News What to Watch

What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Sound the Bryan Fuller Klaxon! Dust Bunny Is Streaming on HBO Max

Plus: Mother Mary, and a surprisingly wholesome connection between Fight Club and dogs

By Molly Templeton

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Published on April 24, 2026

Image: Lionsgate

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Image: Lionsgate

Somehow, Friday came around again. Felt like it took a minute, though. Somehow, it is also almost May, but I’m not going to think about that just yet. There’s just so much to do, and to read, and to watch, and everything this week is just a little bit creepy. We’re not venturing into full-on horror territory, at least not so far as I can tell—just going places that are off somehow. A little askew. A little out of the realm of our world. Or, well, maybe just terrible, at least in the case of Widow’s Bay. I just feel pretty strongly that any small town that loudly insists it’s done no cannibalism is probably lying about something.

May there be no small-town (or mall) (or monster) horrors in your weekend. Soak up some sun, hug your friends, and call your reps before you settle in for your watching and/or reading!

Sometimes Mads Mikkelsen Is the Monster Under the Bed, and Sometimes He Hunts the Monster Under the Bed

Late last year, Bryan Fuller’s feature film debut Dust Bunny was in theaters for what felt like about five minutes. I missed it. Probably a lot of people missed it. But our time is now: Dust Bunny is now on HBO Max. The movie is about a little girl who hires Mads Mikkelsen to kill the monster under her bed. It is, of course, about a lot more than that, but the premise—at least in the hands of Pushing Daisies and Hannibal creator Fuller—is almost enough for me as-is. “Fairy tale—the old kind with blood and death and dread—is pretty firmly where Dust Bunny resides,” wrote Emmet Asher-Perrin in the second of two pieces about the film. (This one probably has spoilers, so I only read the first two paragraphs. Just a warning.) The trailer looks cool and perfect in a perfectly cool Bryan Fuller way. I am confident that I will see something in this movie that I’ve never seen before—beyond the already-fantastic image of Mikkelsen in a yellow tracksuit. I’m going to make a date with myself to watch this as soon as humanly possible, and I’m going to love it.

What Is It About Small Towns, Though: Widow’s Bay

HBO Max has a lot going on this week, or at least a couple of things. On the 29th, the new series Widow’s Bay premieres. I do not know what to make of the one trailer for this series, which is vague, maybe sort of funny, and also very threatening. The show begins in five days, and there has only been the one little teaser. That feels very sneaky! But it has a couple of things on its sneaky little side: Matthew Rhys, perpetually excellent in everything for a couple of decades now (including The Americans and Perry Mason), and creator Katie Dippold, whose background is mostly in funny things, like Parks and Recreation and the movie The Heat. The synopsis explains that Rhys plays the mayor, who the locals sneer at for being soft. But I’m suspicious. I think his face looks a little … untrustworthy. I think there might be more going on there. Next week, we’ll all get to find out.  

But Also About Malls. And Sometimes Plants?

Speaking of familiar spaces and uneasy relationships between longtime tenants and newcomers, Sarah Maria Griffin’s excellent novel Eat the Ones You Love is now out in paperback. Come for the quarter-life crisis; stay for the precision-crafted portrait of a dying mall; get wrapped up in the needs of a very hungry plant. Said plant lives at the heart of the mall and has viny tendrils in absolutely everything, but especially the heart of the woman who runs the flower shop. Her new employee, Shell Pine, has recently moved home to reinvent herself after a breakup. Shell is a bit lost, a bit vulnerable, and totally unprepared for Baby, the plant at the center of the mall. But who could be prepared for a towering, hungry, human-eating plant? Yes, the premise says Little Shop of Horrors, but there’s so much more going on here, and Griffin draws the relationships among the mall’s remaining employees with love and familiarity. It’s such a good read. 

Mother Mary: Mother May I?

To return to the theme of “I don’t exactly know what’s going on here, but I think I like it?” we have Mother Mary, the latest film from The Green Knight director David Lowery. That movie was green; this one is all gothic gray and blue before it leans into red. (At least in the trailer.) The story is something about a fraught friendship between Anne Hathaway’s pop star and Micaela Coel’s designer. The draw is Lowery’s lush imagery (red! RED) and the crackling tension between the two women. And also the fact that I have watched every trailer for this movie and I have no idea what it’s about. How refreshing! Reviews, perhaps unsurprisingly, are all over the place. It’s lush! It’s empty! It’s familiar! It’s weird! It’s too glossy! I’m intrigued by what Brian Tallerico wrote at RogerEbert.com: “It is another story about the intersection of fame and art, but it’s not like one you’ve seen before, a two-hander that owes as much to The Exorcist as it does to Lady Gaga.” Does this not appeal? Will it not entertain? I’m betting it will.

The First Rule of Fight Club Is…

My personal first rule of Fight Club is that I am generally wary of discussing Fight Club. You just don’t know which kind of Fight Club people you’re going to get: the ones who take it at face value or the ones who think there’s a lot going on under the surface, that it’s really necessary not to take it at face value. But I do feel strongly that of the two big, attention-grabbing films of 1999, Fight Club is superior to American Beauty. And I went to see it on the big screen last night, here in Portland, because it was showing as a fundraiser for a local theater, and author Chuck Palahniuk did a Q&A afterward.

The movie holds up. It’s gross, it’s funny, it’s not even that violent by modern standards; it’s mean, it’s sly, and it’s pretty incredible to watch once you understand what’s really going on with the characters. I thought a lot about my beloved Mr. Robot, and how deeply it walks in Fight Club‘s footsteps—something I never thought about while that show was on, just because I hadn’t seen this movie in so very, very long. And it also grows more interesting when you hear Palahniuk talk about it, and about his work in general, and his avoidance of victimizing characters. Listening to him talk is very interesting because the man is a master of answering questions without actually answering the question that was asked. One of his elusive-but-revealing answers involved telling a story about his dog, who died recently, and about how expensive emergency pet care is. Palahniuk has set up a living trust that means that all the money from his work will, eventually, go to a program called the Velvet Assistance Fund, which pays for treatment of sick pets. So whenever you see Fight Club, or read a Palahniuk book, you are, in a way, contributing to that fund. I think that’s beautiful, so I wanted you to know about it.[end-mark]

The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: Sound the Bryan Fuller Klaxon! <i>Dust Bunny</i> Is Streaming on HBO Max appeared first on Reactor.

News The Legend of Vox Machina

There Will Be Ducks in The Legend of Vox Machina Season 4 Trailer

Don’t f— a duck

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on April 23, 2026

Screenshot: Prime Video

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Screenshot: Prime Video

The fourth season of The Legend of Vox Machina is almost upon us, and Prime Video released a trailer today to give us a tease of what’s in store for our favorite ragtag heroes.

The upcoming episodes take place a year after season three’s Chroma Conclave. The group has separated, searching for their respective needs and wants. Luckily for us (and perhaps unluckily for them), however, a long-slumbering evil has awoken and threatens the entire realm. The gang must get back together to vanquish it.

We perhaps see some of that foe in today’s trailer. At the very least, it’s clear the crew is facing a lot of challenges given by the amount of swearing going on. We also see a little bit more of the new character (new to the animated series, at least) Taryon Darrington, voiced by Wayne Brady.

The trailer ends, in fact, with these words spoken to Taryon: “In the span of 24 hours, you’ve caused unfathomable amounts of property damage and confronted a lifetime of internalized parental issues. Welcome to Vox Machina.”

We’ll be able to welcome Taryon ourselves when the first three episodes of season four premiere on Prime Video on June 3, 2026, with three new episodes dropping each consecutive week after that.

Brady joins show stars Laura Bailey (The Last of Us: Part II), Taliesin Jaffe (World of Warcraft), Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us), Matthew Mercer (Baldur’s Gate 3), Liam O’Brien (Marvel’s Avengers), Marisha Ray (Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft), Sam Riegel (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and Travis Willingham (Dispatch). In addition to Brady, the cast for season four also features Kevin Michael Richardson (Lilo & Stitch), Debra Wilson (Star Wars: Survivor), and Tom Cardy.

Check out today’s trailer for season four of The Legend of Vox Machina below. [end-mark]

The post There Will Be Ducks in <i>The Legend of Vox Machina</i> Season 4 Trailer appeared first on Reactor.

News Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica Is Finally Back on Streaming!

It will even have its own dedicated channel, giving us BSG all day, every day!

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on April 23, 2026

Courtesy of NBCUniversal

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Courtesy of NBCUniversal

It’s been a minute (a minute too long), but we’ll once again be able to stream the entirety of Battlestar Galactica, including Caprica!

Starting on May 1, Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries, seasons one through four of Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, and the prequel spinoff Caprica will all be available on Paramount+. (Caprica, ironically, is currently available on Peacock, if you wanted to catch the prequel this week before BSG proper starts streaming.)

All those shows, with the exception to Caprica will also be on Pluto TV. (Caprica, it seems, will continue to get short shrift. Is it a perfect show? Absolutely not! But even though I haven’t watched it since it was on air, that single season has stuck with me in a disturbing way. I imagine watching in now, given the AI of it all, will cause it to hit differently, and that alone might make it worth a rewatch.)

But wait, there’s more: Want to watch some BSG but don’t want to figure out which episode to revisit? Don’t worry, Pluto has got you: There will be a dedicated channel on the platform that plays these BSG titles all day, every day.

One thing that seems to be missing from this deal is Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, the web series that was meant to be the pilot for a prequel spinoff centered on a young William Adama. It didn’t get picked up for series and it wasn’t included in this Paramount+/Pluto TV deal… and if you’ve seen it, you might agree that that’s okay—there’s lots of other BSG available for us to watch.

Get ready to start streaming! So say we all.[end-mark]

The post <i>Battlestar Galactica</i> Is Finally Back on Streaming! appeared first on Reactor.

News Star City

Everybody’s Paranoid in the Trailer for For All Mankind Spinoff Star City

I don’t think you can actually know what someone is thinking before they think it, but okay.

By Molly Templeton

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Published on April 23, 2026

Image: Apple TV

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Image: Apple TV

The basic premise of the alternate history series For All Mankind is that the Soviet Union beat the U.S. to the moon, and the subsequent space race just kept racing. But as the trailer for the spinoff series Star City makes clear, that didn’t exactly lead to a nice, relaxing time for said Russians. Somewhere in Star City, there’s a traitor. And Lyudmilla (Anna Maxwell Martin) is going to root them out, one way or the other.

Apple TV’s synopsis keeps its cards close to its chest:

Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon) stars as what seems like the one man more interested in keeping their cosmonauts safe than punishing whoever might be leaking trade secrets. The rest of the cast includes Agnes O’Casey (Black Doves), Alice Englert (Dangerous Liaisons), Solly McLeod (House of the Dragon), Adam Nagaitis (The Agency), Ruby Ashbourne Serkis (Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man), Josef Davies (Andor), and Priya Kansara (Polite Society).

Showrunners Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi have said that Star City will be notably different from their previous show (which they also created alongside Ronald D. Moore); for one thing, it won’t have time jumps.

Star City premieres with two episodes on Friday, May 29—the same day as For All Mankind’s fifth season finale. For All Mankind has already been renewed for a sixth and final season, but it’s unknown whether Star City will continue.[end-mark]

The post Everybody’s Paranoid in the Trailer for <i>For All Mankind</i> Spinoff <i>Star City</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News epic

With the Animated Epic, More Than One Version of the Odyssey Is Headed to Movie Theaters

Face that launched a thousand ships? Nah, tale that launched a billion views.

By Molly Templeton

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Published on April 23, 2026

Screenshot: Epic

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Screenshot: Epic

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is coming, whether you like the helmets or not. But there is another. The Hollywood Reporter has the news that Epic, the viral hit created by Jorge Rivera-Herrans in his dorm room, is headed to big screens courtesy of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Atlantic Records.

Rivera-Herrans’ Epic is a nine-part musical version of Homer’s classic tale, released between 2022 and 2024. It began life as his senior thesis; he posted about the process on TikTok, then began releasing the “sagas” as musicals. (Casting also took place on TikTok.) THR says, “The self-released EPs began hitting the no. 1 spot on iTunes and then no. 1 on the soundtrack charts, where at one point Epic occupied nine out of the top 10 listings.”

At one point, The Guardian noted, Epic nudged Taylor Swift out of the top spot on iTunes. The project has literal billions of streams and views. According to THR, “The serialized music format, re-envisioning the classic tale of the war hero’s gods and monsters-filled decades-long journey home to his wife and son through a modern, immersive lens, struck a chord with millennials and Gen Zers, who fell for the influences of musicals, anime and video games. They even got to participate in the worldwide casting process. Fans also created animatics to go with the songs, showcasing a range of styles and genres.”

And now it’s evolving into a new form. Epic, the movie, will be animated, and that’s about all that there is to know about it at this point. No director or animation studio has been announced. The project is in “nascent stages,” but with Bruckheimer on board and a huge existing fanbase, it’ll probably begin its next epic journey soon.[end-mark]

The post With the Animated <i>Epic</i>, More Than One Version of the <i>Odyssey</i> Is Headed to Movie Theaters appeared first on Reactor.

News Clayface

Clayface Teaser Wants You to Know It Is a Horror Film, Thank You Very Much

Not surprising given the story comes from Mike Flanagan

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on April 22, 2026

Photo: Warner Bros. Studios

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Photo: Warner Bros. Studios

The first teaser trailer for DC Studios’ Clayface doesn’t reveal any plot points. What it does have in spades, however, is vibes: horror vibes, to be specific; body horror vibes to get even more precise.

That’s no accident: DC wants you to know that the film, written by horror mastermind Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, The Fall of the House of Usher) and Hossein Amini, and directed by James Watkins (Speak No Evil), is very much of that genre.

Here’s the official logline, which is pretty much all we know so far about the story the film tells:

That one man is Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries. We see him in the teaser in various forms. First (assuming that’s Harries under all that makeup) as a bandaged man with bulging eyes in a hospital bed, then as a slick-dressed dude running down a dark alley, and finally as a man watching his face glop off his skull in various locales, including a bathtub. Something (everything!) isn’t right with this picture!

In addition to Harries, the film stars Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll, and Joshua James. What roles are they playing? We don’t know yet!

Clayface releases in theaters on October 26, 2026. Check out today’s teaser below. [end-mark]

The post <i>Clayface</i> Teaser Wants You to Know It Is a Horror Film, Thank You Very Much appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV The Terror: Devil in Silver

Victor LaValle, Christopher Cantwell & Karyn Kusama Break Down Devil in Silver’s Opening Scene

The co-showrunners and director spoke with Reactor about the upcoming series.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on April 22, 2026

Photo Credit: Emily V. Aragones/AMC

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Photo Credit: Emily V. Aragones/AMC

AMC+/Shudder’s The Terror: Devil in Silver is set to premiere in early May, and the streamer released the show’s cold open to let us know what’s in store for us. As luck would have it, I also interviewed co-showrunners Victor LaValle (The Changeling), Christopher Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire, Paper Girls), and director Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body, Yellowjackets) about this very scene.

You can check out the five-minute sequence yourself at the end of this post, but here’s a quick rundown: In it, we see the inside of New Hyde mental institution, where three staff members find one of the patients lying in bed in rigor mortis, clearly dead by violent means. Josephine, the nurse who found the body is freaking out, while the orderly Scotch Tape (Hampton Fluker) and Miss Chris (CCH Pounder) have to break the body’s stiffened arms and legs to get it out of the room.

LaValle, who is also the author of the eponymous novel the show is based on, found inspiration for that specific moment from real life. “I remember reading a story after Hurricane Katrina about this old folks’ home in Far Rockaway, where a lot of the elderly patients were just essentially left there to die. And there was one body that had died in rigor mortis in a way that they couldn’t get it out of the room. And then I was like, ‘Huh, let’s take that…’ I just thought you couldn’t think of a better way to say something is wrong—not with these people, but with this whole system.”

Cantwell and Kusama also shared their thoughts about the opening, including how it sets up the season centered on Dan Stevens’ character, Pepper.

“I don’t know how the hell she’s able to pull this off”

“There had been debate about how much are we meant to learn about New Hyde before we introduce Pepper,” Kusama said. Ultimately, however, the creative team started with the staff at the institution because, as Kusama explained, it conveys that “haunting was there before, it will be there when Pepper arrives, and it would last even if Pepper were to leave—there is an eternal damage that has been embedded into that place.”

The final minute of the sequence, where Scotch Tape and Miss Chris are in the hallway moving the dead, broken body, not only reveals how numb the staff are, but the setup for the series: What if, as Scotch Tape asks Miss Chris, the dead man didn’t kill himself?

Pounder’s silent response as Miss Chris is perfection—a slight stutter followed by a look that says they have a job to do, and it was time to get on with it.

“When we shot [this moment], I just was like, this is horrifying,” said Kusama. “But I’m also laughing at the ability that we all can just look past the horror right in front of us. It’s quite interesting how quickly we all understood that, emotionally.”

Cantwell also praised Pounder’s performance. “I don’t know how the hell she’s able to pull this off—she’s so incredible in what she does—but she’s able to hitch for a moment and then go, ‘Man we got a job to do.’ Which is why they’re stuck there. They all have their reasons—this is my job, I have to clock in every day, and I have to endure the horrors that happen all around me, which feels very relevant to 2026… she nailed it, I think, in that teaser.”

Devil in Silver premieres on May 7, 2026, on AMC+ and Shudder.

Check out the opening scene below.[end-mark]

The post Victor LaValle, Christopher Cantwell & Karyn Kusama Break Down <i>Devil in Silver</i>’s Opening Scene appeared first on Reactor.

