There are few things we love as much as re-imagined Disney artwork, and the latest art show from Mondo Gallery does not disappoint. Never Grow Up: A Disney Art Show, is being presented by Mondo in association with Cyclops Print Works, and will feature new limited-edition posters celebrating the entire history of Disney. We honestly couldn’t pick a favorite, so we’ve rounded up a few highlights below.

“Big Hero 6” by Ken Taylor captures the bustle and wonderment of San Fransokyo:

With “Pinnochio” Jessica Seamans reminds us all that Monstro is TERRIFYING:

“Lilo and Stitch” by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell captures the perfect travel postcard spirit:

“Fantasia” by Becky Cloonan puts Chernobog front and center:

And finally, with “The Little Mermaid” Nicolas Delort gives Ursula the proper respect:

Hmm…some of these posters get pretty dark? It’s almost as though the villains made a giant impression on these artists when they were children. Never Grow Up will open on April 28th, host a special kids’ party on April 29th, and run until May 13th, all at the Mondo Gallery in Austin, Texas! But in the meantime you can check more posters out over at io9.

Patterns emerge in the most unexpected places as a scientist studies the flora and fauna of a new world.

 Jingru smelled the storm long before it came.

The dusty, moist scent wafted in on the morning breeze as she tended the flowers on her porch. It tickled her nose. Her assistant-intelligence, Aimee, chirped a precipitation warning through her jawpiece.

“Attention! A significant pressure system has been detected by Central Station. There is a 64 percent chance of a sub-category storm in Reserve-133 in the next 12 hours. Estimated wind speed is 57 kilometres per hour. Please stow all lightning- and wind-sensitive equipment in an appropriate location, Dr Lee.”

“Yes, Aimee. Thank you. I’ll get the collectors.”

She put the watering can away; there would be no need for watering today. With a deliberate ease, she glided across the faux-wood boards of her front porch and slipped into her shed. The shed, somewhere between smithy and laboratory, was neat and almost well-mannered; her unstudied specimens, packed in cryojars for preservation, were neatly shelved and categorised. A long workbench was arrayed with glassware and cutters, while various items of powered lab equipment and assistant drones lay dormant along the walls. A door at the back led to a large storage room, where the specimens she’d finished studying went. Her field armour was in the corner, plugged into its charging station: a silvered, helmeted suit equipped with an exoskeleton for speed and laced with shear-thickening ferrofluid to protect from unexpected impact. Manoeuvring cables, tightly wound and connected to a body harness, rested on either side of her hips, and a pair of flechette guns were woven into its wrists. She unfastened her clothes from her body, stepped into her armour, and checked its equipment one more time before stepping out. She had work to do.

Jingru stepped out of the house to a second chirp from Aimee.

“Update! Central Station has detected an unexpected increase in meteorological activity. Storm classification has been upgraded to Category 1. Please be careful out there, Dr Lee.”

“Noted with thanks, Aimee. Ask Central Station to authorise the mission. Oh, and ping Maia for me, please.”

There was a click; several seconds passed, with their attendant ringing, before Maia answered the call.

“Hey sweetie, what’s up?”

“Not much, beb. Heading out for a routine collector retrieval. Central’s detected a storm. How’s Luna going?”

Jingru could hear Maia sigh audibly over the connection. “Six hours of Martian civil servants, with so little charisma they make resource management boring, talking into their slides. Watching plants grow in real time is way more exciting, and I’ve actually done that. At least dinner was good, but we’ve got another full day of this before it’s my turn. I’m definitely better than these folks.”

“Aiya. That sounds awful,” Jingru said. A notification from Central popped into view; she was clear to proceed. “Listen, I have to go, but I’ll ping you when I’m done. Love you.”

“Love you too. Take care out there, alright?”

“Yes, beb.”

Jingru cut the connection. She sighed. The biannual Luna Economic Conferences brought economic scientists from all over the Democratic Community of Nations, which governed Earth Original, Mars and most of humanity’s galactic outposts, together. They also took Maia away for three weeks at a time; a week both ways using a faster-than-light shuttle from Central Station, located over Earth-IX, and then five days of conference with two “social” days included. Hypercomms made telepresence possible, but physical attendance at such conferences was still insisted upon. Jingru thought it absurd, but clearly the senior members of the academic community did not.

She slipped her helmet on; the heads-up display took less than a second to initialise, projecting data on suit power, wind speed, air quality, and half a dozen other indicators onto her faceplate. She stepped off the porch and looked up at the vast expanse before her; rolling fields of knee-high yellow-and-red foliage, with a tangled web of tree-like vines in the distance.

She exhaled. “Suit, engage exoskeleton. Aimee, please give me a countdown to that storm, and locate my collectors. Let’s go.”

T-11:45. The first collector was approximately 10 kilometres away, nestled among a clutch of red bushes with striking pink flowers. The device was simple: a ten-centimetre-wide multifunctional sensor staked into the ground, with a second sensor encased in aerogel floating three metres above it tethered by a thin carbon nanofibre. The sensor pair, which gathered environmental data as well as images with sound, was protected from inquisitive fauna and the occasional mobile slime mould by active camouflage, but its minimal-impact design meant that unlike the larger, shielded automatic observation stations, it wasn’t protected from storms. Jingru deactivated the collector with a suit command, and it gently collapsed itself, its lower half retracting its upper half with an inbuilt motor. As soon as the last of the aerogel had disappeared into its main body, she unfastened it from the ground and put it in her suit’s inbuilt pouch.

“Aimee, I’ve retrieved the first collector. Mark it, please.”

“Yes, Dr Lee. Local fauna activity has been detected, if you wish to observe. Biosign monitoring indicates your presence is unlikely to have been noticed.”

“I’ve got time for it. Suit, record.”

Jingru peeked out from the bushes as a herd of chubby isopod-like creatures scurried past. Some of the most common fauna present in most of the Reserves on Earth-IX, they were about thirty centimetres tall with shiny, oblong brown-and-yellow bodies ending in two long, reed-like “tails”. The species was entirely herbivorous; its two large pincers were meant for tunnelling and cutting vegetation rather than predation, and its twin tails were highly sensitive antennae rather than stingers. Despite their appearance, they were warm-blooded and had highly efficient respiratory systems, as most of the invertebrate life here did. They chittered among themselves, switching their antennae back and forth to maintain group cohesion as they scuttled on their spindly legs. Jingru knew they were headed for the nearest body of water, to dig in and weather out the storm.

Jingru waited until the isopods had departed from projected sensory range before stepping out. T-11:40. Plenty of time to retrieve the rest of her collectors. Her suit chimed: its sensors had picked up a rapid increase in temperature about a kilometre away, which quickly subsided. She frowned. The collectors had recently been reporting these “flashes”, as she’d called them, at seemingly random times and locations in Reserve-133. She checked her pouch to make sure it was secured, logged her location with the suit and sprinted towards the next collector, her exoskeleton lightening her feet.

She ran almost mechanically; almost two years training with the suit in Beijing, and three years using it on Earth-IX, had familiarised her with its waypoint system. All she had to do was keep the blue indicator on her HUD centred, and she could concentrate on other things. Now, she thought about what she would do next. The other researchers on the planet had reported similar flashes over the past few weeks, and Central had cleared them to investigate. Dr Vijay Menon, her counterpart from Reserve-32, had proposed that these flashes were a cyclical phenomenon that had gone heretofore unobserved in the eleven years that the planet had been under study; they were regular, as opposed to atypical, events. He had suggested investigating subterranean activity, as well as the soil chemistry in areas where flashes had occurred, to see if spontaneous geological processes or chemical reactions had triggered these flashes.

Jingru thought about convening a teleconference with the other researchers, both environmental and economic, after the storm was done. Central would take a while to process this, but it would probably go ahead. She smiled in anticipation, and kept running.

T-10:39. Three down, seven to go. Jingru pocketed the collector, which had been on a small rocky outcrop on a hill overlooking a clump of vine-trees, and informed Aimee. She fired up her manoeuvring cables again. The one on her left anchored her to her current position, while the one on her right arced towards the top of the hill and impacted with a soft chnk, locking itself firmly into the rock. She detached and fired the left cable at a separate anchor point, and once her HUD indicated both were securely in place she began her ascent. Between the suit’s power and the tension on the cables, running up a steep incline was almost as easy as running along a horizontal surface. She sprinted, leaping and swinging over and around the small boulders in her path.

The view was, in her opinion, spectacular. The hill, which she’d previously named “Rocky Hill,” gave her a great vantage point over several kilometres of reserve. The clump of vine-trees below bristled with the larger forms of flying insect, Earth-IX’s analogue to birds. Dense and shady, the trees provided shelter from storms, and collected enough water to serve as watering holes. A bonded pair of hawk-wasps began a circling descent towards the trees, not for predation but for protection. In the distance, several packs of isopods merged into one striped, twitching mass, evidently headed for the same destination; the trees protected all, predator or prey, without prejudice.

There was still no visual evidence of the storm, which was good. The wind had picked up slightly, by a few kilometres per hour, but it was still sunny. Jingru sat down and sipped from her suit’s built-in hydration system, modelled after those used for extra-vehicular activity in space, which not only contained several litres of water, but also recycled every drop of sweat and urine that its wearer excreted through a highly efficient reverse-osmosis system. The suits hadn’t changed much from those issued to the first research teams on Earth-IX, when it was assumed the planet might have been unexpectedly hostile. Since then, Earth-IX might have been deemed near-ideal for terraforming, with an environment that could be adapted for human habitation in a minimally-invasive way, but for scientists like Jingru it would always be a dangerous, if beautiful, world.

Jingru’s HUD chimed again, as various types of insect burst from the top of the tree cluster in clouds. Another flash, and this one had been particularly hot. Her suit indicated that, in less than two seconds, temperatures somewhere in the cluster had hit two hundred degrees Celsius, flash-boiling anything unfortunate enough to be caught within. Jingru looked at her countdown timer. T-10:35. She hadn’t had nearly long enough to rest, but there was work to be done.

“Aimee, send a message to Dr Menon, from Reserve-32. A flash has occurred in my vicinity, and I’m investigating it. Mark the time as of now, and give Central Station my location and intention.” She exhaled slowly through her teeth, and then continued. “Put the Vega Protocol on standby too, please.”

“Yes, Dr Lee. Connecting audiovisual feeds to your designated backup device… done. Preparing hypercomm for automated message… done. Preparing statement of assets… done.”

“Thank you, Aimee. I’m moving out.”

Anchoring her right cable firmly to the top of the hill, she ran for the trees.

Jingru’s helmet switched to low-light mode as she stepped into the cluster of vine-trees. The trees in each cluster were part of a single organism. Somewhere between plant and animal, its flexible, vine-like “trunks” had evolved broad leaves and a responsive, hydraulic system that enabled each trunk to quickly reposition its branches in order to block off almost all the light beneath their canopy. Below, its subterranean root networks stiffened the soil so water would remain close to the surface and not percolate rapidly through to the layers underneath, maximising accessible resources. Water collected in pools where the roots were thick, and it was around one of these pools that Jingru saw what the flash had done.

Gently but firmly swatting aside curious beetles, bumbling flies and the occasional aggressive wasp (whose stingers could never penetrate her armour), Jingru knelt beside the watering hole, where her HUD indicated the flash had occurred. The water level had been significantly reduced to about half the level it was in the other pools. Dead insects drifted on its surface, bodies shredded by the force of the steam expanding from within them. A large water-bug slipped into the water, grabbed hold of the abdomen of a hawk-wasp and sank beneath the surface. The wasp’s head and thorax struggled weakly by the water’s edge; having only been half-caught in the explosion, the wasp had been torn in two, slowly but surely dying. Jingru grasped its head with her right hand and fired a single flechette round into its brain, putting it out of its misery.

Removing a specimen vial and a multitool from her suit, she carefully retrieved several samples from the wasp, slicing them out of its body. The smaller insects, dead and dying, she swept into specimen bags, one for the insects on the water and the other for those on land. She dug samples out of the soil and the watering-hole’s mud and placed them in separate vials, alongside samples of the water itself. The cause of the flash could be revealed by any of these things, she knew; she would bring the samples back, analyse them and pass the findings on to her colleagues. Taking one last look around, she turned to leave for the next collector.

Then, the suit screamed a warning.

Instinctively, she tethered herself to the nearest vine-tree with both cables, pulling herself into the canopy; her body slammed into a thick branch, winding her but doing no serious damage. Her chest ached slightly from the impact, but it was better than being boiled to pieces. The HUD had shown a flash forming right behind her; she’d barely gotten out of its way before it peaked at a hundred degrees, and then subsided. The light was still blinking, though.

“Suit, engage active thermal overlay. Highlight that abnormal heat source!”

Jingru’s HUD briefly flickered as the suit scanned her surroundings for thermal abnormalities. It highlighted a large red spot near the watering hole, where nothing had been visible just seconds before. Through the overlay, whatever it was looked like a swirling, almost spherical cloud of thermal energy about a metre across, invisible to the naked eye but clear as day in thermal. Its temperature fluctuated between 50 to 70 degrees Celsius. Jingru timed the fluctuations and visualised them on the HUD; the average cycle lasted five seconds and followed a predictable, almost-consistent sine-wave pattern. Then, as Jingru watched, the flash began to move.

It circled around, moving in an ever-widening sweep from its original position. Insects scampered out of its path, with those that could not escape in time left writhing from the intense heat. It moved through the vine-trees, and the cluster trembled in pain; Jingru’s tether held her fast, but she nonetheless reached for the trunk to steady herself. The flash stopped once it reached the tree she was on, and then, to her horror, it centred itself within the tree trunk.

“Fuck!”

Jingru yanked herself to the next tree just as the one she had been tethered to splintered at the base; the suit’s HUD recorded a sub-second increase from 50 to 500 degrees Celsius from within the flash. The vine-trees, whose hydraulic systems relied on significant amounts of pressurised water to operate, were prone to exactly this kind of situation; Jingru had watched collector footage of vine-trees detonating from lightning strikes. Shards of vine-tree embedded themselves in her suit’s outer layer, prevented from going any further by the shear-thickening fluid below. A jagged chunk slammed into the back of her helmet, driving her faceplate into the tree she was on; she could feel a slight sting above her eyebrow where it had impacted the faceplate, but nothing too bad.

The light on her HUD had stopped blinking. The flash seemed to have exhausted itself. She checked the countdown; T-10:18. Jingru was angry, but also curious; as much as whatever this was had gotten the better of her, it was… intriguing. She took a moment to catch her breath, then started to think.

“Aimee, send audiovisual feeds for the last 17 minutes directly to Dr Menon, please. Include both raw and thermal overlay versions. He’s going to want to see this.”

“Yes, Dr Lee. Data transfer in progress… done.”

“Also, visualise the correlation between the number of localised spikes in temperature disregarding lightning strikes, proximity and intensity of storms at or above sub-category level, using collector data.”

