For over 25 years, the Wild Cards universe has been thrilling readers the world over.
Once an assassin and spy, superpowered ace Noel Matthews confronts unexpected enemies after discovering a dead body on the job.
Now in development for TV: Rights to develop Wild Cards for TV have been acquired by Universal Cable Productions, the team that brought you The Magicians and Mr. Robot, with the co-editor of Wild Cards, Melinda Snodgrass as executive producer.
After a bird fatally collides with her car, a troubled young woman’s life changes irrevocably.
Undead girls begin re-entering the world of the living, emerging from refrigerators.
“Bourbon, Sugar, Grace” by Jessica Reisman is a science fiction novelette about Fox, a young salvager living in a mining colony on an inhospitable planet abandoned by its owners once the mines were shut. When Fox is hired to find an object lost in a recent accident, she finds a mystery, an opportunity, and trouble.
Haunted by starlings in the dark, a young woman spirals into an altered state of consciousness.
[Read “Shape Without Form, Shade Without Color” by Sunny Moraine]
In Which… Brandon Sanderson’s dedicated band of Knights Radiant search out problems in the world of Roshar, on behalf of Cosmere fans everywhere. Oathbringer is coming, and work behind the scenes has been building for many months. Now it’s time to ramp up your anticipation, making sure y’all are as excited as you can get by November—as much as we can without giving anything away, of course, because we would NOT do that to you. However, spoilers for The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance abound, so if you haven’t read them, be warned.
A long time ago (a little over three years), my first article for this website was about beta reading Words of Radiance. There’s a fair amount of water under the bridge since then, and I’ve done more beta reads, all of which functioned more or less like that one. Then came Oathbringer. I’m here today, in collaboration with a few of the beta readers, to talk about what this one was like. Special thanks to Ted Herman, Ravi Persaud, Joel and Jory Phillips, Ross Newberry, Brandon and Darci Cole, Deana Whitney, Alyx Hoge, Eric Lake, Nikki Ramsay, Gary Singer, Paige Vest, Becca Reppert, Lyndsey Luther, and Mark Lindberg for all their input. They are a small but representative (and vocal) sampling of the beta readers; so far as I know, they will all return for the gamma in the next few weeks.
A fair number of my stories feature science or technology, even when they’re fantasy. About my first novel, Updraft, my friend Max Gladstone said, “There’s no magic in this book. It’s all engineering.” He was right… and a little wrong (sorry, Max!). There is magic in Updraft, and it’s all engineering.
Because the Bone Universe series — which began with Updraft in 2015 — concludes with Horizon this September, I’m thinking a lot about engineering and how it appears in science fiction and fantasy. For Tor.com, I assembled a roundtable of SF author-engineers and analysts. I also pulled one of the engineering consultants for the Bone Universe series into the discussion. Today, Hugo-Award winner John Chu, Nebula- and Locus-award winner Aliette de Bodard, short story author A.T. Greenblatt, and short story author, editor, and 2017 debut novelist Nicky Drayden join New Zealand-based naval architect and marine engineer (aka: my sister) Susan Lake for a roundtable on engineering in science fiction and fantasy. Here we go:
The new Spider-Man movie is a breath of fresh air, featuring a young version of the character who’s still figuring out his place in a world of colorful heroes. Even after so many Spidey films, and a slew of other superhero movies, Marvel Studios’ first Spider-Man film still feels like something special. Without giving any spoilers, this movie is light, funny and heartfelt.
But Spider-Man: Homecoming also feels unusual because of the way it manages to settle some of the most contentious debates over the nature of superhero movies, and heroic narratives generally. These include arguments about wholesale destruction, dark storytelling—and who, exactly, these movies are really for.
Penthouse Global Media has acquired OMNI magazine, bringing back to life the beloved and groundbreaking science fiction magazine. It’s a fitting move, as Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione co-founded OMNI in 1978 with his wife Kathy Keeton. The next print issue of OMNI will be available October 24.
We’re halfway through 2017, and we’ve got a lot of feelings about books—lists of books, beloved books, book reviews, books about books, and the teetering stacks of books surrounding our desks. Summer reading might technically be a thing for kids, but that’s not going to stop us from sitting outside with a heavy tome or two. So we’ve invited some of our regular contributors to choose their favorite books of the year so far, and we’re sharing their responses and recommendations below. Please enjoy this eclectic overview of some of our favorite books from the past year, and be sure to let us know about your own favorites in the comments!
