All its life, a small monster with emerald scales has been a source of never-ending food to larger and more powerful creatures who feast on the small monster’s limbs each time one regrows. This is the story of how the small monster meets an industrious artist and re-forms into someone new—someone who can’t be eaten.
When Suzy was born, her parents filled her mouth with sand. But this is normal and natural and the way things are always done.
And if she finds it uncomfortable to keep it there, to eat with it there, to talk with it there, she’s just going to have to learn to live with it.
“Sand” is a heart-wrenching tale about generational trauma and healing.
For the residents of this mycological ecosystem, creating art feeds the World around you and requires working in harmony with your inner voice. When one artist’s voice begins screaming, he’s forced to travel farther than he ever has before to reconcile with the noise in his head and find his true place in society before it’s too late.
Judge Dee returns to solve a new case involving a Parisian party gone wrong. But this time? Everyone in attendance is a suspect, including the judge himself.
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In this Martian city, each stop along the monorail has a purpose behind its namesake. However, none are quite like the Station of the Twelfth, and if you decide to visit, you’ll be sure to learn why.
In a fairy tale equal parts gorgeous and gruesome, village couples seek approval for marriage from a stag with golden rings adorning its horns. That is until one suitor, determined to convince a woman to fall in love with him, makes a rash decision.
I have now read the first five books of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, as well as about half of the prequel novel New Spring, and it’s been fascinating to watch the complexities of the story, and the world, unfold. There are quite a few mysteries that it may take a long time to get any resolution on—there are still nine more books to go, after all—but one thing in particular has caught my attention lately. There is something about Aes Sedai agelessness that just doesn’t add up. So I decided this week to go back through my reading and see if I could puzzle out the mystery of Aes Sedai agelessness, and how the Power really does—or does not—affect the age and appearance of a channeler.
A long, long time ago, in a quiet little room somewhere in the medieval quadrangle of an Oxford college, a professor named J.R.R. Tolkien found a blank page in a pile of examination papers and idly scribbled the words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Tolkien likely did not know that the sentence he wrote would become one of the most famous opening lines in English literature, and one of the most influential. This story began very modestly and quietly, after all, but it has continued with us ever since, for nearly a century now, reshaping children’s and fantasy literature, then role-playing games, movies, and global pop culture. The Hobbit wasn’t the first Middle-earth story Tolkien wrote, but it was the first one published, and the one that made everything else possible.
Rereading The Hobbit, it’s easy to see why it was such a success. It’s told with a wry voice, great charm and wit, and is wonderfully imaginative. Bilbo Baggins is one of children’s literature’s great heroes, despite being a fussy, wealthy, middle-aged man. What he lacks in childlike years he makes up for in childlike size, and the book aptly portrays the childlike wonder and fear of finding oneself thrust out into a bigger world, whether one likes it or not.
To my mind, a road trip is not an exodus or a flight from danger. It can start with one of those things but only transcends to “road trip” status when the danger is over, and the participants are looking for the next thing. Road trips are exploratory and often recreational, more ‘let’s see what’s around the next bend’ and less ‘if we don’t keep moving, we’ll have to eat grandpa.’
Photo: Robbie Down [via Unsplash]
Thanks to soaring house prices, many now living will be spared the burden of home ownership. Thanks to soaring rents, many may have the opportunity to enjoy lives in the great outdoors… But just in case you want to take on the burdens of home ownership or rental, note that not all accommodations are expensive, particularly those that require a little maintenance to bring up to code. Many are the books recounting (in hilarious or depressing detail) how the authors have fixed their homes.
