A new novelette set in the realms of Kerstin Hall’s acclaimed The Mkalis Cycle series. The 813th realm of Mkalis has fallen to a cruel and mercurial god, but Tahmais, its would-be successor, finds an unlikely ally in her quest to reclaim it at any cost…
Sneak a peek at the cover for Kerstin Hall’s new standalone fantasy novel ASUNDER, coming August 2024 from Tordotcom!
A contentious election and radicalized locals interfere with Canadian recovery workers’ efforts at the site of a catastrophic flood in near-future Mississippi.
This story is set in the same future as The Lost Cause, Cory Doctorow’s new novel, available everywhere on November 14, 2023.
While learning the ropes from a crafty Jazz Age bank robber, a young stowaway discovers their authentic self, a hidden gift, and that there are no straight lines when you run the fox roads…
A new Judge Dee mystery!
While visiting the mysterious castle of Maidstone for an investigation, Judge Dee and Jonathan discover the only thing more menacing than a vampire child is twin vampire children…
On one of their earliest Visigoth assignments, Graff and Ell stumble into each other’s secrets (and one significant surprise) while conducting a recovery mission on a mining asteroid scheduled for imminent pulverization…
The sister of an abducted child is haunted by a sinister figure who may or may not be real. . .
I think this has been the greatest movie year of my lifetime. I still have a long list of films I want to see before New Year’s Day, but so far the pattern has been: go to a movie, be astonished by it, worry that people are going to think I’m a shill because all my reviews are positive. (I promise you, if I think a film is crap I’ll tell you to save your precious money and far more precious time.) But now here we are, today, with me saying that Godzilla Minus One is one of the best movies of the year.
YES, this year, with all those other extraordinary movies in it.
There’s a fight a-brewin’: On September 26th, Emily Wilson’s translation of the ancient Greek epic poem the Iliad was released (published by W.W. Norton), the natural follow-up to her 2018 translation of the Odyssey. That initial project garnered a great deal of attention as being the first published translation of the Odyssey done by a woman—into English. Wilson, for her part, prefers to emphasize her work’s more immediate qualities than her own metahistorical first-ness.
The marketing campaign for Wilson’s Odyssey was very successful, however, due in whatever proportion to usage of the reliable “first woman to ____” narrative, and the book received popular acclaim as well as positive scholarly reviews. To some people, it was their first introduction to the Homeric epic. For others, it was the first time that they really connected to the story, freshly delivered to them in more idiomatically accessible language. In either case, I have anecdotally heard several people say that they first developed a deep personal connection to Homeric poetry and to Odysseus’ story through Wilson’s translation.
Lately I feel like everyone is talking about masculinity and what it means to be a good dude. Last month, I was on a panel at the Pride on the Page book festival with Jacob Tobia (Sissy) who was saying that we’ve spent decades expanding gender roles for women in mainstream society—and women finally won the right to wear pants in the workplace (for now)—but meanwhile, too many guys men remain trapped, unable to express healthy emotions or process all of their trauma.
As someone who was so successful at being a man that I actually graduated, I want to help!
So it’s a really good thing that science fiction and fantasy offer us so many excellent examples of guys who are secure in their masculinity and ready to do the right thing, even when it’s tough.
Treasure and her mother lost everything when Treasure’s father died.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Dazzling, a new take on Nigerian mythology by Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ—out from The Overlook Press on December 5.
The second season of Our Flag Means Death saw a lot of big changes for the crew, particularly for Stede Bonnet, the gentleman-turned-pirate who’s now trying to navigate his relationship with Ed (a.k.a. Blackbeard).
According to Rhys Darby, who plays Stede on the show, his character’s relationship with Ed wasn’t something that was in Bonnet’s original plan. “He probably wasn’t expecting to find love, but he found it in the most notorious pirate,” Darby told me in a recent interview, adding “imagine you’re in Lord of the Rings, and you’ve fallen in love with Sauron or something. Not that Ed’s that evil, but in pirate terms, he certainly was. But then when you meet a person and you realize that that’s all a façade, because of course it is. Because they need love and that’s why they are the way they are.”
[Note: Spoilers ahead for season two of Our Flag Means Death.]
Watching Elf has become a holiday tradition for many since it premiered in 2003. Twenty years later, and we’ll be able to see the film again on the big screen—a really big screen, in fact.
Head below for the full list of science fiction titles heading your way in December!
Over the last three years, some Pixar films had streaming-only releases: 2020’s Soul, 2021’s Luca, and 2022’s Turning Red. But in early 2024, you’ll be able to see these animated features as they were meant to be seen: In actual movie theaters, accompanied by countless enthused and/or screaming children.
