Finn Wittrock Will Star in HBO Max’s Green Lantern

Fresh off the tiny Green Lantern appearances in Zack Snyder’s Justice League—wherein a couple of Lanterns get summarily murdered—HBO Max has announced the first bit of casting for their upcoming Green Lantern series. Finn Wittrock (American Horror Story: Freak Show) will play Guy Gardner, a Lantern Deadline describes as “a hulking mass of masculinity, and, as rendered in the comics, an embodiment of 1980s hyper-patriotism. And yet, Guy is somehow likable.”

Didn’t we just have a hyper-patriotic and masculine comic book character on a series? Not that he was even remotely likable.

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The Best (and Worst) of the ’90s Teen Horror Craze

Hot take: Final Destination is a better film than just about any 21st century horror movie to date. Argue all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that late-1990s and early-2000s era horror movies are awesome. I’ll take Disturbing Behavior over The Human Centipede any day.

The late-1990s and early-2000s were a transitional period in horror movies and for a brief, shining moment, B-horror movies reigned. During this period the villain shifts from a deranged outsider (the height of popularity in the 1970s and 1980s) to one of the cast on the poster secretly hellbent on revenge. Even thrillers got in on the action, with Dead Man’s Curve, Gossip, and The Skulls. Then as J-horror influenced ghost stories rose in popularity and with torture porn on the horizon, the teen slasher fell by the wayside. The post-9/11 horror movie world wasn’t interested in watching a bunch of pretty people get picked off by dorks leaving disgruntled valentines. There was a last gasp in the mid-aughts as studios re-upped their obsession with 3D and blended gore gimmicks with teen slashers, but they never reached the same level of popularity.

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Five Books About the Culture of Gaming

I love games. Always have, always will. Digital, tabletop, physical—doesn’t matter. My first career was playing one, but I think the biggest thing that’s drawn me to them is what games reveal about the person playing them. What lengths are you willing to go to win? How do you feel when you lose? Do you abide strictly by the rules, or are you willing to bend or break them entirely? At its core, a game is a wholly unnatural construct, something we collectively agree isn’t real, yet games can have absurdly profound effects on reality, creating myths and monsters out of mortals.

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The Single Best Bibliographical Resource There Is (if You Like SFF)

Imagine, if you will, a reader who wants to learn something about the publication history of a book they’re reading, or have just purchased, or one that is being considered for purchase. (Maybe they are reviewing the book, or perhaps they’re interested in finding a cheaper used version online.) In the old-timey pre-internet days, there was no way to do this (unless you knew folks in publishing). Happily, a modern reader—at least a modern reader of science fiction, fantasy, and affiliated genres—can turn to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB).

As you may have guessed from the name, the ISFDB is a database focusing on speculative fiction, one that can be accessed via the internet. It is a remarkable resource to which I turn daily.

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Bridges Go in Both Directions: Humans and Atevi in CJ Cherryh’s Foreigner Series

When we last left our heroes, they had stopped another atevi war, at least for now. They uncovered some very distressing political goings-on, which they will deal with soon. This brings us up to the fifth trilogy (Intruder, Protector, Peacemaker), in which Cajeiri’s ship-associates come down to the planet and land in the middle of the aforementioned messy political situation.

If you remember, when Cajeiri returned from the two-year voyage to Reunion and back, his elders were somewhat concerned about his development of man’chi. He had been around humans for that whole time, and maybe the feelings wouldn’t develop appropriately. Ilisidi was confident that they would, and Cajeiri did indeed develop some “proper atevi” feelings when he returned to the planet. His elders generally disapprove of his association with the human kids and want to disrupt it by keeping them separate, but Cajeiri clings to his happy memories of playing in the tunnels and sees the human kids as part of his network of associations: people whom he must protect, as aiji.