News The Vampire Lestat

Lestat Would Like a Word in the Trailer for The Vampire Lestat

He is a golden god, goddammit

By Molly Templeton

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Published on April 22, 2026

Photo: AMC

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Photo: AMC

Lies, all lies. Or at least some lies. The vampire Lestat (Sam Reid) has some opinions about his story as told by Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) to Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). He’s not exactly here to set the record straight. But he is certainly here, in the trailer for the series formerly known as Interview with the Vampire, to put his stamp on things. It’s The Vampire Lestat now. And Lestat is a rock god now.

I remain uncertain about how he becomes a vampire rock god via music that is so toothless—in this case, a limp cover of Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself”—but perhaps they’re saving the good stuff for the actual show.

This trailer for the upcoming season begins with a voiceover in which Daniel recites all (okay, some of) the things Lestat has already experienced. “You witnessed the French Revolution, the electric light, the atomic bomb,” he says. “Why music? Why now?” According to Lestat, he is doing a rewrite.

The synopsis for this season says:

A previous teaser for this show set Louis and Lestat at each other’s throats—figuratively speaking—across a conference room table. Another showed him having a lil’ meltdown in a bookstore. Every look we’ve had at this season is delicious.

The Vampire Lestat also stars Assad Zaman, Delainey Hayles, and Jennifer Ehle. Rolin Jones is the creator, writer, and showrunner. The drama begins June 7 on AMC/AMC+.[end-mark]

The post Lestat Would Like a Word in the Trailer for <i>The Vampire Lestat</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Daredevil: Born Again

Daredevil: Born Again Makes Us See Red in “Requiem”

This episode has enough choking to inspire half a Weeknd album…

By Leah Schnelbach

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Published on April 22, 2026

Image: Marvel Studios

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Image: Marvel Studios

Welcome back to Daredevil: Born Again! Your faithful recapper is Leah again, returned from a fabulous visit to Matty Murdock’s ancestral homeland. (I mean Ireland, not Hell’s Kitchen, I’m in Hell’s Kitchen all the time.) Many thanks to my beloved colleague Emmet Asher-Perrin for taking care of the last two weeks, and pointing out all the same stuff that pissed me off when I caught up on the episodes. And Emmet is right: I was pleased about the inclusion of Saint Lucia! And I am annoyed by Not-Father-Lantom and his willingness to give up his parishioners to the AVTF thugs—but I’m wayyyy more annoyed by the retconning of Buck “Absolutely-Not-Our-Beloved-Wesley” Cashman.

This week’s episode is “Requiem”, and it was written by Devon Kliger & Jesse Wigutow, and directed by Angela Barnes. And I wish I could say things were looking up but hoo boy is this episode rough.

A Spoilery Recap

We open on Fisk sitting beside Vanessa who is, unfortunately, still dead.

As ever, let me say that D’Onofrio makes this character live in a way that I don’t think anyone else could.

The doctor comes back in and muses that “They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it” and “death cannot kill what never dies”—which is a nice sentiment, and if he’d left it at that and simply left he might still have a functional spine and everything. Instead he goes on to says something about Vanessa having “gone to the beautiful darkness that awaits us all” which I think really exceeds his pay grade as a medical doctor, and then… he tells Fisk it’s been an honor to accompany him on this whole journey, and he hugs Wilson Fisk.

Even in a “normal” end-of-life situation, this is way way way beyond the bounds of what the doctor should do with someone who’s sitting in shock next to newly-dead person!

And Fisk responds pretty much exactly how I would, albeit more successfully, because he crushes that doctor like a spent PBR.

Somehow an impeccable Buck is already waiting outside to clean up the mess, back from cleaning up the previous mess with Daniel. I guess there’s never traffic between Albany and New York City in this universe?

Then the show has a priest intoning the “Requiem Aeternam” or “Eternal Rest” prayer in Latin over Vanessa’s blinding white coffin. The scenes of her funeral are intercut with Matt watching Bullseye sleep, Mr. Charles realizing Fisk stole all his smuggled weaponry back, the AVTF guys celebrating receiving said weaponry, and finally back around to Fisk placing a single red rose on the casket.

After the credits, thugs of some sort show up to a nice house in a suburban neighborhood. They throw a beeping grenade through a window, where a delightful little kid in fairy wings waves it around like a wand. Outside, the thugs are having their various asses handed to them—we hear bodies hit walls, and see blood streak down windows. The clearly superpowered person comes in just in time to disengage the grenade, and guess what? It’s Jessica Jones! She tells the kid—presumably her daughter—that the grenade isn’t a toy, and they grin at each other.

Well shit what if this is a good epi— awwww, dammit. Matt and Karen are arguing about the ethics of murder again, this time right after Not-Night-Nurse Soledad finishes stitching Bullseye up and Angela heads back out into the street. Matt actually says “Vengeance isn’t justice, Karen” cause apparently we just say the themes now.

Meanwhile at Vanessa’s wake, Buck tasks a shellshocked Daniel with determining whether BB’s the leak (“WHO ELSE COULD IT BE THERE ARE ONLY LIKE FIVE OF YOU” I wail at my TV screen) and tells him that “the big time will take care of you if you take care of it.” He also explains the idea of a Barium Meal Test which Daniel, hilariously, thinks is a meal plan his mom is on. But no, in espionage terms, it means you plant false information to see who leaks it.

Meanwhile, on a roof, Matt glowers out over HIS CITY when a rad pair of boots walks up. And inside those boots, once again, is Jessica Jones! She tells him about the raid on her house, says “You told me it wouldn’t touch me” which, what? How could he guarantee that, and how could she trust that guarantee? She goes on to say that a “sketchy” guy called, who was “interested in people like us. I told him to fuck off. Not everyone I know did.” She stares at Matt meaningfully, he takes a beat, and says: “Oh.”

(Don’t worry, I’ll yell about this plot point further down.)

Then she says her powers drop out sometimes since she had Danielle, so I guess I’m not done being furious. Then the two of them raid the warehouse below, I’m still unclear why because don’t they need those weapons to prove nefarious shit about Fisk? They blow the warehouse up, but not before Jess’ power winks out again and fucking Powell is able to knock her down, and Matt has to leap in and save her.

Back at the wake, Heather Glenn is creeping creepily around the Fisks’ bedroom, and steals some of Vanessa jewelry. We all grieve in our own ways? Buck finds her crying in the room, and, in a scene that genuinely felt imported from some other, very different show, he makes Heather sit on the Fisks’ bed, tell him exactly what Muse did to her, and then he encourages her to choke him so hard his face turns purple.

Between this and last week’s foot conversation I really want to hang out in the Daredevil: Born Again writers’ room.

He asks if she feels better and she bolts out of the room.

But wait! We’re not quite done with Daredevil: FetLife!

After a brief scene of Daniel planting a fake story for BB to share, we’re back in Frank Castle’s Sadness Basement. Karen is manspreading in a chair over Bullseye’s prone, shackled body, pointing a gun right at him! She kicks him awake. She climbs on top of him. She puts the gun to his forehead. She flashbacks about Foggy a whole lot. He whispers: “Thank you.” The whole thing is weird and charged and uncomfortable and then, of course, Matt shows up just in time to knocks the gun out of her hand with one of his batons, which should really break her wrist, no? But nobody’s losing their immortal soul on Matty Murdock’s watch, no sir!

And all I can think is how much better would this be from Bullseye’s POV? Handcuffed to a cot for hours and hours, you’ve just begged yet another person to kill you, they almost did it, and now you’re watching the Alpha Couple rehash their murder argument, again, like you’re not even in the room anymore.

BB has gone to Daniel’s mom’s house on Staten Island for his birthday, where Mom-of-Daniel is selling her on a Spectrum Vitamin MLM scheme that I think is based on the idea of ingesting all the colors of the spectrum? BB seems to genuinely like her. She goes upstairs, sneaks into Daniel’s room, and see all the detritus of his life: a photo of him with his late father, wrestling trophies, posters of mob bosses, a How High poster, a Casino poster on the back of his door. She deletes the “scoop” that she was about to send to Ellison.

Of course this doesn’t matter because she still had the SD card in her coat pocket, and while she was snooping in his room, Daniel rifled through her shit and found it. So now he knows that the only person who could possibly be the leak is in fact the leak.

I still think their relationship is on firmer ground than Matt and Karen’s right now, though.

He says he’s wants to protect her, and BB, ludicrously, says “From who?” and he waves his incoming call from Buck in her face.

Mr. Charles confronts the Governor, she tries to posture at him and it doesn’t work, and they both agree to dump Fisk.

(As long as all the plots get wrapped up neatly, I was scared to death we might have to stay in some character development for a minute.)

The protests grow at Gracie Mansion, and finally, somehow, the Resistance projects their recorded testimonials of AVTF victims onto the walls of the building itself. They also project the words “Resist” and “Rebel”. This galvanizes the protesters, but somehow Fisk is able to leave and go back to his murder catacombs, and he stares at Rabbit in a Snowstorm as, obviously, the AVTF gets the OK to get more violent. Somehow Powell knows that Saunders was the mole and kills him and blames the protesters which is just… stupid? They’ve already got guns trained on the protesters, plausible deniability is way out the window. Somehow in the clash Angela’s friend Javi seems to be the only one killed, which is why Karen is tending to him when her wig flies off, and Powell finally recognizes her and arrests her.

And for some reason Matt confronts Wilson in the murder catacombs, tells him “I’m sorry for your loss, Wilson”, and after a very brief attempt at negotiation, they battle in front of the painting. Again. Wilson finally gasps out that Daredevil “cannot” arrest him, and “will not” murder him. We end with Karen kneeling on the ground with her hands in the air, and Matt and Fisk bloodied in the murder basement, gasping for air, with no clear winner.

Grace

Watching Fisk crush that doctor like an empty PBR was excellent. We all grieve in our own ways, man.

The raid on Jessica’s home, and seeing her destroy all the thugs in the background before she came in to disarm the grenade Danielle was waving around like a wand? Pretty great. Danielle herself was extremely great.

Seeing Matt and Jess fight side-by-side again, even if only briefly, was fun… up to a point.  

Daniel’s home in Staten Island, the quiet birthday with his mom, the utter lack of other friends, the way BB looks through his bedroom and realizes he is, actually, a person—all of that is very good. Her decision not to send Daniel’s fake scoop (to Ellison???) was both a sigh of relief for those of us who are rooting for her, and a sweet moment of her choosing to try to be his friend for real.

The decision to project detained people’s video testimony onto Gracie Mansion itself along with the words “RESIST” and “REBEL” was genuinely stirring.

And again, before I get into all of my rage, let me say that all of the acting and fight choreography is stellar. I just wish the scripts trusted us to engage with the show instead of, I don’t know, sitting on our phones and doomscrolling through the reality that the show is mirroring?

Retribution

And now for the rest of the episode.

Why are Matt and Karen still having the same goddamn argument they’ve been having since the Punisher first waltzed into Season 2 of the Netflix era? Karen knows that Matt will never willingly resort to murder. Matt knows that she thinks violence is sometimes necessary. Why does he leave her alone with the man who killed their best friend? Why does she think she can shoot an unarmed man who’s handcuffed to a cot when her boyfriend will immediately know it wasn’t self-defense once he comes back and hears her heartbeat when she lies?

Why does Karen climb into Bullseye’s lap to shoot him through the forehead?

Why the hell did BB keep the SD card in her pocket??? Especially when she’s going into Daniel’s house??? I guess we can all assume Surfshark VPN isn’t sponsoring her fucking Phisk broadcasts, cause she clearly knows dick all about security.

Why the hell is Heather Glenn stealing Vanessa’s jewelry during the wake? And then choking Buck Cashman on the Fisks’ bed??? I mean, I guess I finally understand what Matt saw in her, but come on.

Why does Karen go to the protest when she’s one of the heads of the resistance and needs to stay absolutely underground in order to coordinate shit???

And leaving the women aside for a moment: why do Matt and Wilson need to have a redux of their fight from the end of Season 3??? That fight was great! We saw it already! Do something else!

Also, where the fuck is Bullseye now? Is he just… tied to the cot in Frank Castle’s Sadness Basement while everyone else marches off to protests and murder catacombs?

OK and about the protest: how many people are on the side of the Resistance? Because I feel like at this point there should be a much larger throng of people gathered, and that the AVTF’s inevitable turn to violence should result in even more chaos, but also in the sheer numbers of protesters tipping the scales a bit. New York City has close to 9 million people in it, and, at least in our timeline, the vast majority of them would be anti-Fisk. So where are they? How is the crowd small enough that Powell is able to wade through the protesters to spot Karen after her Alias wig flies off in the fray?

But now back to my real rage: IS THE SHOW TELLING US THAT MOTHERHOOD ROBBED JESSICA JONES OF HER SUPER STRENGTH. And if so, why is it telling us that. Because I need a real, good, thematic reason that I’m watching Matt goddamn barely superpowered Murdock rescue Jessica fucking Jones during a fight in between his usual titanic gasps for breath.

I maybe wouldn’t be quite so angry about this if every other woman in the show wasn’t either acting like they had tapioca between their ears or was, you know, DEAD.

Actually, fuck that, I would be that angry.

You promise me Jessica Jones and she shows up to infodump shit the audience already knows and then lose a fight with Powell? And have to be rescued???? Even if Powell is, um, enhancing himself, which seems likely, you’ve taken a great idiosyncratic troubled anti-hero, tied her powers into her motherhood in a way that I really don’t like, and now had the worst of the AVTF thugs give her a bloody nose and pull a gun on her. Not cool, television show.

And on top of alllll that, are you seriously implying, television show, that Luke Cage—LUKE CAGE—would get in bed with the United States government after everything he’s lived through? Have you met the United States government, television show? You’re telling me that Mr. Charles could call LUKE CAGE on the phone and he’d even stay on the line for a second, let alone agree to work with the man?

(If it turns out Jess is talking about Danny Rand, fine, I’ll retract my anger. If it’s Trish Walker, well, yeah, she’s already compromised, fine. And if this is some kind of deep cover espionage situation, I might retract my anger—but why would Jess withhold that info from Matt while she’s already recapping the plot?)

I just don’t know. I was extremely excited for the show to tackle an underground resistance narrative, I was excited about the AVTF aspect, and about Jessica coming back, and hell, even about Bullseye coming back. But at this point I spend most of each episode saying WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT??? out loud to fictional characters whom I’m pretty sure can’t hear me.

Fiorello’s Desk

Fisk has now attempted to double-cross Mr. Charles by handing the weapons shipment straight off to his private AVTF Army, and Mr. Charles has retaliated by going to the Governor’s house and saying that they need to pull all their support for him.

So… what now? Fisk attempts to go full feudal lord over the nation-state of New York City, and is pretty much immediately crushed by the US military?

Quotes!

“What if this doesn’t end until one of you goes down?”
“I can’t think about it that way.”
“Well you’re gonna have to! He has proven that he will not hesitate!”

—Karen and Matty return to a theme

“What the hell is wrong with you? You keep choosing the wrong people! Fisk???—[gestures at Bullseye] this thing—over the people who love you!”
“What? H-how can you say that?”
“Because it’s true! Because you let them live, and people die. Please, just. Let me do this…[l]et me carry this for you.”

—Karen and Matty return to a theme, AGAIN, this time with a frisson of Murder Samwise

“You want to know what happened to me? I grew up.”

—Karen will never let a good theme die! Unless it murdered Foggy.

“I don’t think the little fish tells the big fish how to swim.”

—Mr. Charles, off in a different episode of a different television show.

Closing Arguments

What’s bothering me is that there are good ideas here, but the show isn’t giving any of them the space to breathe.

Karen leaning back into her ruthless side, especially as a counterpoint to Matt’s lost love, Elektra? Very cool! But not when the only result is the two of them rehashing the same argument they’ve been having since literally 2016.  

Matt wrestling with his own violent tendencies, especially with a partner who encourages him to give in? Cool! Unless that’s expressed through a replay of his “You’re getting redemption whether you want it or not!” argument that was so powerful when he had it with Punisher, but much less so when he keeps having a shallow replay of it with Bullseye—particularly since his history with Bullseye should make this argument riveting.

Matt finally confronting Fisk? Well, again, we’ve seen this so many times! But I will say the fight between them is great, and they’re both giving this their all.

Daniel gives us an interesting opportunity to see a kid who clearly grew up with pop culture about the mafia (and my guess would be that he glamorized it a bit—which shows he wasn’t actually paying attention during those Scorsese movies, but whatever) find himself living the life he thought he wanted, only to realize he doesn’t have the stomach for it. For him to realize that his only real friend in all of this is the girl who’s trying to take the whole organization down—and he can’t really trust her, either? That’s a rich text! And Michael Gandolfini is doing great work with it. But instead of sitting with the themes, we see Buck confront Daniel with a scene that is, literally, straight out of Goodfellas. I guarantee you Daniel has watched the scene with Henry Hill and Jimmy and Tommy stopping off at Tommy’s mama’s house and borrowing a knife roughly 1,000 times. I would bet real money that the dialogue about a deer’s paw was playing through Daniel’s mind as he gazed into that trunk. But the episode doesn’t make us stay with him while he lives the reality of hacking a corpse up. We don’t see him bury it. We don’t even see him washing the blood off. After all the protracted build up to last week’s trunk reveal, we only get two brief scenes of him trying to process the emotional fallout this week, and then the focus shifts to his relationship with BB.

And we don’t see BB wrestling with her burgeoning friendship with Daniel, she just seems like she’s using him until she suddenly isn’t—but she’s so inept that she’s startled when he says he’s protecting her from Buck. Like, girl. You know Fisk murdered your uncle. You are here to bring down Fisk. You should be terrified all the time, not just when Daniel tells you there’s trouble.

