A Russian émigré poet living in Paris is visited by a mysterious bear with an agenda…
The Star-Bear
The Penultimate Outlander Theme Song Makes the Familiar Sound New Again
Screenshot: STARZ
Sing me a song of a lass that is gone
Say, could that lass be I?
The first time I saw the opening lyrics to Outlander’s theme song posted on a friend’s Facebook post, I thought it sounded ridiculous, way too on-the-nose to start every episode by acknowledging the series’ premise. YES WE GET IT CLAIRE YOU DISAPPEARED.
That was before I actually listened to it, and watched the title sequence—and then, like Claire at Craigh na Dun, I fell hard. Now, I forbid my husband from fast-forwarding through the credits every time we watch… and considering that we binged a season at a time to get caught up in a matter of weeks, that means I’ve got it well memorized. But why do I find this particular TV opening so compelling?
The answer, I think, is that it presses all of my nerd buttons: It’s a remix of a mashup, with an excellent invocation of Rule 63. It is the platonic ideal of a TV theme song, reinventing itself each season so that it is always familiar but never predictable.
7 Thrilling SFF Murder Mysteries
Photo: Virginia State Parks (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)
I have loved murder mysteries since I was in fifth grade. I started with these thriller books from Joan Lowery Nixon, then found the wide and wonderful worlds of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and others. I’ve never looked back. I’ve always been particular about the location of the book, whether it was British country estates, an art museum, or a tea shop.
But in the past few years, I’ve learned the wonders of murder mysteries taking place in entirely new worlds, space or fantasy worlds overlaid on our own. Unlike mysteries grounded in the “real world,” these mysteries have magic and magical beings, advanced technologies that can make plots even more creative and deeper. Personally, it’s all about the clever murder mystery. This list of seven books combines the genre of murder mysteries with that of fantasy and science fiction, whether it’s the locked room mystery but in space, or innovative retellings of the British manor history.
Terry Pratchett Book Club: The Wee Free Men, Part I
“We willnae be fooled again!” —Roger Daltrey, probably.
Series: Terry Pratchett Book Club
Celebrating 10 of the Best Dads in Superhero TV and Movies
In real life, loving and supportive fathers run the gamut from fun-loving and goofy to serious and insightful, stay-at-home to daily commuters, biological to chosen, cis to trans, happy-go-lucky to dour and moody.
But in superhero stories, dads tend to fall into one of three categories: emotionally distant, actually evil, or dead. Thor’s father Odin and Iron Man’s father Howard Stark both hide their emotions from their children. Batgirl’s father Commissioner Gordon is too busy cleaning up Gotham to notice that his daughter is Batgirl. The respective fathers of Invincible Mark Grayson, all of the Runaways, and Gamora and Nebula either reveal their evil plans in an unwelcome surprise or taunt their kids with their twisted philosophies. The fathers of the three most iconic superheroes, Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man? They’re all dead.
So it’s pretty exciting when a superhero story not only gives us dads who are alive and not evil but are actually pretty good at being dads. Bucking the trend, some superdads are present for their kids, supportive, and emotionally available.
Read an Excerpt From The Deep Sky
They left Earth to save humanity. They’ll have to save themselves first.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei, a science fiction thriller about a mission into deep space that begins with a lethal explosion that leaves the survivors questioning the loyalty of the crew—publishing with Flatiron Books on July 18.
The Mountain in the Ocean: Ascension by Nicholas Binge
In the 17th century, cooling temperatures pushed the Bossons Glacier to a small settlement outside the French village of Chamonix, swallowing whole farms and houses. The terrified villagers of Chamonix, convinced the glacier was infested by demons, hired the Bishop of Annecy to exorcise it. Classical and medieval Europeans, notes Eric Wilson in The Spiritual History of Ice, regarded the Alps—and alpine regions in general—as terrifying places, full of demons, dragons, monsters, witches, and ghosts. But a few outliers—Jean-Jacques Rousseau among them—saw a different set of spirits in the lofty peaks and rarefied air. Early mountaineers believed heights gave them access to the sublime, a strengthened connection to the mystery and magic of the universe.
Trailer for Animated Film Babylon 5: The Road Home Gives Us Exactly What We’ve Been Yearning For
Babylon 5 is back! The animated feature Babylon 5: The Road Home is coming ever closer to its premiere, and Warner Bros. Entertainment put out a trailer today that gives us our first glimpse of many of the original cast members returning to voice their characters.
