“One spark. Two sparks. Three. This is what it takes to ignite a revolution.”
A reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairytale, “The Tinder Box” tells the story of a witch at the heart of an incipient rebellion—and all of those to come.
The year is 1915, and a young man hired to shout the words on title cards for silent films experiences the magic of movies. This spurs him to edit some of the worst dialog, leading him in a weird direction that utterly changes his life.
A forlorn teenager’s monotonous life is interrupted when a stranger draws him into the hunt for a vampiric serial killer. He will learn that while monsters are much more real than he thought, there is no such thing as heroes.
All its life, a small monster with emerald scales has been a source of never-ending food to larger and more powerful creatures who feast on the small monster’s limbs each time one regrows. This is the story of how the small monster meets an industrious artist and re-forms into someone new—someone who can’t be eaten.
When Suzy was born, her parents filled her mouth with sand. But this is normal and natural and the way things are always done.
And if she finds it uncomfortable to keep it there, to eat with it there, to talk with it there, she’s just going to have to learn to live with it.
“Sand” is a heart-wrenching tale about generational trauma and healing.
For the residents of this mycological ecosystem, creating art feeds the World around you and requires working in harmony with your inner voice. When one artist’s voice begins screaming, he’s forced to travel farther than he ever has before to reconcile with the noise in his head and find his true place in society before it’s too late.
As 2021 draws to a close, it’s time once again to look back and reflect on some of our favorite non-fiction articles from the last year: celebrations of favorite authors and characters, deep dives into the cultural and historical inspirations that inform new and classic SFF, essays about superheroes, epic fantasy, anime, and why we will never stop being grateful for the existence of Terry Pratchett and his work. These articles have made us laugh, occasionally tear up, and think about books, movies, TV, and fandom in new ways, convincing us to broaden our horizons and explore new perspectives we’ve never considered before.
Anyone wishing to learn Quenya, one of the Elvish languages, will have to get to grips with its staggeringly detailed grammar. Each noun has forty possible endings, from yulma (the cup) to yulmannar (towards the cups). It’s a perfect example of a fictional language taking on a life of its own, and becoming as linguistically complex as any organic language. Tolkien is the grandfather of these “conlangs” (constructed languages), and the tradition has continued with Duolingo adding Klingon to their stable of languages; and the publication of HBO-approved Dothraki dictionaries and courses. And yet, although the act of creating and developing them is undeniably impressive, they remain variations of human, typically European languages—with twists on morphology or phonology, but variations all the same. You can plausibly imagine Quenya or Dothraki evolving in some corner of the Baltics, just as Basque has done in south-western Europe.
My favourite languages in SFF are instead the ones that require a leap of the imagination—humans, creatures or aliens who communicate in an ingenious or unusual manner. Here are seven of the best:
Every year we’re blown away by the consistently amazing book releases in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, young adult, and beyond—and 2021 raised the bar even further. Our reviewers each picked their top contenders for the best books of the year, ranging from hopepunk to fantasy romance, and alternate history to gothic horror. We’ve got high society magicians, retired starship captains, family ghosts, and much more.
Below, Tor.com’s regular book reviewers talk about notable titles they read in 2021—leave your own additions in the comments!
Director Guillermo del Toro has brought several films to the big screen, many of which are suitably scary. For those who love his work, the good news is he has lots of other horrifying films he wants to make, such as an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.
In that same interview on The Kingcast podcast (via Collider), del Toro also shared that there’s a Stephen King work he’d love to adapt—the very scary and disturbing Pet Sematary. [Read more]
Those who’ve been watched the third episode of the MCU limited series Hawkeye have been introduced to Maya Lopez, aka Echo, aka the head of the tracksuit mafia after Clint Barton (Jeremey Renner) and Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). What you may not have known, however, is that Alaqua Cox—the actor who plays Echo—had never acted before joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Tara Goedjen’s No Beauties or Monsters, as its title and book cover suggest, is compellingly creepy. Unlike many classic creepy tales, however, this story unfolds in a small town on the edge of the Mojave Desert rather than a tiny cabin enshrouded by New England woods.
As the story and all its mysteries unfold in this stark landscape, we follow Rylie, a 17-year-old high school senior who moves with her family back to Twentynine Palms, the aforementioned town in the Mojave Desert where her distant and sometimes-cruel grandfather lived right up until his recent death.