And as long as I’m here… in the Netflix Era, Matt’s questions about his faith, justice, mercy, the existence of the Devil—they animated his decisions. In Born Again, the writers have given him two accurate, specific saints to pray to, which i appreciate, but if the wrestling isn’t there it starts to feel like stained glass window dressing. His relationship to Bullseye is animated more by a memory of Foggy than anything else, and since Karen is very clearly #TeamMurder, all of Matt’s internal moral struggle gets outsourced into an argument with her. But again, they already had that argument, and I’d be way more interested in watching Matt Murdock, Hero in Hiding, Symbol of Hope, Pretty Lapsed Catholic At This Point Let’s Be Real, struggle with the problem of Bullseye within himself. Bullseye murdered Father Lantom, tried to murder Karen, murdered Agent Nadim, murdered Vanessa, and murdered Foggy, and now he actively wants to die. This should be agonizing for Matt.

WE COME TO THIS PLACE FOR AGONY, MARVEL.

I’ve talked for a long time, I’ll shut up. But I formally request a spinoff prequel about the adventures of poor hapless Dr. Doomed.[end-mark]

The post <em>Daredevil: Born Again</em> Makes Us See Red in “Requiem” appeared first on Reactor.

News Dead Boy Detectives

Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives Are On the Case Starting in April

The series is set in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman universe

By Molly Templeton

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Published on March 20, 2024

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Though all we’ve gotten so far is a single teaser, the Dead Boy Detectives are somehow almost here. Netflix announced today that the comics adaptation will premiere April 25th—barely more than a month from now.

The series was originally set to be a Max release, but moved to Netflix last year—which makes a certain kind of sense, as it is, technically, set in the universe of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. Its behind-the-scenes team has a whole pile of experience with comics and adaptations, and includes showrunner/developer Steve Yockey (The Flight Attendant), showrunner Beth Schwartz (Sweet Tooth), executive producer Jeremy Carver (Doom Patrol), and Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter of Berlanti Productions (all those Arrowverse shows).

Here’s the synopsis:

The series is based on characters created by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner. One hopes we might see a full trailer before that April 25th premiere. [end-mark]

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Book Recommendations Poetry

12 Poems That Capture the Essence of Spring

Each of these poems offers a unique meditation on the changing seasons, as winter passes away and a new, green world emerges.

By Holly Kybett Smith

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Published on March 20, 2024

Photo: Joyce McCown [via Unsplash]

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Photo: Joyce McCown [via Unsplash]

Back in January, I curated a list of twelve wintry poems to mark the blustery start of a new year. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, the winter cold has started to recede and it’s time to welcome the first days of spring. For many of us, the shift in seasons is a welcome one—no more ice, no more chill; now there are flowers and a bit more sun. But it’s a fragile season, more precarious and gentler than summer. Depending on where you live, you may still be experiencing waves of frost—even snow—imperilling any fresh growth. (And of course, elsewhere in the world, the cold season is just about to start.)

No matter where you are, I hope you’ll appreciate these twelve poems, each of which contain “Spring” in their title (or are simply titled “Spring,” full stop). And yet, each one approaches the season from its own unique perspective. What better way to celebrate the marvellous diversity of poetry as a form than to give twelve writers the same prompt and watch each one do something entirely different with the concept?

“Spring” by Mary Oliver

We begin with a meditation on the shift out of winter by the inimitable Mary Oliver, beloved for her nature poetry. This poem follows a snake from his winter burrow to let the sun warm his cold blood. Given the typical iconography of spring—say, a green landscape studded with daffodils and fluffy, fresh lambs—this is not the creature you might expect to herald the arrival of the season, but here he is.

“Spring Song” by Reg Saner

Our second poem is a reminder of the cyclical nature of the seasons, which we come back to time and again in literature as a way of making sense of life and death and change. Note how Saner calls our attention to the dead leaves of the previous autumn—characterizing them as listening in… “What are they listening to?” he asks. Is spring really the season of newness, or is time merely repeating itself?

“Spring” by Marguerite Young

Published in 1935, Marguerite Young’s take on spring is a dark one, asking us to consider again how spring is born from the death of winter. Reading it calls to mind Persephone, rising from the underworld at the end of her imprisonment, free once again (if only for half the year).

“Spring Snow” by Linda Gregerson

With its glancing two-line stanzas, its vivid and almost visceral imagery, Linda Gregerson’s “Spring Snow”paints a picture of a false start: that awkward stage of spring when winter rallies and makes one last effort to supersede it.

“Spring” by Dorothy Keeley Aldis

By contrast, here we have a burst of sunshine in a poem. Although it was written in 1928, Aldis’ take on spring feels almost modern in its depiction of the season—though there is still the sense, within it, of winter giving way.

“Spring Coronal” by Hyejung Kook

Although not precisely about spring, this emotive poem, written during the pandemic, tells its story—of beginnings and endings, grief, pain, and acceptance—through spring’s lens, facing up to what happens when expectations fail, and the idyll does not manifest itself.

“Spring Reign” by Dean Young

This energetic springtime poem hops from snapshot to snapshot of thought, and is incredibly satisfying to read aloud. What does it all mean? Irrelevant. As Young has said of his poetry before, “I think to tie meaning too closely to understanding misses the point.”

“Spring” by Safia Elhillo

This nostalgic poem conjures the ghost of a warm spring suffused with yearning, from many years past. If you’re feeling melancholy this spring—thinking about how quickly winter seems to have gone; how quickly the years seem to be rushing by—reading Elhillo’s words may be of some comfort.

“Springshine” by Alice Monks Mears

Penned in 1954, this poem perfectly evokes the impossibly bright, eye-watering glitter of early spring, as the reader—emerging from wintertime—squints into the sun.

 “Spring Is the Time for Flowers” by Katinka Loeser

As your eyes adjust to the glistening springtime sun, you will notice flowers emerging where there were none only a day or two ago. Loeser’s poem from 1942 celebrates this sudden riotous emergence of colour, and reminds us that contained within the prettiness of it all, there is audacity in defying what came before.

“Spring Music” by Rosalie Dunlap Hickler

Another poem which contemplates the cyclical nature of everything, Spring Music contemplates its narrator’s position as a sort of stick in the river, watching everything go by, unable to pause it. There’s wistfulness in these three stanzas—perhaps even bitterness—but appreciation, too.

“Spring is Coming” by E.L. Mayo

Lastly, we have a darkly humorous narrative poem from 1950, which—published in October—conjures an image of springtime as something distant, out of reach…yet undeniably, irrevocably on its way.

I hope the early part of this year has brought good things to you all, and enjoy these first weeks of spring! Do you have a favourite springtime poem? (And does it have “Spring” in the title?) Let me know in the comments.[end-mark]

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News Alien

Facehuggers Are Back and Extremely Aggro in the Trailer for Alien: Romulus

We’re messing with the Alien timeline here

By Molly Templeton

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Published on March 20, 2024

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I hope you’re ready to do a lot more screaming in space. The trailer for the next film in the Alien franchise is here, and everything old is new again, because this movie takes place 20 years after Alien—so, yes, in between the first two films.

Writer-director Fede Álvarez (The Girl in the Spider’s Web) told Variety, “I don’t see it as upsetting the canon. It’s something I take personal pleasure in doing, making sure that it all tracks and is all part of the big ‘Alien’ franchise story—not only in the story, but also when it comes to how to make it.”

All we get for a synopsis, so far, is a single sentence: “While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonizers come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.” Those colonizers include Cailee Spaeny (Civil War), David Jonsson (Industry), Archie Renaux (Shadow and Bone), Isabela Merced (Madame Web), Spike Fearn (The Batman), and Aileen Wu.

This teaser is full of familiar Alien sounds and imagery—ship hallways, blood, screaming, facehuggers, the general horror of space plus things that want to kill you—but doesn’t offer anything new, at least not yet. It feels designed to simply remind us this movie exists, rather than to give us any specifics about why we ought to be excited about it.

Alien: Romulus arrives August 16th.[end-mark]

The post Facehuggers Are Back and Extremely Aggro in the Trailer for <i>Alien: Romulus</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Reading the Weird

Question Authority But Not Your Cowboy: Max Gladstone’s Last Exit (Part 16)

We are coming on toward the titular last exit, and it’s time for revelations…

By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth

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Published on March 20, 2024

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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 continue Max Gladstone’s Last Exit with Chapters 31-32. The novel was first published in 2022. Spoilers ahead!

After their campfire “reunion,” the alt-riders separate to rest before assailing Elsinore. Zelda and Sarah help a half-asleep June into her tent, and Zelda gets a glimpse of her latest sketch. It shows the four old friends gathered around the fire, plus a fifth figure to Zelda’s right. Did June imagine Sal into the sketch, or was she aware of what Zelda perceived as “a gentle pressure on her arm”?

Alone, Zelda pulls out a much-handled sketch. It’s the one of her and Sal from June’s wall; it shows “their bodies inclined together, drawn by gravity into the hollow that parted them,” Sal looking longingly at Zelda, while Zelda gazes out “to the future.” June joins her, wide awake. “I wondered if you had taken that,” she says. “I stole it,” Zelda says, because this “beautiful clear thing” didn’t represent her and Sal’s true relationship. Zelda tried to give everything to Sal, but she was too scared.

When June asks “What happened?” Zelda knows she means at the end. Since love “demanded honesty,” she finally tells the truth.

The princess calculated that  the stars would come right on “the cross-quarter day in August.” That was long enough for the alt-riders to go home for July 4th. Zelda, however, only “haunted” the woods near her house, spying on her family. She was observing the town’s festivities from under cover when Sal unexpectedly appeared and drew her out of hiding. They’d just relaxed into a kiss when an old classmate recognized Zelda. Zelda was mortified, and when the classmate called to Zelda’s father, she spin-hopped herself and Sal away.

Back in Elsinore the princess welcomed the alt-riders, but the court (Zelda now realizes) simmered with whispers, resentments and conspiracies. The night before all went wrong, Sal opened a conversation Zelda wasn’t ready to have. Why did they need to go to the crossroads? Yes, things had to be fixed, but would the crossroads actually enable them to do the fixing? And how did they know the rot was evil? It eats worlds, Zelda said. But where do they go, Sal countered. Instead of thinking they knew best, maybe they should go to the crossroads to – just keep going, past rot and fear, past everything, and learn what’s really out there. Or else, they should go home and fix things the hard way.

Then Sal gave Zelda an iron ring, urging her to “walk together, forever. Under all stars. If you’ll have me.” Fearful of forevers, Zelda took the ring but didn’t put it on. Then, while the alt-riders slept, the princess’s enemies came for them.

Duels, poison, and blood running down stairs: that’s how Zelda describes their desperate escape. They got an injured Sal to the Challenger as the princess died. The sky broke open. Walls devoured people. Looking toward the princess’s tower, Zelda saw the black-flower road arch upward. They needed to run, but what if the road never opened again, offering this chance at otherwise-impossible safety? And so Zelda returned Sal’s ring and fought her way up to the cracking road.

Sal followed, only to be dragged into the void by shadow-legs. Zelda, struggling to pull her back, saw Sal’s features become monstrous and heard her claim the people from all the empty worlds were in the void, waiting. Just a little further…

Then Sal fell. Zelda made it back to Montana, where her friends deserted her. Zelda expects June to scorn and curse her. Instead June kisses Zelda’s crown. She glows amid her attendant shadows. We were wrong, she says. Their world isn’t real, isn’t right. It’s the cowboy’s world. Because he can’t bear what’s beyond the “last exit,” he’s made them fear it. Zelda glimpsed the truth Sal has embraced, but rejected it. June won’t do so. Sal’s coming to rescue Zelda, and June will help her.

Zelda lunges as June starts toward Elsinore, but June’s grown “mountain-tall and mighty,” and a “wind from beyond the worlds” blows Zelda back.

The alt-riders surround Zelda. What happened, Sarah demands. “I lost her,” Zelda says. “She’s going to the crossroads. To let them in.”

* * *

The Challenger and dead horses race to ruined Elsinore. This time things will be different, Zelda tells herself. She’s not going it alone. The thought that June may be right is a “pernicious lightness in [Zelda’s] chest,” a hope she must push away to do what’s necessary.

The castle’s awake, malevolently alive. They enter, each focused on their own knack. In the Great Hall, a massive shadow-snake attacks them, the serpent Ish has sensed  gnawing at the heart of the world. The serpent strikes, to be repelled by “the raw weight of [Sarah’s] refusal to let them die.” Zelda spin-shapes a path for them up the stairs to the princess’s tower. Then their flashlights die, and shadow slams down. Ish exerts all his strength to carry himself and Ramon onward, his gun his only “certainty.” Sarah and Zelda take the lead, linked together. Zelda asks Sarah if she thinks June is right. Sarah doesn’t know, but she thinks the rest of them may be wrong.

At last the alt-riders reel out onto the princess’s balcony. Her once-elegant metal-and-glass mechanisms are broken. From the edge of the balcony, under the storm, June turns black eyes to them. “Good,” she says. “You’re just in time.”

Fighting the Cowboy: How to Survive the End of the World.

What’s Cyclopean: Sal points out that metaphors matter. Rot is “our word,” but it might as easily be inflammation, or the catastrophic upthrust of tectonic plates clashing. More metaphors: the path to the Crossroads (which may themselves be a metaphor) is the “black-flower road” but also a “silver lie”. Zelda’s fear is “something she had breathed in, like a miner filling her lungs with stone.”

Libronomicon: Stories about conspiracy are meant to “communicate what’s happening to the audience”. Real conspiracy, if successfully, avoids communication with anyone who’s not involved.

Anne’s Commentary

If there’s one aphorism Zelda would buck at, it’s that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Voltaire gets credit for “le mieux est l’ennemi du bien,” but years earlier Montesquieu expressed the notion in still stronger terms with “Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien”—the better is the mortal enemy of the good. Another so-not-Zelda proverb is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Or as Shakespeare put it in King Lear, “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”

Whoa, Zelda could argue, our world is neither good nor unbroken! What’s wrong with bettering the bad and fixing the busted? To varying degrees, her fellow alt-riders would agree with her. To reference another great work of philosophy, if you’re not going to be a Fix-It Felix, how much better are you than a Wreck-It Ralph? At best, you’re on par with the chubby apartment dwellers who’d do nothing but sit whining in the Ralph-Wreckage if they didn’t have a Felix to rescue them. But is it their fault they don’t have superpowers like Felix’s magic hammer or Zelda’s rot-fighting knack? Maybe. Maybe everyone could develop the super-knack latent in their innermost needs and fears if they really tried. So what if society’s game programmers designate you as a Bad Guy? Remake yourself into a Good Guy by putting your Evil Skillz to Good Uses! All you may need is to meet a pesky but charismatic kid like Vanellope or Zelda to kickstart your heroism!

Zelda has kickstarted Sal, Sarah, Ramon and Ish into doing way more than dorm-room jaw about righting a screwed-up world. Later she kickstarts June, who actually didn’t need more than a toe-tap to put her on the alt-road. It’s not that the OG alt-riders never have doubts—eventually their doubts grow big enough to sour them out of the crossroads crusade for a decade. All except for Zelda, who persists in Fixing Things on a smaller scale during those ten long years.

In Chapter 31, Zelda finally tells June the whole story about the failed crusade and losing Sal. Particularly significant is how at the eleventh hour Sal pushed Zelda into a long-needed conversation, for which Zelda was still not ready. After two grueling years on the road, “a gaping uncertainty packed with tangled questions” continued to underlie all the friends’ adventures, not only unvoiced but unthinkable – for Zelda, anyway. Sal had been able to think about them; now, not in spite of her loyalty to Zelda but because of it, she faced the uncertainty and voiced the questions. What do we want, Zelda? Why are we here? Why do we need the crossroads?

Fix-It Zelda’s repeated answer, spoken or tacit, was: To fix things. In addition, she wanted Sal, she wanted to wear Sal’s iron ring and to “walk together, forever. Under all stars,” but she couldn’t fix the part of herself that feared forever and doubted that she deserved it. As for the rot, the nature of which Sal questioned, Zelda’s answers were still terser: The rot must be evil because it’s what they see when things go wrong. Because it eats worlds and vanishes stars. Somehow, the crossroads hold the key to destroying rot and achieving the Big Fix. Because the crossroads are about to open, yes, Sal, “we’re really going to do this.”

Sal proposed alternatives, either to follow the crossroads to find out what was beyond the rot, or to return home and figure out what they could fix there. They knew too little about what their own world was and could be. What if they could only bring to the alts what they’d seen and been told back home? What if back home, instead of living their own reality, they’d been “trapped inside someone else’s dream”?

Whose dream, though? The truth came to Sal as she fell into a darkness that might not be “insectile and many-jointed with inhuman geometries,” but “something else, deep and black and clear as night,” sounding not with screams but song. The people from all the empty worlds they’ve traveled weren’t ravished away. They escaped. They left him.

It takes June, transforming into something as “mountain-tall and mighty” as Sal, to tell Zelda who the “him” is. The alt-riders have been wrong. The cowboy whose voice they’ve heard, whose specter they’ve fled, he’s the one the vanished have escaped. What the alt-riders have believed to be their world, the real and right one, isn’t real or right or even theirs, but his, the cowboy’s, filled with his small dreams and barren shadows. Doesn’t Zelda see that they could be so much more? June saw the truth the first time Zelda took her into the alts—Sal touched her way back then, only June hadn’t trusted what Sal showed her because it wasn’t what she thought she knew. Never mind. Sal’s coming to rescue Zelda, whom she loves, and June is going to help her.

Ish doesn’t seem to have had much time, or breath, to crow that he told his friends so about June. If only they’d listened! Well, he’s got his gun; it’s what guides him even in the living darkness of Elsinore. What can its target be except the one who’s waiting for them on the princess’s balcony?

Sorry, Ish. I’m hoping there’s no earthly caliber that can drop June now.

Ruthanna’s Commentary

We are coming on toward the titular last exit, and it’s time for revelations. Some quiet and domestic, some world-shaking—not that the world has ceased shaking at any point since we came onto the highway.

