“If Wishes Were Horses”
Written by Neil McCrue Crawford & William L. Crawford and Michael Piller
Directed by Robert Legato
Season 1, Episode 15
Production episode 40511-416
Original air date: May 16, 1993
Stardate: 46853.2

Station log: Quark is annoyed that Odo is hovering in the bar even though it’s mostly empty and tries to talk him into a holosuite program. But Odo has no interest in imaginations or wishes or dreams. (Foreshadowing!) Odo is also aghast when he sees Jake (carrying a bat and what Quark amusingly calls a “baseball mitten”) goes to a holosuite, but Quark explains that it’s a program Sisko brought from his previous assignment. Jake plays baseball with some of the greats of the game.

Elsewhere in the bar, Bashir is trying to convince Dax that he can think of nothing but her, to the detriment of his ability to focus. Dax points out the other women she’s seen him flirt with, which he unconvincingly dismisses as poor substitutes for her. She then just-friends him and heads to ops, where there’s an odd thoron emission.

O’Brien is reading the story of Rumpelstiltskin to Molly before she goes to sleep. But then Rumpelstiltskin himself shows up in her room, to O’Brien’s horror. He shoos Keiko and Molly from their cabin and calls security. The little man manages to evade being grabbed by the guards. Meanwhile, Harmon “Buck” Bokai, a baseball player, follows Jake home from the holosuite, and Dax appears in Bashir’s bed and starts kissing and caressing him. Bashir resists at first, then gives in, then, when Kira calls all senior officers to ops, assumes it’s a practical joke. Dax insists she has no idea what he’s talking about as they go to ops together.

[Why do we tell her stories about evil dwarves who want to steal children?]

Plus did we mention the cardboard spaceships and SPARKLERS?

[Step through the door and discover the only power that matters.]

E3 2013 came and went in LA this week, bringing with it a slew of new game announcements, trailers, and catty console rivalries. So what looked cool? We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite show highlights for your viewing pleasure. Fair warning: the following post is chock-full of shiny new gameplay and trailer-y goodness, so grab a coffee or two give yourself a few minutes to peruse. Or an hour. Hey, it’s Friday.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the highlights from this year’s E3 conference.

[Come take a closer look at Sony vs. Microsoft, Diablo III, Outlast, Star Wars: Battlefront, Super Smash Bros. 4, The Witcher 3, Destiny, and more...]

This is probably a moot point, as all of you are going to be seeing Man of Steel this weekend, but there’s a terrifically fun picture playing (in North America; it opens the 28^th worldwide) called This Is The End. It’s the funniest thing Seth Rogen’s done in years, and a fine directing debut for him and his longtime writing partner Evan Goldberg. Their previous collaborations have featured some awkward moments with genre—The Green Hornet and The Pineapple Express were both close to being good and were quite appealing in places but suffered from artificial plotting—but This Is The End, with the exception of a minor lull in the middle, is a much smoother ride. It’s one of the better apocalypse movies, to say nothing of apocalypse comedies, in a long time, and it is this because of its characters.

[Read more.]

Welcome to the Malazan Re-read of the Fallen! Every post will start off with a summary of events, followed by reaction and commentary by your hosts Bill and Amanda (with Amanda, new to the series, going first), and finally comments from Tor.com readers. In this article, we’ll cover the first part of Chapter Fifteen of Toll the Hounds (TtH).

A fair warning before we get started: We’ll be discussing both novel and whole-series themes, narrative arcs that run across the entire series, and foreshadowing. Note: The summary of events will be free of major spoilers and we’re going to try keeping the reader comments the same. A spoiler thread has been set up for outright Malazan spoiler discussion.

[Read more.]

When the government worries us, it would seem that people turn to literature for guidance: the discovery of PRISM, an online surveillance program developed by U.S. intelligence organizations, has led to a remarkable spike in sales for George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984.

[Big Brother very well may be watching...]

Get ready, Fangers. HBO’s Southern-fried vampire drama True Blood returns with new episodes this Sunday.

Scream-queen Anna Paquin reprises her role as Sookie Stackhouse, the fairy waitress of Bon Temps, Louisiana. Picking up right where season five left off, with her former lover Bill transformed into a supervamp after drinking the blood of the first vampire, Lillith, Sookie is on the run with her brother Jason, her best friend Tara, and her other former lover Eric Northman (the hideously deformed Alexander Skarsgård) All of them are caught in the middle of an full-on human vs. undead war.

[Season 6 Trailer Within.]