“Yes, Dr Lee. One moment… done.”

A three-dimensional visualisation appeared on her HUD. Jingru sucked in a breath through her teeth as she looked at the results; there appeared to be a strong correlation between how often the flashes occurred, and the proximity and strength of Earth-IX’s storms.

“Aimee, first give me a prediction for when the highest number of spikes will occur during this storm, and their approximate location. Then, put in a request for an all-environment research vehicle to Central Station, and have it airdropped outside my house. Finally, drop a message to Dr Menon, ask if he can get here by shuttle in five hours.”

“Yes, Dr Lee. Working… done.”

“Good. Mark the next collector, please. I still have a mission to complete.”

T-5:43. Jingru had retrieved the collectors and now stood over her workbench, making minor repairs to one of them. She hadn’t encountered any more flashes while exploring; several times her HUD had alerted her to the presence of a flash several hundred metres out, but she hadn’t engaged. Central had confirmed the all-environmental research vehicle would be here in under an hour, and it’d be unsafe to investigate further without one. The vehicle, designed to weather hard vacuum, storms and lightning strikes and walk unharmed through wildfires and over volcanic terrain, had supercooled cermet armour and a Faraday mesh. Jingru was reasonably sure these features would prevent the flashes from inflicting any damage or worse, infiltrating it. The folks at Central called it a Tardigrade, owing to its incredible resilience and the multiple, stubby spike-toed legs it could extend to climb nearly-vertical surfaces that its tracks could not. It could be remote-piloted in most environments, but Earth-IX’s storms produced sufficient electromagnetic interference to make this impossible. Jingru would have to pilot it herself.

Captain Nurul Isa, the ranking scientific officer at Central, had called to request a pre-authorisation briefing. She’d sent her the footage of her engagement with the flash, and her theory about the flashes. Her hypothesis was that the combination of the electrical activity of the storms and several of the novel compounds in the soil, which had been found in supernormal amounts in the bodies of the insects she’d sampled, had briefly created a new phenomenon heretofore unknown to human science. It didn’t entirely explain how the flash she’d encountered had seemed to know where she was, but it was certainly worth further study, she’d thought. The Captain agreed, authorized the mission and the Tardigrade, and sent a separate message to Dr Menon asking him to ride along. Dr Menon’s shuttle would be there in less than fifteen minutes.

Jingru sighed. She shut the casing of the collector she’d been working on, sealing it shut from the elements, and placed it on a shelf. She spoke into her jawpiece. “Aimee, ping Maia.”

“Yes, Dr Lee. One moment.”

Her jawpiece clicked, and almost a minute passed before Maia picked up. She sounded sleepy; Jingru remembered what time it was over at Luna, and giggled. “Beb, sorry for waking you up, but it’s important.”

Maia yawned, then said, “Nah, it’s fine. What’s up, sweetie?”

“Remember that theory you had about the compounds? The ones the strategic resource teams found in the soil? I’m about to prove it right. We’ve got clearance from Central; there’s a Tardigrade inbound, and Dr Menon’s coming with me.”

Maia sighed.

“I hear a ‘but’, Jingru.”

“…but it’s going to be dangerous. I can’t guarantee I’ll come back in one piece.”

She paused. “I don’t know if I should go. On one hand, I’ve got a mission to complete. On the other hand, I have you, and as much as all of us have protocols in place for this exact situation I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose us. I can still kill the mission if I submit a risk assessment right now.”

The line was heavy with several seconds of Maia’s breathing, before she responded.

“Look, we’re pioneers. Scientists who’ve left the comforts of Sol to go out, on behalf of humanity, and lead the way. Sometimes it’s dangerous, sometimes it’s tough, but hey. It’s in the job description. It’s a damn sight more exciting than this bloody conference, at any rate.”

Maia chuckled, but Jingru thought she could hear her voice catch slightly. “So get out there, sweetie, and try not to die. I love you.”

“Love you too, beb. I’ll take care.”

Jingru held the line for a while, then put it down.

She could hear the shuttle landing in her front yard. She stepped out of the shed; Dr Menon was clambering out of the sleek, matte-grey shuttle, already in his full suit of field armour. He crossed the yard quickly, and she extended her hand to shake his; he instead reached out for a fist-bump, which she switched into awkwardly.

“I got your message, and I got the Captain’s message too. No worries, mate, I’m just as excited to be here as you are.”

“Dr Menon, please. We’re about to engage with a large number of entities that could potentially kill us. What do you have on them that I don’t yet?”

“Glad you asked. Ariel, send the spacing analysis to Dr Lee.”

Aimee automatically downloaded the file from Dr Menon’s assistant-intelligence, and displayed it on Jingru’s HUD. The file was a two-dimensional, world-map style visualisation of where the flashes had been appearing over the past few weeks, with glowing orange lines connecting them. Jingru noticed the flashes had appeared in clusters that looked rather neat. Within these clusters, there was an almost-natural pattern, something that seemed just to fit.

“Aimee, superimpose the storm patterns over this period onto the visualisation. Show me where the storms originated and the path they took, as well as the projected location of the highest number of temperature spikes using the correlation model developed previously.”

“Yes, Dr Lee. Working… done.”

A series of blue arrows, with a bulbous tail to indicate their origin, appeared on the visualisation, with red spots indicating where the epicentres of flash activity would be resolving briefly afterwards. Jingru gasped; there was a near-exact match, with some slight variance, between the predicted and actual epicentres. Again, the location and end-points of the storm seemed to Jingru to fit. It was uncanny. She shared the file with Dr Menon.

“…well. That’s interesting. Why do they look so neat?”

“I don’t know, Dr Menon, but I think it’s about time we found out. The Tardigrade I’ve requested will be equipped with an array of sensors that should, in aggregate, give us the ability to model every single process that goes on in that mess we’re about to walk into on Central’s systems. We’ll be cut off from our assistant-intelligences and all support from Central, but we’ll just have to survive until we’re out of the interference zone. Fifteen minutes, in and out.”

“Fair play.”

He sighed.

“I’ve already instructed Ariel to settle my affairs in case we don’t make it. I trust you’ve done the same?”

Jingru nodded. The Vega Protocol was still on standby. Aimee had been backed up to Central, informed that she’d be going into an interference zone, and ordered to trigger the Protocol either after 24 hours had passed or if her suit confirmed her death.

“Right. By the way, Dr Lee, do you have any tea?”

“It’s in the kitchen, by the bread. Please, help yourself; Maia’s bringing more back from Luna.”

Jingru leaned back in the pilot’s harness and felt the automated docking system engage. She shuddered as the blue liquid filled her helmet. Fighting her body’s natural instincts, she breathed in.

Instantly, while still herself, Jingru was also the Tardigrade.

She hadn’t done this for a while, and her body took a minute to acclimatise to the sudden change in perspective. She could see in all directions, hear every sound for kilometres around and taste the wind, temperature and a hundred other environmental metrics, but she could also feel her chest rise and fall with her breath, and her lips move as she confirmed, “Dr Menon, sync is good.”

“Sync’s fine on my end too, Dr Lee. Ready when you are.”

T-4:58. Jingru shifted the Tardigrade into track mode and rolled towards the location of what they’d decided to call the “flashpoint”. The Tardigrade picked up speed and raced along at over a hundred kilometres per hour; while Jingru piloted it, Dr Menon was her backup, controlling and monitoring the sensors in greater detail. The location of the flashpoint had been backed up on the Tardigrade’s internal computer systems, which not only provided mapping support but also hosted the primary copies of Aimee and Ariel. It appeared as a blue arrow in the distance, with a marker indicating how close the Tardigrade was to it. Currently, it was 647 kilometres away; Jingru and Dr Menon would be driving straight into the storm when it hit Reserve-133, but they both knew the Tardigrade could take it.

Jingru watched a flock of large, metallic butterflies turn sharply upwards as the Tardigrade passed beneath them in the opposite direction. Each the size of dinner plates, the butterflies were no doubt headed for the nearest cluster of vine-trees to roost in. One, a straggler hanging below the rest, failed to make the turn in time; it collided with the front of the Tardigrade, disintegrating in an instant across its rostrum. The chemical sensors picked up the iron smell of its blood and the oddly grape-scented powder on its wings as they rolled off the vehicle’s non-stick plating, and Jingru took a deep breath, drawing more air over the sensors. This was the smell of the planet. She felt sorry for the butterfly.

“Almost there, Dr Menon. We are exactly 1.5 kilometres to the flashpoint.”

“Gotcha. I’m looking forward to catching these flashes in the, ahem, flesh. Get up close, figure out what they are. Thermal energy that moves. Really makes you wonder, no?”

“Yes, it does. This could be an entirely new form of life. If we make it out of here, we might even publish a paper,” Jingru noted.

The Tardigrade, in walker mode now, was galloping through the wind and rain. The lightning was intense here; bolts would strike the Tardigrade every three minutes, on average, but the vehicle’s armour easily shrugged them off. The sensors tasted like ozone, dust and high-velocity winds, as expected, but also here and there the odd whiff of iron, sulfur and pure carbon; likely, she thought, because the storm had stirred up buried minerals.

Several flashes had appeared in close proximity to the Tardigrade, but had not approached; the flashes had either drifted away or disappeared. Jingru noted that the flashes all displayed the same initial pattern: a starting temperature of well over a hundred degrees Celsius, followed by a stable cycle that fluctuated between 50 and 70 degrees Celsius for the duration of their existence. This lasted usually about four to nine minutes, after which they faded just as quickly as they had begun. They were unaffected by the wind, and moved in the same peculiar, spiralling pattern she’d observed previously.

“On target in five… four… three… two… folks, we have arrived at our final destination,” Dr Menon crowed. “Immersive recording is now active, all sensory data is being recorded and archived.”

There were still almost ten minutes before the flashes were projected to appear en masse. Jingru sighed and relaxed in her seat. She tuned out the external audio, which had already been reduced to a human-tolerable level. She could see the lightning, the swirling winds and the dust they had kicked up, the sheets of warm, sweet rain, but to her there was now only silence, and the soft hum of the Tardigrade’s internal machinery.

She’d taken Maia out in a Tardigrade before. That had been an assignment to Reserve-198, an area whose star feature was a massive, seventy-metre-deep and crystal-clear lake dotted with thousands of perfectly circular islands, each several tens of metres in length. The reserve’s environmental scientist, Dr Fukui, had requested a second opinion on her findings and Maia, on a scheduled break from her regular work, had insisted on coming along. They’d spent three days underwater, crawling and mapping the lake floor and sampling its inhabitants. Maia had been particularly intrigued by a species of four-armed mollusc that walked the lake floor in a single herd, tens of thousands of individuals strong, snatching up everything in their way. They parted in an orderly fashion as the Tardigrade crossed their path, and remained in almost-military formation even after Jingru had sampled some of their number. She wondered what Maia would have thought about being in the middle of a storm.

Jingru felt the first flashes appear, the temperature rising in sharp bursts all around her. She switched the Tardigrade’s panoramic recording on; it would record and track not only video and audio, but also every variable it was able to detect within 500 metres, in order to facilitate accurate modelling in the future. So far the flashes were appearing in exactly the manner Aimee had predicted: the same vaguely natural pattern, a whorl whose centre they now stood in.

She engaged her thermal overlay. The enhanced visual feeds provided by the Tardigrade enabled her to see them in greater detail than her HUD could. The flashes were swirls of reddish-orange in the false colour, writhing angrily in defiance of the wind. They held their position and watched in silence as the flashes grew in number. The storm was intensifying around them, and Jingru could feel tingling as more lightning rolled off the Tardigrade’s armour. The air took on the pungency of ozone. Dr Menon shifted instinctively in his seat as the ground in front of them cracked from a particularly strong bolt, the damp grass smoking in a spidery pattern.

The flashes began to converge. Jingru took a deep breath as they closed in. Through the overlay, she could see their temperatures pulsing as they drifted serenely towards the Tardigrade. Some took to the air slightly, rising a couple of metres above the ground, while still others seemed to submerge themselves in the earth, leaving grass to boil in their wake. Jingru hoped the armour would hold as the flashes surrounded the Tardigrade, a bubble of scintillating light gently pressing up against its skin. She felt itchy, as if suddenly hundreds of insects had begun crawling all over her body; the Tardigrade’s external temperature was rising, although its insides remained at a comfortable 25 degrees Celsius. The flashes clambered around the Tardigrade, rolling their scorching-hot bodies over its every surface; she could no longer tell where one began and another ended, but she could feel their movements.

They began to iridesce, then. Jingru noticed a slight ringing, despite having muted the audio feeds. The temperatures were now oscillating out of their previous ranges; the flashes were dipping below 50 degrees, hitting subzero temperatures and bouncing right back up to boiling in the space of less than a second. It was as if a rapidly shifting, opalescent cloud had surrounded the Tardigrade. Jingru tried to cut the thermal overlay to dispel the visualisations, but the Tardigrade wasn’t responding. She opened her mouth to call out to Dr Menon, but her lips only twitched in spasmodic intervals. She struggled to squeeze thoughts together, unable to feel anything but a deadened panic. In the seat next to her, Dr Menon had gone entirely still, the only indication that he was still alive being the green light on his helmet.

The iridescence peaked. Jingru managed to force a crackling grunt out, and then her mind faded into the light.

Blue.

Jingru opened her eyes to find herself underwater. Dr Menon was floating beside her, seemingly naked. Her eyes travelled downwards, but she did not find what she had expected; every detail of his body had been rendered out and replaced with a velvet-like, mahogany bodysuit the same colour as his skin. She looked down at her own and discovered the same suit, this time in her distinctly lighter skin tone. She vaguely wondered if she could breathe, before exhaling a mouthful of sweet glacial water and realising she had been doing it all along.

“Where are we, Dr Menon?” The words came out less as sound, more as echoes; her voice was as clear in her head as if she had spoken on land, but her ears perceived a dampened bubbling. Dr Menon, nevertheless, responded; the words seemed to enter her mind directly.

“You’ll see. Try to move.”

Jingru tried to lift a hand, and then a leg. Both resisted the movement, remaining in place as if tethered by invisible straps. She tried to lean forward, and only got so far before something tugged at her chest. Seat-belts, she realised. This, whatever it was, was still the Tardigrade.

Below them, she could hear a rumbling. A herd of molluscs, the same species she had seen in the lake of Reserve-198, was on the move. Her perspective was forcibly rotated; they were now parallel with the lake bed, watching the four-armed creatures stomp towards their destination.

From up here, the herd looked uncanny. As she tried to figure out why, a grid suddenly appeared in her field of vision. It tracked the movements of the herd, each member fitting perfectly into a single square. Here, she could track the movements of each individual; occasionally members would swap places in the file, creating a small, shifting section of orderly, leg-width movement which reshuffled parts of the herd while keeping its shape. Then, there was a flash in the distance, and the herd stopped. From the direction of the flash, a cascade of shuffling spread throughout the entire herd, and it rotated. Two flashes appeared above the herd and lingered in a holding pattern, temperatures spiking occasionally. These spikes corresponded with spikes in the distant flash.