Unsurprisingly, speculative fiction authors have been swift to see the narrative potential in home renovation, whether for those who wish to own their own homes or who merely wish to find an affordable rental. Consider these five examples:
The work of Yoon Ha Lee has always felt incredibly singular. Between his stunning prose, methodical exploration of intricate worlds he’s handing to us bit by bit, concepts that can range from the mind-blowing to the heart-rending, and beautifully sketched, complex characters—any new work I read by Lee always makes me feel incredibly lucky. From novels to short stories, Yoon Ha Lee’s work is a gift. In this latest collection, Lee shapes a beautiful pocket-sized collection of flash fiction fables and folktales, and in artful strokes of prose, conjures worlds of wonder.
The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales is slim, only around 100 pages all told, and some of those pages are dedicated to gorgeous illustrations. Black and white, these pieces of art break up the twenty-five stories within, almost like natural pauses for breath and contemplation, a necessity in a volume one could theoretically finish in an afternoon’s span. Because trust me, you don’t want to rush through this collection. Every story within is to be treasured, and if you rush through it, believe me, it won’t be long until you find yourself going back to savor them once more.
“Endgame”
Written by Rick Berman & Kenneth Biller & Brannon Braga and Robert Doherty
Directed by Allan Kroeker
Season 7, Episode 25/26
Production episode 271
Original air date: May 23, 2001
Stardate: 54973.4
Captain’s log. In 2404, Voyager is celebrating the tenth anniversary of her return home after twenty-three years in the Delta Quadrant. Admiral Janeway attends a party that also includes Captain Kim (CO of the U.S.S. Rhode Island), Commander Barclay (a teacher at the Academy), Torres (a Federation-Klingon Empire liaison), Paris (a holonovelist), the EMH (now married and having chosen the name Joe), and Naomi and her daughter, at the very least.
When The Blair Witch Project hit theaters in 1999, I’d just graduated from high school, and I went to see it to celebrate my newfound freedom from Hell.
Having grown up on television like Unsolved Mysteries and Sightings, I loved it, and for a time, I was fooled. Everywhere you went, you saw the clip of murdered student filmmaker Heather Donahue sobbing to her camcorder in extreme close-up. I scoured the internet for every scrap of knowledge about Elly Kedward, the witch of Blair, and the fate of the three hikers. Who were these people, and what killed them? What was the significance of the stick-figures?
Then I saw Heather in a Steak ‘n Shake commercial, and it was like stumbling into the living room on Christmas and finding my mother putting presents under the tree.
Last month, the internet became aware that Lee Pace—Thranduil, Ronan the Accuser, Brother Day, any number of other SFF-adjacent and beloved characters—likes science fiction. In fact he loves science fiction. He talked about it a lot. And then he tweeted the picks for his (imaginary?) science fiction book club, which was slightly baffling given that he paired the books with the images from an Esquire photo shoot in which he was (handsomely) dressed in very expensive outfits. But this is certainly not a complaint. Just an observation.
Lee Pace likes science fiction, and the internet likes Lee Pace, and I like all of these things. I also like recommending books. So in the spirit of everything good online being mashed together, I present to you: science fiction book club picks for some of Lee Pace’s SFF (and SFF-adjacent) characters.
After a first season that was horribly hit-and-miss, Lower Decks came back with a second season that fixed several of the first season’s problems, the primary one being that it mostly just sat back and allowed itself to be a Star Trek show, albeit one that was filled with humor and ridiculousness.
Even the reversals of the status quo changes shoehorned into the first-season finale were funny and actually worked in the context of the show. While it’s still not perfect, and suffers from some of the same inconsistent tone as season one, this sophomore outing is a far stronger show than the one that debuted in 2020. And so, we have, in contrast to the first-season roundup, the Good, the Bad, and the Awesome of season two…
Tom Holland will be in the Spider-suit again in December, but after Spider-Man: No Way Home, he’s swinging over to a new potential franchise with Uncharted. Based on the popular video game series created by Naughty Dog, Uncharted is, well… its trailer is a little bit Indiana Jones, a little bit National Treasure, a little bit Mission: Impossible, and I’m sorry, but there’s a little tiny Cocktail scene there at the start, too.