Welcome back to Dissecting The Dark Descent, where we lovingly delve into the guts of David Hartwell’s seminal 1987 anthology story by story, and in the process, explore the underpinnings of a genre we all love. For an in-depth introduction, here’s the intro post.
Even if you haven’t read it, you’ve encountered “Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner. Wagner’s unusual Adirondack gothic story about cosmic-horror folk art can be seen as an inspiration for works as diverse as Skinny Puppy songs, audio dramas, an “imaginary soundtrack” album, and most notably The Blair Witch Project. While its central image—odd configurations of sticks lashed together with a vague purpose—might be its most iconic element, it’s only a small part of what makes this story so effective. Rather, Wagner’s tight focus on his protagonist’s own mental state and limited interaction with the outside world, his use of more lurid and sudden horror elements, and the cryptic details suffused throughout the work all underscore the horror of Leverett’s predicament and the self-isolation that becomes his own undoing. Using this relatively simple structure, “Sticks” weaves a portrait of trauma, isolation, and obsession every bit as intricate and unnerving as the latticework of sticks Colin Leverett can’t help but obsess over.
Lately I feel like everyone is talking about masculinity and what it means to be a good dude. Last month, I was on a panel at the Pride on the Page book festival with Jacob Tobia (Sissy) who was saying that we’ve spent decades expanding gender roles for women in mainstream society—and women finally won the right to wear pants in the workplace (for now)—but meanwhile, too many guys men remain trapped, unable to express healthy emotions or process all of their trauma.
As someone who was so successful at being a man that I actually graduated, I want to help!
So it’s a really good thing that science fiction and fantasy offer us so many excellent examples of guys who are secure in their masculinity and ready to do the right thing, even when it’s tough.
The upheaval in space will continue: Apple TV+ has renewed Foundation for a third season.
There are few things greater in fiction than the annihilation of the magical boy trope, which is only one of many exquisite things about Alex Pheby’s Cities of the Weft trilogy. I first came to Mordew knowing little about the book or the world or why Marlon James was calling it “the future of fantasy.” Now I’m leaving Malarkoi sated, with a full belly from the second installment of Pheby’s extraordinary creation, with even less certainty of how things are going to end. The Cities of the Weft isn’t just a coming-of-age story dissected, subverted, and reassembled into a chaotic new design—that would be doing it a disservice, as it would be to reduce it to a typical fantasy bildungsroman with moralistic lessons and the sort of sentimentality common to the subgenre’s commitment to pedagogy and closure. Pheby makes a close study of these familiar forms and devices and structures, and promptly throws them out the window.
This week in Reading The Wheel of Time, Perrin leaves a sort-of successful meeting with Masema, only to return home and learn of Faile’s capture. They’re short chapters, but there is a lot of emotional work being done for Perrin that I find really fascinating. While I was reading these chapters I suddenly felt very keyed into the fact that Jordan is a war veteran, and that some of what he builds into his characters and in the violence of the world comes from that. Of course I’ve known about Jordan’s history and considered it before during the read. But this was the moment that I felt like the experience was in the page, staring up at me, as I read.
Nestled between thick tomes and lengthy fantasy epics sits one of my favorite 2023 reads: Rachel Hartman’s Tess of the Road. The novel was published in 2018 to some critical acclaim; frankly, I have no idea where I first heard of the book, but I’m glad I did. As soon as I’d finished turning the final page, I immediately began yearned to see Tess’s adventures brought to the screen…
All seventeen-year-old Quill wants is a break from the family business.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Evergreen by Devin Greenlee, an urban fairytale about a dryad who risks immortality for love—out from Entangled Teen on January 16, 2024.
As if the idea of being in space were not stressful enough on its own, here comes a new thriller that doubles down on the terror. Or triples, I guess, depending on your own personal stress-math. I.S.S. is about two groups of astronauts who are aboard the International Space Station when things go absolutely bugfuck haywire down on Earth.
Head below for the full list of fantasy titles heading your way in December!
“In a Mirror, Darkly”
Written by Mike Sussman
Directed by James L. Conway
Season 4, Episode 18
Production episode 094
Original air date: April 22, 2005
Date: January 13, 2155
Captain’s star log. We open in Bozeman, Montana in 2063, the familiar tableau from First Contact of a Vulcan ship landing and making the titular contact with Earth. But then Cochrane whips out a pistol and shoots the Vulcan and the humans board the ship and take it over. Yup, we’re in the Mirror Universe…