When the herd had finished rearranging itself, the flashes above it all disappeared. A final spike from the flash in the distance, and the herd began to move again, in its new direction. An image, unbidden, appeared in her mind—a complex series of lines and nodes across a grid, the pattern of the cascade. She felt it etch itself into her memory. The grid burned with a bright, opalescent pattern, her body jerked upright, and the scene, again, changed.

Now, they were exposed in the middle of a storm. It wasn’t the one they were in; it was somewhere else, another Reserve, or perhaps another time. She, again, was anchored to her place, her head the only part she could move. There was sand, nothing but glittering sand, into the distance. The storm threw up lines of sparkling dust, and the rain simply percolated through ground to its destination. Three flashes appeared: one in the distance, spiking repeatedly, and two others drifting in contraposition to the spiralling winds. Jingru could see the grid again, except it was more of a mesh this time, outlined in stark black contrast to the shining sand. It followed the whirling of the storm, the patterns of the wind made visible in black lines, and the new image of a spiral funnel sucked the previous image of the grid into itself, curved it in three dimensions across its webbed surface.

Jingru thought the result looked like planets, or molecules, or perhaps both. She didn’t know what to make of it. It resembled an old vase that had been colonised by brightly-coloured spiders, their webs vibrating at odd intervals and setting the entire structure awobble. The funnel burned itself into her vision, rotating swiftly. Jingru noticed a thin, grey grid crossing the centre of the visualisation, and that the nodes were bobbing in a pattern around each… coordinate? Yes, she thought, they must be coordinates, in three dimensions, and then her body jerked once more and now—

—they were outside her house, on her own front lawn, and several fuzzy, bee-like insects the size of hummingbirds with long, flexible probosces were feeding from her flowers. She recognised them; the hummingbees were friendly, inquisitive and intelligent animals, and occasionally crawled on Maia and her when they were relaxing on the porch. Several new hummingbees arrived, led by an excitable specimen. They hovered on the edge of the porch, breaking into the communicative dance of their species. It was a complex aerial manoeuvre, taking place in a tightly defined area, a ballet of call-and-response. A single flash appeared, spiking just above her house, and the hummingbees began to trace black gridlines in the air with their bodies. The funnel, and the grid within it, retraced itself within the confines of the dance, creating a spherical web traversed by a series of chords. More coordinates?

She raised her voice, shouting at the flash, “What is this? Why are you showing us these things?” The flash made no reply. It drifted closer, stopping right in front of the porch, and dipped into the ground. It spiked, crisping the grass in a neat circle, and lifted off. The hummingbees dispersed, driven off by the heat, but the sphere they had traced in the air remained, etching itself into Jingru’s memories. The house faded away as the Tardigrade was surrounded once again by a bright, white glow, and then darkness.

Bugs. Bugs chirping. Something on my back.

Jingru woke up. She was still synced. The Tardigrade was in one piece, anchored firmly to the ground, and it was covered in small, fuzzy mole-crickets, which had emerged from their burrows after the storm. The chemical sensors picked up a thin, shiny layer of the soil compounds, which clung to the Tardigrade’s armour; this, apparently was what had attracted the mole-crickets, which were busily licking it off.

“Dr Menon? Dr Menon!” She sent a loud feedback screech through the internal comms circuit, which startled him awake.

“Aaahhghhgh. I’m awake, yeah.”

“Glad you’re awake.” She checked the time; they had been out for about six hours since the flashes had done their thing. “Dr Menon, did we get all that?”

“Yeah, mate, every second of it. What was that?”

“Coordinates. A map of some kind, perhaps. I suspect the team at Central will be very interested. Come on,” she said, turning the Tardigrade around, “let’s go home.”

Jingru flopped onto her couch, her freshly-showered body sinking into the cushions. She’d reached home, deactivated the Vega Protocol, sent her immersive recording and report to Central and then staggered into her shower, drained by the day’s work. Dr Menon had added his own recording and report to hers before collapsing into his shuttle; Ariel had activated the autopilot and taken them home. She was now alone, and completely drained. She picked her jawpiece up off the coffee table, where she’d left it before heading into the bathroom. “Aimee, give me a Class 1 secure line to Maia. Authorisation zero-three-five-nine-two-six-eight. I don’t want anyone snooping on us.”

Her jawpiece clicked, and almost immediately she could hear Maia say, “Hey, shweedie, whashup?”

Jingru could hear Maia chew a couple of times before swallowing. “Ah. Sorry, Jingru, that was lunch. I swear, they’ve got the best roast duck here. My presentation’s in two hours, I can’t wait. Glad you’re back, by the way. Knew you’d make it.”

“Oh, beb. Are you somewhere private?”

“Hold on,” Maia said, pushing her chair out. Jingru could hear her clopping footsteps, until she found a quiet corner. “I’m ready, what is it?”

“I think we’ve discovered something big.”

“What?”

“I’m on a Class 1 secure line, so only the authorised officials will be able to hear this. The flashes showed Dr Menon and me something while we were out there, synced with the Tardigrade. A set of coordinates expressed in the movement of the planet, in its life and its weather. I think Earth-IX isn’t just a planet. It’s a living computer, and everything on it is a calculation. I don’t know if the flashes are sentient, or if they’re just automatons, but they weren’t attacking me; they were trying to communicate.”

“So… intelligent life. You found intelligent life.”

“Maybe not here, but yes. This is evidence that somewhere out there are, or were, species capable of turning a planet into a supercomputer. They wanted someone else to find something, but not until we had the tech to handle it; that’s why the flashes, their communications devices, were designed to kill most living things on contact.”

“Damn. Damn.”

“This changes everything. Central will debrief me tomorrow, once they’ve had a chance to go through our reports. I’ll keep you updated. Now, get back to your roast duck before anyone starts wondering where you’ve been. Enjoy it for me. Love you!”

“Love you too, sweetie. Bye!”

The call ended with a click. Jingru exhaled, leaned back and closed her eyes. She focused on the pattern she’d seen, the chorded sphere she recalled in perfect clarity. She let it take over her thoughts, the mystery of the pattern sweeping through her mind, and then she let it float away.

Disconnecting her jawpiece, she curled up and closed her eyes, right there on the couch. Rest now, she thought as she drifted off. Things are about to get seriously busy.

“The Awakening of Insects” copyright © 2017 by Bobby Sun

Art copyright © 2017 by Gregory Manchess

Our prayers have been answered! Jeff Goldblum will reprise his role as Dr. Ian Malcolm, something no one could have predicted. Or maybe they could—after all, Jurassic World 2 could use some familiar faces in addition to returning heroes Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard).

The last time we saw Dr. Malcolm was in the 1997 sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, so he’s probably got more than one thought about the success and subsequent shitshow that was Jurassic World the theme park. We don’t know much about the sequel, though screenwriter Colin Trevorrow said that it’s going to be less about dinosaurs chasing people around on an island and more about animal rights. No doubt everyone’s favorite rock star mathematician is here to poke holes in dinosaur theories, spout snarky commentary as the dinosaurs inevitably try to eat people, and lose a few buttons along the way.

Life will find a way yet again when Jurassic World 2 comes to theaters June 22, 2018.

I don’t know how Kathryn Bigelow is still making movies. Don’t get me wrong—I’m very, very glad she is, because she’s one of the best directors around. Up until 2008’s The Hurt Locker, Bigelow directed movie after movie that went unnoticed or unappreciated. While a box office success, Point Break doesn’t receive nearly enough credit for being one of the most stylish action movies to come out of the ’90s. Near Dark—my goodness, Near Dark is vampire movie paradise. The Weight of Water is fascinating.

And then there’s Strange Days, which is Bigelow at her best, delivering a sci-fi thriller/noir that’s prescient even now, in 2017. In 1995? To say it was ahead of its time would be like dropping a 1967 Chevelle into Victorian England and calling it advanced.

Strange Days, from a bird’s-eye view, is this: at the dawn of the new millennium, the United States is a powder keg waiting to blow. Los Angeles, from what we see, has pretty much become a police state, with armored officers enforcing checkpoints and an occupation-type control over the crime-infested city. Race relations are bad, the economy is bad, the power structure is broken, and it seems to only be a matter of time before the entire thing we call society comes undone. Keep in mind, Strange Days was released just three years after the L.A. riots, which were sparked by Rodney King’s beating—captured on tape—at the hands of the LAPD; it’s safe to say that Bigelow and James Cameron, who wrote and produced the movie together, had that chapter of U.S. history on their minds when crafting their story.

We follow Lenny (Ralph Fiennes) through this crumbling L.A. as he peddles the current drug of choice: SQUID discs, which are kind of like a Vine that allows users to not only see the world through someone else’s eyes, but to experience what they experienced when the video was made. But when Lenny is delivered a disc that shows the rape and murder of Iris, a woman he knows, he’s plunged into a plot that carves right into the heart of the city’s problems with race, police brutality, and corruption.

It’s hard to describe the plot beyond the basics, because like any good noir, there’s a lot of twists and turns, double-crosses and surprise reveals. It’s arguably a little too much, since by the end it’s difficult to not only make sense of the plot, but it’s also a challenge to figure out how everything connects, logistically. But, again, this is how noir often functions. It’s more about the journey than the resolution—if that wasn’t the case, The Big Sleep wouldn’t be considered one of the best movies ever made. That doesn’t excuse the movie’s problems, however; it lacks focus, and it would have been greatly served by a strong hand in the editing room. The movie doesn’t really start until a quarter of the way through, as the opening 20 minutes (or so) are focused on building the world and positioning the characters rather than developing the plot; it would have been more effective if the inciting incident—Iris’s murder—happened sooner, and the murder of Jeriko One (a famous rapper/activist) could have been better integrated into the narrative and given more weight.

Despite those shortcomings, the journey of Strange Days is one that’s worth taking. Bigelow’s take on institutional racism, police brutality, and the evolution of society toward a military state was bold and sobering in 1995, and it remains salient (unfortunately) today. One of Bigelow’s greatest strengths as a director is her willingness to take unflinching looks at things most people would rather turn away from, and that quality serves her very well in Strange Days. In the hands of a director lacking Bigelow’s fearless gaze, Strange Days would have been a forgettable movie, but she elevates it to so much more. And this doesn’t even account for the film’s forward-thinking take on addictive technology and voyeurism, which was downright prescient.

It’s unsurprising that the movie was polarizing when it was first released and continues to elicit the same mixed response. The plot is problematic, there’s no denying it, and there are iffy performances (particularly from Juliette Lewis) that encumber the film. But the best parts of Strange Days come from its ambitions to train its crosshairs on difficult topics. Bigelow forces the issue of racism in a challenging and unique way, using voyeurism as a means to question our own involvement with this epidemic. After all, the King beating wasn’t just a landmark because of the incident itself—it became a landmark incident because it was caught on film. It was played—and viewed—over and over and over. The philosophical underpinnings of what it means to experience such a terrible moment by watching it gives the Strange Days viewing audience the same sense of unease Lenny feels when watching/experiencing the SQUID disc of Iris’s death. He walks away feeling both complicit and violated, disgusted and responsible. Combining those elements together—the active and passive act of voyeurism with the exposure King’s recorded beating brought to institutional racism—makes Strange Days a courageous, important movie, and it deserves a world of credit for that to this day.

And let’s not forget that Strange Days also showcases Juliette Lewis trying to play Courtney Love, Tom Sizemore in a wig, and Michael Wincott playing…Michael Wincott. A courageous movie, indeed.

Michael Moreci is a comics writer and novelist best known for his sci-fi trilogy Roche Limit. His debut novel, Black Star Renegades, is set to be released in January 2018. Follow him on Twitter @MichaelMoreci.

In the spring of 2016, a close friend of mine moved away.

Or at least that’s what it felt like. After five years spent writing the Memoirs of Lady Trent, I finished the last book… and suddenly my protagonist wasn’t a part of my life anymore. Not the way she used to be. I still think about her, of course, and now that Within the Sanctuary of Wings is in readers’ hands, she’s very much on other people’s minds. So metaphorically speaking, we’re still in contact with each other. But we don’t hang out every night like we used to.

I’ve never had this reaction to the end of a series before—but then again, my other series were different. The Doppelganger books got written five years apart, and there are only two of them in total. There are four Onyx Court novels, but they tell a less unified story; with each book taking place in a new century of English history, my faerie characters are the only ones who stick around for more than a single volume, and even then, there isn’t one protagonist for the whole series. The Wilders series does have that unity, but I haven’t written the third and final book yet.

Lady Trent? She’s different. And it isn’t just because her series is longer, though that contributes. Nor is it because I wrote all five books back to back, without a gap of years in between—though that has an effect, too.

I think the key factor is the narrative voice.

The Memoirs are written in the first person instead of third. And not just the type of first person where the “camera” is perched on the heroine’s shoulder as she goes about her life, but the type where the narrator knows she’s telling her story for an audience. I didn’t realize, when I chose to approach the first novel that way, that it would have the effect of creating a stronger connection between the character and the reader—or the character and the writer. But it means I’ve written nearly five hundred thousand words of Isabella talking to me.

Writers sometimes speak of their characters as if they were real people. It isn’t because we’re delusional; it’s because we train our minds to think of them that way. We need our characters to be vivid, three-dimensional, to give the impression of a life outside the story. How else can we tell what they would do in any given situation? Some of them wind up feeling more real than others. Lady Trent is more real to me than any other character I’ve ever written—to the point where, for the last several years, I’ve invited readers to send her letters during the month of February. And she’s real enough that quite a few readers have taken me up on that, writing letters that are amusing or thoughtful or sometimes heartbreaking. They tell her about their dreams and aspirations, the obstacles they face, their struggles with self-doubt and unsupportive family. I’ve gotten fanmail for other things I’ve written, but nothing to compare with this: people baring their hearts on the handwritten page to a woman who only exists on a page herself. I do my best to answer them; I hope it’s enough.

I look forward to the things I’m planning to write next. With this series moving into my rearview mirror, my brain is exploding with half a dozen different ideas, all clamoring for my attention.

But I’m going to miss Lady Trent. I hope she keeps in touch.

Marie Brennan is the author of multiple series, including the Varekai novellas, the Onyx Court, the Wilders, and the Doppelganger duology, as well as more than forty short stories. Within the Sanctuary of Wings, the fifth and final book of the Lady Trent series, is available from Tor Books. More information can be found at her website.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a reader gets home, opens her front door, and is promptly crushed to death by the tower of books that has taken over every square inch of her home. Granted, it’s not a great joke, but it is my life. My stacks of books To Be Read are gradually taking over my living, work, and, um, everything space. In an effort to clear some out, I’ll be reading one book a week—fantasy, sci-fi, horror, whatever—and reporting back.

