Do we Do we need a remake of Forbidden Planet?? Doesn’t matter—we’re getting one.

BBC released a trailer of the Doctor Who Christmas special. Reactor doesn’t have it, but they saw it.

This is a plug for a local southeastern anthology. The proceeds go to families in Appalachia who lost businesses and homes during the recent hurricanes. I may or may not have a story in it. I’m not being coy; I sent in a story but I haven’t seen the complete TOC yet.

In the weeks following the election, Bluesky has seen over a million members join, as people seek alternatives to X-Twitter, Threads and Facebook. I’m not a new member, but you can find me there.

Rollacrit offers the messenger bag of all messenger bags, just in time for the holidays, if you have $150. (I just bought new luggage and frankly, that’s not a terrible price for something you can use as carry on.)

A small press literary magazine with a focus on ethics has found another way to make money off writers; want your word read ahead of others? Well, buy a “fast pass.”  They’ll let you “jump the line” and read your story ahead of others. (So many thoughts… where to begin?)

Atlas Obscura has ten places that will make you believe in extraterrestrials. They’re overselling it, but some of these places are pretty cool.

Nerds of a Feather reviews Jeff VanderMeer’s 4^th Area X book, Absolution. I can’t wait to compare this review to Bill’s.

As a warm-up these chilly fall days, here’s a warm cranberry cocktail recipe. It reads a little bit like alcoholic cranberry sauce to me, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Giveaway: One commenter chosen at random will get the paperback copy of Your Shadow Half Remains, by Sunny Moraine.

What’s the best book you read in August 2024 and why did you love it? 

It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF, or even fiction. We just want to share some great reading material.

Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.

And don’t forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our 5-Star SFF page.

One commenter with a U.S. mailing address will choose one of these prizes:

• a FanLit T-shirt (we have sizes M, L, XL)
• a $5 Amazon gift card (this is the only option for non-USA addresses).

Subscribe to our posts here (you can filter by tag).

Subscribe to only giveaways here.

What’s the best book you read in July 2024 and why did you love it? 

It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF, or even fiction. We just want to share some great reading material.

Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.

And don’t forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our 5-Star SFF page.

One commenter with a U.S. mailing address will choose one of these prizes:

• a FanLit T-shirt (we have sizes M, L, XL)
• a $5 Amazon gift card (this is the only option for non-USA addresses).

Subscribe to our posts here (you can filter by tag).

Subscribe to only giveaways here.

We’re happy to reveal the beautiful cover of the new book, and host a giveaway. One commenter will have a choice of a hardcopy ARC or an eARC of The Book of Atrix Wolfe.

“When the White Wolf descends upon the battlefield, the results are disastrous. His fateful decision to end a war with a powerful magic changes the destiny of four kingdoms; warlike Kardeth, resilient Pelucir; idyllic Chaumenard, and the mysterious Elven realm.

Twenty years later, Prince Talis, orphaned heir to Pelucir, is meant to be the savior of the realm. However, the prince is neither interested in ruling nor a particularly skilled mage. Further, he is obsessed with a corrupted spellbook, and he is haunted by visions from the woods. The legendary mage Atrix Wolfe has forsaken magic and the world of men. But the Queen of the Wood, whose fae lands ovrlap Pelucir’s bloody battlefield, is calling Wolfe back. Her consort and daughter have been missing since the siege, and if Wolfe cannot intervene, the Queen will keep a sacrifice for her own.”

(One other item; here is the link for the 2024 Nebula Award winners.)

What’s the best book you read in May 2024 and why did you love it? 

It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF, or even fiction. We just want to share some great reading material.

Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.

And don’t forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our 5-Star SFF page.

One commenter with a U.S. mailing address will choose one of these prizes:

• a FanLit T-shirt (we have sizes M, L, XL)
• a book from our stacks.
• a $5 Amazon gift card (this is the only option for non-USA addresses).

Subscribe to our posts here (you can filter by tag).

