More than a hundred years from now, an arborist fighting to save the last remaining forest on Earth discovers a secret about the trees—one that changes not only her life, but also the fate of our world. Inspired by the real-life “Future Library,” a long-term environmental and literary public art project currently underway in the Norwegian wilderness.
Alena has momentarily escaped her world and its imminent gravitational collapse by cheating her way into the selection process of the Board of Cosmogamy. By passing this stringent exam, she may finally learn the secrets of building a universe from first principles. But the competition is smarter and better prepared, and even Alena’s cunning and mathematical talents may not be enough to uncover the answers she has been looking for. The appearance of a strange competitor reveals that Alena may not be the only candidate with hidden motives.
The Wild Cards universe has been thrilling readers for over 25 years. In Alan Brennert’s “Skin Deep,” we see for the first time the events of September 15, 1946 from the viewpoint of someone living on the West Coast of the United States. Trina Nelson is a pretty, popular sixteen-year-old high school student whose idyllic life took a turn for the tragic because of the Wild Cards virus. Now, she wants nothing more than to live out her days in the shadowy anonymity of the Jokertown on the Santa Monica Pier. But life, it turns out, has still another wild card to deal Trina…
Haunted by stories he hears while on jury duty, a documentary filmmaker finds himself in an abandoned mall at the dead of night.
Orna, a representative of a universe-wide trade union, undergoes a drastic change in perspective while investigating the disappearance of three planets and their inhabitants on a newly terraformed world.
Auga, a wandering sorcerer, follows his brother’s fate-thread into the village of Ormsfjoll, where he expects to deliver good news and continue his travels. What he doesn’t anticipate is that to meet his brother he must first contend with the truth at the heart of the volcano that wreaks havoc on Ormsfjoll.
While I would love summer to last year ’round, unfortunately the warm weather does have to end sometime. As the cold descends on us this fall and winter, there are plenty of fantasy and sci-fi reads to keep the heat coming. From the back-to-school adolescent adventures of Tamora Pierce’s prequel Tempests and Slaughter to the dark mystery of Juliet Marillier’s Heart’s Blood, here are eight tales of conspiracy, magic, and danger with summer settings to keep the fun going all through the year.
At long last, the first real look at The Wheel of Time is here. We’ve gotten tiny peeks and glimpses aplenty, but nothing like the images Entertainment Weekly shared today: four shots showing a key location, an important moment, and just about all the major players.
There is nothing quite as thrilling as a last stand. You cannot help but admire characters who stand little chance of survival, but they still draw a line in the sand and hold firm against overwhelming odds. Some may survive and others may fall, but it’s the valiant stand that counts: they do not turn tail, run and hide, they are souls of iron pushed to the limit who say ‘no more’. When the desperate fight for survival begins, we cannot help but root for the underdog, grasp that thin thread of hope and hold on for dear life.
Here are some of my favourite last stands in genre fiction—from films, television, books, and games.
Science fiction conceits and the cartoonist’s will to anarchic fancy accommodate each other quite well, and over the one-hundred-odd years that the two mediums have been playing together, they have managed to capture the technological preoccupations of their times, document humanity’s concerns for their present moment, and speculate on people’s hopes for the future.
So let’s step into our time machine (Science! That’s impossible to implement! ‘Cause paradoxes!) and travel through the decades to see how cartoons have used the lexicon of spaceships, robots, and electronic gizmos to tell their tales. In so doing, we may well discover a bit of reverse time travel, the past reaching out to our present—to entertain, to provoke, and most importantly, to remind us that it’s always fun ‘n games with ray guns until someone gets disintegrated…
Marvel is adding another acclaimed author to its roster (via LitHub): crime novelist Walter Mosley, who’ll be writing a six-issue series about The Thing for the comic publisher.
Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem is moving along: According to the streaming service, it’s brought on Hong Kong director Derek Tsang as a director for the series.
There are few archetypes as exquisite as a wonderfully written royal. The rogue, the runaway, the wrathful. Whether it’s in a fantasy kingdom or catapulting through the stars this character is truly *chef’s kiss*. Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell is just one recent addition to make good on that promise. This debut is bursting with romance and the escapism of a good space opera.
