A man is offered the opportunity to partake in an exclusive, subscription-based eating club for those who wish to dine on human flesh. But he may have bitten off a little more than he can chew.
How to Cook and Eat the Rich
Phoebe Waller-Bridge Is Producing a Series About Working in Hell
Screenshot: Amazon Prime
Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge (pictured above)—who recently renewed a sizable deal with Amazon—has a new series in the works, according to Variety. She’s executive producing an adaptation of Claudia Lux’s novel Sign Here, a story about a guy who works in Hell. Literally.
Also, the guy’s name is Peyote Trip. I feel like this detail is important.
The Harrowing Journey of The Last of Us Will Continue in a Second Season
Screenshot: HBO
There’s plenty of fungus to go around, right? Unsurprisingly, given its glowing reception, The Last of Us has been renewed for a second season at HBO. The adaptation had the network’s second-largest debut, trailing only The House of the Dragon.
6 Books to Read While You Wait for Season Two of Yellowjackets
Showtime had a surprising and bloody hit last winter—and it wasn’t the new season of Dexter. Clever, original, and creepy as hell, Yellowjackets is the latest obsession of thriller fans and paranormal conspiracy theorists everywhere. When a private plane carrying a high school girls’ soccer team crashes in the Canadian Rockies in 1996, the team must do anything and everything to survive. Twenty-five years later, we know that some of the team made it back to civilization, but the mystery and trauma around what happened in the wilderness returns to as the women reckon with how the accident derailed their lives.
Terry Pratchett Book Club: The Truth, Part III
Elect this purveyor of jiggly things and leather goods as the new Patrician of Ankh-Morpork! That will definitely not go wrong in any way…
Series: Terry Pratchett Book Club
11 Very Good Dogs Who Make Everything Better (Even the End of the World)
The chances of me reading a book or watching a movie rise by about 50% if a dog is featured as a main character. Put a dog in a post-apocalyptic setting and it rises to 100%. I love seeing how characters cope in the aftermath of world-ending scenarios, but the addition of a faithful hound adds stakes and a particular dynamic that I just can’t get enough of, so I’ve rounded up eleven of my favorite fictional dogs in stories about surviving the end of the world.
Percy Jackson TV Series Casts Its Zeus and Poseidon
Screenshot: Disney+
The Percy Jackson and the Olympians Disney+ series continues to move ahead, and while we’ve gotten a lot of casting announcements in the last few months (including news that Walker Scobell will play Percy himself), we haven’t known who would play Percy’s dad (a.k.a. Poseidon) or the head honcho god (a.k.a. Zeus).
A Unique Fantasy Adventure: Empire of Exiles by Erin M. Evans
Erin M. Evans’ new novel Empire of Exiles is a story that very much feels at home among polyhedral dice and saving throws, but to call it “just a DnD novel” would be reductive and short-sighted; Evans’ long list of credits working in the world of Dungeons & Dragons means she knows how to tell a damn good story. And let me tell you, Empire of Exiles is a damn good story, through and through. With a deep and rich world of Evans’ own devising, characters that leap off the page in their realness and complexity, and magic that has never made me feel so seen, this is not a novel to miss.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods Trailer Has A Dragon and Helen Mirren — What More Could You Want?
There’s been a lot of shuffling around in the DC Universe of late (to put it mildly), but it looks like the Shazam! sequel, Fury of the Gods, is heading toward us as scheduled. To that end, Warner Bros. released a trailer today that not only gives us a glimpse of Zachary Levi as Shazam once again, but also of Helen Mirren kicking his butt.
Get Creeped Out By Cornfields (Again) When a New Children of the Corn Arrives in March
Screenshot: New World Pictures
Sure, there are probably a few Stephen King stories that haven’t been adapted yet, but why not remake one that’s already been a hit? Almost 40 years ago, a movie adaptation of Children of the Corn (pictured above), based on King’s 1977 short story, premiered and (mildly?) traumatized a generation. An alarming number of sequels followed, along with a 2009 made-for-TV version.
