoiler discussion.

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I’ve been writing a lot and not reading much that isn’t research and so not posting much—though if you want to hear about my research books I could go on for a long time! I thought I’d look at some short stories, because they’re shorter.

A long time ago I wrote about five short stories with useless time travel, and today I was thinking about three short stories that are all about stranded time travellers. The first is H. Beam Piper’s “He Walked Around the Horses” which is free on Project Gutenberg, the second is Poul Anderson’s “The Man Who Came Early,” also old enough to be free online, and the third is Robert Silverberg’s “House of Bones.”

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Yesterday we gave you a preview of The Healer, Antti Tuomainen's new thriller about a dystopian furturistic Helskini where climate change is in fully lethal force. Kick off the long weekend by entering to win one of ten copies—comment in the post to enter!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia, who are 18 or older. To enter, comment on this post beginning at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) on May 24, 2013. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 p.m. ET May 28, 2013. Void outside of the 50 US, and DC where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tor.com, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

Well, another long, adventure-packed chapter, but for fear of driving everyone nuts, we’ll try and do it in one go. Now that Aelius is back (with all the Vesani gold in tow), Basso’s got a chance to handle a few domestic problems.

Chapter Ten: A good deal is where both sides make a profit.

The chapter begins with Aelius’ “official” return to the City. Since he’s already had one triumph in the last year, he’s not allowed another. Basso encourages the House to vote Aelius a rather cruel/prestigious honor, The Order of the Headless Spear. It is… demeaning.

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Just when you thought Doctor Who/Back to the Future mash-ups were going out of style, this awesome one showed up. We really like picturing Tennant with the crazy mind-reading hat on his head, and also the idea of Billie Piper playing lead guitar in The Pinheads. (Art via The Mary Sue. Artist: Sara Wheeler.)

Your collection of daily offsite links are a curious thing. They might make you weep and might make you sing. 

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You've read the super-creepy excerpt from Sketchy, the first book in the Bea Catcher Chronicles, and here's your chance to dive into this new series about a teenage girl who can draw images taken straight from other people's minds. But don't despair if you don't win one of our five copies—it's out now from Skyscape!

Comment in the post to enter!

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia, who are 18 or older. To enter, comment on this post beginning at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on May 23, 2013. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 p.m. ET May 27, 2013. Void outside of the 50 US, and DC where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tor.com, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.

Takahiro O’Leary is an ex-reality TV star with daddy issues and a melodramatic death wish. Samira Moheb is an Iraq War vet with PTSD, OCD, and a heart full of oppressive guilt and unrequited love. Judith Halford is a science prodigy with a conscience and a severe survival instinct. Charles Yates is a mad scientist with a god complex, endless financial resources, and psychopathic tendencies. One fateful evening, the ever-adventurous Tak is made an offer he can’t refuse, to work for the Axon Corporation and Yates exploring alternate realities. At first it’s all fun and games in a bizarre assortment of realities*, but eventually Yates’ sinister intents begin to ooze to the surface. When Tak discovers a timeline in which the company rules the world, he uncovers the truth about his work—that they plan to supplant the real world with the parallel one.

Trouble is, in that world Samira died in the war, and Tak won’t let that stand. Bigger trouble is, Yates, the inventor of the time machine, has his own evil plan afoot and doesn’t give a flying fart about Axon or anyone other than his own egotistical self. He’s using Tak to locate what he calls the Beautiful Land, a heaven-like personalized paradise, and when he finds it he’ll erase everyone and everything to keep it for himself. When Yates sets his scheme into motion, timelines are destroyed in horrific ways, and the only people left in all the universes who can stop him are a beleaguered explorer, a mentally ill vet, and a guilt-ridden scientist.

[“THEY ARE COMING”]

I was as surprised as anyone when Wizards of the Coast decided to release reprints of their old editions. It is a smart move, and one I’m glad to see them make, but personally the really interesting thing was the deluxe reprints of their Advanced Dungeons and Dragons First Edition books. Nice paper, thick covers, ribbon bookmarks, the works. I’ve heard people complain that the shading is too dark, but to me it looks crisp, and captures some of the fainter lines that might otherwise be overlooked. The fact that they donate a portion of the profits to the Gary Gygax Memorial Fund is more than icing on the cake; it is credit where credit is due (though it would be nice to have a Dave Arneson memorial, too; maybe if they reprint the non-advanced D&D?). I decided the best thing to do with these books is to look at them both in historical context…and in comparison to what follows. So I re-read them with a critical eye and was happy to find that they have a lot of great things to recommend them, and plenty of opportunities to talk about the evolution of game design.

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Season 9, Episodes 1 and 2: “Nothing Important Happened Today” Parts 1 and 2
Episode Airdates: November 11 and November 18, 2001

This is a pilot, sort of. A pilot for a new show called Season 9 Of The X-Files, which is a bit of a cheeky title but then again, so is “Nothing Important Happened Today.” Just like a pilot would, these two episodes seek to introduce the show’s themes, characters, and ambitions. And in that respect, it’s a good pilot. We get the new characters, and the new themes, and the new ambitions. Unfortunately, it appears to be a good pilot for a lousy show.

[Would you like to get some air?]

Here in the UK, there’s no more prestigious prize for literature than the Man Booker, and to no-one’s surprise, British genre fiction fans have made an annual habit of bashing this very visible award for its seemingly superficial dismissal of the innumerable novels we believe to be deserving of such recognition.

I’d like to say rightly so, but if the truth be told... I don’t know. Having only read one of the last batch of shortlisted novels, I don’t feel particularly qualified to pitch in with my personal opinion. I mean, speculative fiction should certainly get a look in, and sometimes it does—Communion Town and The Teleportation Accident were both longlisted in 2012—but is it tenable to suggest a genre novel need be nominated every year? I honestly don’t think so, no.

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Despite getting a writer’s credit for Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl by all accounts hated the final film, to the point where he was reluctant to allow any of his books to be filmed at all. Aware of this, his family hesitated to allow the book to be filmed a second time unless they could retain creative control. This, naturally, delayed matters still further. It was not until several years after Dahl’s death that film producers and the Dahl family could agree on hiring director Tim Burton, whose previous work seemed perfectly matched to Dahl’s grotesque visions. It took Burton another few years to develop the film, now back to its original title, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Still more delays followed: British child labor laws limited the hours that the children could legally be on set; set design turned out to be a nightmare, and the crew had to figure out how to transform forty squirrels into movie stars. (And if you are wondering how to do this, the answer is, Squirrel Training Camp.) The final result was not released until 2005.

The decision to use Real Squirrels was but one of many factors that Burton and his creative team, armed with far more money to spend, used to make a film that would be, they declared, closer to the original book than the earlier film had been. In some ways, they succeeded magnificently—perhaps too magnificently. In two major ways, they failed.

Did you know that this was the last film Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s production company worked on before their split? I didn’t. And with that pretty much entirely irrelevant aside, let’s plunge into further discussion!

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