In a near-future San Francisco where the gig economy has made work more precarious than ever, Edwina is an average twenty-something scrambling to hold down her job with a major skin care brand. Until her awful boss does something you should never do—angers the fae on social media—and the struggles of her job take on an even nastier shade.
As the Cold War stalls and the threat of nuclear warfare dominates the news, small-town misfits Laurie and Fell bond over a shared love of music and the mystery of the erratic radio messages that hint at the existence of a future worth reaching out for.
For over 25 years, the Wild Cards universe has been entertaining readers with stories of superpowered people in an alternate history.
When a mysterious stranger approaches Wally Gunderson, a.k.a Rustbelt, about running for Jokertown City Council, he doesn’t think twice about it. His first move? Hiring an unlikely campaign manager – Mordecai Albert Jones, the Harlem Hammer. Together they’ll discover the ins and outs of local politics, and whether conspiracy theorist Sparkjob is actually crazy… or just on to something?
A man sets out to tell a story of his ex, which in turns becomes a story of the world. If only he could change that story—find the moment where it all began and alter the past. But what if he can’t find the beginning—or even the end?
An academic’s whimsical decision to take a DNA test leads her into uncharted territory, where she discovers some extraordinary truths about herself and new possibilities for her future.
No vampire is ever innocent…
The wandering Judge Dee serves as judge, jury, and executioner for any vampire who breaks the laws designed to safeguard their kind’s survival. This new case in particular puts his mandate to the test.
Every Halloween, an elderly woman hands out candy to a young trick-or-treater who’s dressed as a witch each time, looking exactly the same age. With each passing year, the woman grows more attached to the little witch and her odd nature. But she is no ordinary child, and an uncanny relationship develops between the two of them that may prove dangerous and deadly.
In this biweekly series, we’re exploring the evolution of both major and minor figures in Tolkien’s legendarium, tracing the transformations of these characters through drafts and early manuscripts through to the finished work. This week’s installment takes a look at the story of Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, connoisseur of silver spoons and wielder of umbrellas.
Ah, Lobelia. When I first decided to write about the matriarch of the Sackville-Bagginses, I knew there wasn’t going to be much information to work with (turns out there was only a little more than I thought). She only makes a few appearances in The Lord of the Rings, and in most of these she and her family are presented in a fairly unpleasant light. To many, she comes off as snobbish, snide, and generally rude. It’s impossible to deny that she has a predilection for silver spoons and is…well, a bit of a kleptomaniac.
But Lobelia is one of only a few Hobbit women who are given more than a momentary glance in Middle-earth, and a compelling character in her own right. And what’s more, her narrative arc illustrates beautifully some of the more important lessons The Lord of the Rings has to teach, as she becomes an unlikely hero to those who had consistently refused to give her a chance.
After a painstaking process that apparently consisted of determining from which movie/comic books they wanted to lift a name, members of the US Space Force have officially been dubbed “Guardians.” Whether this is in reference to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy or the interfering blue dome-heads from Green Lantern is unclear. Either way, please enjoy five exciting stories about space patrols patrolling… SPACE!
It’s strange to think that this is our first official Marvel Cinematic Universe story in roughly a year. After an empty 2020, Disney+ has arrived to alleviate that lack with their first television offering—WandaVision. And it started us off right, with two episodes to get fans hooked.
Spoilers ahead.
Breed to Come is one of Norton’s better-loved books. It was published in the early Seventies, shortly before what is effectively a companion volume (and was packaged so in Baen Books’ ebook revival of Norton’s works), Iron Cage. Whereas Iron Cage frames itself as a human variation on a cat locked in a cage and dumped out of a car, with aliens as the villains who cage the humans, Breed to Come tells the story of an Earth abandoned by humans and inhabited by intelligent animals.
The primary protagonist is Furtig, a mutated cat who lives in a colony related to a famous explorer and leader, Gammage. The People, as they call themselves, have evolved somewhat functional hands—at the cost of their ancestral claws—and the ability to walk upright as well as on all fours. They coexist more or less peacefully with mutated pigs, have an adversarial relationship with local tribes of mutated dogs, and open enmity with the mutated rats who infest the ruined cities of the Demons.
This is the story of Sankofa and how she came to be—an icon, a feared pseudo-spirit, and a many-faceted metaphor. Nnedi Okorafor’s latest novella, Remote Control, is the melancholy tale of Sankofa’s search for peace and closure as she evolves into something far beyond an adolescent girl. Set in a futuristic Africa, autonomous machines, drones, and robots exist side by side with long-held cultural and spiritual beliefs—witchcraft is alive and well in the future, as it will be as long as the human imagination endures. It’s a classic coming-of-age story where a young protagonist endures personal devastation, only to adapt and grow into her own skin.
Author Adalyn Grace is back with more high seas adventure in All the Tides of Fate, the thrilling sequel to All the Stars and Teeth—available February 2nd from Imprint. Read an excerpt below!
