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Science fiction. Fantasy. The universe. And related subjects.

Heeere’s Ghidorah in the Latest Godzilla: King of the Monsters Footage

Sat Dec 8, 2018 8:59pm 12 comments 1 Favorite [+]

Update: We mistakenly identified this as an entirely new trailer when it was just the first trailer with some added footage. We’ve updated accordingly and will post when the real second trailer is released.

The latest footage from Godzilla: King of the Monsters continues to be lyrical and weirdly affecting, establishing that humans are the real monsters and the mythological titans must save us from ourselves. Including Godzilla, of course, but also King Ghidorah, who gets the big (albeit grainy, so not the top image) reveal in this trailer.

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8 Post-Snap Questions We Have About Avengers: Endgame

Fri Dec 7, 2018 4:00pm 30 comments 3 Favorites [+]

Okay, so we all care about what’s happening to our super friends in Avengers: Endgame, but you know who else we care about? All the normal people who were hanging around doing normal stuff when Thanos’s Snappening happened—you know, like the Avengers: Infinity War post-credits scene barely scratched the surface of showing. This wouldn’t be the first story that saw a world forced to reckon with a sudden and massive population culling, but you wouldn’t know it from the first trailer. Considering how brilliantly series like The Leftovers and Y: The Last Man addressed these kinds of worldbuilding details, we can’t help but we curious about what happens in this universe.

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Five Actors Who Almost Played Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings

Fri Dec 7, 2018 3:00pm 10 comments 4 Favorites [+]

Oh, Viggo. Truly, you are the only Aragorn for us. Er, the only Strider. Only Elessar. Whatever.

Viggo Mortensen did a few things with his character that transcended typical actorly dedication; he only used his heavy steel sword on set, rather than the lighter aluminum ones built for stunts (and the stunt guys had the bruises to prove it). He was prone to dragging the sword around everywhere, and got stopped by the cops when he was spotted carrying it in public. He asked for more of his lines to be written in elvish. He once kicked a helmet so hard that he broke his toes, but still stayed in character for the take.

It’s pretty well-known that his casting in Lord of the Rings occurred late in the game, after they had already started shooting, but do you know the other names that were considered? Because they’re mostly big-deal picks, and imagining any one of them in the role leads to a strange alternate reality.

[So let’s imagine them…]

When Your Day Job Is Your Dream Job

Fri Dec 7, 2018 1:30pm 3 comments 4 Favorites [+]

If there’s anything cooler and geekier than writing science fiction, it’s designing games. I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been able to do both during the course of my career—I’ve published thirteen novels and over a hundred game products. While I’m probably best known in game circles for my work on the Dungeons & Dragons game and the Forgotten Realms world, there’s one game that is especially near and dear to my heart: Axis & Allies Naval Miniatures.

So here’s the story of how I got to make my favorite game.

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Curiouser and Curiouser Retellings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Fri Dec 7, 2018 12:00pm 2 comments 3 Favorites [+]
Illustration by John Tenniel (1865)

Snacks that make you shrink (or grow gigantic), mad tea parties, murderous croquet: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a bonkers enough story on its own that it’s impressive to see the ways in which so many authors have been able to retell it.

In these thrillers and pastiches and history lessons, Alice Liddell is a princess on the run, a mad inmate, or only a tangential part of the story; some retellings focus on other citizens of Wonderland, from the maligned White Rabbit to the misunderstood Queen of Hearts. No matter which of the many ways into Wonderland these writers choose, the stories are as enticing as a bottle that says DRINK ME.

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“Peace was never an option”—X-Men: First Class

Fri Dec 7, 2018 11:00am 37 comments 5 Favorites [+]

In one year, the Uncanny X-Men creative team of Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum managed two retcons of the character of Magneto that changed everything we knew about the character—the year in question being 1982, two decades after the character was introduced in Uncanny X-Men #1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

The first was to establish in issue #150 that Magneto was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Eleven issues later, a flashback issue showed that Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier actually met for the first time before Xavier founded the X-Men, and were dear friends before becoming arch-enemies. When the X-Men were adapted to the screen in 2000, that backstory was the spine of the film, and the plan after X-Men Origins: Wolverine was to do a similar movie for Magneto.

That didn’t quite happen, and we got X-Men: First Class instead…

[“Are you sure we can’t shave your head?” “Don’t touch my hair.”]

Series: 4-Color to 35-Millimeter: The Great Superhero Movie Rewatch

6 Mysteries to Ponder After You’ve Finished George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood

Fri Dec 7, 2018 10:00am 8 comments 4 Favorites [+]

There are a number of unexpected open mysteries present within Fire & Blood, George R. R. Martin’s fictional history of the Targaryen reign of Westeros, many of them ripe for theorizing upon. Considering that the book chronicles events 300 years before the main Song of Ice and Fire novels, it’s a pleasant surprise to find any surprises at all within the text, let alone some that may actually have some bearing on the story within the main series.

Here are 6 mysteries that caught our attention here in the Tor dot office. (Along with some theories, of course!)

Spoilers for Fire & Blood ahead.

