Of the top ten highest grossing films of all time, how many of them are straight up science fiction or fantasy? All of them except one. The only film on that list that isn’t some kind of fantasy is Titanic, directed by James Cameron, a man who made killer robots and underwater aliens all the rage. While what makes money at the box office doesn’t really have bearing on the tastes of more highbrow literary folks, it does serve as a useful barometer for determining the state of pop. And when one considers that the next few generations of “important” writers will come from a time when Raiders of the Lost Ark is considered an “old movie” then the state of pop has a bigger influence on literature than ever. Between The New Yorker’s Arthur Krystal and Time’s Lev Grossman, the discussion as to what comprises genre literature versus literature literature is hot this week. Everyone’s looking for a rubric, and here’s mine. The difference is pop.

Pop is Fantasy. Pop is Science Fiction. And the future of literature is pop, because it always has been.

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The second series of BBC’s super-popular Sherlock concluded its three-part offering today, and the results were shockingly unexpected and ridiculously exciting. This feat is impressive in it of itself, but seeing as the basic plot and concept are taken from the famous (or infamous) Conan Doyle-penned story “The Final Problem,” doubly so. It’s all been leading to this, so what happens when the 21^st century versions of Sherlock and Jim Moriarty try to sort out their final problem? The answer is chock full of spoilers and twists, in what was one of the most fun and engaging Sherlocks yet.

[Read more. Spoilers!]

Fighting with literal monsters is the cornerstone of not only fantastic literature, but some of the oldest stories ever. If Hercules isn’t beheading some creature, then he’s at least thinking about it. His bros Beowulf and Perseus were into that sort of thing, too. But when one switches from myth to modern, post-modern, and what we call literary fiction, then they’ll find the literal dragons, monsters, and beasts have been banished into the past or other genres.

Except for every once and while, when beasts are famously at the forefront of great works of literature. Here are five beasts seemingly at home in fantasy or science fiction that instead occupy works of literary fiction.

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Anytime a novel starts talking about “the Empire,” I don’t default to thinking of the Galactic Empire of Star Wars, but rather of the Empire in Isaac Asimov’s shared universe, found in the Foundation and Robot novels. At this point, the only thing holding back the believability Asimov’s great and bountiful Empire is the dated “futuristic” technology. A Confusion of Princes doesn’t have that problem, and throws in dashes of Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein combined with fast-paced YA breathless prose.

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There’s no use ignoring the current power of nostalgia acts in popular cinema. Nearly every summer blockbuster is derivative of some existing story/franchise/universe/comic book or board game. But when it comes to a big screen version of Dark Shadows, chances are most moviegoers aren’t going to see this out of love for the classic soap opera, nor could your average person name more than a few characters. Instead, the new Dark Shadows film is employing nostalgia of nostalgia. The result? While resting on a knife’s edge of intentional kitsch, Dark Shadows is great to look at, fast-paced, and fun, while somehow being just earnest and clunky enough to satiate the die-hard fans of the original show.

[Read more. Light spoilers]

Hot on the high-heels of Irene Adler’s incursion into Baker Street, PBS has aired the second episode of the second season of Sherlock. Like the previous episode, this too aims to be a straight-forward contemporary adaptation of a famous Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes plot. The novella “The Hound of the Baskervilles” is arguably the most famous and enduring Sherlock Holmes adventure of them all probably owing to the fact that, as Doyle said, the tale is a “real creeper.” But with inclusion of seemingly more hounds, does the Mark Gatiss-penned “The Hounds of Baskerville” live up to its chilling literary forbearer? Read on to find out!

[Eliminate the impossible! Spoilers!]

Contemporary television is often lauded for complicated storylines and numerous characters. We call good television with several chapters, which make up various arcs “dramas” but in many ways, popular television from Downton Abbey, to Mad Men, to Battlestar Galactica, to Fringe, to The Wire, to Doctor Who all have more in common with soap operas than many would care to admit.