An inspiring young hero just joined the cast of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. According to Variety, Dominique Thorne will appear in the sequel as Riri Williams AKA Ironheart. The backstory for this Marvel heroine and the current cast of the second Black Panther (pictured above) film makes this announcement incredibly exciting.
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Sometimes the whole coven has to go on a road trip. It’s time to accompany some Witches Abroad…
Emmet Asher-Perrin’s worthy obit for Steve Perrin mentions such Perrin-related projects as Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, Thieves’ World, Elfquest, Robot Warriors, and (of course!) Superworld. One fascinating Perrin work that often goes unmentioned, probably due to the fact that it has become a comparatively obscure work, is 1982’s groundbreaking Worlds of Wonder. You may not have encountered it, but odds are that you’ve seen and played later games that it inspired or influenced.
Together, Tamar and Fayard have lived a thousand lives…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from For All Time, Shanna Miles’ debut novel about two teens who relive their tragic love story over and over until they uncover what they must do to change their fate. For All Time publishes September 28th with Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
“Body and Soul”
Written by Michael Taylor and Eric Morris and Phyllis Strong & Mike Sussman
Directed by Robert Duncan McNeill
Season 7, Episode 7
Production episode 255
Original air date: November 15, 2000
Stardate: 54238.3
Captain’s log. Kim, Seven, and the EMH are on the Delta Flyer charting comets and collecting bio-samples. They’re attacked by the Lokirrim, who have detected the EMH and declared him a photonic insurgent. Apparently, the Lokirrim are having issues with uppity holograms….
I’ve always been intrigued by reincarnation, whether as a metaphor for life as a long-term curriculum, a spiritual conceit (who can really know about such things?), or simply as literal truth: that life is continuous. After an around the world spiritual pilgrimage, reading countless books, and even braving the guru/disciple relationship—from both sides—I realize that now, as an author, it doesn’t matter to me what’s true or not true. That’s the glory of speculative fiction. Whatever the deal really is, utilizing past lives as a vehicle for introducing a novel crisis into the life of my boy genius narrator served my purposes well in Prodigy Quest, my latest release.
As in all my novels, I started with an idea that bubbled up from nowhere—what if someone were handed a mission from their previous lives? What if the character had to embark on a hazardous quest to find a book of wisdom? When I loosely patterned my protagonist after my arrogant, somewhat gifted ten-year-old self, I was off and running. The rest was an organic, seat-of-the-pants rollercoaster ride for both myself and my readers.
Our third look at Foundation—after a first teaser in which showrunner David S. Goyer explained why the source material is so important and a moody second look that set the stage and the players—we’re into the meat of the series: People doing a lot of talking.
I kid, I kid. Or do I?
It’s been a year for comfort reads. There are so many lists of books like a hug, books like a warm blanket, books like a hot cup of cocoa (with your preferred variety of milk). They’re really good books of a certain kind—books where there may be drama, but things work out; where people are kind and problems are manageable; where the laughs are rich and meaning is found in unexpected, welcoming places.
None of those lists have my kind of comfort reads on them.
When Marvel released the first look at Chloe Zhao’s Eternals, back in May, it showed off the barest hints of what the film might be about: a group of super-powered individuals who have watched humanity from the sidelines for eons, never interfering with our development.
Last night, Marvel released a full trailer for the upcoming film, and it showcases not only the Eternal’s mission on Earth, but the stakes for the next big crisis facing humanity.
One of the most talked-about episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation was the fifth-season episode “Darmok.” It introduced the Children of Tamar, a species who communicated only in metaphor and allusion. The Universal Translator translated their words, but they still had no meaning, unless you understood the references. A Tamarian captain named Dathon, played by the late great Paul Winfield, kidnapped Picard and put them together to try to communicate.
It’s one of the great TNG episodes, but was only ever followed up on in tie-in fiction. Until now. [SPOILERS AHOY!]
From the moment Sunny Nwazue discovered she had mystical energy flowing in her blood, she sought to understand and control her powers…
We’re thrilled to share the cover of Akata Woman, the third installment of Nnedi Okorafor’s Nsibidi Scripts series—publishing January 18, 2022 with Penguin Young Readers/Viking Books for Young Readers.