Or: how do I talk about chapters that question and perhaps reveal the nature of reality? I’ve guessed for many posts now that the rot was something more, as real rot is something more, is what keeps the world from being buried in bones, and trees from continuing to turn into fossil fuel. But I’ve also doubted that “anything but this” is actually a good choice. Sal, too, asked: do we go see what’s beyond the lies we’ve learned, or do we stay home and work to fix things the hard way? Can we actually stand to work on the ground, after we’ve glimpsed the possibility of eucatastrophe?

Of course her engagement ring is made of cold iron, the thing that breaks magic. Come live with me in the truth, she says, with all its discomfiting complexity.

In college, my obsession with fictional religions grew around stories of holy clowns. In Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, Bokononism promises up front that it’s a lie, but a lie that will get you through life and bring you to something worthwhile anyway. Discordianism is just a joke until it isn’t: the opposite of a great truth is another great truth. One of those great truths is that reality is what hurts your foot when you kick it, even if you don’t believe. And on the flip side: we understand so little of reality that we cannot help but believe in illusions. Taken to its extreme that brings us Platonic dualism, that abiding idea that the world that we see is a prisoning illusion, perhaps forced on us by some evil power. Dualism can cause great harm, convincing people that the world we see isn’t worth fixing, that we might even benefit from breaking it so that the cave crumbles and the true stars shine through.

And the flip side of that is Lovecraft’s fear of breaking the illusion and losing every valuable thing that it offers: the lie of the cowboy, and of Ish. Walk the line. Follow the light of the gun. Make money and take power and never, never look down.

Flip again. Adrienne Maree  and Autumn Brown’s How to Survive the End of the World is one of my favorite podcasts, an ongoing exploration of what it means to go through the end of the only way of life we know and come out the other side. In one episode, they draw a tarot reading and talk about the Sun card. Their interpretation: we who are trying to build a better world must “make our own sun” that draws people to its beauty and warmth. We must make the alternative where people can see how beautiful it is. Not just rejecting the cowboy’s lie, but offering another version of reality that can be welcomed. As the alt-riders keep saying, how can you wish for—ask for, demand—something whose form you’ve never imagined?

Flip again: how can you change what you’ve been sheltered from seeing?

The Challenger (well-named) is increasingly clearly the voice of the cowboy, who we now know Zelda first heard ten years ago at Elsinore. (Maybe going home for July 4^th wasn’t the wisest move?) The American Illusion is embodied in cars and highways as well as guns and white hats. But I write this in the passenger seat on a road trip, coming home from Chicago. Our householdmate Sam passed away a month ago from complications of cancer; this weekend we returned her mother home, brought her unfinished projects to her beloved knitting group to finish. The bins filled the back of our minivan. It would have been a different and much more difficult trip by train or bus. World-burning cars, and the community-splitting highways they ride, give us the power to show our love in ways we couldn’t otherwise.

Ish holds a gun in one hand and supports Ramon with the other. The illusion doesn’t make the love experienced within its boundaries illusory. But it also doesn’t change that he’s going to the crossroads with a gun, and with no willingness to acknowledge that he might be wrong. That there might be something worth walking beyond the line.

The path to the crossroads lies open. Everything beyond it lies open, to those willing to question their assumptions. And everything before it lies open to those who won’t. It’s beautiful, and it’s terrifying. The central question remains: what’s scary? And what do we do about being this scared?

Next week, we follow along with a pair of very specialized hunters in Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Eye and Tooth.” You can find it in Jordan Peele’s Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror.[end-mark]

The post Question Authority But Not Your Cowboy: Max Gladstone’s <i>Last Exit</i> (Part 16) appeared first on Reactor.

Book Recommendations

Exploring Nordic Speculative Fiction in Five Novels

These five memorable works encompass magical realism, futuristic dystopias, zombies, trolls, and sorcery, and quite a bit more.

By Rowdy Geirsson

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Published on March 20, 2024

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In the world of English-language books, the Nordic countries have a solid reputation for providing us with a steady stream of crime fiction (under the apt descriptor of “Nordic noir”) and children’s literature, including classics like Pippi Longstocking and the Moomins.

Fantasy, science fiction, supernatural horror, and other speculative fiction by Nordic authors haven’t hit the mainstream in quite the same way—but this is also true in the Nordic homelands of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden themselves. Despite all the fairy tales, folklore, and Norse/Finnish mythology abounding in these nations, the Nordic speculative fiction novel just hasn’t enjoyed the same robust tradition as its counterpart in native English.

But that’s been steadily changing. Nordic speculative fiction still isn’t being written or released at the same rate as Nordic noir, but there’s a growing scene. Nordic speculative fiction authors are often strikingly original—rather than bandwagoning onto a popular, prevailing theme or familiar premise with a slight twist or added extravagance, these writers frequently totally subvert or eschew expectations entirely. English-language translations aren’t hugely commonplace, and the novels that have found their way to the US, UK, and beyond most often tend to be set in our own world (typically in the author’s own Nordic homeland) rather than in alternate worlds. So this list doesn’t feature any examples of high fantasy or space opera, but if you’re a reader who enjoys monsters, alternate realities, magic realism, or dystopia, then one of these titles may be for you.

Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg

(Translated by Tiina Nunnally) A winner of multiple mystery novel awards when it was released, Smilla’s Sense of Snow is the least obvious book on this list and also the oldest, having first been published in Denmark in 1992. Despite the fact that it’s generally labeled as a mystery, Smilla’s Sense of Snow is more akin to a Michael Crichton-style sci-fi thriller heavily wrapped up in the trappings of Nordic noir.

The plot follows the actions of Smilla, a Greenlandic woman living in Denmark, who begins to investigate the mysterious death of young boy in her neighborhood. The deeper she digs, the stranger and more sinister things become as the setting gradually shifts from urban Copenhagen to the desolate, icy coast of Greenland. The narrative voice is hugely entertaining, provided you enjoy an abundance of highly cynical witticisms interspersed throughout the text, and while the speculative element is only revealed towards the very end, it remains the clear motivational force for all of the book’s main events. Smilla’s Sense of Snow was adapted into a movie in 1997 starring Julia Ormond and Gabriel Byrne. (Note: released in the UK as Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow)

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta

(Translated by the author.) Set in a drought-ravaged distant (yet easy to envision) future, Memory of Water takes place in former Finnish territory that has come under the foreign rule of a draconian, new empire based in what is now China. The book focuses on the teenage protagonist, Noria, and her family of traditional tea masters—who by decree enjoy a more generous rationing of water than most citizens—in a secluded village near Kuusamo at the moment when a new military commander with a serious chip on his shoulder arrives in town.

Adding to the tension and suspense is the side-plot that occurs predominately in the second half of the book involving Noria and her best friend’s discovery of…something that shouldn’t be commented upon further for anyone who might want to read it. Full of lush prose about the tangible and ephemeral qualities of water, Memory of Water is more drama than action or thriller; it’s a very somber novel, but also very memorable. A film adaptation of the book premiered in Finland in 2022.

Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist

(Translated by Ebba Segerberg.) A highly original twist on the zombie theme, Handling the Dead presents readers with the notion that the undead aren’t really evil, slavering fiends, but just sad, somewhat dim-witted people who simply want to go home upon awakening—it’s the living who are scary. The story follows three separate pairs of individuals in Stockholm who are confronted with the mysterious reanimation of a recently deceased loved one, and how each of these pairs independently handles the situation on a personal level while society at large spirals out of control around them. Also, there’s rabbit telepathy. The book is the second offering by Lindqvist, who is best known as the author of Let the Right One In (adapted in some versions as Let Me In). A new feature length film based on Handling the Undead was just released in February of 2024 in Norway.

Troll: A Love Story by Johanna Sinisalo

(Translated by Herbert Lomas.) A charming but twisted little book that posits the notion that trolls are very real—and have been  scientifically studied and classified as the incredibly rare species, Felipithecus trollius. Among regular interludes comprised of invented documentation about trolls as well as text from actual volumes of folklore, the plot follows the trials and tribulations of the main character, Angel, as he struggles to house-train and raise an abandoned baby troll that he happened to find by chance one day. Taking place in the interior Finnish city of Tampere, the journey is a bizarre ride through Angel’s private and personal world of ex-boyfriends, friends and lovers, and an abused mail-order bride that steadily builds up a thickening atmosphere of obsession, paranoia, and darkness. (Note: released in the UK as Not Before Sundown)

Shadows of the Short Days by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson

(Translated by the author.) Set in a present-day, alternate-reality version of Reykjavik, Shadows of the Short Days has the feel of a steampunk novel in terms of its attitude and general aesthetics, but built on concepts related to Old Norse sorcery rather than the technology of Victorian England. Many of the Icelandic locales referenced in the book actually exist, though not necessarily with the same functions or purposes as in real life—the city’s iconic, hilltop hot water tank construction known as Perlan is presented as a thaumaturgical power plant, for example. The story follows two main characters on separate paths that sometimes intersect as they struggle to achieve their goals: Sæmundur’s is to become the greatest practitioner of galdr (a specific form of Viking Age sorcery) the world has ever seen, and Garún’s is to overthrow the oppressive regime of the Kalmar Commonwealth (inspired by the actual Kalmar Union of the Middle Ages).

The book is a wild ride and should appeal to anyone who might like the idea of magical human skulls that operate as music/audio devices, highly restrictive schools of dark Norse sorcery, tribal human-bird warrior clans, exiled huldufólk (Icelandic fairy people) who feast on human memories, hostile scorn pole-based magical attacks, and clumsy golems made from unwashed laundry.

[end-mark]

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News American Horror Story

American Horror Story: Delicate Part 2 Trailer Reveals the Sect Behind the Spider Baby

What that spider baby sect wants, however, is up for debate

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on March 20, 2024

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If you were able to miss watching the first installment of American Horror Story: Delicate, you have some more episodes from the FX show to avoid in the near future.

The twelfth season of the anthology series from Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk centers around the horrors of pregnancy and the corrupting power of fame.

Here’s the official synopsis:

The trailer for the back half of the season just dropped, and in it we not only see the questionable acting talents of Kim Kardashian, but also the mysterious sect that she’s part of. The goals of that sect, who wear outfits that evoke Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent, are unclear. I bet, however, they have to do with a power grab and that their plan somehow involves Roberts’ character birthing a spider, given what we’ve seen from the show so far.

American Horror Story: Delicate Part Two premieres on FX April 3, 2024 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT and streams the next day on Hulu.

Check out the trailer below. [end-mark]

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News Supacell

Time Travelers Must Unite or Die in Supacell Teaser  

Doctor Who’s Tosin Cole can time travel without a TARDIS these days, it seems

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on March 20, 2024

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Based on the teaser trailer Netflix released, the upcoming series Supacell centers on a man who, unexpectedly bestowed with the power to time travel, visits the future and finds out the love of his life will die in mere weeks.

The official logline for the show confirms this:

While the time travel premise has been done before, the facet of five Black individuals gaining power that then makes them targets of a mysterious institution resonates all-too-closely to our current real-life circumstances. It looks like a compelling watch, once it hits the streaming platform.

Supacell was created, showrun, and had three of its episodes directed by the British artist Rapman. The cast includes Tosin Cole (Doctor Who, 61st Street) as Michael, Nadine Mills (Sliced and The Weekend) as Sabrina, Eric Kofi Abrefa (Blue Story, BMF) as Andre, Calvin Demba (The Rig, Life, Micky and the Bear) as Rodney, Josh Tedeku (Moonhaven, A Town Called Malice) as Tazer, Adelayo Adedayo (The Responder, Timewasters) as Dionne, Rayxia Ojo (Harry Potter and The Cursed Child – West End Production, Call The Midwife) as Sharleen, and Giacomo Mancini (Top Boy, Orthodox)  as Spud.

Supacell will start streaming on Netflix sometime in June 2024.

Check out the teaser trailer below. [end-mark]

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Excerpts Young Adult

Read an Excerpt From Joan He’s Sound the Gong

The sweeping conclusion to The Kingdom of Three duology.

By Joan He

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Published on March 20, 2024

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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Sound the Gong, the conclusion of Joan He’s YA fantasy duology The Kingdom of Three—publishing with Roaring Brook Press on April 30^th.

“Hello, Lotus. We meet again.”

I saw him from above, as a spirit, but it’s different, so different, confronting him in the flesh. Firelight from the braziers falls over us both. His face is underlit, the planes of his cheeks and forehead shadowed. If only I could clear the shadows like I would a mask. I’m suddenly seized with the urge to do just that—to draw him into the light, out of these pretenses, and put my lips to his ear. Yes and no, Crow.

We meet again, but not as Crow and Lotus.

But I don’t act on whims, and neither does Crow. “Any particular reason for sending this?” He holds up the letter, and though I’ve been waiting for him to ask, I’m caught off guard. It’s his manner. His tone, so blasé, as if the letter is just a piece of paper. I expected… more.

Fool of me to. He’s a strategist, like myself. Emotions are a liability. Of course he’d hide them. I should look to his actions. They speak more than his words. I’m in his tent.

I have his attention.

“I wanted to meet with you,” I say, lightening my own tone. “I seem to have succeeded.”

Crow regards me carefully. It’s nothing like the last time we met face-to-face, by the lake. Why would it be? Crow’s forces are here to break the siege. This can only end with one victor, one loser.

“Indeed you have,” he at last grants. “Did Zephyr give this letter to you too?”

Buy the Book

Sound the Gong

Joan He

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Sound the Gong

Joan He

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Too. What else did I, as Zephyr, supposedly give to Lotus? Then I remember another time I felt this pinned. In the dark of the stables, cornered by Crow, I’d claimed that Zephyr had told me his name. He doubted me then—still doubts me, by the lilt of his voice—and I untense. He cares, enough to have an opinion on what Zephyr would or would not share.

I have more than an opinion. “No. She didn’t.”

“I didn’t think so,” Crow murmurs.

“We found it with her body.” The head of which Miasma collected first. Surely Crow knew of her revolting actions. He is her strategist. An enemy who holds a secret pertinent to this siege. Ask him—

“Tell me, then.” Crow speaks before I can. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

“I challenge you to a duet.”

“Still two on one zither?”

Mmm, Dewdrop thinks, as if the prospect is delicious.

I’ll squash her right after I squash my rival. “One zither each,” I say to Crow, willing my face to cool.

“A proper duet.” Crow lets the words hang for an uncomfortably long second. “If my memory isn’t failing me, you weren’t eager to play during our last encounter.”

“I’ve been practicing since. I liked it.”

His stare is cryptic.

I was cryptic too, the night I sat at his zither as Lotus. I left him wanting, left him wondering how a warrior like myself could unlock the instrument’s qì with just one note.

Now’s your chance to find out, I think to Crow. Can you resist it?

I know I wouldn’t.

“Bring them,” he finally says, eyes never leaving mine as the guards depart, carrying out his order. They return with two zithers. I recognize the first as Crow’s. Midnight wood. Strings white as snow. He takes it to a table at one end of the tent. I take the second zither to the opposite.

We sit.

Since we last played, I’ve been thinking over a dilemma. Zithers are a conduit for the truth in one’s heart. Why would a strategist agree to a duet if they’re at risk of leaking secrets that could end wars or incite them?

The answer I arrived at solidifies when I meet the challenge in Crow’s gaze. We each have secrets, and he’s betting on his skill that he can access mine first. A strategist’s duet is no different from a warrior’s duel in this respect. Both parties stand to injure themselves.

Neither backs down.

Crow raises his arms, black sleeves cascading. “What topic shall we play about?”

“This siege.”

“Hmm.” My heart tremors at the syllable. “I’d like to play about you,” Crow says, and plucks. The open note travels through me, and I with it. Back in time and place. My hands—Lotus’s— are under Crow’s.

We played this very note, by the lake.

Focus. This scene is safe. I play as well, and the space between us swirls, air gone to water. Mist curls—fronds of qì, taking on color. The night appears. The two of us, bent over the same zither. The lake shines behind us, liquid moonlight, as the music rises.

An image within an image.

It changes as we play on. Crow and Lotus disappear, replaced by a hut. My breath stops. Thistlegate?

It’s not. The image clarifies, and I see the pig carcasses, strung from the thatched roof. What—?

Lotus. She’s from a family of butchers, Cloud once told me. Relief—I haven’t leaked my identity—turns into bewilderment. I shouldn’t have these memories. I don’t remember these memories.

How, then, can my music be conveying my thoughts?

Something’s wrong, Dewdrop thinks. Stop playing. This—

Crow plucks another note—two. They vibrate, like rubbed stones. A question sings in the resulting harmonic.

Zephyr—

I can’t leave empty-handed.

I play my response, throwing my notes. The image ripples. Changes. I see Lotus and myself—as Zephyr, in Qilin’s body— crossing a river together. Cloud is up ahead. Tourmaline brings up the rear, and Ren—she’s beside me, between Lotus and Zephyr, just like the old times—

Before my eyes, Zephyr starts to fade.

Quickly I play louder, faster. The image changes to the siege. I strike the zither and Bikong ignites. Arrows soar and our soldiers rush the walls. Smoke blooms and blood spills—enemy blood.

Fight back, my music says, or we will slaughter you.

Excerpted from Sound the Gong, copyright © 2024 by Joan He.

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News Parasyte: The Grey

Parasyte: The Grey Trailer Asks If Aliens and Humans Can Get Along in the Same Body

The feature is based on the popular manga by Hitoshi Iwaaki

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on March 20, 2024

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Director Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan, Hellbound) has a new feature coming out on Netflix based on the popular manga, Parasyte by Hitoshi Iwaaki.