Subscribe to only giveaways here.

Starting in September, 2005, Season 2 led us through 24 episodes. Storylines include:

the Hatch

the Tail Section Survivors

Walt’s abduction

The Others

Courtesy of Lostpedia, here is the cast list for Season 2.

At the end of Season 1, the Others had abducted Walt, shot Sawyer, and burned the raft. On the island, the castaways blew open the hatch.

When Season 2 opens, Shannon has a visitation from Walt, who is speaking strangely and seems to be warning her. A little later, flotsam from the raft washes up, alerting the other main characters that the raft is in trouble. The hatch has been opened, revealing a subterranean outpost, leading to the famous enter-the-numbers-and-every-108-minutes storyline, with its abracadabra component, “electromagnetic energy!” later called “exotic energy” by the Dharma Initiative. Charlie, still detoxing from heroin, is stalked by statues of the Virgin Mary filled with the drug. No, really, that’s a thing. Claire begins to recollect what happened to her when she was abducted, paving the way for the “Others” storyline in Season 3.

I considered sub-heading this column “Down the Hatch,” but as fun as the hatch is, I’m more interested in the books that show up in Season 2, and the way the show uses books throughout.  Part of the pleasure of Lost when it originally aired was checking in with fellow watchers about what you thought the hints and clues meant. Books were one of the best, used as Easter eggs and misdirection.

In Season 1 we see Sawyer reading Watership Down by Richard Adams, and later Madeline L’Engle’s  A Wrinkle in Time. In Season 2, three books chime in to add clues and confusion: An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce; Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoevsky, and The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien, a pseudonym for Brien O’Nolan. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge may be out of style now. The story follows the escape of a man being hanged during the American Civil War, with a final shocking revelation. (Spoiler alert! He never escaped!) Hint or red herring? I’m leaning toward the herring.

Two books get frequent mention: Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (usually evoked in response to bad or violent behavior).

Another book is never named, but it’s impossible to watch the season without making the connection once a character named “Henry Gale” is introduced, and that is Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.

Crime and Punishment—well, the title speaks for itself. Half of the title may refer to various castaways—that would be the “crime” part. This is the book Henry Gale uses to sow discord between Locke and Jack with a story about how Hemingway was always secondary to the Russian writer. Locke (correctly) identifies himself as Hemingway in that scenario.

The Third Policeman is actually the best “symbolic” book for Lost, for a couple of reasons–secret rooms, other dimensions, people who aren’t what they seem, betrayal, lies and death… and also because the author never found a publisher in his lifetime and claimed he “lost” the manuscript, but it was published after his death. Basically, it’s hard to take anything about The Third Policeman at face value, and that is certainly true for Lost as well.

Now, onward with plot things.

Jin, Michael and a wounded Sawyer are captured and imprisoned by people on the island. Our guys think this group is the Others. They seem to be led by a menacing, shirtless Black man with a big club, but it emerges that their true leader is a brutal woman named Ana Lucia. The menacing Black guy is Mr. Eko. From the vantage point of 2024, seeing the first appearance of Eko—shirtless, speechless, and carrying a big club—is cringey. I suppose in 2005 this was designed as an important lesson in judging from first impressions. Maybe I’m overthinking it, and this was a nod to a certain segment of the viewership, the we-like-shirtless-men crowd, since Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje has amazing arms.

The “tailies” include Ana Lucia, Eko, Libby, Cindy and Bernard. Spoiler alert: Don’t get attached.

Soon we find out that Ana Lucia thinks Jin, Michael and Sawyer are the Others, and that her people are the survivors of the tail section of Oceanic 815. Eventually, everyone decides to hike back to the beach camp. Along the way, we see creepy evidence of the Others, who abducted 12 people including two children from the tail section survivors.

