Let’s be real, the part of Spider-Man: Homecoming that we’re most looking forward to is Tony Stark playing superhero dad to Peter Parker. But according to a recently revealed (or recently retconned) bit of MCU lore, if not for Tony, Peter might not have lived to become Spider-Man.
Back in 1997, a little-known writer named Joanne Rowling gave a reading of her new fantasy novel—something about boy wizards and philosophers’ stones—at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Of course, twenty years later, we know that those children were among the lucky few to first hear the story of Harry Potter… and their parents got a phenomenal deal on tickets.
Thanks to the Edinburgh International Book Festival for sharing this cute bit of history for the 20th anniversary of the publication of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone!
Do you have a science fiction or fantasy book burning a hole in your laptop? Today might be the day you find it a home! Twitter is hosting #SFFPit today, so if you have a finished manuscript, you can craft a 140-character pitch, tag your tweet with a descriptor like #FA (Fantasy), #PA (Post-apocalyptic SF), or #WW (Weird West) and send it out into the world! The rules are simple: if a literary agent likes your pitch, you can follow their instructions to follow up with a formal query. If you want to support a pitch, you can retweet it, but don’t like it—only agents are supposed to like, and you don’t want to clutter another writer’s notifications. And remember, only pitch if you have a completed manuscript!
Click through for some samples!
The latest Game of Thrones trailer is a great mess of action designed to delight and confuse the viewer, but whooooaaaaa is that every Greyjoy ship that ever existed?
Uh-oh.
Entertainment Weekly has revealed an exclusive excerpt and the cover to John Scalzi’s Head On, a brand new story set in the same universe as 2014’s Lock In. Check out the cover art below!
How could we not have seen it before? It was right in front of us, through two deceptively simple words: “Yub nub.”
Beehive Books has a funded Kickstarter (that’s ending today!) for three gorgeous editions of classics that you don’t often see; The Willows, The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde, and The Island of Doctor Moreau. We are very sad that these will not be appearing in bookstores everywhere, but we figured you might like to stare at them with us!
We are all for bringing reading material on the morning and evening commute, but if you happen to forget a book, Subway Library has you covered. The six-week program from the New York City MTA and New York Public Library, celebrating the new wifi in underground subway stations, is offering hundreds of ebook excerpts and short stories timed to half-hour, hourlong, and two-hour-plus commutes (which might come in handy if your train runs into some unforeseen delays).
Charlie Brooker’s frighteningly prescient television series Black Mirror is all about how humans use social media, video games, and other forms of technology to turn on each other in disturbing ways. But his latest project in that universe is exploring an entirely new format: the book. Del Rey, Penguin Random House’s science fiction and fantasy imprint, will release a series of three anthologies collecting the kinds of stories that made for nightmare-inducing TV episodes. Brooker will edit the collections, which will include “original, mid-length stories penned by soon to be announced popular writers.”
“Choose Your Own Adventure” was a groundbreaking book series that prepared many of our child minds for the internet…or for keeping track of all the endnotes in Infinite Jest if you’re into that sort of thing. But did you know that each twisty, unforgiving story in the CYOA series has a map? The good folks over at Atlas Obscura have dug into the books and the maps they’ve generated.
Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series returns on June 13 this year with Down Among the Sticks and Bones (then again in early 2018 with Book 3, Beneath the Sugar Sky!) expanding on the origin of “portal fantasy” children Jacqueline and Jillian. (Also known as Jack and Jill.)
The Wayward Children series explores how to deal with real life once the portal to your own personal magical world has closed, but it also gives readers a rough guideline for how all of these different portal worlds—like Narnia, Oz, Wonderland, and so on—relate to each other.
You know how those big family get togethers, when you’re the only kid and everyone else is… dead? Pixar’s latest animated adventure feels your pain. Check out the latest trailer for Coco!
With a $100+ million opening weekend, the Wonder Woman movie is now all but assured a sequel. Star Gal Gadot and director Patty Jenkins are both already signed on for a second Wonder Woman film, and an April 2017 Entertainment Weekly interview with Jenkins reveals that were one to take place:
She can’t give away many story details, but does say it would be set in America. “The story will take place in the U.S., which I think is right. She’s Wonder Woman. She’s got to come to America. It’s time.”
With that framework, we began buzzing about just what we’d like to see Diana do in America and what we’d like the second film to remedy. No spoilers for the movie in the article. (Spoilers in the comments, though!)
A number of years ago, Patton Oswalt shared a heartwarming story during his seminal album, Werewolves and Lollipops. The story was of an obscure film he was obsessed with, titled DEATH BEAD: The Bed that Eats. He used the film’s completion as a motivating tool. After all, if the genius behind DEATH BED: The Bed That Eats, writer/director George Barry, could finish his script, so could Oswalt. We’re happy to report that Twitterer Aspartame Valerian has now unleashed a new horror upon us: “DEATH LOAF: The Bread That Eats People.” Now, they didn’t just stop at a fun pun, oh no—they built DEATH LOAF, and allowed it to menace them for online amusement.
Click through for highlights!
Sure, we all know that Kylo Ren has lots of feelings about his grandfather, the-Sith-Lord-formerly-known-as-Darth-Vader. But did you ever stop to wonder what sort of feelings grandpa might have in return? What Anakin Skywalker’s Force ghost might have to say about all this?
Because we have a pretty good idea.