Fun, Sun, and Murder: The Dead Lifeguard and High Tide
The cover of Richie Tankersley Cusick’s The Lifeguard (1988) has become iconic, with a buff, blonde lifeguard glowering from atop his chair and behind his mirrored sunglasses. Cusick’s The Lifeguard was a predecessor of the ‘90s teen horror trend and set the stage for many of the narrative patterns to come. While the beach getaway of The Lifeguard seems to promise fun and sun for the novel’s protagonist, Kelsey Tanner, the ominous cover image and the tagline that advises “Don’t call for help. He may just kill you” let readers know differently before they even get to the first page. The sand, the sun, and a vacation from the predictability and pressures from home sound like the recipe for a really fun summer. But looked at from another angle, it could just as easily be a scary one: there are dangerous tides, big waves, the threat of drowning, and sharks. Those sun-tanned strangers could be potential new friends or romantic partners, or they could be murderers, it’s really anybody’s guess. And if—let’s face it, when—something goes wrong, these teens find themselves trapped between the threat of human violence and a watery grave.
While Cusick’s lifeguard is scary, a summer job on top of that chair isn’t all fun and games in other ‘90s teen horror novels, including R.L. Stine’s The Dead Lifeguard (1994) and High Tide (1997), both Fear Street series Super Chillers. In both of these books, the protagonists leave Shadyside to get summer jobs, Lindsay Beck at the North Beach Country Club pool in The Dead Lifeguard, and Adam Malfitano at sea-side Logan Beach in High Tide.
What We Do In The Shadows Season 5 Trailer Teases Guillermo’s Big Transformation
It’s confirmed, folks. The latest trailer for Season Five of What We Do In The Shadows reveals that everyone’s favorite familiar Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) has apparently gotten what he wished for, though he’s still got a lot to learn.
Supporting Cast — Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: “The Broken Circle”
Photo Credit: Michael Gibson/Paramount+
I want to start my review of the second-season premiere of Strange New Worlds with the last bit of it: at the very end of the episode before the credits, we get a black screen with the words:
For Nichelle
who was first through the door
and showed us the stars
Hailing frequencies forever open…
I’ll give you all a second to get the dust out of your eyes…
Revealing Seanan McGuire’s Next Wayward Children Book: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known
Photo credit: Beckett Gladney
Portals and danger, and a girl who can find both in the latest book in the Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series.
We’re thrilled to share the cover of Seanan McGuire’s Mislaid in Parts Half-Known—forthcoming January 9, 2024 from Tordotcom Publishing.
Fatherhood and Masculinity in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones
Screenshot: LucasFilm
There’s an incredible, indescribable moment when you first witness yourself represented in fiction. It’s a curious validation of your existence—that your image, personality, and gestures could spring forth from someone else’s imagination. That someone found you worthy of thinking up. Then there’s a sibling moment, one just as incredible and indescribable, when you first witness a loved one represented in fiction. It’s a cathartic Ah-ha! Someone you love is also in multiple dimensions at once. They too have a phantasmagorical reflection worthy of someone else’s imagination, along with their breathing, physical body right next to you.
I experienced the latter moment when my father took me to see Star Wars: Attack of the Clones a few weeks after its release in 2002. I was newly eleven, and immeasurably ecstatic. He was forty-five, and hated almost every second.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the TBR Pile
Photo: Carles Rabada [via Unsplash]
I subscribed to Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter just in time.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t previously aware of Burkeman—I loved his Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, which I’ve written about in this column before—but in the way of the internet, I didn’t know he had a newsletter. (Who can keep track?) Upon discovering it, I signed up, and the first thing to land in my inbox contained this extremely-pertinent-to-my-life string of words:
“I think you should treat your ‘to-read’ pile not as something you have to get through, but as something you get to pick from.”
Did the same bells just ring in your brain?
All the Way Down: Five of the Greatest Turtles and Tortoises in Fantasy
"The Tortoise and the Hare" illustration from Childhood’s Favorites and Fairy Stories (1927)
They’re slow. They’re steady. They win races against arrogant bunnies. Turtles and their tortoise brethren have long been fabled creatures—they may be seen as purveyors of wisdom, or transport characters to new worlds. In some myths (and some newer stories as well), they hold parts of the world (or all of it) aloft.
Once, these creatures carried the weight of Aesop’s pithy morals. Now, they shoulder so much more, and our fantasy stories are often better off with turtles and tortoises in the mix. Here are five of my favorite turtles and tortoises in fantasy, and I hope you’ll add your own in the comments below!
Body-less Modification: Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black (Part 11)
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 continue Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black with Chapter 12. The novel was first published in 2005. Spoilers ahead! CW for mention of sexual assault and the Holocaust.
