A grieving mother wakes up to find all traces of her lost son have been erased as if he had never existed. Only in the hallway mirror is she able to see a glimpse of the reality she remembers having lived—the reality she wants back.
The Counterworld
Read an Excerpt From Owen King’s The Curator
Dora has a secret desire—to find where her brother went after he died…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Curator by Owen King, out from Scribner on March 7th.
All the New Fantasy Books Arriving in March!
Head below for the full list of fantasy titles heading your way in March!
Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch: “The Shipment”
Screenshot: CBS
“The Shipment”
Written by Chris Black & Brent V. Friedman
Directed by David Straiton
Season 3, Episode 7
Production episode 059
Original air date: October 29, 2003
Date: unknown
Captain’s star log. Enterprise makes for the coordinates provided by Tarquin in the previous episode. A scan of the planet reveals that it’s a sparsely populated colony, which has no planetary defenses, but there are energy readings concentrated in one area.
[You could learn something from them—patience, for example…]
Series: Star Trek: Enterprise Rewatch
Mona Awad’s Truly Dark College Novel Bunny Is Headed to the Big Screen
There’s “dark academia” and then there’s Mona Awad’s Bunny, a novel about an MFA program whose students have some decidedly atypical ideas about how to approach the writing workshop. Published in 2019, Bunny is having another moment in the sun thanks to BookTok, where videos about the novel have been viewed more than four million times.
In a “competitive situation,” according to Deadline, Bad Robot snapped up the rights to transform Bunny into a feature film.
Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: February 2023
February brought a host of new short science fiction, fantasy, and horror from big names I’ve followed for a long time. But there’s always room for new discoveries, and a handful of emerging and new-to-me writers also cracked my ten favorite short stories. The theme this month: finding hope in the face of disaster.
Living in a Bunker Sucks in Apple TV’s Silo
It will come as no surprise to most SFF fans to find that living in an underground silo after some sort of apocalypse isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Silo, the latest series to explore this miserable existence, is based on the books by Hugh Howey (the show was formerly known as Wool, after the first book in the series).
Gift of the Gods: Jennifer Roberson’s Chronicles of the Cheysuli
When I started lining up readings for this chapter on Shapeshifters Who Are Not Werewolves, the first book series I thought of was Jennifer Roberson’s chronicles of the Cheysuli. It began with Shapechangers in 1984 and ended in 1992 with the eighth volume, A Tapestry of Lions. It’s a classic of its genre, and I welcomed the chance to reread it.
When I first read these books, when they were new, I read them for the pleasure of living in a new fantasy world. Now that we’re both a fair bit older, I’m delighted to report that the books hold up. There are things about them that are of their time, as we’ve been known to say, but I don’t have to talk about that here in the Bestiary. I get to focus on the best part: the shapechangers.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Are Reborn for Mutant Mayhem
There are things each generation has to learn for itself, and it’s time for the next generation to learn about the great artists Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael. Yes, friends: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have returned (or been reborn? re-hatched?) in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. This time, we have “permanent teenager” Seth Rogen to thank; he produced this nifty-looking new turtle tale, which boasts a laundry list of excellent voice actors and what seems to be a pretty endearing young cast of turtles.
Crooked Houses and Bizarre Buildings: Five Stories Featuring Architectural Oddities
Photo: Sergey Zolkin [via Unsplash]
There’s so much negativity in the world in which we live, and the internet only seems to exacerbate our unfortunate tendency to spotlight faults and shortcomings rather than looking on the brighter side of life. In the name of the optimism and positivity for which I am famous, I’d like to redress the balance. Consider the infamous H. H. Holmes.
These days, discussion of Holmes tends to focus on his more regrettable and extremely murderous proclivities, but in his way, Holmes was also an architectural visionary (depending on which accounts you believe—at the very least, Holmes’ “Castle” contained some hidden rooms, though it’s thought that they were mostly used to hide bits of furniture he hadn’t bothered to pay for). So, in the spirit of recognizing Holmes’ dubious achievements in building design and construction, here are five SFF works featuring bizarre and daring architecture!
4 Sci-Fi Podcasts With Starship Crews You’ll Want to Join
Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
When storytellers want to see just how far they can push the resolve of their characters, there’s only one place to send them—space. Creed, oaths, and religions come face to face with the inky darkness of the void, and the myriad of friends, foes, and otherwise that they’ll find on each new planet’s surface. Our protagonists’ resolves and bodies are tested in the heat of laser sword based combat and the cold of an ice clad moon—and sometimes while being chased by popcorn aliens while working jobs to pay their impossibly large debts to a multi-solar conglomerate. It’s all par for the course with these renegades, rogues, scoundrels, and space detectives.
Fortunately, this particular sliver of science fiction has been well explored in audio fiction podcasts, and there are days worth of stories available to be delivered right to your ears. Here are four space podcasts that will make you want to venture off into the stars.
Star Trek: Discovery’s Fifth Season, Now Coming Out in 2024, Will Be Its Last
Credit: Marni Grossman/Paramount+
The upcoming season of Star Trek: Discovery will be the final one for the series.
Terry Pratchett Book Club: The Thief of Time, Part III
Time’s stopped. Guess we should ponder the effects of existence on mortal form.
Series: Terry Pratchett Book Club
Into the Woods: Five SFF Stories About Forests
Photo: Sebastian Unrau [via Unsplash]
Most Canadians, presented with an untouched forest, would be filled with quite reasonable questions:
- Why has this forest not been clearcut?
- Into how many suburban homes could these trees be converted?
- Is the dark, green expanse plotting even now to lure children away forever, before replacing them with enigmatic changelings?
Truly, it is said that to see old-growth trees is to reach for one’s chainsaw. Science fiction and fantasy authors, being of the curious bent that they are, suggest there may be other uses for forests. Of course, they’re wrong, but it sure is interesting to read about such odd opinions. Here are five different takes on forests.
History’s Demons: Mariana Enriquez’s Our Share of Night
It opens with a departure. From the opening pages of her novel Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez brings the reader into the visceral lives of her characters, zeroing in initially on a man named Juan who’s pondering the heat outside and taking preventative steps for “the headache he wasn’t feeling yet.” He wakes his young son Gaspar and they set out on a long journey—one that Juan is convinced that they must make. That journey begins in Buenos Aires. The year is 1981.
Depending on your knowledge of Argentine history, that combination of time and place might set off a few alarms.
Natalie Haynes’ Stone Blind Fills in Mythological Silences
Natalie Haynes is a comedian, writer, and broadcaster, and along with Professor Dame Mary Beard, is probably at the moment the UK’s most well-known female classicist. Stone Blind is her third novel to draw directly from the well of classical mythology, after A Thousand Ships and Jocasta’s Children, and in Stone Blind Haynes turns her gaze on Medusa, the mortal Gorgon, daughter of Phorcys and Ceto.
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