Milana Vayntrub, a.k.a. That Girl from the AT&T Commercials, is joining Marvel Television and Freeform’s New Warriors, in a pretty perfect bit of casting: She’ll be playing Doreen Green, a.k.a. the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.
Chapters 9 and 10 of Brothers in Arms are like Frankenstein. Ser Galen has created a monster, and he is in the process of losing control of it. Miles is always at his best on a rescue mission; This section begins his efforts to rescue his baby brother.
This reread has an index, which you can consult if you feel like exploring previous books and chapters. Spoilers are welcome in the comments if they are relevant to the discussion at hand. Comments that question the value and dignity of individuals, or that deny anyone’s right to exist, are emphatically NOT welcome. Please take note.
David Wong’s third John Dies at the End book, What the Hell Did I Just Read, is available October 3rd from St. Martin’s Press—but we want to send one lucky reader a galley copy of it, along with copies of the two other books in the series, John Dies at the End and This Book is Full of Spiders, and a t-shirt featuring the cover art from What the Hell Did I Just Read!
It’s the story “They” don’t want you to read. Though, to be fair, “They” are probably right about this one. To quote the Bible, “Learning the truth can be like loosening a necktie, only to realize it was the only thing keeping your head attached.” No, don’t put the book back on the shelf—it is now your duty to purchase it to prevent others from reading it. Yes, it works with e-books, too, I don’t have time to explain how.
While investigating a fairly straightforward case of a shape-shifting interdimensional child predator, Dave, John and Amy realized there might actually be something weird going on. Together, they navigate a diabolically convoluted maze of illusions, lies, and their own incompetence in an attempt to uncover a terrible truth they—like you—would be better off not knowing.
Your first impulse will be to think that a story this gruesome—and, to be frank, stupid—cannot possibly be true. That is precisely the reaction “they” are hoping for.
John Dies at the End‘s “smart take on fear manages to tap into readers’ existential dread on one page, then have them laughing the next” (Publishers Weekly) and This Book is Full of Spiders was “unlike any other book of the genre” (Washington Post). Now, New York Times bestselling author David Wong is back with What the Hell Did I Just Read, the third installment of this black-humored thriller series.
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Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious suicide, Danielle ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa, and witnesses a protector spirit—in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer—begin to turn on its summoners. She and her new friends have to act fast if they’re going to save the town—or get out alive.
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy pits utopian anarchists against rogue demon deer in this dropkick-in-the-mouth punk fantasy that Alan Moore calls “scary and energetic.” Available August 15th from Tor.com Publishing.
Exciting news for Nnedi Okorafor! HBO has optioned her Afrofuturist novel Who Fears Death and will be developing the book into a television series, with none other than George R.R. Martin at the helm.
Okorafor tweeted the news, which has been in four years in the making:
My novel WHO FEARS DEATH has been optioned by @HBO & is now in early development as a TV series with George RR Martin as executive producer. pic.twitter.com/POF7Dj2hWP
— Nnedi Okorafor, PhD (@Nnedi) July 10, 2017
There have been three different major incarnations of Spider-Man on the big screen. Three different story arcs running over the course of fifteen years, giving audiences three clear opportunities to ruminate on the values intrinsic to Peter Parker as a hero. But what does it mean to be a “Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man”?
It’s a question that every film incarnation of the webslinger has been desperate to answer. And Spider-Man: Homecoming may have the sweetest, most genuine reply of all.
If you’ve got ten or so hours to spare between now and July 16th, I highly recommend binge-devouring season six of Game of Thrones, even—or maybe especially—if you watched it when it aired last year. What seemed, week to week, like an inconsistent, fairly unsatisfying season (certain moments aside) turns out to be a solid stretch of narrative setup and motion when you gulp it down in a sitting or three. Every season of intrigue and betrayal moves the narrative forward, but finally, by the end of season three, the pieces are in intriguing place on the board—places that suggest season seven will be a battle of consolidation and compromise as various parties begin to take the Night King’s threat seriously.
There’s going to be war. Everyone’s talking about it. But who’s left to fight?