When the beach camp survivors open the door to the hatch, they discover a wild man, Desmond. Desmond, a victim of sleep deprivation (never mentioned in the show, but seriously, how could he not be?) tells them that the Lost numbers must in entered into a 1970s computer every 108 minutes, or the world will end. When the computer is damaged, Desmond flees into the jungle, sure the end is near, but Sayid fixes the device and they start the process.

One theme in Season 2, spelled out in so many words, is “science versus faith,” as if those two have to be in opposition. Locke, the island’s mystic warrior, sees himself as a man of faith, while Jack is a man of science. The “press enter” act becomes a source of faith to Locke, and later the “tailie” character Eko. For a brief time, Jack and Locke co-lead, but this equilibrium won’t last long.

The hatch has electricity, music, a pantry filled with food, which miraculously restocks… and (to quote The Matrix) guns, lots of guns. The growing distrust between Locke and Jack lets Sawyer pull a con on them, getting the guns for himself. Is it weird that I feel better when the guns are in the hands of Sawyer, a criminal and a killer?

With Season 2, the showrunners employ the “fridging” plot device, a term coined by writer Gail Simone in 1999 to describe the death/rape/torture etc. of a woman character as a plot device for a story anchored by a male character. This happens first as the tail-section survivors approach the castaways’ beach camp. Shannon sees Walt again, and persuades Sayid to follow him with her, leading them straight into the tail-section survivors. In the pouring rain, a jumpy Ana Lucia fatally shoots Shannon. This clearly has two purposes—cull another storyless survivor, and make Sayid feel bad. Relatively little time had been spent on the Sayid/Shannon romance. Sayid, who has spent seven years looking for his true love Nadia, blurts out to Shannon that he loves her and will never leave her only minutes before she’s killed.

In the aftermath, several of the “tailies” follow Jin into the camp, leading to a tender reunion between Rose and Bernard—which the audience deserved.

At the hatch, Michael is contacted by Walt via the computer, and takes off to find him. Jack, Locke and Sawyer follow, with Jack planning to bring Michael back, but they have a frightening encounter with the Others instead. One Other, “Tom” says, “Walt is a very special boy.” Michael returns to the hatch later.

Ana Lucia was one of the show’s worst characters, and a short-lived one. The lore of the show is that she was unpopular with fans, but Rodriguez’s bad behavior off-set, including a short jail sentence for a DUI, didn’t help. She’s more plot device than character. A cop, Ana Lucia coldly hunts down and murders a suspect who shot her and caused her to miscarry. Maybe there was some thought of drawing parallels between Sayid and Ana Lucia—both characters steeped in violence—but she isn’t around long enough to have a storyline.

Season 2 does, however, introduce one of  the show’s best, trickiest, and most compelling characters, who calls himself Henry Gale.

Rousseau, the reclusive French woman in the jungle, contacts Sayid to say she has captured an Other. She delivers Henry Gale wrapped up in one of her trap nets. Dragged back to the hatch, Gale says he and his wife were trying to take a hot-air balloon across the Pacific Ocean and crashed on the island during a storm. Gale is a frail, unimpressive man, obviously terrified, further devastated, he says, by the death of his wife shortly after the crash. Jack is inclined to believe him; Sayid is not and resorts, again, to physical torture. Sayid’s soul-searching and shame of Season 1 is gone, maybe because he feels bad about dead Shannon.

Gale does not change his story. Sayid and Ana Lucia, with whom he is  reconciled, journey to the place Gale says his balloon crashed. They find a balloon, a grave—and proof Gale is lying.

Gale reveals nothing. He manages to shake Locke’s faith and sense of purpose about the hatch and the numbers. By now we are definitely paying attention to “the man behind the curtain.”

Michael returns, saying he escaped from the Others, and he’s seen their camp. He wants to take a team to rescue Walt. When Ana Lucia is watching Gale by herself, Michael kills her, then kills Libby, who had just come into the hatch. He frees Henry Gale and wounds himself. Michael has made a hellish bargain with the Others to get his son back and will betray several of the castaways as the season ends. His betrayal plants the seeds for three tropes that appear throughout the show; death as redemption, death as heroic sacrifice, and life as redemption.

