When an illicit trade deal goes wrong and Quandary is blamed for it, she goes on the run to avoid the crosshairs of a bioengineered killer that only lives for 24 hours. If Q can evade it for that long, she just might survive.
A night of food, fun, and festivities quickly turns sour. But what else can you expect when your ancestors say you will choke?
An unexpected encounter with a mysterious life form turns a simple trip to Mercury into a historic event. Both for ship Captain Victory Citrus and human civilisation as we know it.
The Hero journeys across the desert to capture The Thief Of Memory and retrieve her stolen memories. What she finds in the end may destroy her.
When the elitist institution of Ozymandias Academy and its headmaster, Vamon Kinctuarin, can’t find a solution to the city’s worsening drought, 2 self-taught magicians, Noah and his partner Manny, take it upon themselves to find a solution to the crisis.
An artist’s work attracts the eye of Andrey Porgee, a notorious gangster, who becomes her best customer.
But when he commissions a painting based on a childhood photograph, the artist fears his reaction to the final product.
Movies that are known for being so bad, they’re good form a loose genre, but it is one that can be hard to define. Sometimes these films are classed as guilty pleasures or cult classics, but straight-up terrible movies can occupy the former category, while genuinely great movies can occupy the latter. Often they are B-movies, but sometimes big budget films slip in too—I’m looking at you Moonfall (2022). Perhaps the most well-known examples of this type of film are Tommy Wiseau’s The Room (2003) and Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957).
Although there isn’t a snappy label to perfectly capture this category of movie, there are some clear features shared by the films that qualify. Their bad elements—things like bizarre acting, poor special effects, a clunky script, and weird plot points—are so strange and offbeat that they become funny. They can’t be merely mediocre in their badness, and purposefully bad, intentionally cheesy films (like the Sharknado series) are a different beast entirely. To be worthy of being called a good-bad movie, a film needs to have attempted to be good, but the end result has to be so weird or campy or hopelessly full of faults that it becomes enjoyably watchable (particularly with company).
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
How many of us can recite this line from memory? I admit, I get tripped up in the details, but the first sentence is gold, and the image it conjures up is even better. For me, it’s one part Peter Jackson, one part Rankin/Bass (pictured above), one part the way I imagined a hobbit-hole before I’d seen any movies. Tidy. Cozy. Warm. Wood-lined. Part of a tree, part of the earth, close to all the things I cared so fiercely about when I was a small kid hearing The Hobbit read aloud for the first time.
There’s a particular subgenre of speculative fiction that scratches an itch for me like no other. It’s where you find yourself in a world very much like our own, except one thing is slightly… off. Perhaps there’s a movie theater that plays only memories, or the story centers on a child who learns the language of cats. Or in this familiar-yet-unfamiliar world, everyone wears electronic bracelets that monitor their moods.
These stories place the fantastic alongside the mundane, yet their speculative elements feel subtle compared to other works classified as fantasy or science fiction. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, for example, has a contemporary setting that features one distinct speculative element: the titular midnight library, which is a manifestation of purgatory that allows the main character to travel along alternate life paths.
It’s a fantasy novel, certainly, but to group it with the fantasy worlds of Brandon Sanderson or Robin Hobb feels akin to calling cereal a soup. They’re related but distinct categories.
Growing up, my family never told ghost stories around Christmas. We did, however, have a couple of Krampus-themed ornaments on the tree—one with a chain, one with a large bundle of sticks—courtesy of my father’s Austrian cousin. (Who was also my cousin, albeit of my dad’s generation.) I don’t want to say that I was into Krampus before Krampus was cool, but—I regret to say that that statement is also not untrue.
Yo soy quien soy. I am who I am.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Desideria Mesa’s Bindle Punk Bruja, an historical fantasy inspired by an ancient Mexican folktale—out now from Harper Voyager.
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.
The science fiction world was robbed of a major talent when early star Stanley G. Weinbaum died from cancer at the age of only 33. His stories had taken the magazines by storm, and writers like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke were quick to sing his praises. One of his rare longer works, The Black Flame, did not appear until after his death, and even then, in a significantly revised form. It was not until 1995 that a copy of the original manuscript was located, allowing Tachyon Books to put it out in the form intended by the author.
Being an inveterate optimist, I have a natural tendency to look on the bright side of even the biggest disasters and feel compelled to inspire similar hope and optimism in the world (or at least, the Twitterverse). We all know that everyone loves an optimist, but for some reason, not everyone seems to find my point of view convincing. Take, for example, a recent discussion of possible outcomes of the various crises currently facing the human species in which I made the following points about our ability to endure…
I can’t believe we’ve actually made it to the end of Lord of Chaos! I must say, after getting through these last two chapters, I feel like I’m almost as tired as Rand and Perrin and the rest of them. Figuratively speaking, anyway. Onward to the recap!
[They will pay, Lews Therin growled. I am the Lord of the Morning.]
The story of how I came to write Origins of the Wheel of Time begins with my first reading of Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World as a lad, not long after it came out. I didn’t see the whole picture at that point, but it was enough to have an inkling that there was a bigger story behind the story of the Wheel.
They’ll scare you straight to hell…
We’re thrilled to share the cover and preview an excerpt from Camp Damascus, the debut horror novel from Chuck Tingle—publishing July 18, 2023 with Nightfire.
In Kerstin Hall’s debut, The Border Keeper, we met Eris (the border keeper in question), and a man named Vasethe who needed her help crossing the border she kept. Which border is that, you ask? Why, the ways into Mkalis, the 999 realms of the afterlife—a multiverse replete with gods, demons, monsters, magic. Each realm is ruled by larger than life figures of myth, all involved in a delicate balance, lest the entirety of Mkalis fall in on itself.
Hall’s second installment in the realms of Mkalis focuses on a handful of new characters, but this is a sequel, not a standalone. Tyn, a soul who in death has found herself the Second Spear to a demon ruler, questions who she used to be in life, and what she must do now to save her ruler and realm.
Of all the trailers and teasers and first looks and date announcements Netflix put forth at Tudum, its awkwardly named fan event, this is the one I did not know I needed. A animated and live-action show about a lethargic Sanrio character that looks like a raw egg? Why?
The answer is right here. Gudetama: An Eggcellent Adventure has a precision-calibrated tone that lands somewhere between painfully cute and distressingly existential. Will Gudetama get anything done before going bad or being eaten?!??!
The sixth episode of House of the Dragon is being referred to as a “second pilot” by showrunners Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal, set after a ten-year time jump, with two lead actors recast as older versions of the characters they play, and a bevy of young royal offspring exacerbating tensions. There’s a spiraling sense of doom as old feuds ossify into deadly factions and King Viserys (Paddy Considine) seems ever more blind to the disaster awaiting his house and the realm, refusing to recognize the dangers even as he steers directly into the storm. (Some spoilers for Game of Thrones and the novels below, for anyone who might be avoiding those.)
The era of video game adaptations is well and truly upon us—but if they all look as good as this one, I for one welcome our new adaptation overlords. A series adaptation of The Last of Us was announced in 2020, and it was clear from the start that HBO was going to take this pretty seriously: Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin was selected to develop the show along with Neil Druckmann, the writer and creative director of the original game.
Then they went and cast Pedro Pascal (The Mandalorian) as Joel and Bella Ramsey (Game of Thrones) as Ellie, both of who seemed like impossibly perfect choices—and all the more so now that we can see them in action.
When breaking into a nefarious and/or mysterious science facility, one should always come prepared. And in the case of They Cloned Tyrone, one should always come prepared… with the right song for the lengthy elevator ride into the depths of a creepy building.
The trailer for the upcoming movie from writer-director Juel Taylor (Creed II, Space Jam: A New Legacy) lingers on the scene of Jamie Foxx, Teyonah Parris, and John Boyega’s entrance into a dark lab—a moment that might seem excruciatingly stressful. Or it might seem like a great time to break into song.
It’s a pretty effective way to set the tone.
“Cease Fire”
Written by Chris Black
Directed by David Straiton
Season 2, Episode 15
Production episode 041
Original air date: February 12, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. For a hundred years, Vulcan and Andoria have fought over a world, which the Vulcans have named Paan Mokar, and which the Andorians call Weytahn. The Andorians colonized it and terraformed (Andoria-formed?) it, but then Vulcan annexed it, and they’ve been fighting over it ever since.
[“We need to reduce our speed.” “The ground is going to do that for us.”]
“Am I allowed to say ‘fuck’ on Netflix?” Robert Sheehan asks at one point in this utterly delightful Umbrella Academy blooper reel. The answer seems to be no, given that little birds (sparrows, one assumes) blot out all swears—even the middle fingers Colm Feore holds up at one point.
But we don’t need swears to have a good time with these folks. Especially not when we’ve got creaky desks, stiff suits, a misbehaving treadmill, and a serious case of the giggles.
The game isn’t over. The first season of Netflix’s Alice in Borderland, adapted from the manga written and illustrated by Haro Aso, premiered in late 2020—and ended with a bit of a cliffhanger. It’s been a long wait, but answers (at least some of them, presumably) are just around the corner with the release of a “super teaser” for season two!