The feature, titled Parasyte: The Grey, expands the universe that Iwaaki created, where parasites invade human brains and take over their bodies. The premise sounds similar to The Thing, except in The Grey, these parasites turn their hosts’ heads into tentacle flower things from time to time.

The upcoming Netflix film also centers on a woman named Su-in who joins with a parasite named Heidi(!) and becomes a mutant hybrid, with the parasite and her having conversations inside her head (similar, perhaps, to Eddie and Venom). It was that potential for symbiosis that intrigued Sang-ho.

“To me, Parasyte is about coexistence, so I wanted Parasyte: The Grey to echo this theme,” the director said in a statement. “I questioned whether people could peacefully coexist with other organisms or mutants unlike themselves.”

Su-in and Heidi are the exception to the rule in the film, with the parasites eager to take over humanity and humanity fighting back via an organization called The Grey. The premise has the original manga creator’s blessing.

“I felt that the creators of Parasyte: The Grey greatly respected the original work,” Iwaaki said in the same statement. “At the same time, I could see unique creative branches and ideas throughout the series and enjoyed it as both the original author and as a true ‘audience member.’ Each episode’s plot development is dynamic with a quick tempo that makes it very entertaining.”

Parasyte: The Grey starts streaming on Netflix on April 5, 2024.

Check out the trailer below. [end-mark]

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Book Recommendations space colonization

Five SF Stories Featuring Unsuccessful Attempts at Space Colonization

When poor planning meets insufficient technology and resources, anything can happen!

By James Davis Nicoll

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Published on March 21, 2024

Credit: NASA/SAIC/Pat Rawlings

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Credit: NASA/SAIC/Pat Rawlings

While perusing the latest edition of the tabletop roleplaying game 2300 AD¹, this passage caught my attention:

Given that alien worlds will tend to be, well, quite alien, and settlements on Earth, the planet on which humans evolved, have been known to collapse and vanish in the face of calamity, this passage seems quite plausible. It is not surprising that a significant part of the current edition of the game touches on the technologies required to survive on other worlds, and what social effects these enabling technologies might have. Nor is it surprising that SF authors have sometimes turned to what I will call “premature settlement” for inspiration.²

Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein (1953)

Frustrated farm boy Max Jones abandons his vapid stepmother and her latest beau for a life among the stars. At least, that’s the plan… Max’s lack of credentials in the guild-dominated Earth of tomorrow dooms his ambition to join the starfarers’ guild. It falls to Max’s ethically flexible pal Sam Anderson to wangle berths on starship Asgard through the power of applied lying.

A navigational mishap maroons Asgard in a hitherto unknown system. Unless Asgard can find its way home—if, say, a former farm boy turns out to have a cognitive knack seemingly designed to fulfil a very specific plot need—the crew and passengers will live the rest of their lives on the unfamiliar alien world. As the planet in question already has owners who have little interest in sharing, those lives could be quite short.

Heinlein has something of reputation for placing humans above all other beings in his fiction. However, several of his pre-Starship Troopers works feature aliens that humans are well advised to treat with respect and caution (lest humans discover the hard way the full extent of the aliens’ abilities). Starman Jones is such a novel.

“On the Last Afternoon” by James Tiptree, Jr. (1972)

(Collected in Warm Worlds and Otherwise and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever) Their ship irreparably damaged, Mysha and his fellow humans were forced to set down on an alien world. The surface of the world appeared relentlessly hostile until—at the very last moment—a convenient clearing appeared, a clearing where they could safely land and build their new community.

The human castaways assumed that the clearing was due to a tornado. This is not, in fact, the cause. The unfortunate settlers are about to get firsthand experience of the thing that cleared the forest. Unless they can produce a miracle at the last moment, the experience is likely to be the humans’ last.

Readers will be cheered to discover that humanity survives the calamitous events of this story… in the same way that humanity survives the events of Joanna Russ’ We Who Are About To…

The Keeper of the Isis Light by Monica Hughes (1980)

The class-B, marginally habitable planet Isis has but two inhabitants: robot Guardian and young orphan Olwen Pendennis. Olwen accepts her solitary circumstances as normal. The impending arrival of a starship packed to the gunnels with colonists promises unwelcome change.

As the newcomers discover firsthand, almost all of Isis is uninhabitable absent certain advanced technologies not immediately available to the colonists. Clad in an environment suit to protect her from the colonists, Olwen does her best to provide the newcomers with guidance. Alas, the promising arrangement is imperiled when the settlers discover precisely how it is the young girl has survived on the hostile alien world.³

While this colony doesn’t totally fail, there aren’t all that many settlers and they are confined to a single, specific region from which egress is impractical. On Earth, a species with such constrained numbers and restricted location would be seen as endangered. Making matters even worse is the fact that this group of settlers is somewhat lacking in ingenuity and willingness to change and adapt.

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (2015)

Seven generations after launch, an aging generation starship approaches Tau Ceti. The original crew hoped that their descendants would found a new community on the potentially habitable world known to be orbiting Tau Ceti. Said descendants, having been involuntarily drafted into the effort through the misfortune of having selected the wrong ancestors, are rather less enthusiastic about the whole settling-an-alien-world concept.

The good news: Tau Ceti does indeed have at least one potentially habitable world. The bad news: there is a huge gap between “potentially habitable” and “actually habitable.” It is in no way clear that the involuntary settlers have the correct combination of technology, ingenuity, and leeway for error to bridge the gap. The only alternative is to return to the Solar System, a task that may be as beyond their limited abilities as settling an unfamiliar world.

Rather than dwell on the hilarious science errors scattered throughout this jeremiad against space colonies as a coping mechanism for climate change, I will admit there are two factors that legitimately doom this effort. First, that two thousand people is too few to ensure survival after the inevitable setbacks. Second, that these folks are for the most part incurious nincompoops whose failure is as foreordained as that of any Robert Sheckley characters. Unlike Sheckley’s works, this novel does not seem to have been intended as comedy.

The Scourge Between Stars by Ness Brown (2023)

Having abandoned the Earth as irredeemably damaged, the Calypso and the rest of the Goddess Flotilla set off for Proxima. Proxima b proved beyond the would-be settlers’ ability to colonize. The disheartened crew of the Calypso reluctantly abandoned efforts to turn Proxima b into a new home and set off to see if Earth was quite as hopeless as their ancestors thought.

The return voyage is far slower than the outward journey. More time for aging starships to fail and fall silent. Whether their ingenuity will be sufficient to keep Calypso functioning long enough to discover what has become of Earth  is a question that concerns the crew. Thanks to an alien stowaway, insufficiently closed life-support loops are the least of their problems.

There are some basic rules that would-be colonists should follow to enhance their odds of survival. First, don’t go haring off to an unknown world on a generation ship with only a handful of colonists armed with untested colonization methods. Second, try very hard not to be written by James Tiptree, Jr. or (arguably worse) a depressed John Brunner.⁴ Third—and this is the mistake the crew of Calypso makes—don’t be characters in a horror novel.

These are only a few of the heartwarming tales SF authors have spun about intrepid colonists boldly settling hostile worlds…then failing thanks to insufficient technology and resources. While this is not a large subgenre (see footnote two), there are certainly other examples not mentioned here. If I missed your particular favourite—such as that Poul Anderson story; you know the one I mean—feel free to mention it in comments below.[end-mark]

1. 2300 AD is the game whose three-dimensional map you may recall me praising in a previous entry on this site. I was recently delighted to see that someone has created a resource that handles the heavy lifting of working out routes from interstellar origin to interstellar destination. ︎
2. Not all that many books about premature settlement, because failed settlements are a bit of a downer. ︎
3. I’ll just reassure readers now that the method used is not the one so memorably deployed in John Wyndham’s “Survival.”: “Look, baby,” she said. “Look there! Food! Lovely food….” ︎
4. Why, yes, I did just read Brunner’s Total Eclipse. Why do you ask? ︎

The post Five SF Stories Featuring Unsuccessful Attempts at Space Colonization appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Polite Society

How Polite Society Conveys Its Characterization Through Martial Arts

The combination of thoughtful fight sequences and Jane Austen style humor created one of 2023’s best films

By Aamir Mehar

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Published on March 21, 2024

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As a teenager, I spent most days fixated on martial arts. I practiced Northern Shaolin kung fu, which involved sets of elegant but sharp movements (called “forms”), sparring, conditioning (stamina and strength work), and basic punches and kicks. I watched martial arts films like Tsui Hark’s Once Upon a Time in China and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I read books about Bruce Lee, and I impulsively demonstrated martial arts constantly at school and at family events. I also enjoyed science fiction, and years later, at university, I became a big fan of Jane Austen. Throughout all that time I was also dealing with the complexity of my identity as a “British Asian”; I’m both an Indian and someone who was born (and has always lived) in the UK.

Last year I heard, much to my surprise and immediate curiosity, about a film that actually combined many of those things into one work: British South Asian experiences, martial arts, and a Jane Austen quality. (It even had a science fiction element, which I found out later.) The film is called Polite Society, written and directed by Nida Manzoor, and I have trouble believing that it exists, even though I have seen it twice now.

Polite Society is about a martial arts and stunts-fixated British Asian teenager named Ria (Priya Kansara) and her increasing panic at the prospect of her art school dropout sister Lena (Ritu Arya) marrying a charming bachelor and geneticist named Salim (Akshay Khanna). Salim also happens to have a truly menacing mother named Raheela, played by Nimra Bucha. As the narrative continues, Ria explores as many options as possible to try and stop the wedding, taking things ludicrously far on more than one occasion, and just when it seems she must surely stop, she discovers that Salim (who is reminiscent of Austen’s deceitful Wickham rather than the Darcy comparison that Ria makes at one point) and Raheela are villains; they are planning to create a clone of Raheela and use Lena as a carrier for said clone. The film can be very silly–and it demands to be taken as both serious and unserious simultaneously–yet it also works, mainly because there is a human foundation to it all. That foundation is Ria’s terrible fear of losing her sister, and how losing Lena also means (to her) losing her own dream to become a stuntwoman.

Film scholar David Bordwell noted (when talking about “classic kung-fu movies”) that martial arts on the screen is a way of conveying character, and Polite Society taps into this style too. Manzoor has said that she wanted to explore the pain of being a teenage girl (when everything feels almost violently intense) through action. With this in mind, I’ll go through some of the most significant martial arts scenes in the film and break down how Manzoor and her team were able to explore characterization through combat in such a powerful manner.

One of the big fight scenes in the film is between Ria and Lena. (Lena has discovered that Ria has been interfering with her relationship with Salim, and confronts Ria in her room.) Their fight melds humor (the shot of their parents listening to their shouting with resignation from downstairs) with the vicious reality of a bitter dispute between siblings. The choreography in this scene echoes this concern; it’s like a mixture of UFC style combat with street fighting, and it’s horrifyingly over the top. Lena uses an elbow strike, a headbutt, a choke, and even burns Ria’s face with a hair appliance. Ria, who is such a fiery and aggressive personality throughout the film, fights quite defensively in this scene, showing her respect for her sister as well as her attachment to her.

As in the rest of the film, Ria doesn’t actually want to hurt Lena, but to save her from what she sees as a terrible fate. She uses what looks like Brazilian jiu-jitsu grappling to try and keep Lena from attacking (essentially holding her down on the ground), and only makes her own harsh attack (a bite) when Lena is choking her. At the end, Lena finally spits out the truth. She’s scared that she’s not good enough to ever become an artist, and this is why she’s decided to move on to marriage. The fight ends on that sad, tender note. Ria hasn’t been able to convince Lena of anything, and Lena is distraught at admitting her own sense of failure. Manzoor wanted this specific fight to be the “bloodiest” because a sibling knows what can hurt you the most, and while we see this in the actual fighting, it also comes through in that final confession from Lena. Ria has pushed her to a breaking point.

Perhaps the scene I enjoy the most is when Ria performs a dance as a diversion at Lena’s wedding to Salim. The dance itself is a homage to Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas, a famous 2002 Bollywood film adaptation of a novel by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. In the film, a character named Chandramukhi (played by Madhuri Dixit Nene) is dressed in a vibrant green dress and performs a dance set to “Maar Daala,” an unsettling but hypnotic song sung by Kavitha Krishnamurthy and KK. I don’t recall being a big fan of Devdas when I watched it a long time ago, but I’ve always liked that one song. The main line in the chorus of “Maar Daala” apparently translates as “my joy is killing me.” By using this as a song for her sister’s wedding, Ria gives what is normally a happy occasion a troubling, ominous feeling. Her movements reinforce this; she infuses the Devdas choreography with a martial intent in both her expressions and her gestures.

Sometimes Ria’s movements differ, like when she wonderfully throws in a pose from The Matrix at the very end of the song, beckoning to Salim as Morpheus did to Neo in their dojo sparring, or when she quite bluntly mimics shooting a gun at her own head while glaring at Salim. At other times, though, she uses the original choreography and it takes on a new, more aggressive tone due to the context, as in where she slices down with one hand into her palm just as Dixit did in Devdas. Coming from Ria, the motion looks like a chopping attack associated with martial arts. Dance and martial arts are often linked, especially when people describe fights seen on the screen. (Some have compared the beautiful wirework choreography in films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to dances.) Polite Society fuses martial arts and Indian dance through Ria’s performance in a way that I have never seen done.

After the dance, Ria ends up alone with Raheela, and has to fight her. Manzoor wanted this fight to feel like Ria was confronting a “Big Boss,” Ria’s ultimate villain. The fight with Raheela is similar to the one with Lena in the sense that Ria is once again the one being overpowered, but the style of this fight, and the emotional element of it, are both very different. The style in this one references classic kung fu cinema; Raheela uses motions that look traditional rather than modern, smoother and more graceful. Her skillful movements represent how slippery she is as a villain. She blocks attacks using the outside and inside of her forearm, and when she settles into a stance at one point it looks similar to something from Taijiquan (Tai Chi), with one hand formed in a hook-like gesture. Instead of brawling like Lena, she catches, redirects, and counters Ria’s strikes. Raheela even parries Ria’s punch using a clothes sash at one point, then snaps it at her to blind her, and uses the same sash to choke her; the fight arranger, Rob Lock, has said that he wanted to emphasize how malicious Raheela could be through her technique, and took these specific moves from Silat, a class of martial arts from South East Asia.

Even outside of the fighting, Raheela is incredibly creepy, but some of the impact behind that creepiness might be lost on members of the audience who aren’t familiar with the cultural context. I was always encouraged to call many elders who weren’t related to me “aunty” or “uncle” as a sign of respect. (I still do.) Elders hold a special place within the hierarchy of South Asian families, which can lead to a truly grim situation when they happen to be malicious. There is a sinister quality to this, where you have to be respectful to someone who, as Hamlet would put it, “may smile and smile and be a villain.” Raheela perfectly embodies this quality, which particularly comes out in the scene where Ria goes to her house to apologize for her behavior, and Raheela seems to accept it at first. Eventually things become more and more threatening, with an unsettling waxing scene and Ria then having to fight off flunkies and escape while Raheela laughs. It’s comedic, but in a way that also feels unfortunately real as it mimics the powerlessness one can feel in front of someone of higher “status.” While this is rooted in a specific cultural context, there is also once again a parallel to the work of Austen in the way outward politeness mixes with an antagonistic undercurrent, before that politeness then falls apart. Much like Austen’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh does with Elizabeth, Raheela attempts to control Ria. Both Ria and Elizabeth are outmatched in experience, wealth, and status, but they behave in unorthodox and rebellious ways, and never give in.

Manzoor still remembers to add a touch of sympathy for Raheela by referencing the lack of choice that women of her generation faced, and the bitterness that can arise from that. We even see another dash of sympathy at the end, when Ria finally defeats her and Raheela is left on the street, reaching out for Lena in despair. It’s ultimately her dream, rather than that of Ria or Lena’s, that shatters.

The lyrics in the ending credits song for the film, by X-Ray Spex, say it all: “Identity is the crisis, don’t you see?” Ria is obsessed with needing to be a “stuntwoman,” Lena is afraid to face failure as an “artist,” and Raheela is fixated on being reborn through a clone, to be the person she thinks she was “destined to be.” Their fighting throughout the film reflects their passions and fears. Raheela with her subtle and masterful movements, Lena with desperate brutality, and Ria, fighting with (as her friend puts it) admirable tenacity. Raheela tells Ria that she has “big dreams,” but really, she’s “utterly unremarkable.” Ria’s response—an elegant jumping spin kick that she has never been able to perform properly before—is the perfect response in a film that approaches martial arts as an integral part of characterization.[end-mark]

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Book Recommendations

Falling in Love With Speculative Poetry

If you generally dislike mainstream poetry, speculative poetry could be your gateway into verse.

By Diane Callahan

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Published on March 21, 2024

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Reading poetry sometimes feels like battling a giant squid: overwhelming, disorienting, and more than a little slippery. Poems can be elusive beings, evading comprehension and dissection. When you take an already chimeric beast and give it appendages of fantasy, science fiction, horror, or mythology—well, then it becomes another monster entirely.

Even just a few years ago, I would steer clear of poetry tables at book festivals, feeling that it was too frustrating of an artform to fully grasp. But now writing and reading poetry is a weekly pleasure for me, and I recently read the 2021 Rhysling Anthology—which specifically celebrates speculative poetry—from cover to cover.

What sparked my transformation? Following these two maxims unlocked my mind:

1. You don’t have to like ALL poetry.

This may seem obvious, since it’s not like you need to enjoy two hundred flavors in order to say you like ice cream. However, I’ve heard readers say, “I don’t really like fantasy” when the only fantasy they’ve read is Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. It’s easy to dismiss an entire category after only a few samples. If you generally dislike mainstream poetry, speculative poetry could be your gateway into verse.

One of the first poetry collections I truly enjoyed was the Pulitzer Prize-winning Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith—an ode to the universe, David Bowie, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even though much of it was nonsensical to me at first, it was delicious nonsense, with honeyed phrases and tender images that I chewed on for days, especially the opening lines of “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?”