A young woman’s quest to free her mother pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt fro, Sue Lyn Tan’s Daughter of the Moon Goddess, a debut fantasy inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess, Chang’e—publishing January 11th with Harper Voyager.
Sometimes I succumb to nostalgia and look through my collection of roleplaying games from the dawn of the industry. These games were produced by companies now long forgotten and their prospects of being revived are quite remote. Recently I looked over my edition of SPI’s Universe, whose spectacular star map I referenced in this earlier Tor.com essay. I opined that SPI could have copied GDW’s gambit and used their StarSoldier/Outreach games to provide their Universe game with a more detailed future history. A savvy commenter called my attention to a worldbuilding detail in those boardgames I had either overlooked or forgotten…
[An unfortunate truth: valuable is not the same as powerful.]
Gideon the Ninth waltzed up to the doors of reader expectation, planted plastic explosives around the frames while whistling a jaunty tune, and purposefully walked away in slow-motion, aviators glinting, and blew it all to hell. In a year of incredible genre fiction, Gideon the Ninth spread like wildfire, catching and sparking at every reader who picked it up and challenged them to a sword fight with one arm behind their back. Tamsyn Muir’s star ascended at a rocketing pace and the pressure of what Harrow the Ninth would be continued to grow and grow and grow. And upon release, much like Gideon, it wasn’t what anyone was expecting.
The second half of Netflix’s Masters of the Universe reboot premiered right before Thanksgiving weekend, and it was… pretty good? I don’t think the back half was quite as strong as the first, but the writers made some interesting choices.
Welcome back to Reading The Wheel of Time, where we say so long to getting through the Prologue of Lord of Chaos in two bits. I like a really meaty chapter but I gotta say, Mr. Jordan, sir, why is this so long? Why is it not chapters? How did you keep track of this many characters?
I did, however, catch a very important detail this week that takes us on quite the journey down memory lane, back to some time April 2018 when I wasn’t even halfway through The Eye of the World yet. I am very pleased with myself about it, and very worried for Morgase. But first, the recap.
[A slow horse does not always reach the end of the journey.]
Every year we’re blown away by the consistently amazing book releases in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, young adult, and beyond—and 2021 raised the bar even further. Our reviewers each picked their top contenders for the best books of the year, ranging from hopepunk to fantasy romance, and alternate history to gothic horror. We’ve got high society magicians, retired starship captains, family ghosts, and much more.
Below, Tor.com’s regular book reviewers talk about notable titles they read in 2021—leave your own additions in the comments!
We are excited to share the Table of Contents for the 2021 edition of Some of the Best from Tor.com, an anthology of 22 of our favorite short stories and novelettes selected from the stories we have published this year. The eBook edition will be available for free from all your favorite vendors on January 25, 2022. Of course, you can enjoy all of these stories right now at the links below.
A genius is abducted by an alien bounty-hunter for the location of a powerful inter-dimensional object. Trouble is, he can’t remember a thing…
We’re thrilled to share the cover for Stringers by Chris Panatier! Stringers will be published on April 12, 2022 by Angry Robot Books—and features the publisher’s new logo!
Andrea Hairston will be joining Sheree Renée Thomas as co-host of this year’s Hugo Award Ceremony, set during DisCon III (aka the World Science Fiction Convention, aka Worldcon) later this month.
This is a nice little a palate cleanser after a series of long and intricate adult novels. It’s short and concise, tightly plotted and narrowly focused, but in a good way. As middle-grade books go, it’s solid.
What’s interesting about it is that the co-author, Michael Gilbert, was (is?) an artist. The illustrations are his. Mostly they’re fairly timeless, though young Hal’s father has a classic Seventies mustache, which is appropriate enough for a book published in 1975. There’s no way he could have known that 2021 would call it a “porn ’stache” and see a distinct resemblance to Freddie Mercury.
The story is set sometime after 1975. Lasers are a fully developed form of weaponry, and there are flying cars. Flying cars were The Future in 1975. Instead we have supercomputers in our pockets. I suppose it’s a worthy tradeoff.
The Wheel of Time keeps turning, and the second season of the Prime Video series will see three new actors taking on three new recurring roles.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings premiered this year to positive reviews, and today, Marvel has made it official that we’ll get another Shang-Chi film sometime in the future with filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton again on board to write and direct.
