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. . .
Doctor Who is back! Last Saturday, we got the first new episode in absolute yoinks, and there’s tons more to come. Returning showrunner Russell T. Davies has said that one of his goals is to make more Who spinoffs, the same way RTD’s previous stint was accompanied by Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. (Full disclosure: RTD gave a very generous cover blurb to my novel Victories Greater Than Death.)
As someone who thinks about Doctor Who all the time (it’s true!) I’ve been musing about spin-offs I’d like to see. Here’s a bunch. (Warning: Spoilers for old Doctor Who stories ahead…)
This past weekend, I read Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory. Not quite in one sitting—sleep was required, at one point—but in under 24 hours. I’d given myself permission to just read, to not do any of the things that were nagging at me, and I took that permission and ran with it.
The book is fantastic; you shouldn’t, by now, need me to tell you that. But a detail in the way it’s presented got me thinking about what a reader does or doesn’t want to know when they pick up a book. This is not so much a matter of what counts as a spoiler—an eternal debate in which I do not wish to embroil myself!—but what information is too little, what is too much, and what is just enough.
I work part-time in an older university theatre where I frequently encounter relics of bygone eras. One of note: a disused communication system whose handsets survive in parts of the building that have not yet been renovated (pictured below).
To give you an idea how old those are: the Earl Stieler whose name adorns them retired in 1991. I am not sure if the handsets still work, as I’ve not had the opportunity to test the system. However, when held to the ear, they produce eerie whispering sounds, as if from a realm of despairing and lost souls. Perhaps I will round up an orphaned, friendless voluntold and see what happens when two handsets are used simultaneously. The results cannot help but be educational!
A quirk of old-timey phones and phone-like devices is that they gave no hint as to who might be calling. It could be your beloved granny. It could be Satan. The only way to find out was to listen. Even then, one could not be sure the caller was who they claimed to be…
Those who are impatient for more Suicide Squad television are in luck. While we’ll eventually have a second season of the live-action Peacemaker and an Amanda Waller spinoff heading to Max, we have Harley Quinn, Peacemaker, King Shark and others heading to the world of anime sometime in 2024, and we’ve got a trailer to prove it.
It feels like it’s been years since the first season of Paramount Plus’s Halo made its debut. And in fact by the time season two rolls around, it will have been nearly two whole years since the successful video game adaptation first aired—and became the streaming platform’s second most-watched show.
Now, you can watch that first season even if you’re not a subscriber, because the entire first season is currently free to watch on YouTube.
The creature feature is a gloriously varied subgenre, showcasing a fabulous array of imaginative monsters and incorporating elements from basically every other genre, from horror to comedy and everything in-between. If you love a movie with monsters—be it gremlins or graboids, kaiju or King Kong—and want to expand beyond the usual Hollywood offerings, then I’ve got some fantastic suggestions for you. The six films below offer an international assemblage of creatures drawn from various spots around the globe.
I heard that some folks wanted me to do a read of Where’s My Cow, which also appears in this book. Which is a great idea, so I’ll do that as the first read of the new year, after we’ve finished this one!
She’s back! But also she’s here for the first time. Director George Miller’s long-awaited Furiosa, the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, is out next year, and the first trailer is… well, it looks like a prequel. I can certainly say that about it.
Photo: Quino Al [via Unsplash]
I work part-time in an older university theatre where I frequently encounter relics of bygone eras. One of note: a disused communication system whose handsets survive in parts of the building that have not yet been renovated (pictured below).
To give you an idea how old those are: the Earl Stieler whose name adorns them retired in 1991. I am not sure if the handsets still work, as I’ve not had the opportunity to test the system. However, when held to the ear, they produce eerie whispering sounds, as if from a realm of despairing and lost souls. Perhaps I will round up an orphaned, friendless voluntold and see what happens when two handsets are used simultaneously. The results cannot help but be educational!
A quirk of old-timey phones and phone-like devices is that they gave no hint as to who might be calling. It could be your beloved granny. It could be Satan. The only way to find out was to listen. Even then, one could not be sure the caller was who they claimed to be…
There’s nothing quite like seeing two A-list actors try to interview each other, and Variety knows it. The trade publication hosts a series of actor-on-actor interviews, and the latest batch has some fun pair-ups.
I keep thinking about something that Philippines-based author Thea Guanzon said in a recent interview with Paste Books: “Coming at it from the perspective of someone who lives in the Global South, fanfiction opened doors for me that I otherwise would not have had access to.” Her debut novel The Hurricane Wars may have started as a Star Wars fanfic, but its transformation into a Southeast Asian-inspired fantasy romance has a greater emotional resonance because of where it started. Like fierce heroine Talasyn, Guanzon can credit a mix of luck and her own drive with achieving a dream—here, a published novel—that had previously seemed impossible.
More than a few folks were upset to hear the news that Netflix didn’t move forward with a third season of Shadow and Bone. And to make matters worse, we also found out that the streamer commissioned a writers’ room for the Six of Crows spinoff, but decided not to move forward to production with the already-written scripts.
The second season of Our Flag Means Death introduced us to some new characters. One of the new folks we meet is Zheng Yi Sao, a pirate who brought China to its knees, and who also is more than a little interested in Oluwande and his “softness.”
Zheng Yi Sao is based on a real-life pirate (though she lived decades after Ed and Stede roamed the open seas), and her introduction to the crew we’ve come to love is a welcome addition. And just like Ed and Stede are markedly different than their real-life counterparts, Ruibo Qian, who plays Zheng Yi on the show, brought her own take to her character as well.
Sometimes a thoughtful note or a sweet gift from a secret admirer can be a much-appreciated confidence boost. These anonymous kindnesses let you know that somebody’s thinking about you and even better, thinks you’re pretty great. An admirer might keep their identity a secret for several different reasons: maybe they’re working on a nice surprise or a grand gesture, maybe they’re smitten but shy, maybe they’re just trying to send a bit of kindness out into the world. Or maybe they’re planning to murder you and don’t want to get caught. In Carol Ellis’s My Secret Admirer (1989) and R.L. Stine’s Secret Admirer (1996), Jenny Fowler and Selena Goodrich have to figure out who their secret admirers are and what they want–before it’s too late.
The Black Phone continues to ring. The 2022 adaptation of Joe Hill’s story was one of last year’s most profitable movies, and naturally, a sequel is on the way. Deadline reports that a possibly surprising number of actors will be returning for the phone’s next ring: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, and Miguel Mora.
If you’re a regular reader of Tor.com, then there’s a pretty good chance you like movies about aliens. If you’ve already seen the classics of the genre countless times—movies like Alien (1979), The Thing (1982), and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)—and you’re looking for something a little more esoteric, then here, for your consideration, are five alien movies that are hidden gems…
This past weekend, I read Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory. Not quite in one sitting—sleep was required, at one point—but in under 24 hours. I’d given myself permission to just read, to not do any of the things that were nagging at me, and I took that permission and ran with it.
The book is fantastic; you shouldn’t, by now, need me to tell you that. But a detail in the way it’s presented got me thinking about what a reader does or doesn’t want to know when they pick up a book. This is not so much a matter of what counts as a spoiler—an eternal debate in which I do not wish to embroil myself!—but what information is too little, what is too much, and what is just enough.
There’s a new Stephen King adaptation to add to your list (you keep a list, right? A really long list?). According to The Hollywood Reporter, director Francis Lawrence (Constantine) is in “final talks” to direct The Long Walk for Lionsgate (who just picked up the rights). JT Mollner (Outlaws and Angels) will write the script.