The connotations of “soap opera” are almost always negative, which isn’t really fair, because in some ways, soap operas represent a naked honesty in TV storytelling; i.e. it’s just trying to get you to watch the next episode. The original Dark Shadows was a soap opera, and it was great at being a soap opera. But the show also subverted the notion of soaps, television, and vampires forever. It is also the first soap opera to feature straight-up time travel and a parallel universe!

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Easily one of the most quotable films of all time, Ghostbusters haunts the zeitgeist with its wit, originality, and almost complete perfection. For massive Ghostbusters fans like myself, the animated series, and the second film count too, but nothing will quite match the total statement of the original.

But sometimes what happened behind the scenes on a great film like this is almost as interesting as what we ended up seeing. Derived from the excellent directors commentary track on the Ghostbusters DVDs, here are five things you might not know about the boys in grey and the strange things going on in your neighborhood.

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The long-awaited return of the popular 21st century Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson hit America tonight with the season 2 premiere of Sherlock titled “A Scandal in Belgravia.” In addition to giving us this splendid image of Benedict Cumberbatch un-ironically rocking the infamous Holmes deerstalker, the hour and a half episode served up a variety of new twists and turns. Most specifically it revealed that this version of Sherlock Holmes not only has a contemporary Moriarty, but the adventuress Irene Adler, too!

Find out who was naked (everyone) and what we thought of the return of Sherlock in our very spoiler-filled review below.

[Back to Baker Street]

Last week, the new Prometheus trailer hit, and it’s fantastic. It’s gripping, original, and most of all it makes you want to see the movie if only to find out what the hell is going on. At one point someone in the trailer says “they’re changing!” and then some one else says “changing into what?” Exactly. Who are they? And just what are they changing into?

More importantly, on an aesthetic level, the trailer’s second half is almost a direct homage to the theatrical Alien trailer. What does this mean?

[Read more. Speculation and possible spoilers ahead.]

Historical dramas have a lot in common with science fiction when you consider how alien/exotic the settings might seem to a contemporary audience. As a kind of squeakquel to the Arthur C. Clarke maxim; “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” I’d like to assert that any sufficiently different set of social mores in a historical context is indistinguishable from an alternate universe. Consider the following bizzaro dimension: limited electricity, paranoia related to class struggles, shifting loyalties, and rigid caste system. Could it be Battlestar Galactica? Yes. But it’s also Downton Abbey!

What does Downton Abbey have in common with Battlestar Galactica? Well, both shows have two central cores that make them thematically identical; all the characters are struggling against outside influences to maintain the status quo and preserve a way of life which is threatened. Second, and probably more effective; both shows constantly tease the audience with secrets, and star-crossed lovers.

[Read more. Spoilers for Both BSG and DTA ahead.]

In addition to the official trailers, the marketing for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus has given us two “viral” videos in the form of faux-statements from Weyland Industries. Any fan of the original Alien series knows that Weyland-Yutani Industries was responsible for the Nostromo and the subsequent terraforming of the planet where the xenomorphs were first encountered by Ripley and friends. In the less-than-stellar Alien vs. Predator, the founder of Weyland Industries was revealed to be Charles Bishop Weyland, who’s appearance was later (in the timeline, but earlier in the films) used as the basis for the robot “Bishop” who we met in Aliens.

Now, Weyland Industries is back in the news so to speak, but what do these new statements from Weyland tell us about the plot of Prometheus? Just what kind of fictional universe is being created here? Is it all leading to something even bigger than just one, single movie?

[Wild speculation, which may be spoilery below the cut]

Considering how nerdy the Tor.com offices is (we have a shrine to Dalen Quaice, for Cthulhu’s sake) we come to agreement on a bizarrely large number of things. But that’s by no means a guarantee, so when we find ourselves on opposite sides of a particular “issue,” we figure we’ll take it to you!

Today Bridget and Ryan are arguing about ThunderCats. Specifically, are they worth the nostalgic fuss? Read our arguments for and against, then join in!