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Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy”

“Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy”
Written by Bill Vallely and Joe Menosky
Directed by John Bruno
Season 6, Episode 4
Production episode 224
Original air date: October 13, 1999
Stardate: unknown

Captain’s log. The EMH is giving a concert in the mess hall, singing “La donna è mobile” to a mostly rapt crowd. Tuvok starts crying, and then attacking the other people in the mess hall. The EMH diagnoses him as going through pon farr, and has Paris prepare a hypospray while the EMH continues to sing, albeit with new, Tuvok-focused lyrics. After he gives Tuvok the shot, he gets a standing ovation—

[Warning: last chance to be a hero, Doctor—get going!]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

Beyond Shadow and Bone: Your Guide to Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse

With the recent release of Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, hordes of viewers are falling in love with the series based on Leigh Bargudo’s Grishaverse. This isn’t Leigh’s only universe. She’s written the DC Icon’s novel about the legendary Amazon, Wonder Woman: Warbringer, as well as the adult dark academia hit, Ninth House. But, newcomers may not know where to begin when it comes to the Grishaverse books. Well, you’ve come to the right place. Allow me to be your archivist-tour-guide type from Ravka to Ketterdam to the dreaded Shadow Fold.

Hold on to your fur hats, we’re going to Ravka!

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The Handmaid’s Tale Season 4: Does June Want to Be Saved?

It’s been two years since the previous season of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale aired, one of many ongoing television series that experienced a longer-than-usual hiatus due to covid. Thankfully, season three ended on such a key turning point in the struggle to explode Gilead from inside—with the delivery of nearly one hundred children to Canada—that the new season could pick things up immediately, without missing a beat. To do this, of course, it needed one of the series’ trademark ironic music cues: Dionne Warwick’s “I Say a Little Prayer” as the band of rogue Handmaids carry June, going into shock from a gunshot, through the woods to temporary safety.

If you’re a millennial like me, your first exposure to this song might have been the saccharine opening to My Best Friend’s Wedding, starring an anonymous bride and her bridesmaids; June being ferried away has that same vibe, her struggles to stay lucid backed by Together, together, that’s how it must be / To live without you / Would only mean heartbreak for me. Except… she has chosen, again and again, to be apart from Luke and Moira and now baby Nichole in Canada. Is June doomed to a future of nothing but heartbreak? Will she ever choose her own freedom over Gilead’s end?

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Those Pesky Earthlings: Pandora’s Legions by Christopher Anvil

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.

It might seem counterintuitive, but there are many books about warfare that take a comedic approach. This is probably rooted in the kind of grim gallows humor often shared by people in a dark and dangerous situation. In Pandora’s Legions, the Earth is invaded by aliens who, despite some lucky scientific discoveries that gave them the capacity for interstellar travel, are less intelligent than the earthlings. Hilarity ensues when the invaders attempt to subdue an enemy that confounds their every effort—and when their policies of assimilation spread those pesky humans throughout their empire, they indeed begin to feel like they have opened the Pandora’s Box of human legend.

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Hugo-Nominated Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is a Bardic Fantasy

The 2021 Hugo Award finalists list features a fascinating entry under Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Alongside comic book-inspired romps (Birds of Prey), some loopy time business (Palm SpringsTenet), and treatises on immortality and the afterlife (The Old Guard, Soul) is Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, Netflix’s Eurovision movie starring Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as two naïve Icelandic singers with dreams of campy stardom.

It might initially seem like a surprise that Eurovision made it onto the Hugos list, although this underrated comedy does establish itself as fantastical with nothing more than a knife and a door in one of 2020’s best movie moments. Yet even beyond that, The Story of Fire Saga is undeniably a fantasy narrative. After all, who is Fire Saga if not a pair of bards embarking on an epic adventure to discover foreign realms and downright magical new ways of singing?

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Rhythm of War Reread: Chapter Thirty-Four

Happy Thursday, Cosmere Chickens, and welcome to yet another episode of the Stormlight Archive reread! Last time we walked with Kaladin as he navigated the new ways he’s trying to come up with to combat PTSD and depression… Today, we’re with Shallan and Adolin as they navigate their own mental landscapes (as well as the physical landscape of Shadesmar). Weird flora, beautiful fauna, and daddy issues abound in today’s episode, so buckle in and prepare yourselves for deep conversations, missed innuendoes, and Adolin being the perfect husband (as usual). Won’t you join us?

[We’re all strangely normal. Or normally strange.]

Series: Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson

Change Your Clocks, Change the World: Robert Levy’s “DST (Fall Back)”

Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches.

This week, we cover Robert Levy’s “DST (Fall Back,” first published in the Mike Davis’s 2016 Autumn Cthulhu anthology. Spoilers ahead.

[“Starlight and stridulations. Together they open windows. But only inside the gifted hour.”]

Series: Reading the Weird

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