Libby is the second woman to be “fridged” in Season 2. Her character strikes up a friendship with Hurley that becomes something more, and she is killed just minutes before their first date. Sound familiar? I’ll let Lindelof and Cuse speak for themselves on the reason for this. While Ana Lucia’s death corrects a bad hiring decision, Shannon’s and Libby’s only serve to make men feel bad.  I think it’s a symptom of a bigger problem, one the showrunners were starting to acknowledge; what were they going to do with all their “survivors?”

In the long stretch of Season 2 we get different versions of faith through the actions of Locke, Eko and Charlie, who struggles with increasing anxiety over the safety of Claire’s baby, Aaron; we find out more about the 1970s research group the Dharma Initiative, their multiplicity of 1970s-era “experimental” programs and their various stations on the island. Eko confronts the smoke monster, and it backs away from him. We watch Henry Gale introduce himself as Ben Linus, leader of the Others, and tell Michael the Others are “the good guys.”

Desmond, who ran off into the jungle, returns, bringing a hangover, his boat and a desperate solution to a crisis at the hatch.

Season 2 ends with Jack, Kate and Sawyer as prisoners of the Others; the Hatch imploded under a strange violet sky, and Michael, with Walt, leaving the island. One of the Others says of Walt, “We hate to let him go, but he gave us so much it’s only fair.” So much what? Attitude? Blood? DNA? Information? Walt, who can bilocate among other things, appears once or twice later in the show, but his gifts are never explained. Remember that line, “He’s a very special boy?” Yeah. Me, too.

The very end of the season hints that Penny, the woman Desmond loves, has been searching for Desmond, and the hatch implosion has pinged her radar, literally.

I was unsatisfied, but three of “our” guys are in the hands of the murderous, lying Others, and I wasn’t ready to walk away yet.

(One commenter will get a paperback copy of Spin a Black Yarn by Josh Malerman.)

4,8,15,16,23,42

Lost opens in the immediate aftermath of an airliner crash on a deserted jungle island. The first character we see is a wounded Jack Shepherd, a spinal surgeon with a Messiah complex, but very soon the canvas of the Survivors of Oceanic flight 815 will be spread out before us, and what a broad canvas it is.

Filmed entirely, or nearly so, in the state of Hawaii, mostly on Oahu, Lost was beautiful, but it required some conscious suspension of disbelief to accept Honolulu as every other single city represented in the show. Season 1 had 25 episodes, nearly six months of content, in an era before streaming and binge-watching.

I am indebted to Lostpedia, a wiki devoted to the show. They did an amazing amount of work throughout the show’s 2004-2010 run and after. Rather than spend column space here on the large cast of Lost, I’m linking to their Season 1 cast list.  I will, however, give highlights of the characters we meet in Season 1.

Jack Shepherd, aforementioned spinal surgeon, wants to “fix” everybody, and struggles with self-doubt.

John Locke was a paraplegic who receives a miracle when the plane crashes, and believes he has a spiritual connection with the island.

Jin and Sun Kwon (to use the USAian representation) have a troubled marriage, just one of many obstacles to their undying love for each other.

Kate Austin, a fugitive, arrives on the island in handcuffs.

(Handcuffs are a popular fashion accessory on the island. It is amazing, over the course of six seasons, how many pairs of them people have.)

Michael Dawson and Walt Lloyd, a father and son, were just getting to know one another when the plane crashes.

Rose clings to the faith that her husband Bernard, who was in the tail section of the plane, is still alive.

James “Sawyer” Ford, a grifter, is driven by vengeance. He is oppositional-defiant and an early-stage capitalist.

Hugo “Hurley” Reyes won the lottery with the Lost numbers, and believes the numbers have cursed him.

Sayid Jarrah is an Iraqi citizen who fought with the Republican Guard. A communications officer, Sayid was also a torturer.

