An AI car is caught between its ruthless employer and the people she hurt. . .
What It Means to Be a Car
Barbie Deleted Scene Gives Allan a Hilarious, Jaws-Like Moment
Screenshot: Warner Bros.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Barbie has earned the title of the highest-grossing movie of the year, and as such, has also been released into IMAX theaters with some “special new footage,” as filmmaker Greta Gerwig describes it, included with the screening.
V/H/S 85 Trailer Hints at Monsters, Guns, and Lots and Lots of Blood
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist.
The upcoming installment of the V/H/S horror anthology series is set in 1985 (and, as such, is appropriately called V/H/S/85), and the latest trailer for it hints that at least one of the segments in the 110-minute movie contains a supernatural, tentacled monster of some kind, and that more than one very likely contains a lot of blood and a lot of violence.
The Wheel of Time Explores Themes of Slavery in “Eyes Without Pity”
Screenshot: Prime Video
Things have gotten very dark this week in The Wheel of Time, and although there are a few moments of connection between some characters, the theme of isolation continues to ramp up. For better or worse.
Terry Pratchett Book Club: Going Postal, Part II
All right, pinheads! Wait, it only just now occurred to me that he repurposed a (relatively mild) pejorative. Nice.
Series: Terry Pratchett Book Club
The Final Episodes of Doom Patrol Are Overrun With Butts
If you have not been watching Doom Patrol, I’m sorry. You’ve been missing out on a lot, as this baffling yet endearing trailer for the show’s final episodes suggests. Michelle Gomez singing “What the fuck?” in fake opera! Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero) giving a pep talk! A whole lot of attack butts! And a dreaded enemy: the loss of longevity!
Superheroes: They’re just like us.
Emma’s Story Expands in Episode Five of The Changeling
Image: Apple TV
Episode five marks the show’s divergence from and expansion of Victor LaValle’s original novel. Much of what we see of Emma’s story is only hinted at or mentioned briefly in the book. Here, showrunner and script writer Kelly Marcel takes us along Emma’s trip to Brazil, to meeting the bruxa and the photographer, to motherhood and finding the witches. Let’s take a journey with Apollo down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, and out the other side of the wardrobe.
Five Sci-Fi Books That Are Perfectly Suited to Audio
If I had to choose my preferred mode of reading it would be physical books, rather than ebooks or audiobooks. To me, there’s something deeply satisfying about flipping pages, about the way books smell, and—if I’m being totally honest—about the way they look all lined up on a shelf. But I do always have an audiobook on the go for those moments when I don’t have my hands (or eyes) free to skim through the pages.
I’ve found that there are some books that are actually better when experienced via audio, whether that’s because of the structure of the story itself or because of a particularly fantastic narrator. Here are five such examples.
Read an Excerpt From The Death I Gave Him
Hayden Lichfield’s life is ripped apart when he finds his father murdered in their lab, and the camera logs erased.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu, a queer sci-fi retelling of Hamlet as a locked-room thriller—out now from Solaris.
A Second Chance to Save a Dying World: Revealing The Failures by Benjamin Liar
Photo credit: Siân Wright
The vast machine-like expanse of the Wanderlands, crafted by long-lost gods, is teetering on the brink of eternal darkness…
Check out the cover of The Failures, the debut novel from Benjamin Liar and the first installment of The Wanderlands trilogy. The Failures will be available July 2024 from DAW Books.
Do Not Enter: Captives, Double Date, and Trapped
In horror, there’s a long and bloody history of people who are told not to go somewhere and go there anyway, with disastrous results. An abandoned asylum where people have heard screams in the night? The ruins of an old school, rumored to be haunted by the ghosts of former students? A summer camp where a whole bunch of kids were slaughtered a few years back? That creepy haunted house just down the street? All good places to stay away from. But of course, the siren song of mystery, thrill seeking, and a clandestine place to party/drink/have sex away from the prying eyes of adults is just too strong and our horror heroes and heroines invariably end up right where they’re not supposed to be. In Diane Hoh’s Captives (1995), Sinclair Smith’s Double Date (1996), and R.L. Stine’s Trapped (1997), ‘90s teen horror authors get in on this time-honored tradition, with predictably terrifying results.
When Evil Lurks Trailer Gives Us Terrifyingly Possessed Goats And Mutilated People, Just In Time For Spooky Season!
The possession story is alive and well in horror (we’re getting another Exorcist movie, after all!), and if its trailer is any indication, When Evil Lurks looks like a brutal and grotesque addition to the subgenre.
The Secret Origin of the Mistress of the Winter Constellations — Star Trek: Lower Decks: “Something Borrowed, Something Green”
Image: CBS / Paramount+
One of the first alien species Gene Roddenberry created for Star Trek were the Orions, mentioned as trading in “green animal women” and slaves in “The Cage,” and then seen in one of the illusions for Pike created by the Talosians, with Susan Oliver’s Vina reimagined as one of those “green animal women.”
We saw Orion pirates on the original series in “Journey to Babel” and the animated series in the aptly titled “The Pirates of Orion,” and another sexy Orion woman, played by Yvonne Craig, in “Whom Gods Destroy.” Later uses of the Orions on Enterprise, Discovery, and Lower Decks—with an Orion woman in the main cast—have made the society a bit less cringe-y
Nine (Very) Short Fantasy Stories With Happy Endings
Photo: Lucas George Wendt [via Unsplash]
I love “bite-sized” fiction I can read while enjoying hot chai on rainy days. Lately, as the world seems to grow more pessimistic, I’ve been seeking out stories where good things happen, where characters make those good things happen… Little reminders that things can and do end well, and that we’re not always as helpless as we think. Here’s a list of some recent favorites.
Beyond “Guilty Pleasures”: When Reading Is Weird, or Hard, or Personal
Painting by George Kars (1911)
At some point in my twenties I broke up with the concept of a guilty pleasure. I had heard enough from guys who wanted to try to shame me for liking bands they didn’t think were good, or for reading books they didn’t think were important enough; I decided that I was going to like what I liked, without feeling guilty about that enjoyment. I enjoy bands that aren’t cool and I love the kind of off-brand candy that comes in a see-through bag for 59 cents. Why feel guilty?
There are plenty of reasons to have complicated relationships with things, though, especially art. There are authors we grew up reading or once loved who turned out to be terrible people. Filmmakers who make beautiful movies through which a thick misogynist streak runs. Musicians who also turn out to be real dicey people. The art is still there, speaking to us, and while sometimes you can put aside the ugly bits, sometimes you just can’t. Art is made by complex, flawed humans; experiencing it is not often simple. Complicated relationships are to be expected. (Claire Dederer wrote a whole brilliant book, Monsters, on this topic.)
But there are still books I feel weird talking about. Not guilty. Not bad. Maybe just … a little self-conscious. Squirmy. And that is all I’ve been reading lately.
Elantris Reread: Chapters 22 and 23
Happy Elantris Reread Day, Cosmere Chickens! Did you miss us? We’re back with Raoden and Sarene chapters, and they finally meet! We’ve been waiting for this for a while, so watch out for the much anticipated meeting and join us in the city of Elantris while Raoden discovers who Shaor really is and Sarene begins her Widow’s Trial!