And now, it’s all happening again: Deadline reports that writer and director Kurt Wimmer’s new Children of the Corn lands in theaters in March before making its way to Shudder.
Secrets of the Wilderness: Christopher Pike’s Spellbound and Fall Into Darkness
A group of teens heads out into the wilderness, chock full of sexual tension and dark secrets, and they don’t all make it back alive. What happened out there? With Spellbound (1988) and Fall Into Darkness (1990), Christopher Pike begins with this shared premise and then provides readers with two very different explanations. While Fall Into Darkness foregrounds realistic horror and Spellbound draws on the supernatural, both also reflect on how these stories get told and who gets to tell them, as lawyers and journalists try to shape the narrative of what happens to these teens, and the books become a tug-of-war over different versions of the truth.
Five SF Works About Ruined Civilizations
Photo: Rafael De Nadai [via Unsplash]
One of the rewards of travel and tourism is the opportunity to admire ruins of great antiquity. Across the planet, edifices remain to attest to the achievements of past civilizations now lost to history. Indeed, many of these sites are so impressive that a person could be forgiven for looking around at modern, well-maintained, and occupied buildings to ponder how they might best be converted into relics along the lines of the Roman Forum, Harappa, and Chichén Itzá.
The three most important ingredients? Time, bad luck, and poor judgement.
Netflix’s We Have a Ghost Is a Movie About Being Trapped in a House With David Harbour
You ever wonder what compels actors to make their choices? Netflix’s We Have a Ghost looks like a cute if goofy little movie, a story about a family that moves into a haunted house and makes their ghost an internet star while trying to solve his murder. Okay! Sure! Sounds` nice, I guess, in a family friendly sort of way!
But nice enough to star Anthony Mackie, David Harbour, Jennifer Coolidge, and Tig Notaro?
What Makes a Story Comforting?
Photo: Mitchell Luo [via Unsplash]
Though I am slightly loath to admit it, I have been rewatching Grimm. It is dark and wet in Portland, as it always is at the start of the year—January is just ever so January—and a somewhat ridiculous procedural show about a fairy tale cop feels like just the thing.
It’s also weirdly comforting, which is another thing I am reluctant to confess. I do not generally find cop shows comforting, and the very idea of a fairy tale cop is gently hilarious to anyone who grew up on fairy tales, in which there are many things, but not usually cops. There are wolves and trolls and princes and witches and all manner of creatures, but at best there might be some sort of hapless authority figure who gets turned into a bear or something. (I’m using a loose definition of fairy tales here.)
But in each episode of Grimm, at least in the early and very episodic seasons, a fairy tale cop (who is also a regular cop) solves a crime generally committed by a person who is also a magical creature, of which Portland has a surprising abundance. (Bird people! Wolf people! Cat people! Spider people!) Sometimes the magical creature-people are misunderstood, sometimes they’re vicious, sometimes they’re just ordinary guys who make clocks and offer the fairy tale cop a beer. There is magic, and mundanity—and there is closure.
Rhythm of War Reread: Chapter One Hundred Six
Greetings, Cosmere Chickens! We had some fantastic discussion in the comments last week regarding redemption and psychology, mostly in regard to Moash. I’d highly recommend you go back and read through some of those comments, if you haven’t already—there’s some wonderful debate in there! As for this week… well, my chickens, I’m afraid that things are going to get much darker before we find the (storm)light.
Series: Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson
Doom Patrol and Titans Will Both End With Their Current Seasons
Screenshot: DC Universe
HBO Max’s Titans and Doom Patrol, both currently in their fourth seasons, are done at HBO Max. This news is disappointing but not hugely surprising, given all the change at DC Studios of late. If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that—according to Variety—”both productions were aware that these would be their final seasons some time ago and thus both will have definitive endings.”
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