In a near-future San Francisco where the gig economy has made work more precarious than ever, Edwina is an average twenty-something scrambling to hold down her job with a major skin care brand. Until her awful boss does something you should never do—angers the fae on social media—and the struggles of her job take on an even nastier shade.
As the Cold War stalls and the threat of nuclear warfare dominates the news, small-town misfits Laurie and Fell bond over a shared love of music and the mystery of the erratic radio messages that hint at the existence of a future worth reaching out for.
For over 25 years, the Wild Cards universe has been entertaining readers with stories of superpowered people in an alternate history.
When a mysterious stranger approaches Wally Gunderson, a.k.a Rustbelt, about running for Jokertown City Council, he doesn’t think twice about it. His first move? Hiring an unlikely campaign manager – Mordecai Albert Jones, the Harlem Hammer. Together they’ll discover the ins and outs of local politics, and whether conspiracy theorist Sparkjob is actually crazy… or just on to something?
A man sets out to tell a story of his ex, which in turns becomes a story of the world. If only he could change that story—find the moment where it all began and alter the past. But what if he can’t find the beginning—or even the end?
An academic’s whimsical decision to take a DNA test leads her into uncharted territory, where she discovers some extraordinary truths about herself and new possibilities for her future.
No vampire is ever innocent…
The wandering Judge Dee serves as judge, jury, and executioner for any vampire who breaks the laws designed to safeguard their kind’s survival. This new case in particular puts his mandate to the test.
Every Halloween, an elderly woman hands out candy to a young trick-or-treater who’s dressed as a witch each time, looking exactly the same age. With each passing year, the woman grows more attached to the little witch and her odd nature. But she is no ordinary child, and an uncanny relationship develops between the two of them that may prove dangerous and deadly.
Could humanity be a recent visitor to this world? Are our true origins on some distant exoplanet?
NO.
The fossil record documents our purely terrestrial linage going back hundreds of millions of years. Humans are merely a recent flourish on the tetrapod body plan and suggestions to the contrary are manifestly nonsensical.
Still, no author in possession of a cool story idea ever hesitated merely because it constituted an egregious contradiction of firmly established science. Here are five examples of stories in which humans came from somewhere beyond the sky.
C.S. Lewis didn’t care for magicians.
In fact, as Lewis wrote in The Abolition of Man, he saw the core problem that magicians were trying to solve one that was at best distasteful, and at worst something that led to actions “disgusting and impious.” That core problem: “how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.” (We won’t get into this much yet, but he saw magicians and scientists as related in this sense…something we will discuss more when we get to the Space Trilogy.)
For the “wise men of old” the core question of the universe was “how to conform the soul to reality,” but for magicians the question was how to bend Nature to one’s own desires (or, at best, humanity’s desires). “It is the magician’s bargain: give up your soul, get power in return.” The process was clear: the magician “surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power.”
Where the wise sages of old bent their soul to reality using “knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue,” the magician embraces a core selfishness, a willingness to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to attain greater power.
2020 was a weird year for movies: closed theaters, no Marvel movies, and the new Bond movie and The Fast and the Furious sequel pushed to 2021.
But limitations on theater attendance not only pushed studios to experiment with their releases, but also allowed some smaller genre movies to attract attention that usually would have been taken by blockbuster franchise films. In other words, 2020 made room for some great new genre movies, and gave viewers more of an opportunity to watch them.
Here are ten of the best sci-fi and horror movies of 2020 (in no particular order), all of which you can watch right now.
If you’re afraid of spiders, brace yourself now: Serial Box is about to publish Spider King, a four-part horror miniseries from Justin C. Key that will definitely get under your skin.
Wanda and Vision are arriving on your screens in full technicolor! Which is apparently only surprising to them. Let’s get to it.
In a real way, the western and science fiction are made for each other, and have been for decades. Long before things like Firefly or Outland or Star Wars, the very term “Space Opera” is a derivation from the term for romances of the Wild West, “Horse Opera”. The DNA of westerns is in many SF stories where there are frontiers, conflicts between “civilized” and “rough” areas, the psychology and anthropology of communities very much on their own for good and for ill against the wilderness.