(It’s also surprising how often the castaways need a torturer.)

Claire Littleton is eight and a half months pregnant.

Charlie Pace is a heroin-addicted has-been pop star.

Boone and Shannon Carlyle are moneyed step-siblings with a love-hate relationship.

Danielle Rousseau has been on the island for sixteen years.

Vincent is Walt’s dog.

John Locke is immediately enigmatic and disturbing. We don’t know, as he wanders up and down the beach being folksy, that earlier that same day he had no feeling in his legs, and used a wheelchair. He takes a shine to Walt, introducing him to backgammon (a recurring symbol, “light and dark”), and telling Walt a miracle happened. Michael views him with jealousy and suspicion. As Season 1 progresses, both Locke and Walt will engage in sabotage to stay on the island.

The first night on the beach the survivors encounter the entity that will become the “smoke monster.” In this first appearance the monster merely roars and tears up some trees. Later, characters encounter ghostly whispers and voices in various parts of the island. In short order, the castaways encounter a mysterious and dire radio message (on repeat), polar bears, and a crazy French woman in the jungle.

Even with this growing menace, most time is spent on developing the relationships and setting up the important jostling for alpha male status the show seems most interested in. Sawyer scavenges the plane, hoarding many of the supplies. This sets him in direct opposition to “lawful” Jack, who has assumed a leadership role, while Locke challenges Jack by hunting the island’s wild pigs and bringing back food. (On one of his solo expeditions, Locke encounters the monster, but he is spiritually ecstatic about it.)

Claire, Hurley and Kate take actions that show they are caring and focused on the community. From early on, even though Hurley is a character who is the butt of the jokes in his flashback episodes and the “present tense” story, he is someone who cares about people, and sometimes he’s the only one who does.

The main plotlines for Season One include:

–Meet the Survivors

–The Monster

–The Others

–The Raft

Emotionally, two storylines kept me watching; Michael and Walt, and Jin and Sun. Jin and Sun are originally defined as isolated by language, since we, like the castaways, believe neither of them speak English. Jin is protective and controlling, bristling whenever a man talks to Sun, but he is also the first one to fish, offering people sea urchin to eat, while Sun creates a garden. At first, we tend to think Michael’s rift with Walt is simply due to Walt’s age—a preadolescent testing boundaries, but as the flashbacks that are the show’s trademark continue, we realize these two barely know each other.

We also learn that Walt is magical. I was eager to see this aspect developed. Like Locke, Walt seems to have a connection to the island, and sometimes he knows the future. Is Walt the reason the castaways are here? This is never answered, the first but not only time the showrunners will jettison an intriguing plotline with zero resolution.

Sayid meets the shipwrecked French woman Rousseau. All of her expedition died, “infected” she says, but it turns out she killed them. And her daughter, Alex, was kidnapped by one of the “Others.” Locke takes Boone under his wing, and they find a metal hatch buried in the jungle. The hatch becomes an obsession for Locke.

In a flashback, we learn that Hurley won the lottery, playing numbers he got from a fellow resident in a mental institution. The numbers, 4,8,15,16,23,42 recur throughout the six seasons, providing loads of entertainment and internet fodder for the fans, until Season Six, when a character tells Sawyer that the numbers mean nothing, really; “Jacob [a later character] had a thing for numbers.” Still, the doomed flight was 815, people’s seat numbers correspond to the numbers, and in Season 2, the numbers’ total, 108, becomes a countdown number.

Charlie and Claire bond. (One of my favorite moments in Season 1 is the “imaginary peanut butter” sequence between Claire and Charlie.)

Sun reveals she can understand and speak English. She does this to save Jin, but it shames him. Claire begins having bad dreams about someone taking her baby, but Jack ignores her fears. Hurley’s desire to know something about the people he’s cast away with leads to the discovery that one of the people in their group, Ethan, wasn’t on the plane. Ethan  abducts Claire, leaves Charlie for dead, and when Claire escapes, kills one of the other survivors. Later, Charlie murders Ethan. [Edited for clarity.]