Content Warning: Brief discussion of suicide.

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Tired of Series? Try These 10 Standalone Fantasy Novels

Fri Dec 7, 2018 9:00am 40 comments 8 Favorites [+]

Fantasy fiction is best known for its giant, door-stopping series that come in trilogies or longer. Of course, not everyone wants to embark on a ten-book project. And even if you love series, sometimes it’s nice to read a standalone story that provides a satisfying resolution within a single book. With that in mind, I’ve set out to provide a list of ten fantasy stories that have all the thrills of a series but stand alone as a single volume.

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“90% of Space is Crap” and Other Fun Things That Happen When You Mix SF/F Aphorisms

Thu Dec 6, 2018 3:09pm 9 comments 9 Favorites [+]

The Tor.com office’s favorite thing on the Internet today is this brilliant chart from Twitter user @crunchleaf a.k.a. Alex, one half of the Hamsteak Podcast. Combining Chekhov’s gun, Pavlov’s dog, Frankenstein’s monster, and other well-known sayings/writing rules/random movie synopses, the intersections become beautifully weird new rules to live by. And after laughing ourselves silly at “Actually, Pavlov was the dog,” we knew that we had to apply the same logic to other SFF aphorisms/catchphrases/what-have-you.

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From Urban Fantasy to High Epic Fantasy Hopepunk: Edward Lazellari’s Guardians of Aandor Trilogy

Thu Dec 6, 2018 2:00pm 4 comments 5 Favorites [+]

The Empire of Fantasy, unlike Gaul, can be divided, very roughly, into two parts, based on where it is set. On one side there is fantasy that focuses and is set on Earth. This is contemporary fantasy, with urban fantasy being the dominant form and flavor of that particular fantasy. From Seanan McGuire to Jim Butcher, it is a familiar and extremely popular half of fantasy, even if it is not quite as predominant as it once was.

On the other side, there is secondary world fantasy, which comes in sizes, scales, and flavors from sword and sorcery, to low fantasy to city-state fantasy, and all the way to epic fantasy that spans kingdoms, continents, and worlds. Secondary world fantasy, whether in the Tolkien, Jordan, Jemisin, Martin, or Elliott tradition, comes in a multitude of settings and subtypes. Recent developments, from grimdark to the increased use of settings and cultural inspirations far beyond Medieval Europe have made secondary world fantasy a hotbed of experimentation.

Portal fantasies bridges these two sides of fantasy, and is where Edward Lazellari’s Guardians of Aandor, concluding with Blood of Ten Kings, sits.

[Step through the portal to Aandor]

Queering SFF: The Art of Collecting Short Fiction

Thu Dec 6, 2018 1:00pm 1 comment 5 Favorites [+]

Lethe Press has been a consistent source of queer speculative fiction for more than a decade now, with an ever-expanding catalogue of writers from diverse and engaging backgrounds. In fact, some of the earliest Queering SFF posts I wrote for Tor.com included an interview with the owner of the press, Steve Berman—and a review of Wilde Stories 2010, his annual best-of gay sff collection. I was twenty years old at the time and I’d been reading Wilde Stories since I was a teenager, hungry for openly marked queer content. In the intervening years, Lethe’s reach has expanded to include lesbian and trans years-best collections, multiple Lambda awards for novels and short fiction alike, and so forth.

However, this year’s edition marks the final release of Wilde Stories. In honor of that long run—and to give a sense of the delightful breadth and depth of queer short fiction the press is producing in 2018—I thought I’d do a review roundup of three recent collections, all published in the past six months, including the last volume of the series that brought my attention to Lethe in the first place.

[Onward.]

Series: Queering SFF

Not Quite Up to the Original: The Incredibles 2

Thu Dec 6, 2018 12:00pm 34 comments 6 Favorites [+]

For both Pixar and Disney, the question was not if The Incredibles (2004) would have a sequel, but when The Incredibles would have a sequel. Pixar, after all, had already released one sequel, Toy Story 2 (1999) to great acclaim, and The Incredibles seemed the natural choice for the next sequel: a film/franchise with engaging characters and nearly limitless story opportunities. The film had even ended with the Incredibles gearing up to fight their next villain.

Best of all, writer/director Brad Bird was willing to do the sequel. He even had some ideas for it.

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Updating Pulp Adventures: Two Captain Future Stories by Edmond Hamilton and Allen Steele

Thu Dec 6, 2018 11:00am 11 comments 3 Favorites [+]

In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.

We live in a world of “re-”: reboots, remakes, and reworkings of all manners of myth and entertainment. Sometimes overtly and sometimes more subtly, old favorites are made new again—and often, they are all the worse for the wear, and the new version cannot stand up to the original. But such is not the case of the recent novel Avengers of the Moon, by Allen Steele, an adventure featuring the pulp hero Captain Future, which I will be comparing to the original novel which started the series, Captain Future and the Space Emperor by Edmond Hamilton. In this case, I’m pleased to report that the new book is a success—one in which we see the exuberant energy of the pulps channeled into a new and more scientifically plausible setting. [Read more]

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