In this day and age though, we can work this connection further. The position of women in westerns, and frankly, a lot of space opera, is not so great. Where are the stories of women doing things on the frontier, riding the star winds, trying to do what’s right? Where are the Wild West Heroines, or even grizzled veterans just trying to make a living and get caught into a greater cause, despite themselves?
And so we come to Stina Leicht’s Persephone Station.
The CW is gearing up for another Arrowverse series, Superman & Lois, which will debut in February on the network. Ahead of its release, The CW has released a new trailer for the show, showing off a family that’s struggling with a variety of problems—real world and others.
We’re heading into one of the few singular plotline Discworld books… time to start Pyramids.
It looks as though Gareth Powell’s space opera Embers of War is getting a television adaptation, with director Breck Eisner (The Expanse, The Last Witch Hunter) tapped to direct, according to Variety.
HBO’s world of Westeros might be getting even bigger. Variety reported yesterday that the network is working to develop a new series set in the same world as Game of Thrones based on George R.R. Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas, which are set nearly a hundred years prior to the events in the main series.
We are pleased to share the cover for Questland, a new novel from Carrie Vaughn! An action-packed blend of sci-fi and fantasy, Questland publishes June 22nd with John Joseph Adams/Mariner Books.
The Frozen Crown is American author Greta Kelly’s debut novel. In this fantasy novel, the heir to an embattled kingdom travels to the court of a great empire, ruled by her godfather, to beg for military aid.
Askia is the legitimate queen of Seravesh, but the expansionary forces of the Roven empire have put her cousin on the throne and proceeded to terrorise her country in order to compel her surrender. She’s taken her last loyal legion and fled, in the hopes that a personal appeal to the emperor of Vishir—in whose realm her parents met their death, and where she experienced torture at the hands of an extreme anti-magic sect in her youth, who were attempting to prove that she was a witch—will have the effect she desires.
We’re excited to share an excerpt from Silence of the Soleri, book two in Michael Johnston’s epic fantasy series The Amber Throne—publishing February 16th with Tor Books.
Let there be many more books about tavern wenches. Barkeeps, cobblers, tailors, fletchers, the blacksmith who’s just really tired of how the soldiers treat her finest work—I’d like books about all of them, please. Every character trope in the fantasy toolbox can be a person who deserves to have their story told.
In her second YA novel, Wench, Maxine Kaplan plucks a longtime tavern girl from behind the bar and shoves her headlong into a tumultuous adventure. Seventeen(ish)-year-old Tanya is deeply attached to her identity as the person who keeps things running. Orphaned at a young age, she was taken in by the owner of the Smiling Snake, who’s getting on in years. Tanya always expected he would leave the tavern to her.
Maybe he just forgot to do the paperwork.
Last month, we got our first peek at Andor, the Rogue One spinoff prequel series about Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor. Alan Tudyk, who voices the delightfully crabby droid K-2SO, was part of the show’s initial announcement. Andor began filming late last year, but as Tudyk said in a recent interview, he’s not in it. Yet.
“Drone”
Written by Kenneth Biller and Harry Doc Kloor and Brannon Braga & Joe Menosky
Directed by Les Landau
Season 5, Episode 2
Production episode 196
Original air date: October 21, 1998
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. Seven, the EMH, Torres, and Paris are taking a type-2 shuttle to watch a proto-nebula form. It’s a rare opportunity for study of a nifty natural phenomenon. However, the nebula damages the shuttlecraft, and the team is beamed back.
[How many Borg hitchhikers are we gonna pick up on this ship?]
What could be better than a retelling of your favorite fairy tale? How about a retelling of two of your favorite fairy tales? How about a retelling that incorporates a bunch of your favorite fairy tales?
One of my favorite types of narrative is the mashup, wherein a bunch of existing characters or storylines mingle together, resulting in brand-new flavors, new adventures, and if you’re lucky, fresh nuances to explore.
The Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust has announced its annual list of nominees for this year’s Philip K. Dick Award! Check below for the list and information on where the award winner will be announced…