Michael builds a raft to leave the island. Someone burns the first raft. Jin, who harbors animosity toward Michael, is suspected, leading Sun to reveal she speaks English, but in fact Walt torched the first raft. Michael starts again. The raft was a thing of beauty and one of my favorite visuals on the show. While wandering around in the jungle, Locke and Boone find a small plane crashed into a tree. Locke persuades Boone to climb up into the plane, causing the plane to nosedive, fatally injuring Boone. While Jack struggles and fails to save Boone (misled at first when Locke gives a false report of how he was injured) Kate delivers Claire’s baby boy, Aaron.

Shannon is desolate without her stepbrother. She and Sayid grow closer.

Michael, Walt, Jin and Sawyer leave on the raft. They are accosted by the Others, who shoot Sawyer, snatch Walt and burn the raft. Season One ends. The Others definitely have a thing for other people’s kids.

After the first or second episode it becomes quite clear that Lost is not a story of survival. Survival crops up now and then as a plot point, but most “survival” is an Us against Them battle—and there are so many “Thems.” There are polar bears, a monster, and the Others. In case those weren’t enough, the male principles squabble among themselves constantly. Jack crashes his leadership role when he orders the castaways to move off the beach to be closer to fresh water. The majority of survivors want to maintain the signal fires. Jack, haunted by his controlling, alcoholic father, effectively splits the group, the worst thing to do given the nature of the risks they face. Early in Season One, one design flaw with the show is obvious; there are too many survivors. The so-called “leaders,” mainly Jack and Locke in Season One, both want to lead, but both take off on adventures or something with no thought to the people left behind. Locke’s carelessness gets Boone killed (Locke, at first, sees the death as a “sacrifice” to the island). Jack ignores Claire’s fears, and splits up the group. Sayid doesn’t aspire to leadership. Sawyer, the callous loner who is running a thriving barter business, is actually the most reliable of the alpha males!

Still, there is much to like. The showrunners took a big risk with the story of Sun and Jin, since it is largely subtitled, but it is a standout. The two actors are standouts throughout the show, too, working at a higher level than most of the cast and elevating the whole show by it. The funny/sad story of Hurley, who is cursed by the numbers, nevertheless reveals Hurley’s heroism early. In the first episode, Hurley, who is fat (a fact remarked upon throughout the show), hands out the remaining food to terrified, traumatized people. He creates a golf course, letting people have some fun and hang out together. It is his desire to know people that leads to the discovery of the Other in their midst.  The show works really well, on rewatch, if you consider Hurley the show’s true “hero.”

The women characters of Season One are strong and complicated. Con-artist tomboy gal-pal Kate is the Letherman Utility Tool of characters; she is pretty, sexy and smart; she lies well, she can climb, track, hunt and shoot. Rose is a Mom figure in a show that doesn’t do well with mothers; caring but no-nonsense, and an avatar of faith in a different way from Mystic Locke. Sun is the subtlest of the female characters. While mostly a love interest and a victim in Season One, Claire grows as the show progresses. Shannon, Boone’s stepsister, is the least developed woman character, more plot device than person.

When Season One ends, the castaways are in trouble and questions are piled up around them. Will they be answered in Season Two? Was any question in Lost ever answered? I guess we’ll see.

(One commenter will win a copy of Bird Box by Josh Malerman)

Like the show itself, this is a very long column. Unlike the show, it’s only about one thing. 

Lost aired on ABC from 2004-2010, six enigmatic seasons that left a vocal and devoted fanbase, and a larger audience whose reaction seemed to be more like, “Huh? What?” when they watched the final season—especially the final episode.

Lost can be purchased via Youtube or Amazon Prime. I stopped watching the show early in its original run, maybe at the end of Season Three,  but recently, via Xfinity On Demand, I watched it all the way through to the end.