This week, I’m reading and spewing thoughts about Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus. Angela Carter was a writer who joyously blurred the lines between literary fiction, fantasy, and fairy tale, and who often used her work to examine gender roles and sexuality. Nights at the Circus was her eighth novel, published in 1984, and… well, the plot bumps and sprawls around half of the world through dozens of characters, but mostly follows a woman who might be part-swan. Cool, right? There is only one problem… this book is so overstuffed with ideas, plot points, conspiracies, and general insanity that it’s been difficult to find one element to focus on.

What would Angela Carter do?

I found the answer in the dead center of the book, 150 pages in: “You can do anything you like, as long as nobody takes you seriously.”

I didn’t always like this book. I often loved it. I often wanted to live inside of it. But I also needed to put it down and walk away from it. It took me days to read it because I had to keep taking breaks. It’s an exhausting read, overstuffed and tearing apart at the seams like an old couch, or like the main character’s shoulder blades when her wings finally sprout.

Carter takes us from Whitechapel to Siberia, and barely lets us stop for breath. From the opening scene we’re assaulted with the scents of champagne, pancake make-up, violets, perfume, powdered armpits, boiling tea, buckets of piss, much-worn underwear and sweat-stiff stockings. Jack Walser, the intrepid, globetrotting reporter who’d be the hero in any other book, is attempting to interview Sophie Fevvers, an aerialist who may actually be part-swan. The book gives us no real reason to doubt her, but Walser believes himself to be a cynic, and he’s determined to expose her fraud. At first, that’s the book I thought I was reading: young man tries to uncover a humbug, discovers there’s more to Heaven and Earth than is dreamt of in his philosophy. But nope, the book drops that angle almost entirely to bounce through the consciousnesses of dozens of characters.

The first third of the book is Walser’s interview, as he is overwhelmed by the chaos of Fevvers’ dressing room. In the middle section Walser joins up with the circus with the idea of writing pieces about Fevvers while disguised as a clown…but he soon learns that dressing like a clown and being treated as a clown essentially make you a clown. The book jumps around to tell us the stories of the clown troupe, the Ape-Man and his educated chimps, the Abyssinian Princess who calms tigers with her music, and finally the long and tragic tale of the Ape-Man’s wife, Mignon. The final act of the story follows the troupe as they travel across Siberia, and run across both a horrifying panopticon-style women’s prison and a tribe of animistic shamans.

Did I mention this book is stuffed with stuff?

What the novel is really about, and what makes it worth reading, is that every single character contains an intricate world. Just as the initial plot—“cynical Schmendrick learns there’s true magic in the world”—is discarded, so are dozens of others: cynical man embarks on a relationship with the Ape-Man’s wife; Fevvers’ foster mother is a spy; Fevvers is ensnared by a rich Duke; the romantic intrigues of the circus continue to mount until the truth comes out in a hilarious-yet-tragic setpiece… Carter sets all of these possibilities up, flourishes her hands around them, and then knocks them out of the way like a cat pawing a wine glass off a coffee table.

Carter repeatedly introduces ideas and plot points involving Fevvers, seemingly to make us want to see the plot’s resolution. Instead, she redirects the book’s energy into extremely close looks at the inner lives and histories of “side” characters, until each “side” character becomes as important as her winged star. Most of these characters are women—specifically the types of women who are overlooked by history, society, culture. Fevvers is famous when we meet her, but she’s a self-made celebrity who started out in a brothel. Even she, however, has a more secure place in society than the women Carter chooses, over and over, to shove into the narrative spotlight: street urchins, prisoners, women with sleeping sickness, ancient Russian grandmas who don’t even remember how to pray anymore. Rather than waltzing us through the bright lights of Paris, Moscow, and Tokyo (as she initially promises), Carter takes us into squalid alleys, brothels, prisons, freak shows, and unforgiving tundra, and forces us to spend time with desolate people. Sometimes these people manage to create happy endings for themselves.

This is a book in which the women are not taken seriously, and still manage to accomplish extraordinary things. The Abyssinian Princess, whose race, class, and gender would almost certainly restrict her to life as a servant in most parts of the world, is able to tame tigers with her glorious music. Mignon the abused street urchin sings like an angel and uses her voice to create a new life with a new love. Nelson the one-eyed madame runs an empire successful enough that she owns a boat and regularly takes her working girls on picnics in the park. Lizzie, who used to make her money cleaning a brothel, runs an international anarchist network. Fevvers the hunchback prostitute can fly. Olga and Vera, a prisoner and guard, respectively, overthrow the prison warden and leave to create a new society.

Carter infuses her story with fabulist set pieces, but each time the characters begin to get carried away with whimsy, she brings them back down to earth. Many of Fevvers’ adventures end with her barely escaping a man who wants to possess her, whether through sex, marriage, or murder. The long, philosophical musings of the clowns end in slapstick. The circus ringleader’s vision of taking his circus around the world runs into the reality of a Russian winter. Even the opening of the book, the glorious monologue of Fevvers’ history, which features many florid details about her love for London, begins with this:

“Lor’ love you, sir!” Fevvers sang out in a voice that clanged like dustbin lids. “As to my place of birth, why, I first saw the light of day right here in smoky old London, didn’t I! Not billed the ‘Cockney Venus’ for nothing, sir, though they could just as well ‘ave called me ‘Helen of the High Wire,’ due to the unusual circumstances in which I came ashore—for I never docked via what you might call the normal channels, sir, oh dear me, no; but, just like Helen of Troy, was hatched.”

And ends, 80 breathless pages later, with this:

…they walked through Piccadilly in silence, among early risers on their way to work. They skirted Nelson’s Column, went down Whitehall. The cold air was not freshened by morning; there was an oppressive odour of soot and horseshit.

At the end of Whitehall, along the wide road, past the Mother of Parliaments, there came at a brisk trot a coal cart pulled by clattering, jingling drays, and behind, an impromptu procession of women of the poorest class, without coats or wraps, in cotton pinafores, in draggled underskirts, worn carpet slippers on their bare feet, and there were shoeless little children too, running, scrambling after the carts, the girls and women with their pinafores outstretched to catch every little fragment of coal that might bounce out.

“O, my lovely London!” said Fevvers. “The shining city! The new Jerusalem!”

She spoke so flatly he could not tell whether she spoke ironically. She said nothing else.

Did I mention that the book essentially opens with an 80-page monologue, full of digressions, nested flashbacks, and obvious lies?

We also get the usual fairy tale and mythological riffs you would expect from Angela Carter, including references to Leda and the Swan, Sleeping Beauty, Sheherezade, and Baba Yaga, plus an entire long section about the religious significance of a troupe of clowns, who meditate on their roles as Holy Fools when they’re not throwing food at each other. Carter seems to place these characters as counterpoints to her more realistic settings, and especially setting different ideas about feminism and progressive society against each other.

To some, Fevvers becomes a symbol of May Day—a glorious angel who is ushering a springtime for humanity. But Fevvers resists becoming a metaphor rather than a person, and she and her foster mother Lizzie are much more interested in celebrating May 1^st as International Workers Day, and expressing solidarity with their socialist brothers and sisters across Russia. (The novel is set in 1899, so Carter has some grim fun teasing a dream of the Communist future.) Carter continues this play of contrasting ideals throughout the book: the brothel that raises Fevvers may be a feminist utopia run by a progressive madame, but the freak show she works in as young woman is run by a madame, too, and it’s a nightmare… but even that’s nothing compared to the women’s prison, also run by a woman, also committed to a noble ethos, that creates a hell on earth for its prisoners. The most exhilarating thing about Nights at the Circus is Carter’s ability to inhabit so many different people, and embody so many clashing ideas, and then stand back and allow fur and feathers to fly.

This book is such a beautiful exercise in trusting a reader—I’ve never read a novel structured like Nights at the Circus, and I think what I found so rewarding in the end was simply Carter’s willingness to do anything. The novel’s shape mirrors Fevvers herself: often ungainly, but always fascinating, with occasional moments of pure flight.

Leah Schnelbach will finally have time! But she should probably buy a second pair of glasses…just in case. Come read with her on Twitter!

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first…

Jacqueline was her mother’s perfect daughter—polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it’s because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.

Jillian was her father’s perfect daughter—adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you’ve got.

They were five when they learned that grown-ups can’t be trusted.

They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.

Seanan McGuire returns to her popular Wayward Children series with Down Among the Sticks and Bones—a standalone urban fantasy set before the events of Every Heart a Doorway. Available June 13th from Tor.com Publishing.

Chapter 1
The Dangerous Allure of Other People’s Children

People who knew Chester and Serena Wolcott socially would have placed money on the idea that the couple would never choose to have children. They were not the parenting kind, by any reasonable estimation. Chester enjoyed silence and solitude when he was working in his home office, and viewed the slightest deviation from routine as an enormous, unforgiveable disruption. Children would be more than a slight deviation from routine. Children would be the nuclear option where routine was concerned. Serena enjoyed gardening and sitting on the board of various tidy, elegant nonprofits, and paying other people to maintain her home in a spotless state. Children were messes walking. They were trampled petunias and baseballs through picture windows, and they had no place in the carefully ordered world the Wolcotts inhabited.

What those people didn’t see was the way the partners at Chester’s law firm brought their sons to work, handsome little clones of their fathers in age-appropriate menswear, future kings of the world in their perfectly shined shoes, with their perfectly modulated voices. He watched, increasingly envious, as junior partners brought in pictures of their own sleeping sons and were lauded, and for what? Reproducing! Something so simple that any beast in the field could do it.

At night, he started dreaming of perfectly polite little boys with his hair and Serena’s eyes, their blazers buttoned just so, the partners beaming beneficently at this proof of what a family man he was.

What those people didn’t see was the way some of the women on Serena’s boards would occasionally bring their daughters with them, making apologies about incompetent nannies or unwell babysitters, all while secretly gloating as everyone rushed to ooh and ahh over their beautiful baby girls. They were a garden in their own right, those privileged daughters in their gowns of lace and taffeta, and they would spend meetings and tea parties playing peacefully on the edge of the rug, cuddling their stuffed toys and feeding imaginary cookies to their dollies. Everyone she knew was quick to compliment those women for their sacrifices, and for what? Having a baby! Something so easy that people had been doing it since time began.

At night, she started dreaming of beautifully composed little girls with her mouth and Chester’s nose, their dresses explosions of fripperies and frills, the ladies falling over themselves to be the first to tell her how wonderful her daughter was.

This, you see, is the true danger of children: they are ambushes, each and every one of them. A person may look at someone else’s child and see only the surface, the shiny shoes or the perfect curls. They do not see the tears and the tantrums, the late nights, the sleepless hours, the worry. They do not even see the love, not really. It can be easy, when looking at children from the outside, to believe that they are things, dolls designed and programmed by their parents to behave in one manner, following one set of rules. It can be easy, when standing on the lofty shores of adulthood, not to remember that every adult was once a child, with ideas and ambitions of their own.

It can be easy, in the end, to forget that children are people, and that people will do what people will do, the consequences be damned.

It was right after Christmas—round after round of interminable office parties and charity events—when Chester turned to Serena and said, “I have something I would like to discuss with you.”

“I want to have a baby,” she replied.

Chester paused. He was an orderly man with an orderly wife, living in an ordinary, orderly life. He wasn’t used to her being quite so open with her desires or, indeed, having desires at all. It was dismaying… and a trifle exciting, if he were being honest.

Finally, he smiled, and said, “That was what I wanted to talk to you about.”

There are people in this world—good, honest, hard-working people—who want nothing more than to have a baby, and who try for years to conceive one without the slightest success. There are people who must see doctors in small, sterile rooms, hearing terrifying proclamations about how much it will cost to even begin hoping. There are people who must go on quests, chasing down the north wind to ask for directions to the House of the Moon, where wishes can be granted, if the hour is right and the need is great enough. There are people who will try, and try, and try, and receive nothing for their efforts but a broken heart.

Chester and Serena went upstairs to their room, to the bed they shared, and Chester did not put on a condom, and Serena did not remind him, and that was that. The next morning, she stopped taking her birth control pills. Three weeks later, she missed her period, which had been as orderly and on-time as the rest of her life since she was twelve years old. Two weeks after that, she sat in a small white room while a kindly man in a long white coat told her that she was going to be a mother.

“How long before we can get a picture of the baby?” asked Chester, already imagining himself showing it to the men at the office, jaw strong, gaze distant, like he was lost in dreams of playing catch with his son-to-be.

“Yes, how long?” asked Serena. The women she worked with always shrieked and fawned when someone arrived with a new sonogram to pass around the group. How nice it would be, to finally be the center of attention!

The doctor, who had dealt with his share of eager parents, smiled. “You’re about five weeks along,” he said. “I don’t recommend an ultrasound before twelve weeks, under normal circumstances. Now, this is your first pregnancy. You may want to wait before telling anyone that you’re pregnant. Everything seems normal now, but it’s early days yet, and it will be easier if you don’t have to take back an announcement.”

Serena looked bemused. Chester fumed. To even suggest that his wife might be so bad at being pregnant—something so simple that any fool off the street could do it—was offensive in ways he didn’t even have words for. But Dr. Tozer had been recommended by one of the partners at his firm, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, and Chester simply couldn’t see a way to change doctors without offending someone too important to offend.

“Twelve weeks, then,” said Chester. “What do we do until then?”

Dr. Tozer told them. Vitamins and nutrition and reading, so much reading. It was like the man expected their baby to be the most difficult in the history of the world, with all the reading that he assigned. But they did it, dutifully, like they were following the steps of a magical spell that would summon the perfect child straight into their arms. They never discussed whether they were hoping for a boy or a girl; both of them knew, so completely, what they were going to have that it seemed unnecessary. So Chester went to bed each night dreaming of his son, while Serena dreamt of her daughter, and for a time, they both believed that parenthood was perfect.

They didn’t listen to Dr. Tozer’s advice about keeping the pregnancy a secret, of course. When something was this good, it needed to be shared. Their friends, who had never seen them as the parenting type, were confused but supportive. Their colleagues, who didn’t know them well enough to understand what a bad idea this was, were enthusiastic. Chester and Serena shook their heads and made lofty comments about learning who their “real” friends were.

Serena went to her board meetings and smiled contently as the other women told her that she was beautiful, that she was glowing, that motherhood “suited her.”

Chester went to his office and found that several of the partners were dropping by “just to chat” about his impending fatherhood, offering advice, offering camaraderie.

Everything was perfect.

They went to their first ultrasound appointment together, and Serena held Chester’s hand as the technician rubbed blueish slime over her belly and rolled the wand across it. The picture began developing. For the first time, Serena felt a pang of concern. What if there was something wrong with the baby? What if Dr. Tozer had been right, and the pregnancy should have remained a secret, at least for a little while?

“Well?” asked Chester.

“You wanted to know the baby’s gender, yes?” asked the technician.

He nodded.

“You have a perfect baby girl,” said the technician.

Serena laughed in vindicated delight, the sound dying when she saw the scowl on Chester’s face. Suddenly, the things they hadn’t discussed seemed large enough to fill the room.