There’s a definite crossover between SFF themes and experimental literary practice in the UK of late, particularly in London. As the dominance of white, upper-middle class, male writers writing realist fiction about their lives continues to falter, new perspectives, new voices and new ways of thinking about the worlds we live in are emerging. Small presses are picking up on these exciting explorations of the boundaries of experience and literature, so I’m going to use this opportunity to direct the reader’s attention to the work of five writers who engage with science fiction and fantasy tropes, push the boundaries of literary genre and form, and are challenging the cultural status quo.
Next month, a new audiobook of The Eye of the World is being published—and this one will be narrated by none other than Moiraine Damodred herself! Actress Rosamund Pike will narrate the novel, the first in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. This new audiobook will be published just before Amazon’s Wheel of Time adaptation, arriving on November 16th—three days before the series premieres.
Two strangers learn that their soul mate might be both as close as breath and as distant as a star…
We’re thrilled to reveal the cover and share an excerpt from The Impossible Us by Sarah Lotz—publishing March 22, 2022 with Ace, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Hey, my Cosmere Chickens, it’s Thursday again—time for another Rhythm of War reread chapter. Welcome back, as we rejoin Kaladin for some sober conversation with Syl, and some very sneaky sneaking around the Tower. Also an Observation, and a realization that leads to a very tense mission… which we’ll get to in another three weeks. Come on in and join the discussion!
[He felt as if he were standing on the edge of eternity.]
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 cover Fritz Leiber’s “To Arkham and the Stars,” first published in 1966 in Arkham House’s The Dark Brotherhood. Spoilers ahead.
Near future America is easily a frightening place in any imagination, and in Christina Dalcher’s third novel Femlandia, America in 2022 is a completely broken, lawless society. After a massive economic breakdown, things rapidly fall apart, supply chains run dry, violence is the only thing that works, there is little food to be found, and everyone is left scavenging as best they can, both for food and safety. 40-something Miranda and her 16 year old daughter Emma have been trying to eke out a survival in their home, but Miranda knows that they won’t be able to stay there much longer. There aren’t many options for them, other than to go to the one place Miranda had sworn off from years ago—Femlandia, the women only commune her mother Win had established before the world broke, a community that is ‘Women Oriented. Self sufficient. Cooperative. Safe. Accepting. Natural. Free’.
Or is it.
Most of the time, books come into your life in the usual ways—a friend recommends one to you, or you browse through the shelves at your local bookstore deliberately looking for something that will catch your eye, or you see a new release advertised somewhere and decide to give it a shot.
But every once in a while, that small moment of serendipity slams into you like a lightning strike and a clap of thunder—you overhear a title, or you catch a glimpse of a cover, and you are gripped instantly with the knowledge that this is going to be one of those books, one of the ones that change you, that leave you better than you were before you read it: A better writer, or a better reader, or a better person, or… just nebulously, undefinably better—more healed, more loved, more whole.
A long, long time ago, in a quiet little room somewhere in the medieval quadrangle of an Oxford college, a professor named J.R.R. Tolkien found a blank page in a pile of examination papers and idly scribbled the words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” Tolkien likely did not know that the sentence he wrote would become one of the most famous opening lines in English literature, and one of the most influential. This story began very modestly and quietly, after all, but it has continued with us ever since, for nearly a century now, reshaping children’s and fantasy literature, then role-playing games, movies, and global pop culture. The Hobbit wasn’t the first Middle-earth story Tolkien wrote, but it was the first one published, and the one that made everything else possible.
Rereading The Hobbit, it’s easy to see why it was such a success. It’s told with a wry voice, great charm and wit, and is wonderfully imaginative. Bilbo Baggins is one of children’s literature’s great heroes, despite being a fussy, wealthy, middle-aged man. What he lacks in childlike years he makes up for in childlike size, and the book aptly portrays the childlike wonder and fear of finding oneself thrust out into a bigger world, whether one likes it or not.