2. Don’t aim to understand poetry; strive to experience it.

When I stopped treating poetry as if it were prose—quit mining for a coherent narrative, for a clear message—my frustration evaporated. I embraced uncertainty and even found joy in never completely untangling a poem’s meaning, allowing a sense of mystery to linger. Although poems can tell a story, poetry is predominantly a language-driven form where sound and sensation intersect.

Take a look at this stanza from Amal El-Mohtar’s Rhysling Award-winning poem “Peach-Creamed Honey,” which begs to be spoken aloud (in fact, you can listen to El-Mohtar perform the poem here):

This poem comes from El-Mohtar’s collection The Honey Month, in which twenty-eight flavors of honey are paired with tasting notes and literary reflections that belong in the realm of fairy tales. “Peach-Creamed Honey” is a sensual poem laced with innuendo, where every word sounds like an act of temptation and seduction.

Speculative poetry is a hybrid creature that combines elements of poetry and prose, in addition to blurring the line between realism and fabulism, giving it a unique approach that no other medium can replicate.

“Mainstream” vs. Speculative Poetry

To better understand what speculative poetry can achieve, we can put it under a microscope and see how this subgenre differs from mainstream poetry. Many classic poems from days of old could be said to have speculative elements: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market,” for example, and even the epic poems of Beowulf and The Odyssey, with their tales of hauntings, goblin fruit, dragons, and sirens. (Theodora Goss’ website “Poems of the Fantastic and Macabre” has an inexhaustive list of these types of older works.)

Speculative poet Bruce Boston emphasizes the difference in subject matter and the “stance” of the poet in his distinction between the two forms:

Mainstream poetry deals with the rendering and exploration of the here and now, reality as we know it, internal and external. The poet is often present in the poem as an ‘I’ voice, explicitly or implicitly. Speculative poetry has more to do with imagination, the world of dreams and the world as it could be. The stance of the speculative poet is closer to that of a fiction writer. If an ‘I’ voice appears in a speculative poem it is usually that of a fictional character rather than the author.

The two forms aren’t really a dichotomy so much as they are a spectrum. In contemporary poetry, some poets will reject the “speculative” label even when their work uses fantastical elements, whereas certain poems featured in science fiction and fantasy magazines don’t feel very speculative at all. The label isn’t as important as the poem’s effect.

All poetry shares the broader purpose of defamiliarization—casting the familiar in an unfamiliar light so that we can find fresh meanings, new wrinkles and scars in faces we’ve known our whole lives. As writer Stephen Moss put it, “A good poem looks closely at the world; does that Martian thing of trying to see it for the first time. Everything else—the emotional charge, the lyrical delight, the intellectual pleasure—is secondary.”

So, if poetry’s purpose is—at least in part—to paint the familiar in an unfamiliar light, then what happens when the subject matter is also deeply unfamiliar, or doesn’t even exist? The effect is often an added layer of defamiliarization. Speculative poetry transmutes the ordinary into the extraordinary, supercharging the reader’s attention on one particular idea or image.

The ocean and love are familiar enough elements in poetry, and they’re spotlighted in Fran Wilde’s “The Sea Never Says It Loves You” published in Uncanny Magazine. However, it’s in how Wilde presents “you” as the lover of an uncaring sea that we view the familiar through an unfamiliar prism. The poem feels playful in its absurd premise (“You could go to school with the sea / You might pass it in the hall”), yet grows more melancholy as it continues, ending on the dissolution of the relationship:

What speculative poetry can do that mainstream poetry can’t is heighten the experience of the unfamiliar by twisting reality into new shapes. Through that subversion of the real, we can stare into the pool at our own reflections and better understand what we see.

Opening my mind to these possibilities revealed the varied powers that speculative poems can wield: to imagine, to delight, to ignite, and to converse.

To Imagine

What the hell did I just read?!

That was my first reaction, anyway. The second is “I want to read this aloud, over and over again.” These lines from Sonya Taaffe’s poem “Radio Banquo” in Strange Horizons seem to present Banquo’s death from Shakespeare’s Macbeth as a radio broadcast, the diction filled with allusions to the Bard with “furious nothing” and “signal ghosting.” For me, the poem’s gravitational pull comes from that unexpected juxtaposition of old and modern. The poet gifts me with a sensory experience that I couldn’t have imagined on my own.

Warping time and place in speculative poetry can be a way for us to reexamine our relationships with each other and the world around us. In C.S.E. Cooney’s “Postcards from Mars” in Stone Telling, the narrator’s mother takes a one-way trip to Mars after saving up every penny, sending back monthly postcards to Earth. The narrator pretends her mom is dead instead—until she discovers that her mom has disappeared on Mars, and the poem ends on a bittersweet note:

This poem invites the reader to examine a complex mother/daughter relationship, creating an even greater emotional distance between characters by using Mars as a setting. As poet Theodora Goss has said, “…every story or poem we write is necessarily about us, whether it involves dragons, robots, or accountants. We can’t help writing about our world, however obliquely. We can’t escape our context.”

As in speculative prose, speculative poetry lets us imagine new societal structures, voice warnings about potential futures, and envision identity, gender, and sexuality through a lens that’s unencumbered by our present reality. We can explore our hopes and fears through the hyperbole of strange worlds and what they challenge us to reconsider about our current lives—a way to “tell all the truth but tell it slant.”

To Delight

A poem doesn’t need to be serious or groundbreaking to fulfill its purpose. Some poems are solely designed to entertain: to inspire a smile at a surprising turn of phrase or an appreciative sigh at a poignant image. Narrative poems that tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end can feel like morsels of microfiction that have been artfully arranged to guide the reader’s experience.

Mary Soon Lee’s The Sign of the Dragon is an epic fantasy story told through over three hundred poems, and Lee crafts each poem in a way that allows for a new discovery in how storytelling can be experienced. One poem jumps between snippets of conversations the new king has with his tailor, stableboy, and generals as he prepares for his succession. Another poem is written from the perspective of the king’s horses. Battle scenes are painted in impressionistic strokes to capture the chaos:

That continual string of novelty in form and language feels like dancing at a masquerade ball with a dozen different partners.

Tim Pratt’s “Soul Searching” in Strange Horizons also plays with form to deliver whimsical surprises (this poem also won the 2005 Rhysling Award). It opens:

The enjambment with the first line gives us this seemingly normal premise (“On weekends I help my old neighbor look”), which is immediately subverted as our eyes jump to the next line (“for his soul”). It’s like the turn in the punchline of a joke or the cherry cordial when you bite into a chocolate truffle—that instant sweetness of surprise. Poetry encourages creative risks, leading to unexpected uses of language and punctuation, like the way Pratt’s parentheses create the effect of forgetfulness that the narrator must be hearing in the older man’s dialogue.

This poem also underscores why speculative elements can be essential. By untethering the poem from reality, the poet has access to fresh imagery, like picturing a soul hidden in an egg that’s been hidden inside a sheep. The literal take on “soul searching” makes the abstract concrete.

It’s a whimsical but deeply sad poem, as the old neighbor eventually explains that he wants to break the egg so that he can finally lose his immortality and die. Even when poems tell a story in an accessible style, they can touch on deeper truths about nebulous concepts such as heroism and war, mortality and old age.

To Ignite

All words are fightin’ words.

In her insightful article “How to Read Poetry 101,” Amal El-Mohtar shares the story of her poet grandfather who was imprisoned in Lebanon for his political views, which forever shaped her view of poetry’s purpose:

I grew up being taught that poetry is the language of resistance—that when oppression and injustice exceed our capacity to frame them into words, we still have poetry.

Adding speculative elements to resistance poetry can amplify its intensity. I was struck by the use of a science fiction framework when I first read Franny Choi’s poem “Introduction to Quantum Theory” from her collection Soft Science, which begins, “There are only so many parallel universes / that concern us.” From that premise, she imagines a universe “in which our mothers haven’t learned to wrap / their bones in each small grief they’ve found,” and a universe where “no one’s child washes / blue, ashore.” Choi highlights the absence of certain features in other universes as a way to remind us of the failings in our own.

When I read poetry, I’m seeking out that shock to the nervous system. “Birth, Place” by Brandon O’Brien in Uncanny Magazine embodies that idea right from the title, with its separation of “birth” and “place.” Immediately, you know that this is going to be a poem about identity and the loss of homeland. Even from the opening stanza, O’Brien pulls no punches:

The poem invokes the orishas of healing and rivers in the creation of the land. It feels like a story of displacement in the wake of colonization (“Your legacy’s already drowned me”), and the narrator is reclaiming that ancestral land—land that is an extension of the body, the dirt in their mouth, home caked around them. Amongst the whispering spirits and the rebuilding of a planet shines a hope for future generations in the poem’s powerful final lines:

Speculative poems present a challenge: look inward and reexamine the way you see the world.

To Converse

Listen closely enough and you can hear artists talking to each other through their art, whether to their contemporaries, or creators long dead, or to future generations. Verse is a vehicle for conversations about genre tropes or touchstones.

Feminist retellings in poems reimagine fairy-tale figures with greater agency, subverting stories that are part of our collective consciousness. In the titular poem from her collection Snow White Learns Witchcraft, Theodora Goss imagines what Snow White’s life might be like in old age, after she marries the prince and has a daughter of her own. Who is she now that she’s in the “Evil Queen’s” position as a beautiful woman whose hair has become “as white as snow”?

These retellings are another type of defamiliarization, taking the “familiar” out of familiar stories. Speculative poems converse with stories outside the genre, too, like how Dominik Parisien’s “A Portrait of the Monster as an Artist” in Mythic Delirium is a clear play on James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Brandon O’Brien’s “Cento for Lagahoos” in Strange Horizons borrows from twenty other poets; he took familiar pieces and composed new meaning from them, conversing with the realm of poetry as a whole. Instead of erasure poetry, it’s highlight poetry.

The challenge and inventiveness of Sherese Francis’ poem “Celestial Mary (Galilean Daughter)” in Apex Magazine comes from how the poem puts itself in conversation with the Bible, focusing on Mary’s perspective on a metaphysical level. Two stanzas appear side by side, making the poem feel like a conversation, followed by a centered stanza. Forward slashes break words into units of sound or meaning, which has a disorienting effect:

Through innovations in form and content, speculative poetry furthers what’s possible in the genre.

The Future of Speculative Poetry

We gain so much more from poetry when we stop fighting the giant squid and instead marvel at the way it dances in the deep and let it drag us off into the depths. I’ve always been in love with language, but poetry reshaped the way I thought about how the world can be experienced through a handful of words—and for me, that’s the true purpose of speculative poetry.

If you’d like to dive into the genre, the Rhysling Anthology is a fantastic way to sample a variety of voices, as are the panoply of amazing magazines mentioned throughout this article. I also highly recommend FIYAH Literary Magazine, Polu Texni, Speculative North, Augur, Asimov’s, and The Future Fire, and the archives of Goblin Fruit and Liminality, among others.

The future of speculative poetry is in your hands—because it’s only through reading the words that we give them life.[end-mark]

Originally published in July 2021.

The post Falling in Love With Speculative Poetry appeared first on Reactor.

News House of the Dragon

HBO Goes Hard on Political Divisiveness With “Green” and “Black” Trailers for House of the Dragon

If all must choose, I’m Team Rhaenyra

By Molly Templeton

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Published on March 21, 2024

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If there is one thing I did not forget from the first season of House of the Dragon, it’s that former besties Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) and Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) are extremely at odds, what with all the child-death-by-dragon, throne-stealing, and other general treacherous mayhem between them.

But just in case it wasn’t clear that this series is about conflict and war and choosing sides … HBO would now like you to pick. Are you Team Green (Alicent) or Team Black (Rhaenyra)? Are you really going to watch just one of the two trailers—one for each side—that the company released? Let’s be real: We’re going to watch them both. But the point here is to remind you that everything is conflict, everything is teams, and you must choose a side. Literally: “ALL MUST CHOOSE” flashes across the screen in both trailers.

What’s funny is that even the trailer that’s ostensibly for the Greens can’t make them seem like anything but schemers. Wild idea, but if your new baby king is super hot on violence, he might not really make the best ruler.

Along with D’Arcy and Cooke, Matt Smith returns as the enjoyably terrible Daemon Targaryen; Eve Best as the only good Targaryen; Ewan Mitchell as the worst princeling; Steve Toussaint as the Sea Snake, Corlys Velaryon; Fabien Frankel as a knight who made some bad choices; Tom Glynn-Carney as that violence-loving king; Sonoya Mizuno as the intriguing Mysaria; and Rhys Ifans as Otto Hightower, head of the schemers.

Many new faces arrive in time for the impending war, including Tom Taylor as Lord Cregan Stark, Kieran Bew as Hugh Hammer, Clinton Liberty as Addam of Hull, Vincent Regan as Ser Rickard Thorne, Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers, Freddie Fox as Ser Gwayne Hightower, Simon Russell Beale as Ser Simon Strong, Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull, Jamie Kenna as Ser Alfred Broome, and Tom Bennett as Ulf.

The Dance of Dragons begins June 16th. [end-mark]

The post HBO Goes Hard on Political Divisiveness With “Green” and “Black” Trailers for <i>House of the Dragon</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Humane

Caitlin Cronenberg’s Humane Offers a Terribly Twisted Take on the Future of the Planet

It’s a family drama AND a climate change nightmare!

By Molly Templeton

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Published on March 21, 2024

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It’s the Cronenberg family’s disturbing world; we just live in it. And we’re lucky to live while they’re making movies, honestly. Caitlin Cronenberg is the latest child-of-David to take a seat in the director’s chair; her brother Brandon made Infinity Pool. And while there’s a certain amount of oh-we’re-really-going-there family resemblance to the tone of her debut, Humane, there’s also a fun little kick in the seat: The story is about a wealthy family whose patriarch sacrifices himself for the good of the planet. But there’s a catch: One of the kids might have to die, too.

The summary for Humane simply says, “A global environmental collapse forces world leaders to take extreme measures to reduce earth’s population.” That doesn’t even begin to cover it. “Extreme measures,” here, means that 20 percent of the world population has to die. Peter Gallagher plays Charles York, who gathers his rather large family together in order to announce that he and his wife are going to “enlist,” which is a biting little euphemism. But his wife isn’t having it, and takes off. And when the authorities arrive, they need to collect two bodies.

Bloody hijinks, naturally, ensue.

There’s so much to like in this trailer, which goes all in on the bleak-as-hell comedy of its premise (the screenplay is by Michael Sparaga). But Enrico Colantoni (best known as Veronica Mars’ dad, or a certain alien in Galaxy Quest) is an utter delight as Bob, who seems way too invested in his job as corpse collector. The scrabbling, possibly murderous family members include Jay Baruchel (This is the End) and Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek).

Humane is in theaters on April 26th. [end-mark]

The post Caitlin Cronenberg’s <i>Humane</i> Offers a Terribly Twisted Take on the Future of the Planet appeared first on Reactor.

Book Recommendations Teen Horror Time Machine

From Almost Silly to Deadly Serious: Christopher Pike’s Tales of Terror

Scuba gear? Really?

By Alissa Burger

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Published on March 21, 2024

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The landscape of ‘90s teen horror was dominated by novels. Whether standalone stories or as part of a larger series (like R.L. Stine’s Fear Street), these short books flooded the market, defining the genre and keeping bookstore shelves well-stocked with new scares. Aside from the edited collection Thirteen—which featured stories from some of teen horror’s heaviest hitters, including Stine, Christopher Pike, Caroline B. Cooney, Sinclair Smith, and others—there wasn’t much short fiction to be had. While I had vivid recollections of Thirteen from my own teen horror days, I had no memory at all of Christopher Pike’s Tales of Terror (1997) and Tales of Terror 2 (1998). 

Pike’s two short fiction collections were published in the waning days of the ‘90s teen horror trend, which started running out of steam around 1996, and this may be part of why it flew under my radar. But reading these stories now, there are some real gems in the two Tales of Terror collections, both in terms of typifying ‘90s teen horror trends and in engaging with the narratives and themes explored in Pike’s novels. There’s a lot to tackle here, so we’ll explore Pike’s Tales of Terror collections over the course of a couple of columns, with dark revenge stories in this one and the more esoteric and entertaining tales in the next column. 

Both collections feature stories that are interconnected with Pike’s book Master of Murder (1992), with “The Fan From Hell” in Tales of Terror and “The Burning Witch” in Tales of Terror 2 focusing on the further adventures of Marvin Summer, his cushy lifestyle as a best-selling horror writer, and (unsettlingly) his exploitation of and violence against young women who come into his orbit. These stories further develop Master of Murder’s perspective of Marvin’s girlfriend Shelly as a deadly femme fatale, with “The Fan From Hell” noting that Marvin “still believed that Shelly had killed a mutual acquaintance, Triad, about the time they had started going out … she had never admitted to doing the black deed and maybe that was why he still found her so endlessly fascinating, the mystery of not knowing” (39). Marvin and Shelly’s relationship is complicated: he lives in a townhome on the California coast, while Shelly has gone across the country to go to college—and while he claims to love only her, Marvin does acknowledge that “he was faithful to Shelly only within specifically defined geographical circumstances” (45). He cheats on her repeatedly—almost always with young women who reach out to him to tell him what a genius he is—but is filled with rage when he thinks of Shelly doing the same. She takes a heavy load of summer classes each year so that she can graduate early and move back to the West coast to be with Marvin, though he’s not all that thrilled when she shows up and makes almost no changes to his life or home to accommodate sharing those with her.