The technician gasped. “I have a second heartbeat,” she said.

They both turned to look at her.

“Twins,” she said.

“Is the second baby a boy or a girl?” asked Chester.

The technician hesitated. “The first baby is blocking our view,” she hedged. “It’s difficult to say for sure—”

“Guess,” said Chester.

“I’m afraid it would not be ethical for me to guess at this stage,” said the technician. “I’ll make you another appointment, for two weeks from now. Babies move around in the womb. We should be able to get a better view then.”

They did not get a better view. The first infant remained stubbornly in front, and the second infant remained stubbornly in back, and the Wolcotts made it all the way to the delivery room—for a scheduled induction, of course, the date chosen by mutual agreement and circled in their day planners—hoping quietly that they were about to become the proud parents of both son and daughter, completing their nuclear family on the first try. Both of them were slightly smug about the idea. It smacked of efficiency, of tailoring the perfect solution right out the gate.

(The thought that babies would become children, and children would become people, never occurred to them. The concept that perhaps biology was not destiny, and that not all little girls would be pretty princesses, and not all little boys would be brave soldiers, also never occurred to them. Things might have been easier if those ideas had ever slithered into their heads, unwanted but undeniably important. Alas, their minds were made up, and left no room for such revolutionary opinions.)

The labor took longer than planned. Serena did not want a C-section if she could help it, did not want the scarring and the mess, and so she pushed when she was told to push, and rested when she was told to rest, and gave birth to her first child at five minutes to midnight on September fifteenth. The doctor passed the baby to a waiting nurse, announced, “It’s a girl,” and bent back over his patient.

Chester, who had been holding out hope that the reticent boy-child would push his way forward and claim the vaunted position of firstborn, said nothing as he held his wife’s hand and listened to her straining to expel their second child. Her face was red, and the sounds she was making were nothing short of animal. It was horrifying. He couldn’t imagine a circumstance under which he would touch her ever again. No; it was good that they were having both their children at once. This way, it would be over and done with.

A slap; a wail; and the doctor’s voice proudly proclaiming, “It’s another healthy baby girl!”

Serena fainted.

Chester envied her.

Later, when Serena was tucked safe in her private room with Chester beside her and the nurses asked if they wanted to meet their daughters, they said yes, of course. How could they have said anything different? They were parents now, and parenthood came with expectations. Parenthood came with rules. If they failed to meet those expectations, they would be labeled unfit in the eyes of everyone they knew, and the consequences of that, well…

They were unthinkable.

The nurses returned with two pink-faced, hairless things that looked more like grubs or goblins than anything human. “One for each of you,” twinkled a nurse, and handed Chester a tight-swaddled baby like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

“Have you thought about names?” asked another, handing Serena the second infant.

“My mother’s name was Jacqueline,” said Serena cautiously, glancing at Chester. They had discussed names, naturally, one for a girl, one for a boy. They had never considered the need to name two girls.

“Our head partner’s wife is named Jillian,” said Chester. He could claim it was his mother’s name if he needed to. No one would know. No one would ever know.

“Jack and Jill,” said the first nurse, with a smile. “Cute.”

“Jacqueline and Jillian,” corrected Chester frostily. “No daughter of mine will go by something as base and undignified as a nickname.”

The nurse’s smile faded. “Of course not,” she said, when what she really meant was “of course they will,” and “you’ll see soon enough.”

Serena and Chester Wolcott had fallen prey to the dangerous allure of other people’s children. They would learn the error of their ways soon enough. People like them always did.

Chapter 2
Practically Perfect in Virtually No Ways

The Wolcotts lived in a house at the top of a hill in the middle of a fashionable neighborhood where every house looked alike. The homeowner’s association allowed for three colors of exterior paint (two colors too many, in the minds of many of the residents), a strict variety of fence and hedge styles around the front lawn, and small, relatively quiet dogs from a very short list of breeds. Most residents elected not to have dogs, rather than deal with the complicated process of filling out the permits and applications required to own one.

All of this conformity was designed not to strangle but to comfort, allowing the people who lived there to relax into a perfectly ordered world. At night, the air was quiet. Safe. Secure.

Save, of course, for the Wolcott home, where the silence was split by healthy wails from two sets of developing lungs. Serena sat in the dining room, staring blankly at the two screaming babies.

“You’ve had a bottle,” she informed them. “You’ve been changed. You’ve been walked around the house while I bounced you and sang that dreadful song about the spider. Why are you still crying?”

Jacqueline and Jillian, who were crying for some of the many reasons that babies cry—they were cold, they were distressed, they were offended by the existence of gravity—continued to wail. Serena stared at them in dismay. No one had told her that babies would cry all the time. Oh, there had been comments about it in the books she’d read, but she had assumed that they were simply referring to bad parents who failed to take a properly firm hand with their offspring.

“Can’t you shut them up?” demanded Chester from behind her. She didn’t have to turn to know that he was standing in the doorway in his dressing gown, scowling at all three of them—as if it were somehow her fault that babies seemed designed to scream without cease! He had been complicit in the creation of their daughters, but now that they were here, he wanted virtually nothing to do with them.

“I’ve been trying,” she said. “I don’t know what they want, and they can’t tell me. I don’t… I don’t know what to do.”

Chester had not slept properly in three days. He was starting to fear the moment when it would impact his work and catch the attention of the partners, painting him and his parenting abilities in a poor light. Perhaps it was desperation, or perhaps it was a moment of rare and impossible clarity.

“I’m calling my mother,” he said.

Chester Wolcott was the youngest of three children: by the time he had come along, the mistakes had been made, the lessons had been learned, and his parents had been comfortable with the process of parenting. His mother was an unforgivably soppy, impractical woman, but she knew how to burp a baby, and perhaps by inviting her now, while Jacqueline and Jillian were too young to be influenced by her ideas about the world, they could avoid inviting her later, when she might actually do some damage.

Serena would normally have objected to the idea of her mother-in-law invading her home, setting everything out of order. With the babies screaming and the house already in disarray, all she could do was nod.

Chester made the call first thing in the morning.

Louise Wolcott arrived on the train eight hours later.

By the standards of anyone save for her ruthlessly regimented son, Louise was a disciplined, orderly woman. She liked the world to make sense and follow the rules. By the standards of her son, she was a hopeless dreamer. She thought the world was capable of kindness; she thought people were essentially good and only waiting for an opportunity to show it.

She took a taxi from the train station to the house, because of course picking her up would have been a disruption to an already-disrupted schedule. She rang the bell, because of course giving her a key would have made no sense at all. Her eyes lit up when Serena answered the door, a baby in each arm, and she didn’t even notice that her daughter-in-law’s hair was uncombed, or that there were stains on the collar of her blouse. The things Serena thought were most important in the world held no relevance to Louise. Her attention was focused entirely on the babies.

“There they are,” she said, as if the twins had been the subject of a global manhunt spanning years. She slipped in through the open door without waiting for an invitation, putting her suitcases down next to the umbrella stand (where they did not compliment the décor) before holding out her arms. “Come to Grandma,” she said.

Serena would normally have argued. Serena would normally have insisted on offering coffee, tea, a place to put her bags where no one would have to see them. Serena, like her husband, had not slept a full night since coming home from the hospital.

“Welcome to our home,” she said, and dumped both babies unceremoniously into Louise’s arms before turning and walking up the stairs. The slam of the bedroom door followed a second later.

Louise blinked. She looked down at the babies. They had left off crying for the moment and were looking at her with wide, curious eyes. Their world was as yet fairly limited, and everything about it was new. Their grandmother was the newest thing of all. Louise smiled.

“Hello, darlings,” she said. “I’m here now.”

She would not leave for another five years.

Excerpted from Down Among the Sticks and Bones, copyright © 2017 by Seanan McGuire.

Thanks to major properties like Game of Thrones and Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, we’ve entered a golden age of sci-fi and fantasy properties being developed for film and television. It seems that nearly every network and studio has snatched up the rights to old and new classics, with a bevy of projects in production or premiering in the coming months. To keep you on top of the latest news, we’ve updated our master list of every SFF adaptation currently in the works, from American Gods to Y: The Last Man.

Check out this list and get your DVRs and Netflix queues ready, because you’re going to be wonderfully busy for the foreseeable future.

RUMORED

Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Originally published: 1984, Random House
Optioned for: Film (TBD)
What it’s about: Lifelong friends who had gone their separate ways are reunited by a mysterious woman with a crystal staff, destined to become something they never would have expected: heroes.
Status: Joe Manganiello (Magic Mike) is enthusiastic about making a Dungeons & Dragons movie happen—specifically, this adaptation of the first Dragonlance novel, from a screenplay developed with John Cassel. Manganiello has been in talks with Wizards of the Coast, but so far this project seems to be in the very early planning stages. In the meantime, revisit our Dragonlance Reread!

Watchmen by Alan Moore (writer) and Dave Gibbons (artist)

Originally published: 1986, DC Comics
Optioned for: Television (HBO)
What it’s about: In alternate-universe 1985—after the emergence of costumed heroes in the 1940s and ’60s turned the tide in historical events such as the Vietnam War—the murder of The Comedian brings these retired vigilantes out of hiding.
Status: “Preliminary discussions regarding Watchmen have occurred, but we have no additional information and no deals are in place,” HBO said after meeting with Zack Snyder, who adapted the graphic novel into a 2009 film.

IN THE WORKS

100 Bullets by Brian Azzarello (writer) and Eduardo Risso (artist)

Originally published: 1999-2009, Vertigo Comics
Optioned for: Film (New Line Cinema)
What it’s about: In Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s noiry, pulpy comic book series, the mysterious Agent Graves approaches people with a gun, the identity of the person who ruined their lives, and a hundred rounds of untraceable ammunition.
Status: Tom Hardy is on board to produce and potentially star in the movie adaptation.

3001: The Final Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

Originally published: 1997, Del Rey
Optioned for: Television (Syfy)
What it’s about: In 2014, Syfy announced that it would develop a miniseries based on Clarke’s fourth and final Odyssey book, which wraps up the loose ends from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Status: No update since the 2014 announcement, and Syfy seems concerned with plenty of other projects (many of which are adaptations).

Aleister Arcane by Steve Niles (writer) and Breehn Burns (artist)

Originally published: 2004, IDW Publishing
Optioned for: Film (Amblin Entertainment)
What it’s about: Weatherman-turned-late-night TV horror show host Aleister Arcane (a.k.a. Green) gets a kick out of airing gory little skits, until the local sponsors in his hometown of Jackson, OK, shut him down. But when a tragic incident gets him taken off the air and forced into early retirement, the local kids realize that Aleister Arcane has laid a curse upon their town.
Status: Eli Roth is teaming up with Jim Carrey (who will star and produce) to adapt Niles’ series. Jon Croker (The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death) will write the screenplay with David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Originally published: 1996, McClelland & Stewart
Optioned for: Television (Netflix/CBC)
What it’s about: Atwood’s novel is a fictionalized account of the true-crime double murder for which domestic servant Grace Marks (along with a suspected accomplice) was convicted. The audience surrogate is the fictional character of Dr. Simon Jordan, a specialist in the burgeoning field of mental illness, who struggles to reconcile the sweet girl who has no memory of the incident, and the gruesome crime for which she is serving a life sentence.
Status: After having previously planned to adapt the novel into a feature film, Sarah Polley (Away From Her, Looking for Alaska) will write and produce the six-hour Netflix miniseries, with Mary Harron (American Psycho) directing. Sarah Gadon will star as Grace Marks, with Anna Paquin playing her deceased employer Nancy Montgomery.

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

Originally published: 2017, Penguin Publishing Group
Optioned for: Film (Paramount/Pascal Pictures)
What it’s about: Mastai pitched the alternate-universe novel as Kurt Vonnegut trying to tell The Time Traveler’s Wife with the narrative voice of Jonathan Tropper: A man from a utopian AU falls into the very real 2015 and must decide whether he wants to return to his time or try to establish a life in this new reality.
Status: Amy Pascal nabbed the film rights at the 2015 Frankfurt Book Fair. Mastai will write the script for the adaptation and executive produce.

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Originally published: 2002, Gollancz
Optioned for: Television (Netflix)
What it’s about: In a post-cyberpunk future, human consciousness can be stored, downloaded, and reuploaded into “sleeves,” or new bodies. Soldier Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) is downloaded into the body of a disgraced cop to investigate the death of a Meth, or aristocrat, who’s convinced that he was murdered. The rest of the cast includes James Purefoy (as Laurens Bancroft, a Meth), Dichen Lachman (as Takashi’s sister Reileen Kawahara), Leonardo Nam (as Stronghold Kovacs, Takeshi’s former body), and more.
Status: Formerly being developed as a movie with Mythology Entertainment, now Altered Carbon will be a Netflix series produced by Skydance Television. Morgan will act as a consultant (and possibly write some episodes) for the ten-episode season.

Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi

Originally published: 2008, Scholastic
Optioned for: Film (20th Century Fox)
What it’s about: Kibuishi’s ongoing graphic novel series (which won the American Library Association’s Best Book for Young Adults in 2008) follows siblings Emily and Navin through a portal into a fantasy world filled with giant robots and man-eating demons. Led by the talking rabbit Miskit, Em (wearing the eponymous amulet) and Navin search for their missing mother.
Status: 20th Century Fox is looking to develop the series into a potential film franchise. Aron Coleite (co-executive producer of the Star Trek TV series) will write the screenplay.

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Originally published: 2011, Tor Teen
Optioned for: Film (Fickle Fish Productions)
What it’s about: Ghost hunter Cas (Cameron Monaghan) is surprised when Anna Dressed in Blood (Maddie Hasson), a ghost known for killing anyone who sets foot in the abandoned Victorian she calls him, decides to spare his life. As he investigates her curse, these opposites grow closer.
Status: Twilight author Stephenie Meyer will produce, with music video director Trish Sie helming a script from Allison Wood.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Originally published: 2014, Orbit Books
Optioned for: Film
What it’s about: Breq used to be the spaceship Justice of Toren, controlling countless ancillary soldiers, before an accident fragmented her. Now, in a single form, she is returning to the Imperial Radch to confront its ruler, Anaander Mianaai.
Status: In 2014, Ann Leckie shared the exciting news that Ancillary Justice had been optioned for television! Fabrik and Fox Television Studios (who have between them worked on The Killing, Burn Notice, and The Americans, among other series) are interested, especially in terms of dealing with the series’ depictions of gender and race. There’s been no update since, but as Leckie put it, “the potential is there, and that’s tremendously cool!”

Astronaut Academy by Dave Roman

Originally published: 2011, First Second Books
Optioned for: Film and Television (TBD)
What it’s about: Short version: “Harry Potter in space.” Long version: Hakata Soy, along with his friends and crushes Miyumi San and Maribelle Melonbelly, split time at Astronaut Academy between pop quizzes and Fireball Championships and saving the galaxy from threats that adults just can’t handle.
Status: Writer/producer Vivek J. Tiwary (The Fifth Beatle) has optioned the film and TV rights; he is currently in talks with studios, networks, and other creatives.

Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey

Originally published: 2016, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Optioned for: Television (Studio 8)
What it’s about: In Howey’s collection of linked novellas, the notion of the lighthouse keeping boats safe has transformed into lighthouses in space, sending beacons across the Milky Way to ensure safe passage for spaceships. But when the supposedly reliable beacons break down, a shellshocked former soldier must put aside his past to help the ships traveling out in the dark.
Status: Studio 8 has tapped Josh Friedman (creator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles and screenwriter, Avatar 3) to develop the TV series.

Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life by Marcus Wohlsen

Originally published: 2011, Penguin Publishing Group
Optioned for: Television (Legendary Television)
What it’s about: In 2011, WIRED editor Wohlsen delved into a then-mostly-unknown subculture of biohackers working to change how we build and alter genetic code. In the intervening half-decade, biopunk has become much more mainstream, so it’s good timing to reexamine Wohlsen’s book on the small screen.
Status: Zachary Quinto will co-executive produce and star as “the iconoclastic leader of this movement who can’t wait for the future to get here fast enough.”

The Black Company by Glen Cook

Originally published: 1984, Tor Books
Optioned for: Television (Boston Diva Productions/Phantom Four)
What it’s about: The Black Company begin their series as a tough, cynical unit who sell their skills to the highest bidder. However, when they learn that an ancient prophecy may be coming true, they have to reevaluate their choices, and most importantly, decide whether to forsake old loyalties. The Lady, who rules the Northern Empire, hires the Black Company for her own ends.
Status: Eliza Dushku and David Goyer’s production companies (respectively) are collaborating on the adaptation, with Dushku playing the pivotal role of The Lady.

Bodies by Si Spencer (writer) and Tula Lotay, Phil Winslade, Meghan Hetrick, and Dean Ormston (artists)

Originally published: 2014, Vertigo Comics
Optioned for: Television (Hulu)
What it’s about: This miniseries follows four detectives trying to solve four murder cases, all in London but in distinct time periods: the 1890s, the 1940s, 2014, and post-apocalyptic 2050.
Status: Amulet screenwriter Aron Coleite is developing Bodies with Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey’s Team Downey company.

Bone by Jeff Smith

Originally published: 1991, Cartoon Books
Optioned for: Film (Warner Bros)
What it’s about: The series follows the three Bone cousins, Fone, Smiley, and Phoney Bone, after they’re run out of Boneville and have to make a new life for themselves in a forbidding forest. They’re soon caught up in an adventure with a young woman named Thorn, which is gradually revealed to be an epic high fantasy saga.
Status: Warner Bros is planning a trilogy of feature-length animated films: Mark Osborne (Kung Fu Panda, The Little Prince) will direct a script co-written with Adam Kline (Artemis Fowl).

Bone Street Rumba by Daniel José Older

Originally published: 2015, Roc
Optioned for: TBD (Roaring Virgin Productions)
What it’s about: Being a “halfie”—not quite dead, not quite alive—makes Carlos Delacruz a perfect soulcatcher for the Council of the Dead in New York City: He tracks down ghosts with unfinished business and keeps them from disturbing the balance between the living and the dead.
Status: Actress Anika Noni Rose optioned Daniel José Older’s urban fantasy series in January 2015, though it’s unclear if she’ll be developing it for film or television.

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch

Originally published: 2017, Harper
Optioned for: Film (Stone Village Productions)
What it’s about: In this futuristic retelling of the Joan of Arc story, humanity has fled the radioactive surface of the Earth for CIEL, a mysterious hovering platform. Having evolved into hairless, sexless creatures who inscribe stories upon their skin, the surviving humans are galvanized by Joan, “a child-warrior who possesses a mysterious force that lives within her and communes with the earth.”
Status: Stone Village won the movie rights before the book even hit shelves, with Scott Steindorff (The Lincoln Lawyer) and Dylan Russell (Penelope) producing.

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

Originally published: 2017, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Optioned for: Film (Paramount)
What it’s about: Borne follows a young woman fighting to survive in desolate near-future city. The woman finds a green lumpish creature called Borne during a scavenging mission, and begins to realize that her new companion may be more than she first thought.
Status: Scott Rudin and Eli Bush, who are currently producing the film adaptation of VanderMeer’s Annihilation with Paramount, will also produce Borne.

Black Lightning by various authors and artists

Originally published: 1977, DC Comics
Optioned for: Television (The CW)
What it’s about: Retired vigilante superhero Jefferson Pierce (Hart of Dixie’s Cress Williams) must don the mantel and secret identity of Black Lightning after his daughter is hell-bent on justice and his star student is recruited by a street gang.
Status: Being Mary Jane creator Mara Brock Akil is co-writing the pilot with her husband Salim Akil; both will serve as executive producers alongside Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter. After Fox dropped the pilot, The CW picked it up.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Originally published: 1932, Chatto & Windus
Optioned for: Television (Syfy)
What it’s about: Aldous Huxley’s scarily prescient vision of the future sees humans born in hatcheries and seduced by consumerism, free sex, and—when those don’t make them entirely happy—the hallucinogenic drug soma, which they can take to get away from it all. But soon a “savage” from the “reservation” threatens the World State.
Status: Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Television will adapt Huxley’s iconic novel, with Grant Morrison and Bryan Taylor (Crank) serving as writers and executive producers. No word yet if it will be a miniseries or ongoing series. The last update was in late 2016.

Camelot, from every Arthurian legend ever

Optioned for: Television (Fox)
What it’s about: The legend of King Arthur, reimagined as a modern-day police procedural. Hoo boy. I’m just gonna post the synopsis: “When an ancient magic reawakens in modern-day Manhattan, a graffiti artist named Art must team with his best friend Lance and his ex, Gwen—an idealistic cop—in order to realize his destiny and fight back against the evil forces that threaten the city.”
Status: The Jackal Group’s Gail Berman (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Rocky Horror Picture Show reboot) and Joe Earley will oversee the project, written by Dan Frey and Ru Sommer (The Black List, Fox’s Saint Patrick) writing.

Captain Marvel by various authors and artists

Originally published: 1968, Marvel Comics
Optioned for: Film (Marvel Studios)
What it’s about: Captain Marvel tracks Air Force pilot Carol Danvers’ (Brie Larson) transformation into the titular superhero after an accident fuses her human DNA with that of an alien and grants her superpowers.
Status: Directing duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson) will helm the film, based on a screenplay from Meg LeFauve (Inside Out) and Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy). Comes to theaters March 8, 2019.

Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon

Originally published: 2015, Dial Books
Optioned for: Film (Walt Disney Company)
What it’s about: Ellen DeGeneres, along with her A Very Good Production partner Jeffrey Kleeman, will produce the story of a 12-year-old witch who travels to Castle Hangnail to become its new master. If she fails at being as wicked as expected, the castle will be decommissioned by the Board of Magic, with its various residents (including a hypochondriac fish and a minotaur afraid of the letter Q) dispersed into the non-magic world.
Status: Recently announced.

Castle Rock, from various works by Stephen King

Originally published: various
Optioned for: Television (Hulu/Bad Robot)
What it’s about: Named for the fictional Maine town appearing (or mentioned) in many of King’s novels and short stories, Castle Rock is a horror anthology series that will both draw from King’s existing body of work while including new stories.
Status: J.J. Abrams will produce; Manhattan creator Sam Shaw will write with Dustin Thomason, who also served as a writer and executive producer on Manhattan. Hulu has released a teaser.

Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness

Originally published: 2008, Walker Books
Optioned for: Film (Lionsgate)
What it’s about: In a dystopian future where all living creatures can hear each other’s thoughts, the sole boy in a town of men flees with his dog after discovering an awful secret, and comes upon a strangely silent girl.
Status: Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow) will direct; both Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Jamie Linden (Money Monster) have taken stabs at adapting the book. Daisy Ridley has signed on to star, presumably as the silent girl Viola; Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Homecoming) is in talks to play protagonist Todd.

The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny

Originally published: 1970, Doubleday
Optioned for: Television (Skybound Entertainment)
What it’s about: Recovering from a loss of memory, Corwin discovers that he is a prince from Amber, one of the two “true” worlds—the other being the Courts of Chaos—waging war for control over the “shadow” worlds, including Earth.
Status: Robert Kirkman and David Alpert will adapt the ten-book series; no writers have been announced yet.

The City & the City by China Miéville

Originally published: 2009, Del Rey
Optioned for: Television (BBC Two)
What it’s about: To solve a murder, Inspector Tyador Borlú must move between the overlapping twin cities of Besźel and Ul Qoma.
Status: Tony Grisoni (The Young Pope, Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreamswill adapt the novel into a four-part series) starring David Morrissey (The Walking Dead).

Cormoran Strike, from the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith

Originally published: 2013, Sphere Books
Optioned for: Television (BBC One/HBO)
What it’s about: In Galbraith’s (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling’s) mystery series, war veteran-turned-private detective Cormoran Strike (War and Peace‘s Tom Burke) copes with physical and psychological wounds while solving three complex cases that have stumped the police.
Status: Cormoran Strike will air in three separate event series: the three-hour The Cuckoo’s Calling, two-hour The Silkworm, and two-hour Career of Evil. (HBO and BBC One also worked together on the adaptation of Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy.) Filming began in fall 2016 in London.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

Originally published: 2015, Tor Books
Optioned for: Film (G-BASE)
What it’s about: Traveler-magician Kell’s official job is to deliver correspondence between the parallel Londons, but his unofficial job is smuggling visitors to see the flourishing magic of Red London, or the eerie control of White London (though no one is allowed in Black London). When a thief from boring Grey London robs, saves, and then joins Kell, he discovers the perilous magic at the root of everything.
Status: While the original plans for the adaptation was a limited series along the lines of Game of Thrones, the project changed direction in 2017: Schwab will be a producer on the movie version of the first book, with the other two volumes serving as material for a potential franchise.

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

Originally published: 2012, Disney Hyperion
Optioned for: Film (20th Century Fox)
What it’s about: After a pandemic kills most of America’s children and teenagers, the survivors develop superpowers and are placed inside internment camps. Sixteen-year-old telekinetic Ruby Dee (The Hunger Games‘ Amandla Stenberg) escapes the camp, joining up with a group of teens on the run from the government. This Is Us’ Mandy Moore will play a doctor who’s part of a crusade to stop the persecution of the children.
Status: Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 3) will direct the adaptation, with Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) producing.

Deadly Class by Rick Remender (writer) and Wes Craig (artist)

Originally published: 2014, Image Comics
Optioned for: Television (Sony Pictures TV)
What it’s about: High school intrigue—first love, gossip, cliques, growing up—at a boarding school for assassins in 1987 San Francisco.
Status: The Russo brothers (directors of the last two Captain America movies) are adapting the shockingly vicious series for the small screen. No word yet on network, though Deadline says the Russos are targeting cable and streaming services.

Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant by Tony Cliff

Originally published: 2013, First Second Books
Optioned for: Film (Disney)
What it’s about: Like the female Indiana Jones and trained in 47 styles of swordfighting, Delilah Dirk breaks out of a Turkish prison and picks up a mild-mannered lieutenant, Selim, as her sidekick for fighting pirates and the like.
Status: Disney is developing a live-action adaptation that could lead to a diverse franchise built on female empowerment.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Originally published: 2011, Penguin Books
Optioned for: Television (TBA)
What it’s about: Diana Bishop, an alchemical history professor at the University of Oxford, gets caught up with an ancient manuscript that calls to the magic in her blood, and a charming vampire who may also have designs on her blood.
Status: While there was a film adaptation in development back in 2011, now it looks as if the All Souls trilogy will appear on TV. Harkness recently announced that Jane Tranter and Bad Wolf would produce the series; Harkness is one of the executive producers and is writing some of the episodes. They haven’t yet confirmed broadcaster, in the U.S. or the UK.

Divergent series by Veronica Roth

Originally published: 2011, HarperCollins
Optioned for: Television (Lionsgate)
What it’s about: Post-apocalyptic Chicago has been split into five factions, ways to group citizens possessing different affinities: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite. When Abnegation member Tris discovers that she is Divergent—able to choose more than one faction—she goes for the brave, reckless adventurers Dauntless. Along the way, she uncovers conspiracy upon conspiracy that threaten the entire social system of the city.
Status: The Divergent franchise stumbled in the box office, with the third installment (part one of the third book) Allegiant not doing as well as its predecessors Divergent and Insurgent. Lionsgate has announced that it will release the fourth planned film, Ascendant, as a TV movie, and then develop a spinoff starring an entirely new cast. However, it’s unclear if stars Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller will even return for Ascendant; Woodley said in a recent interview, “I didn’t sign up to be in a TV show.”

Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

Originally published: 1968, Ballantine Books
Optioned for: Film (Warner Bros.)
What it’s about: The possible franchise series would begin with the first book, Dragonflight, which sees orphaned noble Lessa hiding out as a lowly servant after the assassination of her family. But as her telepathic powers grow, a dragonrider recognizes her potential to become the strongest Weyrwoman (that is, the female leader in a Weyr, or group of dragons) in recent history.
Status: As of late 2014, the studio had landed a screenwriter, but no update since then.

Dune by Frank Herbert

Originally published: 1965, Chilton Books
Optioned for: Film and Television (Legendary Entertainment)
What it’s about: Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, whose family accepts stewardship of the desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the coveted “spice” in the universe. After a betrayal, Paul leads a rebellion to restore his family’s control over Arrakis.
Status: Legendary Entertainment has reached an agreement with the Frank Herbert estate in which it has acquired the film and television rights to Dune. The agreement calls for the development and production of possible film and TV projects for a global audience. Brian Herbert has confirmed that Arrival and Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve will helm the project.

Electric Dreams: The World of Philip K. Dick, from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Originally published: 1968, Doubleday
Optioned for: Television (Channel 4)
What it’s about: From the title, we’re assuming that Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica, Outlander) is pulling from PKD’s famous novel–but the ten-part sci-fi series will draw from his entire body of work, adapting his stories in order to “illustrate Dick’s prophetic vision and celebrate the enduring appeal of the prized sci-fi novelist’s work.”
Status: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child writer Jack Thorne will co-write scripts with Moore, who is executive producing alongside Michael Dinner (Justified, Masters of Sex) and Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), who will also star in at least one episode.

Endurance: My Year in Space and Our Journey to Mars by Scott Kelly

Originally published: 2017, Knopf
Optioned for: Film (Sony Pictures)
What it’s about: Astronaut Scott Kelly’s memoir will detail his year spent in space, as well as the post-return to Earth experiments conducted on him and his twin brother and fellow astronaut Mark Kelly to help guide NASA’s plans for eventual travel to Mars.
Status: Sony Pictures picked up the competitive rights to the book; both Kelly brothers will serve as co-executive producers.

