A post-human civilization of synthetic beings, fixated on the concept of children, grapples with the meaning of life…after life ceases to exist.
After the Animal Flesh Beings
Trailer for The Nun II Will Make You Never Want to Look At a Newsstand Again
The latest installment in the $2 billion-grossing Conjuring franchise is almost here, and while it doesn’t star Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, The Nun II does see the return of the demon who takes the form of a woman of the cloth who, in the recently released trailer at least, terrorizes everyone she comes in contact with.
New Young Adult SFF for July & August 2023
Holy moly, this summer is packed with young adult science fiction, fantasy, and especially horror books! I hope you’ve cleared your schedule, because you’re going to be hard-pressed to not end up adding to your already unmanageable TBR.
Marrying the Sea: Maddalena and the Dark by Julia Fine
It is the time of Vivaldi. No longer at its apex of power, Venice seems more than ever to be sinking into the sea. Torn between the modern world and the medieval, religious order and secular desire, old money and new, the inhabitants of the floating city live their lives vying for whatever power the water might afford them.
Maddalena is no exception. A young girl from an aristocratic family embroiled in scandal, she faces marriage or extinction. And so, at the Feast of the Ascension, as the Doge marries the city to the sea, she looks to the sea as a source of control. She wishes on the mysterious force she sees in its dark and murky waves, for the thing she desires most—not sweeping social change, not even sovereignty over her own body, but to be seen and recognized by someone, anyone. When she enters the prestigious Ospedale della Pietà conservatory and meets the young violin prodigy Louisa, she knows immediately that she’s been granted her wish.
“I fly the ship” — Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: “Among the Lotus Eaters”
Image: CBS / Paramount+
Prior to Discovery’s second season, we only knew of two specific missions of Captain Pike and the U.S.S. Enterprise. One was, of course, the journey to Talos IV that we saw in “The Cage” and the flashbacks in “The Menagerie.” The other, though, was the mission right before that one: a trip to Rigel VII that resulted in three people, including Pike’s yeoman, killed in action and Spock badly wounded (which is why Leonard Nimoy was seen limping in “The Cage”). One of the illusions the Talosians sent Pike and Vina to in “The Cage” was to Rigel VII, complete with castle and warrior armed with medieval weapons.
In “Among the Lotus Eaters,” that planet is revisited.
Finding Identity, Family, and Community With Percy Jackson
A few weeks before I started at middle school at Rio Norte Jr. High, I read a book called The Lightning Thief. My brother had won it from the Summer Reading Challenge at Barnes & Noble, but my mother, who was an elementary school teacher and who had heard good things about the book, encouraged me to read it, too. At first, I had refused. It seemed like a book for boys. It’s funny, in retrospect. I can’t imagine making that sort of distinction today. But I was twelve years old. I clung to the rigidity of the gender binary because I was aware, on some level, that I did not fit neatly within it, and being abnormal was something I deeply feared.
A Fandom of One: Loving the Books No One Else Knows About
Photo: Benjamin Raffetseder [via Unsplash]
There’s a book I love that no one else knows about. It caught my eye in the middle school library, magically shelved right in the spot of the fiction section where I liked to read, curled up safely in the corner. The cover was eerily appealing, with dandelions framing a three-faced figure. Her pointy faces looked angry. But the fox on the spine looked nice.
Some years later, I found a new copy of this book, Pat O’Shea’s The Hounds of the Morrigan, with a new cover: a gorgeous Kinuko Craft painting that I loved even though it didn’t look right to my young self’s memory of the book. The book isn’t lush and rich but spry and scrappy, a story about Pidge and his sister Brigit, about Cooroo the fox and magic candies and a lot more details that I remember disjointedly. A spider named Napoleon. Wanting the hounds to be nice. The cover wasn’t my cover, but I was still thrilled to see the book available again: Maybe someone else would read it!
I still only know one person who knows this story. I know there are other readers out there, but it feels like I love this one alone. Don’t you have a book like that? And isn’t it a weird feeling?
Announcing the 2023 Hugo Award Finalists
The finalists for the 2023 Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book have been announced!
This year, more than 25,000 individual works were submitted, and the Worldcon committee notes that “The data indicates that this is the largest-ever participation of non-English speaking members in the history of the Hugo Awards.”
The awards are voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Society and given each year at Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention, which will take place in October in Chengdu, China.
Congratulations to all the finalists! The full list is below.
Elantris Reread: Chapters Five and Six
Good day, Cosmere Chickens, and welcome to another exciting installment of the Elantris Reread!
Well… maybe not that exciting. Admittedly, not a lot happens in these chapters—but we do learn a lot about Hrathen and Sarene and meet some absolutely delightful family members of Sarene’s…
Series: Elantris Reread
Nimona’s Latest Transformation Is Into a Dazzling, Affecting Film
Screenshot: Netflix
It’s a wonder Nimona ever got made. The tale of a puckish, chaotic, shapeshifting would-be sidekick and a presumed-evil knight began life as a Tumblr comic by ND Stevenson when he was in college. It transformed into a graphic novel in 2015 and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The movie rights got picked up, then languished, then ran into trouble when the studio making the film got sold, and the film was canceled.
In swept Netflix and Annapurna, who switched things up again, turning the movie into a streaming release. Apparently there were promotional plastic pink rhinos and everything.
I remind you of all of this because backstory is important, and because it’s kind of delicious that a story about transformation—of bodies, hearts, ideals, countries—has been through so many forms. Like the best adaptations, Nimona the movie is not Nimona the book, but it has the same heart: one that looks for the truth of things, whatever shape that truth may take.
John Wick: Chapter 4 Almost Had A Very Different Ending
Screenshot: Lionsgate
This post, as the title above strongly suggests, will talk about the ending of the excellent John Wick: Chapter 4. If you don’t want to be spoiled, move on to the next post! Read More »
History As Hallucination: Siddhartha Deb’s The Light at the End of the World
I don’t normally recommend reading a novel while ill, but there’s something about Siddhartha Deb’s The Light at the End of the World that makes taking it in while in the midst of the slightly altered state that can come from a light sickness seem entirely fitting. Since we’re still early in the review, I should also stress that this is absolutely intended as a compliment.
Greta Gerwig May Follow Barbie With an Even Bigger Fantasy: The Chronicles of Narnia
Screenshot: Walt Disney Pictures
First, a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world; then, a land of magic, Jesus allegories, and Turkish Delight. In 2018, Netflix bought the rights to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia books, and the streamer may have found a director for a least a couple of them: The Hollywood Reporter says Greta Gerwig is attached to direct two films in the series.
Which two? Who knows? Which reading order are we going in? What if they do The Magician’s Nephew first? Wouldn’t that be something?
The Skrull Who Loved Me — Secret Invasion’s “Betrayed”
Image: Marvel / Disney+
Each of the first two episodes of Secret Invasion had a surprise ending, first the bad surprise that ended “Resurrection,” then the intriguing surprise that ended “Promises.” This week, “Betrayed” doesn’t so much end as stop, and it’s an extremely jarring end to an episode that, like last week, does a good job with conversations if not necessarily plot, and which, like two weeks ago, continues a tired trope.
The Robin Hood You Know Is a Lie
Illustration by Louis Rhead (1912)
In the earliest tales, Robin Hood was many things—gambler, fighter, braggart, gentleman, con artist, master of disguise—but he was never a nobleman.
Despite scholarly fights and centuries of material to choose from, no one has ever agreed on why this change became so popular. It may have been a desire to link the legendary bandit with a real live person (such as Fulk fitz Warin or Robert Hod), or fear that the poor folks of the world might read stories of Robin’s origin and start a rebellion of their own, or simply the novelty of a man displaced and still carrying on despite it all. No matter the cause, the version of Robin that we come across most often is a figure of privilege. He’s an earl or a member of the landed gentry. He’s in the forest for now, while he waits for the rightful king and the restoration of his lands and position. With very few exceptions, modern Robin Hood stories are about a rich dude who is briefly less rich, and thankfully doesn’t hate poor people.
The Book That Made Me Believe in Aliens (But Not in the Way You Think)
Beginning Operations cover art by John Harris
There was a time, not that long ago, when if you told people you were a science fiction fan they would ask you—no doubt thinking of The X-Files—whether you really believed in aliens. My usual response was to reply, putting a gentle emphasis on the second word, that it’s called science fiction for a reason. But the fact is that I did, and do, believe in aliens … but not in that way.
I do believe that there are intelligent alien species out there in the universe somewhere (though the Fermi Paradox is troubling, and the more I learn about the peculiar twists and turns that the evolution of life on this planet has taken to get to this point the more I wonder if we might, indeed, be alone in the universe), but I don’t believe that they have visited Earth, at least not in noticeable numbers or in recent history. But I do believe in aliens as people—as complex beings with knowable, if not immediately comprehensible, motives, who can be as good and bad as we can, and not just monsters who want to eat us or steal our water or our breeding stock. And I can date this belief to a specific book.
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