A group of five friends rent a cabin in the woods—the next day only four are alive. What happened and why is something the survivors are desperate to unravel.
Monsters Trying to Dance: Gillian Daniels’ “Bobbie and Her Father”
Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches.
This week, we’re reading Gillian Daniels’s “Bobbie and Her Father,” first published in the August 2020 issue of The Dark. CW for harm to children.
Series: Reading the Weird
Lev Grossman’s The Map of Tiny Perfect Things Looks Like a YA Version of Palm Springs
Amazon Studios has debuted its first trailer for its upcoming time-loop film, The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, written by The Magicians author Lev Grossman.
Films and shows featuring time loops are in right now, judging from the success of Netflix’s Russian Doll and Hulu’s Palm Springs, and this looks like a delightful YA take on the genre.
High Stakes and Tough Choices in Siege of Rage and Ruin by Django Wexler
In the final installment of the Wells of Sorcery series, author Django Wexler has brought both of his characters together for a climactic story of injustice, oppression, power, and leadership.
From page one of Siege of Rage and Ruin, Wexler sets us up for an explosive reunion as sisters Isoka and Tori, separated by miles of ocean for two books, but united in blood and righteousness, must reckon with each other and figure out a way forward before Naga takes them and everything they love to the grave.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Reread — Enigma Tales
Enigma Tales
Una McCormack
Publication Date: June 2017
Timeline: Late 2386, one year after The Missing, which was set in November 2385 (though internal references may place it somewhat later)
Progress: Doctor Pulaski is invited to Cardassia Prime to receive the Distinguished Impact Medal from the University of the Union for her work on the Andorian reproductive crisis, and she invites Peter Alden to join her on the trip. Once there they are greeted by Metok Efheny, who shows them around.
Revealing The Tensorate Series Omnibus
The Tensorate Series brings together four genre-defining silkpunk novellas by acclaimed author Neon Yang. We’re excited to share the cover to a new omnibus edition, arriving September 21st from Tordotcom Publishing.
Empathy Leads to Change in The Expanse’s Outstanding “Winnipesaukee”
We’re almost to the end of an incredibly good season, even for The Expanse. Tense action, nuanced performances, and a quiet treatise on a better way to live: “Winnipesaukee” is the show at its best. The table is neatly, brilliantly set for next week’s season finale.
Spoilers for episode 9, “Winnipesaukee,” follow!
Envisioning a Very Different 2016, Elan Mastai’s All Our Wrong Todays is Headed to Peacock
Elan Mastai’s 2017 time travel novel All Our Wrong Todays is getting a television adaptation, Variety reports. The Orville‘s Seth McFarlane is set to produce the series, which will head to NBC’s streaming service Peacock.
Mastai is a screenwriter who’s best known for The F World and is currently a writer for NBC’s This Is Us. All Our Wrong Todays was his debut novel, and is set in an alternate world that looks like the future 1950s science fiction imagined, complete with flying cars, moon bases, and so forth.
The book follows a man named Tom Barren, who’s life is coming apart. When he’s given the chance to help out a chrononaut named Penelope Weschler, he falls in love with her, and accidentally goes back in time and further messes up reality. After ending up waking up in our 2016, he ends up pulled between both realities.
Back in 2017, Mastai told The Guardian that he wrote the novel as a way to come to terms with his mother’s death. He’d already embarked on a career as a screenwriter, and had been been musing about a story about alternative selves. Rather than turn the story into a screenplay, he opted to write it as a novel instead, and made a splash when he sold the book to Dutton for a rumored $1.2 million.
17 Iconic Fashion Moments in Science Fiction and Fantasy
Do you think they have a MET Gala in Middle-earth? If they don’t, they should. As a fantasy writer, I believe no fantasy world is fully realized without fashion. Fashion, though often considered to be nothing more than frivolity, is as integral to a world’s rendering as its resources, its struggles, its power structures, and its art. In fact, fashion is the instrument by which all of these are often expressed. It can be frivolity, yes, but often it’s everything else as well.
This is why I’ve compiled my list of the seventeen most iconic fashion moments across science fiction and fantasy. Let’s get into it, shall we?
Babylon 5 Just Got an Upgrade for HBO Max
When it debuted on PTEN back in 1993, Babylon 5 was unlike anything seen on television to that point. J. Michael Straczynski’s space opera featured both a rich mythology and some ground-breaking visual effects, and it’s become a cult classic in the years since.
But while the series has endured for its story, its appearance hasn’t dated well, thanks in part to a subpar home release to DVD (and later streaming). This week, the series moved over to HBO Max, and it’s undergone a significant facelift that leaves it looking better than ever.
Read an Excerpt From Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters
One woman will travel to the stars and beyond to save her beloved in Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters, a lyrical space opera from author Aimee Ogden that reimagines The Little Mermaid—available February 23rd from Tordotcom Publishing. Read an excerpt below!
The Grishaverse Comes to Life in the First Photos From Shadow and Bone
Netflix’s Shadow and Bone finally has a release date. The series adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s books arrives on April 23rd—and the streaming network is starting to dole out details and teasers, including our first real look at the world of the Grishaverse.
5 Great Alternative Histories of WWII and the Space Race
More often than not, authors make the imagined compatible with the real. The world around us continues to exist while we read, even if we believe everything the author tells us. In A History of What Comes Next, the Kibsu insert themselves into history in their bid to take us to the stars, but the resulting timeline is the one we know. There are few, if any, verifiable facts that would contradict the storyline and, conversely, nothing in our present would change if it all happened to be true. There are those, however, who aren’t so kind to our reality, authors whose stories mess with past events and take a wrecking ball to our timeline.
Series: Five Books About…
Revealing SF Thriller We Have Always Been Here
One doctor who must discover the source of her crew’s madness… or risk succumbing to it herself.
We’re excited to share the cover for We Have Always Been Here, a psychological sci-fi thriller from a debut author Lena Nguyen—publishing July 6th with DAW.
Shards
A group of five friends rent a cabin in the woods—the next day only four are alive. What happened and why is something the survivors are desperate to unravel.
SFWA Announces the 2021 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award Recipients
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is closing the first month of 2021 by announcing the recipients of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. This honor is given out to those who have made “distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community.”