The show is twenty years old. This column and any others I write will contain spoilers.

J.J. Abrams, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof get the credit or the blame for this show, which blended genres with a varying degree of success. At times, the show included fantasy tropes, secret histories, time travel, and more angst than most daytime soap-operas could muster up. After an airliner crashes on a deserted south Pacific island—an island that can’t be found by radar, satellites, or Google Earth–the survivors try to, well, survive, while they uncover weirdness, mystery and murderous Others.

For an island that can’t be reached or left successfully by boat, plane or helicopter, the island of Lost has a population roughly that of Disneyland on a summer weekend. Each time the showrunners seemed to write themselves into a corner, another group of characters would show up. Some, the Others, had supposedly been there the whole time (“whole time” having a relative value). Other groups knew how to “find the island” and so on. With all these disparate tribes wandering around committing mayhem, one theme stands out. Whether it’s baby-stealing locals, a mysterious button that has to be pushed every 108 minutes, a derelict 19^th century ship full of unstable dynamite, or the Dharma Initiative, the terrain we visit has one outstanding characteristic. It is the Island of Terrible Dads. Nearly every major character, and most subsidiary ones, have terrible dads. The best a character can hope for is an absent father who didn’t mess them up too much.

–Jack’s Dad, Christian Shepherd (sit with that name for a moment), appears in the show the most of the Bad Dads, which is quite a feat considering he’s dead. When he was alive, he was an absentee father to Claire, his out-of-wedlock daughter. He does show up in her life finally, to give her terrible advice. In Jack’s life, Christian is a controlling alcoholic who feeds his son’s self-doubt with conflicting messages. As a bonus, during a chance encounter in Australia, Christian encourages Sawyer to kill an innocent man. All this happens before he hosts one of the demi-god brothers who inhabit the island.

–John Locke’s dad wins the gold for Bad Dads. This guy never appeared in Locke’s life as a child. When he shows up, he cons Locke out of a kidney and later kicks him out of an eight-story window, which causes Locke’s paralysis. Father of the Year?

–James Sawyer’s dad kills Sawyer’s mother and then himself while his eight-year-old son is in the room, sending Sawyer on a lifelong vengeance quest.

–Hurley’s dad takes off when Hurley’s ten years old. Surprisingly, this dad comes back and makes amends. Still, you’re starting to see the theme.

–Kwon Jin Soo’s dad, a lowly fisherman, is good, but Jin is ashamed of his low status. He becomes entangled with his father-in-law, Sun’s vicious crime-lord dad, who definitely makes the Bad Dad list.

— Kwon Sun Swa’s dad; patriarchal crime-lord. On the bright side, he teaches Sun deception, which helps her a lot on the island.

–Kate Austin’s father is a physically abusive alcoholic, so terrible that Kate kills him.

–Walt Lloyd had a stepfather who was afraid of him, and after his mother died, he ends up with a man who says he’s Walt’s biological father, but Walt has only known him about a week before they end up on the island.

–On the flip side, Michael Dawson, Walt’s dad, struggles to protect and bond with his boy, but Walt’s mother kept him from Michael his whole life. Michael and Walt’s story is one of the best of the early seasons until the showrunners jettison it.

–Sayid Jarrah’s father appears once during the run of the show, berating Sayid’s older brother for being too tender-hearted to kill a chicken. Sayid does it instead and gets praise. This is one of the more benign dads.

–Ben Linus’s dad, Roger, constantly blames Ben because Ben’s mother died during childbirth. Roger is especially careful to remind Ben of this on Ben’s birthday every year. His behavior is part of what drives Ben to join the Others. (Or at least this is true until the Time Travel season.)

–Ben is a dad himself, or at least a “dad.” Alex is not his biological daughter, just a baby he kidnapped from a woman stranded on the island because that’s what the Others do. His relationship with Alex is troubled. It seems like Ben loves her, but he can’t stop manipulating, even her.

