Welcome to the final installment of the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel was released, we’ve used this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and discuss your theories about where it might be headed. We’ve also gotten behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, too.

And though I strove to err on the side of caution when I talked about each episode’s plot points, this read-along was meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story could talk about it with each other. There were spoilers.

And there are going to be even more spoilers as we dig into the final episode: “Earth Below, Sky Above.”

[Now that’s a season finale...]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 12, “The Gentle Art of Cracking Heads.”

[We all found the Trek easter egg, right?]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 11, “A Problem of Proportion.”

[Break out the emergency box of tissues...]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 10, “This Must Be the Place.”

[Who’s Hart Schmidt when he’s not on the Clarke?]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 9, “The Observers.”

[It’s like Philo Vance... IN SPACE!]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 8, “The Sound of Rebellion.”

[Three CDF soldiers walk into a hofbrauhaus...]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 7, “The Dog King.”

[Tragedy tomorrow, comedy tonight!]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 6, “The Back Channel.”

[All Systems Are Gau!]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 5, “Tales from the Clarke.”

[Jack Ryan... IN SPACE!]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 4, “A Voice in the Wilderness.”

[It’s the future of talk radio!]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this read-along is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 3: “We Only Need the Heads.”

[“Space: It’s FANTASTIC.”]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this readalong is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 2: “Walk the Plank.”

[Wait up: Where’s Harry Wilson?]

Welcome to the Tor.com read-along for John Scalzi’s The Human Division—each week, as a new episode in this serialized novel is released, you can use this space to talk about how you think the story’s going so far and put forward your theories about where it might be headed. You’ll also get behind-the-scenes info from Scalzi, as well as the occasional insight from his editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden... and maybe a few other special guest stars along the way.

Warning: Although I’ll strive to err on the side of caution when I talk about each episode’s plot points, this readalong is meant to be a zone where people who have already read the story can talk about it with each other. Expect spoilers.

Okay, then! Let’s talk about Episode 1: “The B-Team.”

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eDiscover is a new series on Tor.com that highlights sci-fi/fantasy titles recently brought back into print as ebooks.

For me, Avram Davidson’s The Other Nineteenth Century is a true rediscovery: When I was a young SF/F fan in the mid-1980s, I kept up my subscriptions to Asimov’s, Amazing, and Fantasy & Science Fiction with a completist’s enthusiasm, so based on the publication dates given for the short stories in this collection, I must have read “The Engine of Samoset Erastus Hale, and One Other, Unknown” and, quite possibly, “El Vilvoy de las Islas” when they first came out. And though this is the first time I’ve stumbled upon “The Odd Old Bird,” I had seen a few other stories about Dr. Englebert Eszterhazy and the mythical empire of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania—it was those that had stood out most in my memory, and made me jump at the chance to read this anthology when it was offered.

[Alternate histories, pastiches, satires—take your pick of 19th centuries!]

eDiscover is a new series on Tor.com that highlights sci-fi/fantasy titles recently brought back into print as ebooks.

Ken MacLeod is an author I’ve always wanted to get to know better. I’m a big fan of his SF-tinged thriller The Execution Channel, and the excellent “first contact” novel Learning the World, but I’ve never been able to clear the decks to read more of his hard science fiction. One of these days I’ll take a vacation and pack the “Fall Revolution” quartet with me—I’ve been told that it’s likely to mesh well with my well-established fandom for fellow Edinburgher Charles Stross—but in the meantime, the standalone space opera Newton’s Wake has been a great way for me to get back into a MacLeod groove.

[Planet-hopping in the 24th century...]

Crazy question: What’s going to happen when the mainstream fiction crowd gets bored with the end of the world? When they’ve had enough of post-apocalyptic wastelands and hardened survivors fighting off zombies and super-vampires? Here’s my theory: Instead of indulging themselves in worst-case scenarios for the future, they’ll see what sort of damage they can do to the past.

Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America is an obvious early frontrunner in the mainstreaming of alternate history, with its exploration of how putting Charles Lindbergh on the Republican ticket in the 1940 presidential election could have led to the ascendancy of a fascist, anti-Semitic strain in American politics, with dire consequences for Europe as Lindbergh (widely considered to have been a Nazi sympathizer in real life) cuts a deal with Hitler. Now Stephen L. Carter turns up with The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, which does an even better job than Roth’s novel of doing exactly what it says on the tin. But, like Roth, Carter also tries very hard to put all the historical toys back exactly where he found them.

[The more things change, the more they stay the same...]

Back in May, Walter Mosley wrote a post for Tor.com making “the case for genre,” so it’s only natural that the first question from Ryan Britt during Tuesday afternoon’s Tor.com Author Stage event at BookExpo America should be based on that essay: Does science fiction prepare us for real life?

Mosley covered some of the same territory he’d written about, discussing science fiction as “the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world,” and emphasizing that although it may be looked at by some critics as an excluded gerne now, it’s important to remember that in years past, authors from Jules Verne to George Orwell used science fictional forms to talk about what it meant to be a human in the society of the time, and as that society was undergoing massive upheavals. In some ways, he observed, it’s literary fiction that has excluded itself from that conversation.

[“OMG, Jeff VanderMeer, do you need a hug?”]

My first reaction to Ryan’s post on the ten funniest science fiction films was: “What about Time Bandits?” But then I figured, okay, you could make a decent argument that Time Bandits should be classified under fantasy rather than science fiction, so we’ll give him that omission. Then I shared the list with my wife, and after we agreed that Young Frankenstein needed to be much higher on the list than it is, she said, “Where’s Bedazzled?”

And that’s when I knew we needed a parallel list for fantasy films.

Of course, you’ve probably already figured out what the top two films on my list are likely to be — that still leaves eight surprises... or eight opportunities to fight over the movies I’ve left out. This is a purely subjective list, after all, and I can’t even count how many times I’ve been told my sense of humor is warped. But let’s have at it...

[So that’s what an invisible wall looks like...]

I had just started reading Brian McGreevy’s Hemlock Grove when I spotted a news item about how Netflix had picked up a 13-episode series based on the novel, about a series of grisly murders in a Pennsylvania town and the unlikely team-up between Roman Godfrey, the teenage heir to what used to be the local steel fortune, and his classmate Peter Rumancek, a young Gypsy who could also be a werewolf. I wasn’t that deep into the novel, but I’d gotten far enough to think: Sure, I could see how this would work as television.

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