A new trailer for Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium has been released and it promises a sci-fi film that we will almost certainly be talking about long after we’ve seen it. The story itself is simple: it is the mid 22nd century and the haves live in a heaven of their own creation called Elysium while the have-nots live on a hot, hardscrabble Earth. Where the movie excels—and which the trailer goes out of its way to show you—is in displaying the system of cruel indifference that has been set in place to care for, and discipline, the population. If you want to better your life you have two options: drugs, or try to sneak on to Elysium. The latter means certain death, as the citizens of Elysium are merciless in maintaining their separation from Earth.

And that’s just where the trailer begins! There’s Jodie Foster and Matt Damon being awesome, cybernetic implants, snippy robots, and not one idiot screaming something like “Tonight we take Elysium!”

[Watch the new trailer for Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium]

The problem with Superman has always been that the ability to lovingly accept him demands a lack of cynicism—something that we have in abundance, more and more every day. Yet fans of DC’s proclaimed “Boy Scout” are typically capable of casting off that mantel of suspicion when they talk about Clark Kent. And Man of Steel’s job, as a film, was to see if it could get the rest of the world to do the same, to remind us what makes him the first superhero who’s name every child learns.

So I’ll spare you the suspense: It succeeds.

[“Welcome to the Planet.”—NON-SPOILER REVIEW]

In the last chapter, we saw the Vesani Republic (soon to be Empire) scaling up for the invasion of Mavortis. Maps, mercenaries and mine ponies, all summoned up by Basso’s grand vision. The only flaw in the great plan? Basso’s own sons.

Nothing a little bribery couldn’t sort out.

[Read more.]

Many people look at their dads and see heroes, but Giulia Pex decided to make sure the rest of us see him that way, too! Some stealthy moves in Photoshop, et voila—Super (Evil?) Dad. What are you getting your dad for Father's Day?

[These links will weedwhack for you...]

In Solstice, the first YA novel from author P.J. Hoover, a young girl named Piper struggles with a world on the brink of a Global Heating Crisis. When her mother is called away, Piper discovers a hidden realm of gods, monsters, and mythology, and finally has a chance to learn her true destiny. 

Read an excerpt here, and catch a reading in one of these cities:

[Read more]

It looks as though Emma Watson is headed back to the fantasy genre with a vengeance! After nabbing the lead in Guillermo del Toro’s Beauty and the Beast, she has now picked up another fantasy heroine that she can add to her to her tool belt. Watson will be re-teaming with Harry Potter producer David Heyman to star in the fantasy film Queen of the Tearling. This film will be based on a trilogy of books... that have not been released yet. But there are more details!

[The rest of this story below...]

Season 9, Episodes 9 and 10: “Provenance”/“Providence”
Original Airdates: March 3 and March 10, 2002

There’s something familiar about “Provenance” and “Providence.” A sprawling two-part mytharc, a UFO cult, a long-haired cult leader, a suspicious man pulling the strings at the FBI, an agent in a coma, bodies burned beyond recognition, a once-buried UFO taking off before anyone can figure out exactly what it’s there for, men who come back to life, and a Messiah. Perhaps you’ve felt that Season 9 was a departure? But perhaps, in fact, Season 9 is just like all the others.

[Whatever you do, don’t worry.]

Ever notice the way you put something down right there and when you come back it’s completely gone? Or the way that you know you filled the salt shaker or sugar bowl or cat food bowl and then two minutes later, it’s half empty again? (Ok, in the case of the cat food bowl, we all just might be able to think of a mundane explanation.) Or the way pins and needles and other small things are always disappearing?

Kate certainly has, complaining to the elderly Mrs. May that things always seem to be missing. A smiling Mrs. May tells Kate that she thinks they are in the house. By they she means The Borrowers.

[Major, major, spoilers for the end of this book, which my small self thought was a complete and very upsetting cheat but my adult self kinda loves.]

Hey all you Battle of Algiers fans, next March we've got another multi-layered, nuanced exploration of the horrors of war—just kidding! But honestly, it's probably going to be lots of fun. Lena Headey's back as Queen Gorgo, and now Eva Green will play Artemisia, the only female commander to serve under Rodrigo Santoro's Xerxes. Here's the trailer for the entirely necessary 300: Rise of the Mach... um, Rise of an Empire.

[Rise!]

Welcome back to A Read of Ice and Fire! Please join me as I read and react, for the very first time, to George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.

Today’s entry is Part 32 of A Storm of Swords, in which we cover Chapter 54 (“Davos”).

Previous entries are located in the Index. The only spoilers in the post itself will be for the actual chapters covered and for the chapters previous to them. As for the comments, please note that the Powers That Be have provided you a lovely spoiler thread here on Tor.com. Any spoileriffic discussion should go there, where I won’t see it. Non-spoiler comments go below, in the comments to the post itself.

And now, the post!

[If you miss a payment the APR goes up to 19.99% of your SOUL]