In “The Burning Witch,” when Shelly is devastated after learning that she cannot have children, it turns out Marvin never really thought about them having a family together and can’t figure out what she’s so upset about, telling her he’s pretty relieved not to have to worry about accidental pregnancy and that “you can always adopt later, if you want” (5). Marvin seems pretty intentional in his choice of “you” rather than “we,” apparently still seeing their lives as separate, regardless of the years that they have spent together. Later though, when Shelly is murdered by witches who want to have sex with Marvin, he is willing to sacrifice whatever he has to to get her back, though there really aren’t any indicators that he has a new appreciation for her or that he will be any more committed to Shelly or a future together than he has been in the past. It’s almost like she’s a coveted prize that he has won—she was his dream girl in high school and remained well out of his reach until her alleged murder of Triad brought them together—and now that he has her, there’s no way he’s letting her go, even if he doesn’t actually want her anymore.

“The Fan from Hell” and “The Burning Witch” are the only two stories in Pike’s Tales of Terror collections that explicitly connect with and build upon narratives and characters established in his novels, though he does note some resonance in themes between other stories and his books, including similarities between “Death of Despair” and his Remember Me trilogy (1989-1995). One of the strongest themes in these stories that draw upon and connect with Pike’s larger body of work is that of (usually sex-fueled) teenage revenge.

Pike navigates revenge narratives through different directions, including realism, fantasy, and the murky gray areas in between in Tales of Terror’s “Death of Despair” and “Revenge,” and in Tales of Terror 2’s “The Tears of Teresa.” As Pike mentions in his author note that prefaces “Death of Despair,” there are some similarities between this story and Remember Me, namely in a suicide from a high-rise balcony that isn’t quite what it seems. While readers eventually learn that Remember Me’s Shari Cooper was actually murdered, in “Death of Despair,” Mike Cutter wakes up in his parents’ townhouse following a wild party and encounters three identically dressed and beautiful young women: his ex-girlfriend Penny, his girlfriend Linda, and Sandy, a girl he had recently rejected. According to these young women, Mike is already dead, having jumped from the balcony in a fit of despair the night before when Linda broke up with him. His vision is clouded, everything is darkly shadowed, and they take him out onto the balcony to show him his body in the bushes far below. The only way to move on to the afterlife, they say, is for him to jump now from the balcony so his spirit can rejoin his body. But the problem is that Mike isn’t actually dead … yet.

Linda is really upset because Sandy told her that Mike had been unfaithful (which he denies) and Penny’s still heartbroken that Mike dumped her to be with Linda, while Linda’s upset that when Mike broke up Penny, he kissed her goodbye. So obviously the only way to balance the scales is to trick Mike into jumping from the balcony and committing suicide. That’ll teach him. There’s a good deal of confusion over Mike’s fidelity (or lack thereof). For example, when Mike denies ever having had sex with Sandy, she tells Linda that “There is sex in a technical sense and there in sex in a backseat-of-the-car sense. We had the backseat and then he begged me for the technical details” (23-24) and I’ve honestly got no idea what that means. Did they? Didn’t they? Is Sandy arguing that sex is a matter of interpretation? It’s all relatively baffling, but these young women have gone to great lengths to convince Mike that he’s really dead, including dyeing his contact lenses to mess with his vision, drugging him, and buying an inflatable doll and making fake blood in order to convince him that he’s actually looking at his own dead body several stories below. But Mike turns the tables, shoves all three of them to their deaths from the balcony, and scores a free blow-up doll, which he gives a bubble bath to clean off both the fake blood and the girls’ real blood, and then snuggles up with to go to sleep, in a bizarre and darkly humorous conclusion.

The revenge plots in “Revenge” and “The Tears of Teresa” are less convoluted, with both centering around a wronged man seeking to punish the woman who betrayed him, with the women’s names inspired by a not-so-fondly remembered ex-girlfriend of Pike’s. In the author note to “Revenge,” Pike reflects that “I used to have the bad habit of putting the young woman I happened to be dating into the book I was working on. How we were getting along often determined how her character fared—whether she died slowly and painfully or quickly and with dignity” (157), which is honestly a little disturbing. Anyway, he and Teresa went swimming one day in rough seas when Teresa sank down beneath the water and didn’t resurface. After remembering his fear for her safety, he writes that “She was under for probably only ten seconds—I reached her quickly. Even though I saved her life, she was none too happy with me when we were back on shore. She wouldn’t even talk to me—it was distressing” (158). He doesn’t seem to realize that Teresa was probably plenty distressed herself by nearly drowning, but instead watches the boats come and go and dreams up the plot for “Revenge.”

In “Revenge,” the narrator Chris is really upset, first that his girlfriend Teresa won’t have sex with him, and second, after she finds someone else, is unfaithful to Chris, and starts a new relationship with Mr. Wonderful–she decides sex isn’t too bad after all. All that sex that he isn’t having drives Chris mad and he decides the best course of action is to don his scuba gear, lurk underwater at a beach where Teresa and her new fella like to swim, and then pull her under the water to the bottom and hold her there until she drowns. There are some unexpected challenges, but everything seems to go pretty much according to plan (though the new boyfriend tries to come to Teresa’s rescue and gets murdered too, which is fine with Chris), until Chris gets home and finds out that Teresa has survived. He rushes to her side, is welcomed by her family with open arms, and when he talks to her, instead of being identified as a murderer, she tells him she was wrong to break up with him, that she loves him, and that when she thought she was going to die “all I could think about was you … You felt so close to me, so close to my soul, and I suddenly knew that it was you I loved” (179). This is incredibly unsettling, particularly because Chris’s feelings toward Teresa are still an uneasy mixture of love, obsession, and toxic hatred, so who knows what their relationship dynamic is going to look like moving forward. After Teresa’s recovery, Chris takes a sick pleasure from putting his arm over her throat to see if her body will remember him as the one who choked her (the answer seems to be kind of), which definitely isn’t a healthy relationship indicator. Chris does make sure to tell readers in the story’s final section that he and Teresa finally had sex, so there’s a load off of our minds, I guess.

“The Tears of Teresa” is much less morally complex and adds a kind of metaphysical twist, with a married couple who are kidnapped at knifepoint and paralyzed, as Pike weaves together two intersecting stories of past betrayal and present retribution. More than eighteen years ago, Teresa told her boyfriend Max that she was traumatized because he forced her to have an abortion. Max’s family has a lot of money and while Max is terrified of his father’s disapproval, Teresa convinces Max to marry her on a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas, colludes with Max’s best friend (and her secret lover) David, and pushes Max off the hotel balcony, before we discover that she is actually still pregnant and plans to have the baby in order to blackmail Max’s grieving father. Max survives long enough to be taken to the hospital and dies next to a crying baby, and this baby then grows up to become the mysterious and avenging stranger who kidnaps Teresa and David from their disappointingly bland suburban life (the blackmail didn’t work) almost two decades later to make them pay for their transgressions.

While many of these revenge plots are outlandish, sometimes these tales of revenge take a serious turn. This is the case with the school shooting story of “The Thin Line,” which feels a bit too familiar and depressingly timely. Tim Klane was a starter on the basketball team and dating the head cheerleader, Jane Pascal, “who just happened to be the coach’s daughter” (134). Coach doesn’t like Tim seeing his little girl and Tim takes a hit in practice that he thinks was intentional (though the other player later denies this). Regardless of intent, however, Tim suffers a serious back injury which ends his basketball career and ends up in constant, severe pain. Jane refuses to see him anymore, he’s lost his basketball dreams forever, and he’s become addicted to strong painkillers. In this haze of depression and suffering, he decides he needs to make everyone pay. He buys two guns, locks the doors to the gym, and prepares to take out the coach, the basketball team, and the cheerleading squad. Tim actually shoots just one person: Steve Wiley, who took over Tim’s position as center, is Jane’s ex-boyfriend, and is the guy Tim thinks took him out at practice, making him responsible (as far as Tim sees it anyway) for all Tim’s pain. Tim is immediately horrified by what he has done, recalling that “The bullet caught him in the mid right thigh and, oh God, what a mess. No shot ever fired on TV got results like this. He didn’t develop a nice round red hole that could be covered with a white bandage. The middle of his leg literally exploded. Muscle and bone and blood erupted like a living volcano, splattering me as well as him. I actually tasted his blood on my lips” (154-155). This description is explicit and gruesome, foregrounding the consequences of Tim’s actions, the dissonance between his fantasy of revenge and the devastating reality. This is (thankfully) the only shot Tim fires, instead relying on the threat of violence from this point forward, and he finds out later that while Steve lost his leg, he lived. What follows becomes more of a hostage situation story as Tim takes Jane and goes on the run, though things don’t end well for them and Tim is haunted by the mistakes he has made.

While it is challenging for me to wrap my head around how this story might have read at the time of its publication before Columbine and the epidemic of school shootings that have defined the last two and a half decades, Pike does foreground real-life inspirations and influences on the story. As he writes in his author’s note, “I never wrote a story about which I had such reservations … I started ‘The Thin Line’ before the killings in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and did not finish it until after Springfield, Oregon. It was weird for me to watch what I was writing appear on the news” (132). (Both of these shootings occurred in 1998. The shooters at Westside Middle School in Arkansas killed four fellow students and a teacher; the shooter at Thurston High School in Oregon killed two fellow students and wounded more than two dozen others). Reading Pike’s story and thinking about that specific context, as well as how the conversation surrounding school shootings has (and hasn’t) evolved in the intervening decades is disorienting and depressing. There’s no way to really dismiss or neutralize the horrors of “The Thin Line,” whose very title reminds us of how close so many of us are to this potential violence every single day.

While Pike’s short stories might lack some of the narrative development and evolving themes of his books, his philosophical perspective and approach to horror still resonate in these tales. As with so much of ‘90s teen horror, Pike’s books at times get convoluted, with ridiculous red herrings and sensationalistic side plots, but there’s little room for those kinds of departures in these stories. There’s no extraneous fluff. Pike gives us interesting (if not fully developed) characters, puts them in weird situations, and lets the action play out as it will, often with sexy, disastrous, or violent consequences. These two short fiction collections may be among the least well-known of Pike’s teen horror books, but they contain some darkly entertaining tales, more of which we’ll dig into next time![end-mark]

The post From Almost Silly to Deadly Serious: Christopher Pike’s Tales of Terror appeared first on Reactor.

Book Recommendations book reviews

A Breathless Panther Chase: Mariely Lares’ Sun of Blood and Ruin

A review of Mariely Lares’ historical fantasy novel reimagining Zorro.

By Maura Krause

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Published on March 21, 2024

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I’ll admit it. I wanted to read Sun of Blood and Ruin because it’s marketed as a reimagining of Zorro featuring a swashbuckling sorceress. 1998’s Mask of Zorro was my first PG-13 movie and I loved it, despite being forever haunted by that head in a jar scene (iykyk). My inner adolescent’s attachment to that film may have brought me to Mariely Lares’ debut novel, but her story is so much more than a twist on the classic Zorro legend—though at times, almost too much more. 

Set in sixteenth century New Spain, which is present-day Mexico, Sun of Blood and Ruin is the first in a duology. It is narrated by eighteen-year-old Leonora, a noblewoman whose elegant façade hides her double identity as folk hero Pantera. The daughter of the first viceroy of New Spain and the Mexica woman he loved, Leonora is caught between worlds even when she isn’t wearing the panther’s mask. For while the book is speculative history, the horrors of colonialism remain central. The regime of New Spain seems determined to crush the indigenous people of the land—the Nahuas, a term encompassing the seven tribes of the area. As a member of the court led by her fourteen-year-old half-brother, Viceroy Jerónimo, and his scheming mother vice regent, Leonora is a political voice for the native residents. As Pantera, our heroine meets violence with violence, fighting in the streets against the cruel Captain Nabarres and his persecution of all who adhere to Nahua ways. 

Pantera’s power itself grows from the world depicted in indigenous lore. As a girl, Leonora wandered away from the palace and was lost in the forest for ten years. During this time she lived in Tamoanchan, a mythological paradise where she was trained as a Nagual—a shapeshifter. Though Pantera did not complete her training, she returned to the city able to wield her tonalli (life force) in battle, shift into a panther, and cross swords with the best of them. 

The novel begins with both Pantera and Leonora in crisis. As Pantera, our protagonist fails to save a beloved local wise man from Nabarres, and loses her magical Sword of Integrity. As Leonora, she faces an unwanted betrothal to the Crown Prince of Spain, which will take her away from her land and her calling. In both guises, our narrator was born during the cursed Nemontemi, the Dead Days at the end of the year, and is thus destined to die young in battle. As the prophesied collapse of the Fifth Sun approaches, Leonora-Pantera can feel her violent fate drawing nearer—not to mention the end of the world at the hands of demons and vengeful goddesses. Over the course of the following 350 pages, this multifaceted character navigates political intrigue, meets a roguish guardsman with tonalli too powerful to be what he seems, discovers the truth about her betrothed, goes in search of the indigenous resistance La Justicia, and negotiates with the gods themselves. 

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Sun of Blood and Ruin

Mariely Lares

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Sun of Blood and Ruin

Mariely Lares

Buy this book from:

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• Barnes and Noble
• iBooks
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• Target

Lares’s intricate plot is a wonder, full of surprising connections and revelatory twists. She unfolds the sumptuous world of the book with care and patience, weaving new aspects of magic and startling creatures throughout the story. Her extensive research is brought to visceral life, and I felt she held my uninformed hand just enough. I appreciated that Lares guides this many-layered story to a satisfying conclusion, her only indication of a sequel being a rather filmic teaser scene at the very end. 

Yet, this astonishing plot would be more suited to two or even three novels. The disguised folk hero and revolution narrative would be enough to fill the covers of a book, as would the saga of the gods’ cyclical struggles over the fate of humanity. With so much richness crammed into one book, every event is on the heels of the one before. I quickly became overwhelmed by revelations and lightning-quick action sequences, and couldn’t slow down to appreciate the characters’ arcs or the dazzling settings. At one point in the novel, a character seems to die, only to reappear five pages later; within those same five pages, a new character is introduced and the main character has a major revelation about her inner self. As this sequence might suggest, some character development is lost to the demands of this juggernaut of a plot, which is frustrating when the characters have been so well set up. 

I came away from all this hoping Lares’ duology gets optioned for TV someday, despite the fact that I’m not much of a TV person. If I got the conflicted Pantera and a universe shaped by Quetzalcoatzin instead of another medieval Europe-inspired fantasy epic, I would be glued to that screen. Lares’ ideas are magnificent, but I craved more immersiveness, which actors and production design could provide. Though my love of Zorro might seem to inform my desire for such an adaptation, by the final page of this gripping and original tale, I’d forgotten all about him. Sun of Blood and Ruin presented a world and characters I desperately wanted to get lost in, but its frenetic pace and overambitious scope wouldn’t quite let me. [end-mark]

The post A Breathless Panther Chase: Mariely Lares’ <i>Sun of Blood and Ruin</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Spider-verse

New Animated Short Set in the Spider-Verse Focuses on Mental Health

a reminder that your feelings are valid, and you’re not alone

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on March 21, 2024

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There’s a new animated short in the Into the Spider-Verse universe that is aimed to address mental health. The short is titled “The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story” and was created in partnership with the Kevin Love Fund as part of the organization’s mental health-centered lesson plan.

In the short, as reported by Variety, Miles Morales “struggles to balance his responsibilities as a teenager, friend, student and Spider-Man. In navigating those pressures, Miles experiences a panic attack that forces him to confront the manifestations of his anxiety and learn that reaching out for help can be just as brave an act as protecting his city from evil.”

“Miles represents so many of us doing the best we can in our day-to-day lives,” Jarelle Dampier, director of “The Spider Within,” said in a statement. “We don’t often realize all that we’ve been through until our own body forces us to become aware of its experience. My intention is that ‘The Spider Within’ can motivate deeper conversations amongst friends & family about their own mental health journeys—and I hope it feels like a love letter to those who adore Miles Morales.”

KLF founder, professional basketball player and mental health advocate Kevin Love said in the same statement, “My hope for the short film would be for everyone, especially young people, to understand that your feelings are valid and that you are not alone in this.”

He added, “You see it with Spider-Man in the short film, where Miles has a trusted confidante. He is able to take a walk with his dad and express what he’s going through. We can all learn from that – how important it is to reach out to someone, express your true emotions, speak your truth and not hold everything inside.”

“The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story” was written by Khaila Amazan and will become available on Sony Pictures Animation’s YouTube channel starting at 6:00 a.m. PT on March 27. [end-mark]

The post New Animated Short Set in the Spider-Verse Focuses on Mental Health appeared first on Reactor.

News Chucky

Chucky Isn’t Looking So Great But Is Still Up for Murder in Season 3 Part 2 Trailer

Our favorite possessed doll has seen better days

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on March 21, 2024

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“Chucky you’re a cockroach; you always come back!” says Jennifer Tilly’s Tiffany Valentine in the trailer for the second half of Chucky’s third season.

Chucky, however, doesn’t look so great! Could this be the end for the possessed doll? If so, it’s clear from the trailer that he’s looking to go out in a bloodbath, which is no surprise.

In the back half of Season Three, if the trailer is any indication, we’ll see shit go down in the Oval Office, including a séance that appears to bring a human being into the fray who claims to be… Chucky?!

We’ll have to wait to see how things play out. In the meantime, here’s the official synopsis for Season Three:

New episodes of Chucky premiere on SYFY and USA on April 10, 2024 at 10:00 p.m. ET/ 9:00 p.m. CT.

Check out the trailer below. [end-mark]

The post Chucky Isn’t Looking So Great But Is Still Up for Murder in Season 3 Part 2 Trailer appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Fairy Tales

Read an Excerpt From Markelle Grabo’s Call Forth a Fox

A sapphic twist on the classic fairy tale “Snow White and Rose Red.”

By Markelle Grabo

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Published on March 21, 2024

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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Call Forth a Fox by Markelle Grabo, a YA fantasy twist on a classic fairy tale—out from Page Street Publishing on April 2^nd.

I hop off my tree stump to study the line of fox tracks leading deeper into the wood. My neighbor might’ve scared her away, but the fox could be waiting for me somewhere among these trees. Perhaps she wants me to follow her tracks, find her like she found me.

I’m tempted to do just that, yet night draws near. While Ma encourages independence in her daughters, her one rule is to never be alone in the forest when it’s dark, and it’s a rule Eirwyn’s enforced since she left. Besides, my sister’s likely returned from Maple Square by now. She’ll be waiting for me, on the bench reading or hopelessly attempting to rebuild the fire. My sister can no more successfully kindle a flame than I can prepare a decent meal.

I find the will to turn away from the tracks before the temptation to follow seizes me completely, but I drag my feet toward the cottage, thoughts of the fox wrapping around me like rose vines. My boots clomp through the snow and I imagine them as nimble fox feet prowling past the trees. I shift my head right and left, wrinkling my nose as if scenting the air for signs of prey. I imagine the glowing moon illuminating my coppery coat, turning its fire into faerie light.

If only I were a fox. No one would take me to Poppy, then.

Buy the Book

Call Forth a Fox

Markelle Grabo

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Call Forth a Fox

Markelle Grabo

Buy this book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble
• iBooks
• IndieBound
• Target

I lift my eyes to the dark opening ahead, the one that leads to the clearing before the cottage. I squint, and through the dim-ness, I can make out the square windows glowing faintly. Either Eirwyn figured out the fire, or she’s lit every lamp we own. 

Icy unease pricks my skin. Now that I’m closer, I’m not sure I’m ready to go home, ready to face Eirwyn so soon after our quarrel. I still feel awful for invoking Pa’s name the way I did. I linger in the developing night, breathing in the cold until it nips at my chest. All around me, snow glistens like the stars slowly appearing overhead. Shadowy trees bend and creak in the wind. A few stray leaves—left over from fall—flutter quietly to the forest floor.

Then, a streak of copper leaps across my path, mere inches from the tips of my boots. 

I jump back, but I can’t find my footing. I fall to the ground, and the sudden drop is so jarring that I wince. I press a cold palm to my forehead, blinking away the haze in my eyes in time to see the red fox bounding in the direction of the cottage, paws kicking up snow like a small windstorm.

An ache spreads down my neck as I rise to my feet, and my backside is covered with snow, but neither matters with the fox running ahead. I’m about to chase after her when I hear a deep huff.

I breathe in sharply through my nose. Slowly, I turn.

A bear, its massive form crowding the forest, lumbers toward me.

Muscles ripple beneath dark brown fur. Ears stand straight up. Each puff of breath is a steamy cloud beneath the moon-light.

I try to swallow my rising terror but it’s so thick in my throat that I choke. I cover my mouth, fingers trembling. My chest plummets to my gut, over and over.

A bear in the wood. A creature much larger than a fox.  Fur bristling. Eyes gleaming. Mouth hungry. Cold fear drenches me, seeps past layers of clothes to soak my skin.

My teeth chatter. I know I should do something, but I can’t remember what. Ma’s voice is insistent in my ears, but I can’t comprehend the words. I’m caught. Gasping. Trembling. Prey.

The bear huffs again. I can’t breathe.

Then something inside me snaps and Ma’s lesson slams into me like a gale of frozen wind. I don’t wait. I lift my arms, wave them slowly. “Hey! I’m backing away, I’m backing away.”

I step backward as he trudges forward. Enormous paws make deep grooves in the snow. I veer to the left, straying from his path. Dread grips my gut like bear claws. The itch to flee has never been stronger, but I keep my pace. Never try to outrun a bear.

I bump into something solid. Only a tree, but a yelp escapes my lips before I can stop it. The bear groans low.

I shudder against the bark. “I’m backing away,” I repeat. “Please, I’m backing away.”

Moving around the tree, I lose sight of the bear for a few precious moments. But my knees weaken in relief as soon as I regain my view. Despite my yelp, the bear isn’t following me. Ma’s lesson worked.

I wait until I can no longer hear the bear’s heavy tread, then collapse against a tree, my forehead pressed hard against the bark. I release a rush of breath, lips pulling upward in a cautious smile. No longer caught. No longer prey. No need to tremble.

But a sharp wail pierces the night. The fox.

I imagine the scene clearly: Teeth clamping. A coppery coat drenched in red. A broken body in the snow. A triumphant roar. 

A swell of rage much stronger than my fear burns its way down my throat.

I dash after the lumbering bear, my satchel thumping against my side. My clothes are damp with snow and sweat. When I reach the edge of the forest, my breaths have turned hoarse and painful.

The bear has the fox cornered, pressed up against a thick oak tree. My ears ring, the sound overcoming all whispers of Ma’s lesson. I must save her. I must stop him.

With fumbling hands, I remove my boot. I blink hard, find my aim, and hurl my boot at the bear. It spirals chaotically until it hits the top of his back. He grunts and turns his head.

“Hey!” I scream, clenching my fists. “Hey!”

It’s not enough. The bear’s head swings back toward the fox. The cornered animal wails again—sharp, insistent, and loud.

I yank off my other boot and throw. “Leave her alone! Get away from her!”

The second boot hits the bear’s side. This time the beast turns fully in my direction. Gleaming eyes latch onto me. He huffs, lifts one large paw, takes one step forward. His ears flatten against his head.

It seems I’ve become the fox.

The bear charges. I spin on my heels and sprint toward the cottage. A mere hundred feet away, but I fear I won’t make it. My chest is tight; I can’t get enough air. I can’t move fast enough. My sock feet slip and slide. Above the ringing in my ears is the sound of the bear’s heavy tread. At such a speed, not even a fox body could save me now.

With a grunt, the bear’s head rams into my back and I’m thrown forward. My body smacks against the ground and my face meets the snow. Crystals of ice sting my cheeks. Unlike the fox, my resulting wail is low and quiet.

A fleeting hope flares in my chest at the thought of the fox leaping onto the bear’s back, nipping at his ear to save her new ally. But of course, foxes don’t think like foolish girls. Foxes don’t provoke a bear; they run from one. I hope the red fox is running now.

A massive paw batters my side. The assault turns my scream into a whimper. I bring my knees to my chest and cover my head with my arms. I wait for another swipe; I know it will come.

Until it doesn’t.

Instead, the bear emits a low groan, and my eyes flutter open. There’s an arrow embedded in the beast’s right shoulder. He stumbles. I uncoil and drag myself across the snow. He drops to the ground like an overturned boulder, huffing and making clicking sounds with his tongue.

In the open doorway of the cottage stands Eirwyn, bow in hand. Her slender frame is illuminated by the light from within.

“Ro,” she calls, starting forward. 

I stagger to my feet and run to my sister. We collide and Eirwyn’s bow smacks my back, but I barely register the discom-fort. I bury my face in my sister’s neck, smell her rose perfume. Eirwyn grips me tight and murmurs calming words into my ear, stroking my snow-drenched hair. 

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I didn’t mean to be out so late. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re all right,” Eirwyn says, breathless and trembling. “I’m here.”

Thank goodness for that. After years of neglect, she took up her bow to save me. I’m relieved she never threw it away.

“Did you kill it?” I ask. “Is it dead?”

“I don’t know, I—”

I feel Eirwyn’s body stiffen, then she shrugs herself out of my embrace. Her eyes are wide, her lips parted. She stares past me as if I’m no longer here.

I tug on her sleeve. “Eirwyn, what is it?” 

“Ro,” she breathes. 

She lifts an arm and points. My eyes follow.

Lying in the snow is a boy. A boy where there should be a bear. A bleeding, naked boy.

He groans, and he sounds like a bear. But he isn’t one. He’s not massive and he doesn’t have fur or sharp claws. He’s pale with messy brown hair and long limbs. He’s human.

But he’s lying in the snow where a bear was, with the arrow Eirwyn shot protruding from his shoulder.

Numbed by the sight, I reach for my sister’s hand, grip her fingers as if touch will rouse me from this strange, terrible dream.

The not-a-bear boy lifts his head. “Help,” he moans. “Please.”

Eirwyn drops her bow. “What have I done?”

Excerpted from Call Forth a Fox, copyright © 2024 by Markelle Grabo.

The post Read an Excerpt From Markelle Grabo’s <i>Call Forth a Fox</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

The Trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Confirms That This Is Really a Movie That Will Be Happening

Don’t say it a third time

By Molly Templeton

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Published on March 22, 2024

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They really did it, folks. They really did a haunted-child trailer-cliché version of “Day-O.” But they didn’t even commit fully to the bit, as this version could be so, so much more haunted.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reunites director Tim Burton with a power trio of actors from his iconic 1988 film: Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Michael Keaton. But Ryder’s Lydia Deetz is all grown up now, with a kid of her own, and since history and movie series love to repeat themselves… you know what’s coming.

This first teaser, however, offers very little, besides telling us that Lydia has not changed her style much after all these years, and that the people who decide what should go in movie trailers really wanted to subject us to this song again. Keaton is a treat, as always, but is that enough?

Here’s the synopsis:

Wednesday‘s Jenna Ortega plays Astrid, and Wednesday‘s Alfred Gough & Miles Millar wrote the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice screenplay (Seth Grahame-Smith joins them for story credit; the characters were originally created by Michael McDowell & Larry Wilson).

Rounding out the cast are The Leftovers’ Justin Theroux, The Matrix’s Monica Bellucci, strange genius Willem Dafoe, and Arthur Conti. The creative team is full of Burton vets, including costume designer Colleen Atwood (Sweeney Todd, Sleepy Hollow), creature effects and special makeup FX creative supervisor Neal Scanlan (Sweeney Todd), editor Jay Prychidny (Wednesday), and, of course, composer Danny Elfman (Batman)

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theaters September 6th. [end-mark]

The post The Trailer for <i>Beetlejuice Beetlejuice</i> Confirms That This Is Really a Movie That Will Be Happening appeared first on Reactor.

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10 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Shows With Stellar Freshman Seasons to Watch in 2024

Catch on these excellent shows before their second seasons

By Melody L. Simpson

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Published on March 22, 2024

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In a time when television shows are renewed and then suddenly canceled just a few short months later, it’s vital to get more eyes on the shows that we love sooner rather than later. Let’s give these networks a reason to stop the constant renewal reversals and make them a thing of the past. So let’s talk about a number of new speculative shows that have entered or will be premiering their sophomore seasons soon. If you love these shows, now is the time to talk about them with everyone you know and get them on board. Let’s dive in.

Severance

Severance (AppleTV+) is without question, the most successful sci-fi show on Apple TV+. When you watch the first season, you’ll know exactly why: The show takes place in a world where people can choose to have their memories of work and personal lives surgically divided. So what happens when one officer worker begins to investigate this division and who benefits from it? You’ll have to watch and see how this speculative mystery thriller unfolds. While the show is binge-worthy, it’s also a show that asks its viewers to be fully immersed in this viewing experience with no distractions. This show is so rich—top-notch storytelling, pitch perfect directing (seven of the nine episodes were directed by Ben Stiller), the music, lighting, sets—everything plays such a necessary part in bringing this story to life. In 2022, the series entered the Emmy Awards race for the first time with 14 nominations and took home two wins. Severance is a chilling examination of work-life balance and the sacrifices we make for it in a way you’ve never seen before. Season two is slated to premiere in 2024.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur

There is a huge lack of diverse sci-fi and fantasy storytelling on the small screen and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Disney+) is a breath of fresh air amidst that lack. The animated action-adventure series, which is based on Marvel’s comic books, follows a 13-year-old prodigy who is the smartest character in the Marvel universe. But before she gives Iron Man and everyone else a run for their money, she’s a kid. She’s a kid who accidentally brings a dinosaur to present-day New York City. Together, the two fight crime on the Lower East Side as Lunella discovers her place and responsibility in the world as a super-genius. Did I mention she can switch consciousness with Devil Dinosaur? You’ll have to tune in to discover how this works. Season two premiered February 2, 2024.

Gen V

Gen V (Amazon Prime) is the breakout hit spin-off series to watch for fans who loved The Boys, which was adapted from the comic book series by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. Set at Godolkin University, the only college for superheroes in the nation, the series follows the first generation of superheroes who know they are superheroes because of Compound V. Only those who are ranked at the top have any shot of joining The Seven, Vought International’s elite superhero team that we came to know in The Boys. Just like The Boys, Gen V is not for children. This is a very mature series and it’s set in college, so if you appreciated the adult content in The Boys, Gen V is the spin off you’ve been waiting for. It’s raunchier, it’s got blood and guts, and it’s got a stellar story. Do you have to watch The Boys before you watch Gen V? No. You can watch either show first. With the actual return dates of both shows a mystery as of now, you have plenty of time to watch three seasons of The Boys and the first season of Gen V on Amazon Prime. 

Echo

Marvel’s first TV-MA series, Echo debuted on Disney+ this winter. It’s a series that tackles family and legacy in a way that we haven’t seen Marvel do before on the small screen. The story is set in Tamaha, Oklahoma where we meet Maya Lopez shortly before the tragic death of her mother. This takes her to New York City, where things get worse as the person she trusts the most raises her to be an assassin. Secrets are discovered. Decisions are made. And Maya heads back home with even bigger choices to make, this time testing her loyalties and putting her family at risk. 

Alaqua Cox is the first Deaf actress to lead a Marvel television series. She is also an amputee and her disability is written into her character’s story. Marvel also made sure to intertwine the richness of Native American culture throughout the show wouldn’t be complete without this care taken. 

The character of Maya Lopez was introduced in the Hawkeye series. While it is not required to watch Hawkeye beforehand, it is recommended if you have the time. The first season of Echo is magnificent, so get the popcorn ready and make a night for this five-episode event. 

The Ark

If you’re aching for a space drama with twists and turns like you’d never believe, The Ark (Syfy) is here to serve all of your greatest desires. Set 100 years in the future, when global warming has officially run us off the earth, spacecraft Ark One faces conflict after conflict in the race to keep the humanity alive. The stakes are raised immediately as the series begins when disaster strikes and the majority of the Ark’s senior officers are killed. How do you survive when most of the colonists on board aren’t qualified to get the ship to its final destination? When I tell you this show starts off with a bang and does not let up for any moment, I mean you will be at the edge of your seat with bated breath for all twelve episodes. Get ready for a ride. 

Silo/Beacon 23

Let’s cheat with a two-for-one here. Book-to-television series are hit or miss, so when I tell you not just one Hugh Howey series was a hit, but two… it’s almost too good to be true. But if you’ve read either the Silo or Beacon 23 series, you will not be disappointed. If you haven’t read these works, that’s okay, too. Both shows do a phenomenal job making the adaptations fully comprehensible and enjoyable without a need to be familiar with the original works. So for anyone who has a taste for psychological thrillers set in either a dystopian world or in space, you’ve found your next two shows to watch. The character development, the secrets, the mysterious high-ups holding together a completely broken system for their own selfish desires… both shows are packed with all of this and then plenty more. Gather your friends who love sci-fi for a fun weekend full of mystery, tension, and more on AppleTV+ and MGM+. The second season of Beacon 23 premiers April 2024 on MGM+. 

Fired on Mars

With thousands of layoffs over the past four years, this series might be triggering for some. Hear me out. I, too, was laid off at the beginning of the pandemic. So when I heard about Fired On Mars (Max), instinctively, I had no desire to watch an entire TV series about someone who experienced the same fate. But then I found out that the main character, whose job relocated him to literal outer space, is laid off with zero chance of returning home. Now that’s a satire if I ever heard of one. Could you imagine? Eight episodes is not nearly enough time to explore everything I wanted to see in this animated comedy, but what they’ve shown so far hits deeply. This show is so intelligent and deserves more recognition. I’m stunned that this series hasn’t garnered water cooler discussion because it will make people angry, and rightfully so. 

Halo

For someone who has never played the Halo video game a day in their life, the television adaptation on Paramount+, to my surprise, became one of my favorite new series of 2023. If you’re a sucker for military science fiction, Halo will do it for you. If you want to see some of the best sci-fi action scenes you’ve seen in a long time on the small screen, Halo is the show you want to tune into. If you want to see aliens attempt to annihilate human beings, buckle up. This action-packed series will take you on a ride for nine episodes that will leave you hankering for more. Take it from me, you don’t need to be a gamer to enjoy. Season two premiered February 8, 2024. 

The Last of Us

We can’t talk about Halo without talking about the video game adaptation that took over television this past year. The Last Of Us (HBO) recently announced that season two premieres in 2025, so you have plenty of time to watch the first season and play the game on Playstation before new episodes. Winner of eight Primetime Emmy Awards, Craig Mazin has masterfully brought this world to life, which is set when a global pandemic causes absolute chaos as those infected mutate. If you know people who don’t like zombies, watch this series with them. I guarantee this will bring them to our side. The Last Of Us is more than the zombies that wander the earth. It’s about the survivors—their pasts, their present, and their fight for the future. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll cheer, you’ll shout. You will feel all of the emotions with this one. Prepare the tissues. 

Interview With the Vampire

Based on the classic by Anne Rice, you might be thinking we didn’t need another adaptation of Interview With the Vampire (AMC). But this is one instance where you’ll be so happy to be wrong. It’s so culturally rich as it doesn’t shy away from the reality Louis faces as a Black man who is a vampire. By making this change, the series has a depth that most vampire stories don’t have by ignoring the aspects of racial tension over time. There is plenty more to love and appreciate about this series. Take my word for it. Watch it. Thank me later. Season two premieres May 12, 2024. 

The Power, School Spirits, the list goes on. What speculative shows in their freshman year do you love or plan on watching soon? Let me know in the comments![end-mark]

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