“Night”
Written by Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky
Directed by David Livingston
Season 5, Episode 1
Production episode 195
Original air date: October 14, 1998
Stardate: 52081.2
Captain’s log. Paris and Kim are acting out a Captain Proton adventure on the holodeck, which is interrupted by the EMH, who declares that they’ve gone over their allotted time, which leads to a fight between Paris and the doctor for time, and then a power surge on the holodeck.
[“What if I told you I’m not leaving until you join me?” “I’d say have a seat—it’ll be a while.”]
Netflix has released a full trailer for its upcoming Korean science fiction blockbuster Space Sweepers, about a salvage crew in Earth orbit that comes across a mysterious and potentially dangerous android.
M.A. Carrick is an open pseudonym for writing team Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms. Brennan’s track record needs scant introduction, with twelve books to her name—including, mostly recently, the acclaimed Memoirs of Lady Trent series and its spin-off sequel Turning Darkness into Light. Helms is perhaps less well known, though they have previously published two solo novels, 2015’s The Dragons of Heaven and 2016’s The Conclave of Shadows.
The Mask of Mirrors is the first novel to come jointly from their pens, and it reminds me strikingly of the Astreiant novels of Melissa Scott and the late Lisa A. Barnett’s Astreiant novels, albeit more in worldbuilding and tone than in characters and concerns.
Just last month it was announced that Chris Pine will star in a live-action Dungeons & Dragons film. But there’s more live-action D&D on the way: The Hollywood Reporter broke the news that John Wick writer and creator Derek Kolstad has been hired to develop a D&D television series.
Uluru at sunset (Photo: Public Domain)
Like most Gothics, the Australian Gothic has acquired its own distinct aesthetic—most frequently, an abject unpleasantness and atmosphere of sand-scoured horror. Personally, I’d like to blame both Evil Angels (aka A Cry in the Night) and Gary Crew’s memorably effective Strange Objects (1990) for many of my own nightmares.
It is also, like most Gothics, tangled up with the genre’s own past, and inextricably knotted into colonial and imperial histories as well as the multitude of other mirrored and recurring histories typical of a Gothic plot. And Australia has a bloody history, with terrible things done and still being done. Yet there are also stories which, without shying away from terrors (although not necessarily innately any better at handling the true history than other varieties of Australian Gothic), manage in a variety of fascinating ways to capture a sense of great (even sublime, often terrifying, never false) beauty.
The United States Postal Service has announced its latest batch of stamp art, including one honoring science fiction luminary Ursula K. Le Guin by artist Donato Giancola, which will be released later this year.
This week in Reading the Wheel of Time, we’ll be covering Chapters 24 and 25. Egwene discovers Nynaeve and Elayne’s secret, we learn a little more about how Tel’aran’rhiod works, and find out that Moghedien, unsurprisingly, is as close as we feared.
But first, let’s recap!
[We keep secrets too often, Egwene, but sometimes there is a reason.]
Marvel has an ambitious slate of projects coming up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Disney+, including a new series about Moon Knight, which will come alongside other heroes like She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and more.
With the roster of projects underway, we’re starting to get word about what to expect from the next batch of shows, including details for Moon Knight.
Storm Constantine, author of the Wraeththu Chronciles and a book publisher, has passed away at the age of 64. The news was announced Friday on Constantine’s Facebook page, which noted that the writer died after a long illness.
Constantine (who adopted her pen name as her legal name) was born in 1956 in Stafford, England, and began making up stories before she knew how to write. After art school, and time spent managing bands, she began her writing career with the beloved Wraeththu Chronicles. The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit was published in 1987, followed by The Bewitchments of Love and Hate and The Fulfillments of Fate and Desire. As her website explains, “Although characters in the Wraeththu novels inhabited a fantasy world, they were drawn from real people who were part of the alternative night-club/music scene of the mid-eighties.”
If you’re a fan of The Walking Dead franchise, you’re going to have a very busy year. AMC announced the release dates and premiere time frames for all three main series as well as commentary show Talking Dead. Based on the dates we see so far, it looks like practically every month of the year could contain some new zombie content.
Could humanity be a recent visitor to this world? Are our true origins on some distant exoplanet?
NO.
The fossil record documents our purely terrestrial linage going back hundreds of millions of years. Humans are merely a recent flourish on the tetrapod body plan and suggestions to the contrary are manifestly nonsensical.
Still, no author in possession of a cool story idea ever hesitated merely because it constituted an egregious contradiction of firmly established science. Here are five examples of stories in which humans came from somewhere beyond the sky.
In a near-future San Francisco where the gig economy has made work more precarious than ever, Edwina is an average twenty-something scrambling to hold down her job with a major skin care brand. Until her awful boss does something you should never do—angers the fae on social media—and the struggles of her job take on an even nastier shade.