Extreme Universe, from various titles by Rob Liefeld

Originally published: 1992, Image Comics
Optioned for: Film (Fundamental Films)
What it’s about: Spanning nine comic-book titles and nearly 100 characters, Liefeld’s universe includes such superheroes as Bloodstrike, Brigade, Lethal, Re-Gex, Cybrid, Bloodwulf, Battlestone, Kaboom, and Nitro-Gen.
Status: Liefeld will work with Akiva Goldsman and Graham King to develop the property, with the potential opportunity to make it into a film franchise.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Originally published: 1953, Ballantine Books
Optioned for: Film (HBO Films)
What it’s about: Bradbury’s chilling class envisions a future in which fireman Guy Montag begins to question his job to burn books after meeting a young woman who doesn’t share the empty-headed complacency of his peers. While the last film adaptation was in 1966, Fahrenheit 451 has been adapted as a stage play (1979), a radio play (1982), an interactive computer game (1984), and a graphic novel (2009).
Status: Ramin Bahrani (99 Homes) will write, direct, and executive produce the new TV movie adaptation starring Michael B. Jordan as Montag and Michael Shannon as Beatty.

The Final Six by Alexandra Monir

Originally published: TBD, HarperCollins
Optioned for: Film (Sony Pictures)
What it’s about: The United Nations teams up with international space agencies to create an unprecedented coalition of six intrepid teenagers who will establish humanity’s first settlement on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Not much else is known, but the book will have themes of global unity, leadership, and environmentalism.
Status: Sony optioned the rights based on the first few chapters alone; HarperCollins recently won publishing rights. Josh Bratman at Immersive Pictures is attached to produce.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Originally published: 1974, St. Martin’s Press
Optioned for: Film (Warner Bros.)
What it’s about: Channing Tatum has signed on to star as William Mandella, a soldier fighting a fearsome enemy, only to (thanks to time dilation) return to a world he doesn’t recognize.
Status: The project was initially announced in 2015. Screenwriter Jon Spaihts provided an update in late 2016, saying that the adaptation was still happening but had been delayed by the production of his film Passengers.

Fortunately, The Milk by Neil Gaiman (writer) and Skottie Young (illustrator)

Originally published: 2013, HarperCollins
Optioned for: Film (Fox)
What it’s about: Edgar Wright will direct a part-live action, part-animated adaptation (written by Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie) of Gaiman’s children’s book. Johnny Depp will star as a father who, with his son, gets caught up in issues of time travel and breakfast cereal.
Status: Currently the aforementioned folks are in negotiations.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Originally published: 1951, Gnome Press
Optioned for: Television (HBO)
What it’s about: Foreseeing the imminent fall of the Galactic Empire, mathematician Hari Sheldon creates a foundation of artists, academics, and engineers to preserve and expand on humanity’s knowledge before said fall.
Status: At a 2015 Paley Center panel, Jonathan Nolan said he was still “incredibly excited” about the adaptation and that he was in talks with Robyn Asimov, Isaac’s daughter, about the project. He mentioned that it would be “coming together,” but didn’t give any specifics. No word how the success of Westworld affects the likelihood of the Foundation adaptation, but something to consider.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl

Originally published: 1977, St. Martin’s Press
Optioned for: Television (Syfy)
What it’s about: The discovery of Gateway, a space station belonging to the Heechee alien race, in a hollow asteroid leads to a kind of gold rush for the human race, as they endeavor to learn more about the Heechee and turn these artifacts into fortunes.
Status: Syfy announced in 2015 its intention to adapt the novel to series, with David Eick (Battlestar Galactica) revising a pilot script written by Josh Pate (Falling Skies).

Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

Originally published: 2004, Tor Books
Optioned for: Television (Syfy)
What it’s about: Syfy’s adaptation of John Scalzi’s military sci-fi series Old Man’s War takes the name of the second novel (Scalzi jokes that it’s “sexier”) but will pull from all of the OMW books. Syfy sums up the series as following 75-year-old John Perry, who enlists in an intergalactic war that has soldiers fighting in younger bodies into which their consciousness is transplanted.
Status: The series is still in development, but as of late 2015 it’s slow going.

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

Originally published: 2016, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Optioned for: Film (Fox Animation)
What it’s about: Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to an unseen witch. But when delivering a baby to waiting families on her yearly journey, witch Xan accidentally feeds moonlight to the infant, filling her with magic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own, with the help of a wise swamp monster and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon.
Status: Kubo and the Two Strings co-writer Marc Haimes is adapting Barnhill’s book as a live-action/animation-hybrid film.

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch

Originally published: Not yet published.
Optioned for: Film (Fox)
What it’s about: Not much information is available about the book except that it’s described by Deadline as “a sci-fi time travel procedural.” Read our review of Sweterlitsch’s first novel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, for an idea of his work.
Status: Last we heard, Neill Blomkamp was in talks to write and direct the adaptation, but there’s been no confirmation.

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu

Originally published: 2015, Saga Press
Optioned for: Film (DMG Entertainment)
What it’s about: Bandit Kuni Garu and Mata Zyndu, son of a deposed duke, become friends when fighting to overthrow the emperor. But once the throne is available for the taking, they become leaders of opposing factions, with very different views on the best way to run the world.
Status: DMG Entertainment has acquired the film and licensing rights to the entire Dandelion Dynasty series into a film series.

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Originally published: 2014, Penguin Books
Optioned for: Film (New Regency)
What it’s about: Austin Szerba struggles with confusing sexual feelings for both his best friend and his girlfriend while preying mantises hatch in his Iowa town and threaten to take over the world.
Status: Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) is on board to direct. New Regency is in final negotiations after a bidding war against Netflix and others; the project had previously been set up at Sony.

Happiness Is for Humans by P.Z. Reizin

Originally published: TBA, Grand Central Publishing (US) and Sphere Fiction (UK)
Optioned for: Film (Fox 2000/Working Title)
What it’s about: Described as “Sleepless in Seattle meets Her,” the novel follows a pair of AIs who attempt matchmaking with two lovelorn humans.
Status: Fox 2000, which adapted John Green’s Paper Towns and Nicholas Sparks’ The Longest Ride for the big screen, acquired film rights to Reizin’s partial manuscript before the London Book Fair in 2016. Fox 2000 is partnering with Working Title to adapt the novel.

Happy! by Grant Morrison

Originally published: 2012, Image Comics
Optioned for: Television (Syfy)
What it’s about: After a shootout lands him in the ICU, ex-cop-turned-hitman Nick Sax gets visited by a tiny blue horse named Happy… the invisible friend of a girl being held captive by a child murderer dressed as Santa Claus. As Christmas bells begin ringing, Sax must team up with this figment of a child’s imagination to find her.
Status: Universal Cable Productions is adapting the comic book series for Syfy, with Morrison and writer-director Brian Taylor co-writing the pilot and set as executive producers. Syfy ordered a pilot in fall 2016.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Originally published: 1959, Viking
Optioned for: Television (Amblin TV/Netflix)
What it’s about: Shirley Jackson’s famous ghost story involves a summer at the eponymous house, as a doctor invites three strangers there to investigate the property’s supposed supernatural possession.
Status: Netflix has given a 10-episode straight-to-series order to the as-yet untitled series, a modern reimagining of The Haunting of Hill House.

Hello, Moto, from “Hello, Moto” by Nnedi Okorafor

Originally published: 2011, Tor.com
Optioned for: Film (Fiery Film)
What it’s about: Scientist and witch Rain hopes that her inventions, wigs that allow their wearers to wield influence and power, will help battle corruption. Instead, she watches her friends Philo and Coco themselves become corrupted, turning them against Rain as she attempts to make up for what she’s done.
Status: Nigerian film/TV company/studio Fiery Film optioned the rights in early 2017.

HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Originally published: 2016, Tor Books
Optioned for: Television (Warner Bros.)
What it’s about: The residents of Black Spring use apps and video surveillance to keep track of their resident witch, who in turn keeps them trapped in Black Spring. But when a group of teenage boys want to broadcast the existence of Katherine van Wyler outside of their tiny town, they risk unleashing an ancient and dangerous magic.
Status: Not much information beyond the initial announcement, but in the meantime, delve into the creepiness of Black Spring by reading an excerpt.

The Hidden Girl, from “The Hidden Girl” by Ken Liu

Originally published: 2017, TBA
Optioned for: Film (Studio 8)
What it’s about: Described as Interstellar meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, “The Hidden Girl” follows a group of assassins who can cross between dimensions. And that’s all we know about it so far!
Status: Film rights were optioned before Liu’s story was even published; it will appear in the 2017 anthology The Book of Swords, edited by Gardner Dozois. Find out more about the film adaptation.

The Hike by Drew Magary

Originally published: 2016, Viking
Optioned for: Television (IM Global Television)
What it’s about: On a business trip in rural Pennsylvania, suburban family man Ben decides to take a short hike before his dinner meeting… only to find himself lost in the woods, his path crossed by a talking crab, a futuristic hovercraft, a 16th-century Spanish explorer, and even more surreal encounters.
Status: David S. Goyer (Batman v Superman) is producing the show, with Magary adapting his novel to pilot.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

Originally Published: 1995, Scholastic UK/1996, Alfred A. Knopf
Optioned for: Television (BBC One)
What it’s about: Lyra, an orphan, and her trusty dæmon Pan travel through parallel universes in order to learn the truth about her parents, prophecies about Lyra’s place in the fight against celestial beings, and the meaning behind the mysterious Dust.
Status: The BBC is partnering with New Line Cinema (who produced the movie version of The Golden Compass in 2007) to adapt all three books for television, with author Philip Pullman drawing comparisons to Game of Thrones and The Wire. Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) will write the teleplay, under the watch of producers Jane Tranter and Julie Gardner (Doctor Who).

The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs

Originally published: 1973, Dial
Optioned for: Film (Mythology Entertainment)
What it’s about: Bellairs’ eerie middle-grade books follow Lewis Barnavelt and his mysterious warlock uncle Jonathan Barnavelt as they get tangled up with black magic, ancient artificats, and the apocalypse.
Status: Supernatural creator Eric Kripke was attached to adapt the series, but no movement seems to have been made on the project since 2012. In the meantime, read Grady Hendrix’s nostalgic thoughts on Bellairs!

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Originally published: 2014, Quirk Books
Optioned for: Television (Fox)
What it’s about: The novel follows five employees at the ORSK furniture superstore, as they volunteer to take an all-nighter shift to find out what’s behind the mysterious damage at their store. Fox’s supernatural dramedy (co-written by The O.C. creator Josh Schwartz and produced by Charlie Kaufman) seems to be building out this story into more serialized form, focusing on slacker protagonist Amy.
Status: No update yet.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman

Originally published: 2006, HarperCollins/Headline Review
Optioned for: Film (A24)
What it’s about: Enn (Alex Sharp, from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time on Broadway) and his friends go to a party trying to talk to girls, only to discover that the girls, especially Zan (Elle Fanning), are not what he expected.
Status: Filming began in November 2015, with the movie expected to be released sometime in 2016.

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

Originally published: 2018, G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Optioned for: Film, 20th Century Fox
What it’s about: A retelling of the Donner Party tragedy, but with zombies.
Status: 20th Century Fox snapped up the film rights to former CIA analyst Katsu’s book proposal—she is currently writing the novel—with Luke Scott (The Martian) attached to direct the film.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Originally published: 1989, Doubleday
Optioned for: Television (Syfy)
What it’s about: On the eve of armageddon brought about by galactic war, seven pilgrims set out to the Shrike, hidden in the Valley of Time Tombs. Each has a riddle, a hope, and a secret.
Status: Bradley Cooper, who has been trying to adapt the novel for years, is now working with Syfy to adapt the novel into an “event series” (i.e., miniseries). Itamar Moses (Boardwalk Empire) is set to write the screenplay.

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Originally published: 2015, Knopf
Optioned for: Film (Warner Bros./Plan B Entertainment)
What it’s about: Told through a series of letters, chat conversations, and dossiers, a teenage hacker and her pilot ex must struggle with their broken relationship while unearthing an interstellar conspiracy.
Status: No update since the first announcement in 2015.

Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice

Originally published: 1976, Knopf
Optioned for: Film (Universal Pictures)
What it’s about: Louis de Pointe du Lac tells his life story to a reporter—but as life stories go, it’s a doozy, spanning over two centuries of being a vampire alongside his maker Lestat and their bloodthirsty charge Claudia.
Status: For a long time the rumors were that Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) was working on a movie adaptation that combined the plots of The Vampire Lestat and The Queen of the Damned. Then Boone clarified in 2016 that he was remaking Interview, by sharing a page from the script on Instagram. He has also hinted that Jared Leto could play Lestat, though that has not been confirmed.

Jake Ellis, from Who Is Jake Ellis? by Nathan Edmondson

Originally published: 2011, Image Comics
Optioned for: Film (20th Century Fox)
What it’s about: Silas’ life is turned upside-down when he discovers that the voice in his head—an entire personality named Jake Ellis—is a result of human experimentation. With Jake Ellis’ help, Silas flees the people chasing him as he tries to learn what happened to him. (In the comics, Silas was former CIA analyst-turned-criminal Jon Moore; it’s unclear if the film will stick to this original background.)
Status: Josh Mond (James White) will direct the adaptation, taking over for David Yates; they’re currently looking for a screenwriter.

The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss

Originally published: 2007, DAW Books
Optioned for: Film, Television, & Video Games (Lionsgate)
What it’s about: In Rothfuss’ fantasy trilogy—the first two books of which have been published—adventurer and musician Kvothe tells his life story, with the majority of the series made up by the flashbacks.
Status: Lionsgate plans to adapt the books into movies and a TV series and tie-in video games… and perhaps eventually for the stage? At any rate, it’s in good hands: Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda will serve as creative producer overseeing this burgeoning franchise, and John Rogers will serve as showrunner of the TV series.

The Last Girl by Joe Hart

Originally published: 2016, Thomas & Mercer
Optioned for: Television (Amazon Studios)
What it’s about: Twenty-five years after a worldwide epidemic reduced the female birth population from 50 percent to 1 percent, an entire generation grows up with a population of fewer than a thousand women. Held captive in a scientific facility looking for the cure, Zoey seeks to escape beyond the walls of the facility rather than be subjected to a potentially fatal round of experiments. But after being isolated from her family for two decades, Zoey has no idea what kind of world awaits her outside of the walls of her prison.
Status: According to Publishers Marketplace, Amazon Studios has nabbed the TV rights to Hart’s dystopian novel.