–Miles Straum, the psychic medium who appears in Season Three, grows up believing that his father threw him and his mother out for no reason.

–Penny Whidmore’s dad is, well, not quite a Big Bad, just a Medium-Sized Bad. Some fans insist that Charles Whidmore is the ultimate villain, but really, it’s a crowded field. Whidmore manipulates Penny and disregards his out-of-wedlock (oh, look! It’s a pattern!) son Daniel.

–We see nothing of  addict and pop-star Charlie’s father, so we can assume he’s out of the picture.

While Lost rolls through various genres in its six-year run, clearly one of its themes is the seething stew of father-and-son conflict. At first glance (and, frankly, second and third glance) it seems like the showrunners, back then anyway, could not conceive of an internal conflict for a character that didn’t involve a dad figure. Furthermore, abusive dads seem to all be alcoholic abusive dads. Surely more imagination could have been employed.

In addition to literal fathers, the show bubbles over with father figures. Boone’s devotion to Locke makes Locke a father figure, a role Locke accepts and fails at. The constant struggle over leadership of the Others takes on a paternal quality, especially once you add the invisible, enigmatic Jacob to the mix. In the first three seasons, the words “protector” and “leader” seem synonymous with “dad” seen from a child’s point of view—powerful and capricious beings who make demands for no reason, who won’t explain decisions or orders. By Season Three, the attitude toward father figures shifts to one that would have Sigmund Freud rubbing his hands with glee—the father must be eliminated for the male character to “advance.” Richard says this to Locke in almost so many words; He has to get his father out of his path if he is to succeed.

It seems ironic that the two demi-gods (one of whom is Jacob), the battling brothers, only have a mother-figure. They waste no time in assuming Bad Dad qualities, though. They are merciless, and one, at least, is vocally judgmental and a chronic liar. They are both big on sacrifice—of other people, not themselves.

This show delivered the “bad dad” trope perfectly and consistently—in fact, it might be the only thing that is consistent in the entire run of the series.

In later columns I’ll share my views by season. On rewatch, I’m not loving the show, but there is a lot to admire here, and a lot to discuss, so I’m going to. I’ll hope you come along. Don’t worry, I can get us off the island. I’m the only one who can. How? I can’t tell you. You’ll just have to trust me.

What’s the best book you read in April 2024 and why did you love it? 

It doesn’t have to be a newly published book, or even SFF, or even fiction. We just want to share some great reading material.

Feel free to post a full review of the book here, or a link to the review on your blog, or just write a few sentences about why you thought it was awesome.

And don’t forget that we always have plenty more reading recommendations on our 5-Star SFF page.

One commenter with a U.S. mailing address will choose one of these prizes:

• a FanLit T-shirt (we have sizes M, L, XL)
• a book from our stacks.
• a $5 Amazon gift card (this is the only option for non-USA addresses).

Subscribe to our posts here (you can filter for giveaway posts if you prefer).

Primary endosymbiosis is rare,

Among other events, BaltiCon will feature an SFF-themed short film festival. (Thanks to File 770.)

Fallout has been renewed for another season on Amazon.

Nerds of a Feather interview Cheryl Ntumy about Mothersound, a science-fantasy anthology based on African folklore, and the Sauutiverse collective.

Reactor offers an excerpt of James Logan’s new epic fantasy novel The Silverblood Promise.

This is old news, but I heard it today on CNN. The Voyager spacecraft is still sending a message now and then.

As part of her “Bestiary” column for Reactor, Judith Tarr discusses a Bigfoot movie from the late 1980s—Harry and the Hendersons.

The war in Gaza is reverberating through the literary award community as PEN pauses its annual award process in response to many of the nominated authors.

This is a nice article on the new generation of independent booksellers. Maybe those who were wringing their hands over the demise of the bookstore were premature.

One commenter chosen at random will get a hardcopy of Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee.