When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion—or something else entirely. How much time do we have left, and do we even understand what timescale to use? As a slow apocalypse blooms across the Earth, planets and plants, animals and microbes, all live and die and evolve at different scales. Is one human life long enough to unravel the mystery?
After marrying the prince and having her own child, Snow White visits her stepmother—promising to kill her in ever more horrible ways, at the same time attempting to stay away from the mirror that started it all.
After aliens arrive on earth, humans do the unthinkable out of fear. When an alien walks into a human kite maker’s store, coveting her kites, the human struggles with her guilt over her part in the alien massacres, while neo-Nazis draw a violent line between alien and human.
From the wondrous mind of Brooke Bolander, the author of The Only Harmless Great Thing, who “shares literary DNA with Le Guin” (John Scalzi).
After the world’s end, the last young human learns a final lesson from Earth’s remaining animals.
Toby Benson has a chance to make history. The first mind to circle the moon without a body in tow. It’s a golden opportunity, perhaps the only chance for a 19-year-old whose body failed him to become immortal. But as he reaches the dark side of the moon and loses signal from Earth, the cold of space threatens to overwhelm him.
A mother. A son. A virtual world they both share where each could live forever and achieve their fullest potential. Until one of them decides that isn’t enough for life.
Amazon has ordered Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic The Wheel of Time to series, with Sony Pictures TV to co-produce, and Rafe Judkins serving as showrunner.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Stop!
I see you there, with that novel in your hand. Turning to page 1 (or, given the vagaries of publishers, maybe page 3), are you? Starting with the prologue, or the preface, or good old Chapter 1? Well, I’m here to tell you to turn that page back in the other direction and take a look at what you might find lurking in the front matter of the book. No, I’m not talking about the publication information (though I’m sure the Library of Congress would love to feel appreciated) and not even the acknowledgements and the dedication (though while you’re here, why not find out who the author loves?). I’m talking about the epigraph. The little (often italicized) sayings or quotations nestled in the very beginning, right before the action starts: right ahead of that opening paragraph on page 1 you were about to read.
Read the epigraph. Yes, exactly like the one I put up at the top of this article, why do you ask?
Now, not every book—not even every fantasy novel—is going to have an epigraph. For example, I just checked the romance novel I was reading this afternoon and it doesn’t have one. But when a novel does have an epigraph—when the author has decided to start their book with a little bit of something else—it’s well worth your time to read it. In fact, reading those little italicized words can tell you an awful lot about the book you’re about to experience.
Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s classic book about the Antichrist and Armageddon, is finally getting the TV treatment it always deserved. Fans have been begging for decades for this favorite novel to make its way onto our screens. Fancasts have been going around for years on Twitter, Tumblr, and even LiveJournal (that’s how long people have wanted this! It’s practically archaeological!).
For years the biggest names from British TV and film have been thrown around on various fan lists, and now I’m happy to say the real cast of the upcoming six-part series lives up to even the most exacting fan’s standards. Just based on the cast alone, Good Omens is already shaping up to be an incredible show. When you combine some of the best actors from every important genre show in the past ten years, how could it not be?
“I have no idea who you are,” an audience member said during one of the Q&A portions of NYCC’s Patrick Rothfuss spotlight—prompting uproarious laughter from the attendees and the epic fantasy author himself. “My friend has been talking about you for a year,” the person went on, “drags me here—you’re hysterically funny—I still don’t know what you write.”
“Well, a lot of people know me from the gaming community,” Rothfuss responded, adding that “if people know of me because of books, it’s because I write fantasy books. Heroic fantasy,” he clarified, casting about for a subgenre, “epic fantasy, big thick fantasy.”
While Rothfuss did take questions about The Kingkiller Chronicle during the spotlight (sorry, no book 3 updates), the most entertaining moment of the night was when he took a question about that other facet of his life—Dungeons & Dragons, specifically, advice for first-time DMs.
“To clarify,” Rothfuss began, to the laughter of attendees spotting the punchline ahead, a DM is of course a Dungeon Master—no, not that kind of Dungeon Master. But then there was a shared moment of wait, this joke could have legs, and the author known for hiding secret meanings in his prose launched into what turned into a rather hilarious series of double entendres.
Years ago, the Aquitans crossed the sea and invaded Chakrana. Now under strict colonial rule, Chakrans are second class citizens in their own land. Compliance is demanded by a distant king, and resistance is brutally put down by the Aquitan army. Despite the odds, the Chantray family has survived, using their skills as performers to appease the colonizers and remind the colonized of their stolen traditions. They are shadow players, artists who use paper cutouts, screens, and fire to tell ancient folktales through shadow puppetry. Jetta’s brother Akra used to perform with them before he was lured away to the army by the promise of a salary big enough to send home to his family. Akra stopped writing letters a year ago. He never returned. Today, it’s just Jetta and her parents traveling the countryside, a family with no home, no village, no history, no land.
After a disastrous bid to win a trip to Aquitan where she hopes to access a cure for her “malheur,” Jetta falls into the arms of Leo, a brooding, secretive dance hall owner with ties to the rebellion. Leo also has the unfortunate luck to be the illegitimate son of the head of the Aquitan army and a long dead Chakrana woman. Despised by both groups, he is trapped in a suffocating space between two worlds. Yet he has learned to navigate the borderland by exploiting his Aquitan power to benefit the impoverished Chakrans. Guided by Leo’s sordid ties, Jetta and her parents travel to the Chakrana capital for a last ditch attempt to sail to Aquitan. Disaster besets them at every turn, and death stalks them like a shadow.
[“She is still battered, still broken, but it is enough. Souls are so strong.”]
At the world premiere of Titans at New York Comic-Con, Warner Bros. Television shared some exciting news about other upcoming projects for new streaming service DC Universe. Among them is the animated series Harley Quinn, which looks to be a delightful take on single Harley Quinn (The Big Bang Theory’s Kaley Cuoco) breaking up with the Joker and striking out with her bestie/soulmate Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) in her quest to become the “queenpin” of Gotham.
I remember reading S.L. Huang’s Zero Sum Game soon after its first publication in 2014. Memory is a hazy and uncertain thing, but I do recall one thing: that book, though similar in incident and outline to this one, was a much less accomplished and smooth thriller experience. The rest of this review won’t discuss any differences between the first publication and this one (and not just because I don’t remember them in enough detail to comment) but they’re definitely present.
Cas Russell doesn’t have superpowers. What she has is an incredible facility with mathematics, very good proprioception, and sufficient athleticism that what she can do looks like superpowers. (For all intents and purposes, she definitely has superpowers; she just believes that they’re natural talent.) Russell specialises in retrieval work: she can find anything and steal it (back) for you. She’s casually violent, poorly socialised, and has no respect for other people’s property. And she doesn’t do well with boredom.
Fantasy icon Jane Yolen (The Devil’s Arithmetic, Briar Rose, Sister Emily’s Lightship) is adored by generations of readers of all ages. Now she triumphantly returns with this inspired gathering of fractured fairy tales and legends. Yolen breaks open the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets: a philosophical bridge that misses its troll, a spinner of straw as a falsely accused moneylender, the villainous wolf adjusting poorly to retirement. Each of these offerings features a new author note and original poem, illuminating tales that are old, new, and brilliantly refined.
How to Fracture a Fairy Tale is available November 5th from Tachyon Publications. Read an excerpt from “Sleeping Ugly” below!
Wilson Fisk is out of prison, and he’s… good? And he’s saying the real villain is… Daredevil? It’s very The Dark Knight—Daredevil being the hero New York City deserves, but not the one it needs right now. Except… who is this other guy?
It’s scary to grow up girl in this world of ours. The constant pressure to maintain a certain standard of beauty, fear of harassment, and the insidious effects of rape culture—as well as consistent dismissal, ridicule, and cruelty directed at women by those in power—mean that we are constantly struggling to make our voices heard and be taken seriously.
This is even more of a predicament for girls and teens. The things they’re passionate about are met with eyerolls. They’re scorned as silly, superficial, and vain, even as they are told, directly and indirectly, through countless advertisements and media, that they are worth only as much as their beauty. I have experienced this struggle in my own life—both when I was a teen and also now that I’m a grown woman. If you’re too ambitious, you’re a bitch. If you’re too nice, you’re reviled as weak, and subsequently preyed upon or taken advantage of.
[This is why I am drawn to books with “unlikeable female protagonists.”]
The animation studios at Disney in the 1980s could be a rather stressful place, to put it mildly. Even for an animator who had started with the 1973 Robin Hood, continued through the 1977 The Rescuers, and eventually found himself directing the 1981 The Fox and the Hound, which if not exactly one of Disney’s all-time great success stories, had earned a solid profit on its initial release, and would later continue to bring the company steady earnings from video and streaming sales.
Unfortunately, after these mild successes, Disney executives thought it would be a good idea to assign that animator, Richard Rich, to help direct the already troubled production of 1985 The Black Cauldron. Like many seemingly good ideas in Disney history, this one turned out poorly. Rich ended up having “creative differences” with multiple people assigned to the project, including then-animator Tim Burton, screenwriter Rosemary Anne Sisson, animators John Musker and Ron Clements (who slid over to The Great Mouse Detective and thus, managed to transform later Disney history) and, most importantly, newly arrived Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, who, in a moment retold in awed voices years later, was allegedly so horrified—or infuriated—by his first viewing of The Black Cauldron that he grabbed the film from the animators and started making his own edits.
Rich decided it was time to leave. Possibly time to start his own studio. Definitely time to think of creating his own film about a fairy tale princess. Perhaps with a connection to ballet.
The eventual—very eventual—result: The Swan Princess.
We’re excited to share the cover for A People’s Future of the United States, a new anthology edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams showcasing twenty-five speculative stories that challenge oppression and imagine new futures for America. Get more details and check out the full cover below!
When I worked in eldercare, both in assisted living facilities and in a nursing home, people who found out I was a novelist would often say things like, “Lots of material around here,” or “Do you write about your work?” I would always smile wryly and say no, my writing is pretty much unrelated.
I write epic fantasy. My characters swing swords, cast spells, and alternately wield or try to evade divine intervention. With a single memorable exception, they do not have dementia or even act particularly irrationally. Most of the time, the connection between my writing and my work wasn’t nearly as obvious as people apparently imagined.
But there is a connection. Writing fantasy helped me build a particular set of problem-solving skills that I used in my work day in and day out. To explain how, I’m going to have to tell you a bit about best practices in dementia care.
Hey, y’all! It’s Thursday up in here, and you know what that means: Oathbringer Reread Time! This week we’re twenty-three years in the past, as Dalinar deals with addictions, relationships, fatherhood, and monstrousness.
[These were the mark of a person pushed past the limits of what they thought they could do.]
Jon Favreau’s long-discussed Star Wars series finally has a name, and, presumably, a main character! The actor/director shared the name and a little bit of plot on Instagram on Wednesday night: it will be called The Mandalorian.
Click through for more info!
1. how does any story work
Wood, snow, blood: old stories. The witch in the forest, the breadcrumb trail, the grandmother-skinned wolf—everybody’s here, in this wild little book, breath steaming humid in the cold air. The taiga is the sometimes swampy coniferous forest of the high northern latitudes. A person has gone there with her lover to become lost. Or perhaps she has gone there to find something else.
2. suicide
Our narrator is a writer, a failure, and a detective. She is hired by a man whose Adam’s apple she cannot fail to notice to find a woman who loves someone other than him, or who has run away to the taiga with someone other than him, which, to him, is the same thing, but may not be the same thing to us. The circumstances of her own disappearance may not be of interest to the disappeared. She is the protagonist of a different story than the one the man seeking her has told.
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading Edgar Allen Poe’s “Ligeia,” first published in the September 1838 issue of The American Museum of Science, Literature, and the Arts. Spoilers ahead.
Sixteen- year-old Marion arrives at Sawkill Island with her mother and her elder sister, all three of them still in shock and traumatised after the death of Marion’s father. Marion became the de facto rock of their little family, tethering their mother and Charlotte together. But Sawkill, which was meant to be a sanctum for them, turns out to be everything but. Sawkill Island is “like this thing, perched out there on the water. A beetle. A monster. Some magical lost place.” The magic, however, isn’t the fun kind.