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The 2012 Pulitzer winners have been announced, and in the category of Fiction, no award was given. However, three fiction finalists were named; Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, and Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. We’ll never quite know why a winner wasn’t chosen; but as Ann Patchett pointed out in her New York Times op-ed, the likely explanation is the committee couldn’t come to a consensus. Patchett is frustrated there wasn’t a winner named. Lev Grossman, writing for Time doesn’t mind there wasn’t a winner. I tend to agree with Lev, while completely understanding where Patchett is coming from.

But, what does the lack of award, and the selection of finalists say about the future of genre fiction getting big recognition?

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Though not the largest extinction in the history of our little planet, the collective death of the dinosaurs still stings. Never mind that we probably wouldn’t have evolved if they were still around nor would Jurassic Park have ever been made, the point is, the dinosaurs are missed. But what was it that caused their untimely demise? The going thinking tends to agree with the Alvarez Hypothesis and points an accusatory finger at a large asteroid, with the smoking gun being the infamous Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan Peninsula. There’s also the notion of increased volcanism and other climate change issues too. But what if it wasn’t any of these things? What if a science fiction thing killed the dinosaurs?

Below are five instances when the extinction of our favorite terrible lizards occurred through science fictional means.

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If the medium is indeed the message then it seems like the crossover of a prose writer into the world of screenwriting would be as extreme as a unicorn turning into a panda. And though we can conceive of all sorts of shape shifting in the realms of science fiction, when you stop to think about it, writers switching from the medium of the page to the medium of the screen is actually a little bizarre. With science fiction and fantasy writers it happens quite a bit, but sometimes mainstream literary writers take on SFF screenplays for greater fame and glory. Or maybe money.

In any case, the results are often interesting, if oft-mentioned. Here are four literary writers who took on screenplays for genre films and one science fiction writer who took on a literary film. And because Genre in the Mainstream is all about books, all of the films are adaptations.

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Science fiction has a rough reputation for being written off as escapist entertainment and as such has always struggled with being taken seriously. But what’s so great about being taken seriously, anyway? Science fiction can be wonderful escapist entertainment and is occasionally at its best when not being serious. Comedy can be a close friend to sci-fi, and some films which have combined comedy with science fiction have often gone on to be some of the most beloved and watched movies in cultural memory.

Here are 10 of the greatest comedic science fiction films according to me. Like comedy itself, this list is by no means comprehensive, nor objective.

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Since we first heard of the existence of the American version of a contempoary Sherlock Holmes show; Elementary, everyone in the Tor.com office shared a collective groan. (We even went so far as to make a fake mock-up poster, complete with a “What up Holmes?” catchphrase.) And though the recent casting of Lucy Liu as a female Dr. Watson is interesting and progressive, I still can’t help but feel a little annoyed and protective of the BBC’s Sherlock.

Sherlock co-creator Steven Moffat has gotten really grumpy, too, admitting in a recent interview that the prospect of a contemporary version of Sherlock Holmes in America has him “annoyed.”

I’m mostly with the Moff on this one, but does he really have a claim to all things Holmes?

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The IDW ongoing Star Trek comic series has started to boldly go where it hasn’t gone before: a totally original storyline. All the prior installments of this series have, up until this point, been retellings of classic 60s Trek stories, with both major and minor alterations to the plots, characters, and outcomes. Because current Trek screenwriter Roberto Orci is a creative consultant on these comics, it’s possible some of these developments could be considered spoilers for the new continuity of the current film series. With a limited amount of information available about what is happening in the new Trek universe, these comics are an interesting window into the continuing voyages of not just the Enterprise, but everyone else who lives in the same galaxy.

So what is the first IDW original story about? Well, it’s called “Vulcan’s Vengeance” and as you might guess, the Vulcans are pretty pissed about the destruction of their home planet. And they’re fighting back…

[Read more, spoilers]