One of the comments on the last post in this series of thought experiments wondered if I was projecting from terrestrial horse behavior to equinoid aliens. I replied that that’s the point. That’s what science fiction writers often do: they look at terrestrial species and extrapolate their biology and behavior into alien species.
At the same time, there’s a persistent assumption that equinoid sexuality has to be analogous to the human version. That every species will always have sex on the brain, the way humans do. That’s projection, too, and I don’t think it works with a species based on equines.
Another eagerly-awaited installment in Charles Stross’s Laundry Files, The Delirium Brief returns us to Bob Howard’s point of view in a direct continuation of the events of The Nightmare Stacks. With the previously-clandestine Laundry, the British occult secret services, made public due to the invasion of a nasty species of elves, Bob and our familiar cast of characters must take on a unique threat: governmental interference and restructuring.
Faced with the lethal consequences of poor government intervention on their institution, the agents of the Laundry must make a drastic decision—to go rogue and consider “the truly unthinkable: a coup against the British government itself,” as the flap copy says. Other pieces on the board are also moving, including a servant of the Sleeper in the Pyramid previously presumed dead and the American equivalent agency going off the reservation. Howard also has his personal life to contend with, given that he’s become the Eater of Souls and his estranged wife Mo has suffered a great deal of field trauma of her own.
Over a year ago, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination published an essay by me called A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction. Since then I’ve been asked to write individual monthly essays on each of the 42 works mentioned.
This column’s subject, Virginia Hamilton’s The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl, is a children’s novel about a child goddess come to Earth. From her heavenly home on top of Mount Highness in Kenya, Pretty Pearl journeys to America beside her brother John de Conquer. Their plan is to investigate the cruelties of chattel slavery. In the form of albatrosses they follow a slave ship to Georgia, but on landing they lie down in the red clay rather than jump right into interfering. Interference has a habit of backfiring, the grown-up god informs his little sister. But divine time runs differently than human time. The siblings take a short, two-century nap, and soon after the Civil War ends they’re ready for action.
[Cruelty, magic, and the function of great children’s literature…]
It’s the year 2147. Advancements in nanotechnology have enabled us to control aging. We’ve genetically engineered mosquitoes to feast on carbon fumes instead of blood, ending air pollution. And teleportation has become the ideal mode of transportation, offered exclusively by International Transport—the world’s most powerful corporation, in a world controlled by corporations.
Joel Byram spends his days training artificial-intelligence engines to act more human and trying to salvage his deteriorating marriage. He’s pretty much an everyday twenty-second century guy with everyday problems—until he’s accidentally duplicated while teleporting.
Now Joel must outsmart the shadowy organization that controls teleportation, outrun the religious sect out to destroy it, and find a way to get back to the woman he loves in a world that now has two of him.
Tal M. Klein’s The Punch Escrow is available July 25th from Inkshares.
The Ghost Line is a peculiar novella, the debut from writing team Andrew Neil Gray and J.S. Herbison. Part space opera, part horror, part reminiscent of James S. A. Corey’s early Expanse novels, it left me unsure how I felt about it. I may be thinking for quite some time.
Husband and wife team Saga and Michel are salvagers and hackers working in the far reaches of the solar system. Saga makes interactive narratives about the old ships and installations that they find. They’re hired by Wei, an odd woman with idiosyncratic priorities, for a job that could solve all their problems—pay for treatments to save Saga’s mother’s life, allow them to settle down and have children, take a holiday from space.
I want to talk about one of the moments in Spider-Man: Homecoming that made me cry. (Don’t worry, this is not a spoiler!)
During the end credits, a cartoon version of Spider-Man runs around New York doing cute New York-y things. He goes to MoMA, and sees a Lichtenstein, which then morphs into a Lichtensteined Spider-Man.
This doesn’t sound like a huge deal right? But here’s why it made me tear up. Roy Lichtenstein created a lot of amazing art, but he also took comics images and used them in his painting. I don’t think he was doing this to shine a spotlight on things people considered “low” culture (as Warhol did) and I don’t think he was commenting on comics as a valid medium. He was more interested in what could be done with the images themselves, out of context. There are several warring opinions on his work, but as far as I’ve been able to see he wasn’t creating his paintings to acknowledge comics as art.
And now, in the end credits to Marvel’s best movie in years, their working-class friendly neighborhood every-teen takes that art back.