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

Originally published: 2012, Quirk Books
Optioned for: Television (CBS)
What it’s about: Asteroid 2011GV1 is hurtling toward Earth, the human race has six months left to live, people are leaving their jobs to hole up in churches to pray, and yet Detective Hank Palace is still solving murders.
Status: No updates since the original announcement in 2012, so it’s likely in development hell.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore (writer) and Kevin O’Neill (artist)

Originally published: 1999, DC Comics
Optioned for: Film (20th Century Fox)
What it’s about: The ongoing comic book series teams up a bevy of Victorian characters from literature—including Mina Murray, Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Doctor Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, and the Invisible Man—to fight various nasties.
Status: The 2003 movie adaptation starring Sean Connery tanked, but Fox is rebooting itself over a decade later. No cast has yet been announced.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

Originally published: 2006, Bantam Spectra
Optioned for: Television (TBA)
What it’s about: Elite con artists the Gentleman Bastards—counting among their ranks their leader Father Chains and his protege Locke Lamora—rob the rich in the Venice-like city of Camorr on a distant planet. As Locke comes of age, the Gentleman Bastards find themselves fighting the mysterious Gray King, looking to take over the criminal underworld.
Status: Warner Bros. had acquired the film rights shortly after the book’s release in 2006, but those seem to have lapsed. In 2014, TV writer Ryan Condal (The Sixth Gun) claimed that he was writing a pilot; Lynch neither confirmed nor denied that he was confirming or denying the news.

Lilith’s Brood by Octavia E. Butler

Originally published: 1987, Grand Central Publishing
Optioned for: Television (Bainframe)
What it’s about: Lilith’s Brood is a trilogy, in which the alien Oankali save humans from themselves, but for a price (Dawn); some humans agree to mate and evolve with the Oankali, while others revolt (Adulthood Rites); and there emerges a new generation of human-Oankali hybrids (Imago).
Status: Allen Bain acquired the rights in 2015 and shared with io9 some of his ideas about how to adapt some of the series’ fascinating visuals (organic, not mechanical, ships) and controversial themes (interspecies sex with multiple partners) for television. It sounds as if Bainframe is still focusing on adapting the material before looking for a distributor and network/platform.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Originally published: 2008, Tor Books
Optioned for: Film (Paramount Pictures)
What it’s about: Cory Doctorow’s modern techno-thriller follows a 17-year-old hacker in the wrong place at the wrong time following a terrorist attack on San Francisco, and how he and his friends must fend for themselves when their home becomes a police state.
Status: In 2015, Paramount Pictures acquired Cory Doctorow’s hacker series as its own “reality-based” YA franchise; no update since then.

The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu

Originally published: 2013, Angry Robot Books
Optioned for: Television (ABC)
What it’s about: IT consultant Roen Tan must become a secret agent when he’s taken over by an ancient alien named Tao. He soon learns that whether he likes it or not, he’s part of a terrifying alien civil war—and one side is quite willing to wipe humanity out in order to win. Roen must fight to save his species, while also training to become a real secret agent.
Status: Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, the executive producers behind Agent Carter, are developing the series with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter‘s Chris Dingess. Chu will serve as a consultant.

Lock In by John Scalzi

Originally published: 2014, Tor Books
Optioned for: Television (Legendary TV)
What it’s about: Legendary TV, behind The Expanse and Colony, optioned the rights to Lock In to develop a pilot about the virus that paralyzes one percent (or five million) of the population; these people are called Hadens, after Haden’s Syndrome. Twenty-five years later, the murder of a Haden brings in the FBI, with the main suspect being an Integrator, or one who lets the Hadens use their bodies.
Status: Still very much in the early stages. In a recent interview, Scalzi cautioned fans of his books to “not get too excited” about his various optioned projects until they’ve heard that they’ve been greenlit and/or that production has wrapped.

Locke & Key by Joe Hill

Originally published: 2008, IDW Publishing
Optioned for: Television (Hulu)
What it’s about: After the gruesome murder of their father/husband, the Locke family moves in to their family estate on the island of Lovecraft, Massachusetts. As the Locke boys mourn their father, they also discover a set of magical keys that open strange doors in the house… but that also draw out creatures who’ve been looking for those locks and keys.
Status: Locke & Key has gone through a number of failed adaptations, from a Dimension Films movie to a TV series—that Fox greenlit in 2011, only to pass on—to a movie trilogy from Universal Pictures. Hulu has ordered a pilot written by Hill, with Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel) producing and Scott Derrickson (Doctor Strange) directing the pilot.

Logan’s Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson

Originally published: 1967, Dial Press
Optioned for: Film (Warner Bros.)
What it’s about: In the dystopian future of 2116, the population lives only to 21; on citizens’ Lastdays, they are executed, or those who attempt to escape are run down by Sandmen. Logan-5, a Sandman, plans to ring in his 21st birthday by tracking down the rumored Sanctuary that takes in runners; instead, he becomes sympathetic to their cause.
Status: The 1976 movie adaptation became a cult classic but changed some key details (like raising the age from 21 to 30). Joel Silver, Simon Kinberg, and Ryan Condal are teaming up on a new film that will hew closer to the original novel.

Lumberjanes by Shannon Watters (writer), Grace Ellis (writer), Brooke A. Allen (artist), and Noelle Stevenson (writer)

Originally published: 2014, Boom! Studios
Optioned for: Film (20th Century Fox)
What it’s about: Boom! Studios describes its beloved series as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Gravity Falls and features five butt-kicking, rad teenage girls wailing on monsters and solving a mystery with the whole world at stake.”
Status: Emily Carmichael (Powerhouse) will direct the adaptation.

Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald

Originally published: 2015, Tor Books/Gollancz
Optioned for: Television (CBS)
What it’s about: In 2110, fifty years after the Moon’s colonization, the top ruling families—the Five Dragons—are intermarrying, poisoning, sabotaging, and battling for control of the Moon.
Status: CBS Television Studios won the bidding war over adaptation rights in late 2015. In the meantime, we made a handy chart showing you how everyone is related in this drama some are likening to “Game of Thrones on the Moon.”

MaddAddam, from The MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood

Originally published: 2003, Doubleday/Bloomsbury
Optioned for: Television (TBD)
What it’s about: The speculative fiction trilogy follows the 21st-century human race before and after the Waterless Flood, brought about by corporations’ control and an overabundance of genetically-engineered organisms. The latter two books look at the survivors of the Flood and how they rebuild society.
Status: In late 2016, HBO said that the project was dead. Director Darren Aronofsky is still trying to make the adaptation happen, but it’s unclear how, with whom, or when.

Meg by Steve Alten

Originally published: 1997, Bantam Books
Optioned for: Film (Warner Bros/Gravity Pictures)
What it’s about: When a deep-sea submersible is stuck in a trench at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean after an attack by a prehistoric shark called the Megalodon, expert deep sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) must rescue the crew. Why is he the best man for the job? Because he’s the only one who has encountered this creature before.
Status: Comes to theaters March 2, 2018. Check out the first production photo.

Mika Model, from “Mika Model” by Paolo Bacigalupi

Originally published: 2016, Slate
Optioned for: Film (Netflix)
What it’s about: Bacigalupi’s short story “Mika Model,” written as part of Slate’s Future Tense initiative, has drawn comparisons to Ex Machina for its examination of whether a robot (a sex bot, no less) is capable of murder. Detective Rivera finds himself grappling not only with his attraction to the fantasy-in-the-synthetic-flesh, but also with issues of morality and justice.
Status: Up-and-comer David Weil is in talks to adapt the screenplay, as the subject matter matches one of his spec screenplays that made it onto the 2014 Hit List. Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum, Real Steel) will produce.

The Monolith by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray (writers) and Phil Winslade (artist)

Originally published: 2004, Image Comics
Optioned for: Film (Lionsgate)
What it’s about: In this modern-day retelling of the golem legend, ex-junkie Alice Cohen inherits a Brooklyn house from her grandmother, only to discover a diary from the 1930s detailing the creation of a monster that would avenge a good man’s death.
Status: Dave Wilson (creative director of the studio that made Deadpool) will direct a screenplay by Barnett Brettler.

Mort by Terry Pratchett

Originally published: 1987, Gollancz
Optioned for: Film (Narrativia)
What it’s about: Hapless Mort lives up to his name when he becomes the apprentice to Death. But he is torn between helping his master usher souls into the afterlife and the desire to change destiny for pretty princesses and others called before their time.
Status: Recently announced at Pratchett’s memorial. Terry Rossio (Aladdin, Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) will write the adapted screenplay.

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

Originally published: 2001, Scholastic
Optioned for: Film (Universal Pictures/MRC)
What it’s about: Mortal Engines is the first book in a quartet set in a distant future called the Traction Era. A catastrophic Sixty-Minute War laid waste to Earth, and obliterated national boundaries. People rebuilt society by focusing on “Traction Cities”—that is, mobile city-states that are mounted on tracks and can attack each other for resources as part of a system known as “Municipal Darwinism.”
Status: Peter Jackson will adapt the screenplay (with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) and produce the film, with his protégé Christian Rivers directing. The cast includes Robert Sheehan, Patrick Malahide, Stephen Lang, Jihae, and Leila George.

Mouse Guard by David Peterson

Originally published: 2006, Archaia Studios Press
Optioned for: Film (Fox)
What it’s about: Peterson’s graphic novel series follows the Mouse Guard, a brotherhood of medieval mice in an alternate-history world without humans, protecting their fellow mice from predators.
Status: Rogue One screenwriter Gary Whitta will pen the adaptation, with War for the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves producing. The movie will employ motion-capture technology to try to mimic the art and feel of Peterson’s story.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Originally published: 1934, Collins Crime Club
Optioned for: Film (Fox)
What it’s about: Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Peña, Derek Jacobi, Leslie Odom Jr., and others form the ensemble for Christie’s famous mystery about Hercule Poirot’s attempts to solve a murder aboard the Orient Express, with the murderer among the passengers.
Status: Kenneth Branagh will direct and costar as Poirot.

Needle in a Timestack, from “Needle in a Timestack” by Robert Silverberg

Originally published: 1983, Playboy
Optioned for: Film (Miramax)
What it’s about: Silverberg’s short story follows “a devoted husband who will stop at nothing to save his marriage when it is destroyed by a time traveling rival.”
Status: 12 Years a Slave producer John Ridley will write and direct the adaptation.

Newsflesh by Mira Grant

Originally published: 2010, Orbit Books
Optioned for: Film (Electric Entertainment)
What it’s about: In 2040, the post-zombie generation is all infected with a miracle-cure-turned-infection that will cause them to amplify at death, used to routine blood tests and carrying a gun to ward off wild undead, and get all their news from bloggers like the After the End Times. The first book, Feed, sees Georgia and Shaun Mason following the Republican senator on the campaign trail, though they hit a few zombie-shaped stumbling blocks. Learn more about the world of Newsflesh here.
Status: The rights were optioned in 2012, but there doesn’t seem to have been much movement made on the project so far. We want to see the Masons move from the computer screen to the silver screen!

October Daye by Seanan McGuire

Originally published: 2009, DAW
Optioned for: Television (Kung Fu Monkey Productions)
What it’s about: After being cursed by someone from the world of Fae, changeling October Daye is ready to embrace only the human half of her heritage. But when she gets geased into investigating a murdered fae, she must return to the kingdom of Fae, hidden just beneath the surface of the San Francisco Bay Area.
Status: The film rights were acquired in 2013, but as of 2014, McGuire had no updates to share on the project. In a recent column, Foz Meadows made the case for adapting the October Daye books—but as a TV series. As it turns out, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries writer Margaret Dunlap is adapting the series for television, but as she explained in a recent podcast, it’s a slow process.

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg

Originally published: 2014, 47North
Optioned for: Movie (Walt Disney Company)
What it’s about: After graduating from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony Twill is heartbroken when she’s assigned an apprenticeship with paper magic instead of her true love, metal magic. And once she bonds to paper, she won’t be able to do any other magic. But as she finds herself warming up to bespelling paper, she also discovers forbidden, dark magic, at great price.
Status: Producer Allison Shearmur (The Hunger Games, Rogue One) has picked up the project for Disney.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

Originally published: 2010, Ballantine Books
Optioned for: Television (Fox)
What it’s about: Cronin’s trilogy takes place over about a century, and combines elements of a tense conspiracy thriller, a post-apocalyptic horror, and a vampire tale, while focusing on the young girl who is the last hope for humanity.
Status: Fox has committed to a pilot for The Passage. Ridley Scott’s production company, Scott Free, will be working with Fox, Friday Night Lights’ Liz Helden, and Matt Reeves (director of Cloverfield and Let Me In) to adapt the book. Cronin will also be a co-producer.

Queen of Shadows, from the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas

Originally published: 2012, Bloomsbury
Optioned for: Television (Hulu)
What it’s about: In a land without magic, assassin Celaena Sardothien must fight 23 challengers in order to win her freedom… to become the champion of a tyrannical king.
Status: Kira Snyder (The 100, The Handmaid’s Tale) will write the pilot, with Anna Foerster (Outlander, Underworld: Blood Wars) set to direct.

Ranger’s Apprentice, from the Ranger’s Apprentice series by John Flanagan

Originally published: 2004, Philomel (US & Canada) and Random House (Australia & New Zealand)
Optioned for: Film (Dick Cook Studios)
What it’s about: After spending the first fifteen years of his life wanting to be a Ranger, with their dark cloaks and shadowy ways, Will finally gets the chance when he is selected as a Ranger’s apprentice. But he quickly learns that not only are the Rangers the protectors of the kingdom, but there’s a battle brewing that will need every skill he can obtain.
Status: Paul Haggis and his daughter Alissa Sullivan Haggis are writing the screenplay, with Haggis directing and co-producing. Lou Xiaolou, chairman of China-based financier Film Carnival Co. Ltd., said, “Ranger’s Apprentice is only the beginning to our strategic plan of a more comprehensive collaboration.”

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

Originally published: 2012, Scholastic
Optioned for: Television (Universal Cable Productions)
What it’s about: “[F]our private school boys and a psychic’s daughter … quest for a sleeping king of Welsh legend in the mountains of Virginia, uncovering ancient magic, powerful dreams, and the devils in themselves.”
Status: Publishers Marketplace reported the news.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Originally published: 2011, Crown/Archetype
Optioned for: Film (Amblin Entertainment)
What it’s about: In 2044, most people have abandoned their grim, poverty-stricken reality for the OASIS, a completely immersive MMORPG. When OASIS creator James Halliday passes away, he leaves behind a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-esque Easter egg hunt for his fortune. Leading the search are aspiring gunter (egg hunter) Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), his best friend Aech, and famous gunter Art3mis.
Status: Coming to theaters March 30, 2018.

Real Artists, from “Real Artists” by Ken Liu

Originally published: 2011, MIT Technology Review of Science Fiction
Optioned for: Film (Semaphore Studios)
What it’s about: Young animator Sophia (Bones‘ Tiffany Hines) is offered her dream job; but at the interview with Palladon (Teen Wolf‘s Tamlyn Tomita), she discovers the unsettling secret behind the company’s creative process.
Status: Now that writer-director Cameo Wood and her team have secured funding, they’re in post-production on their adaptation of Liu’s short story.

Revival by Tim Seeley and Mike Norton

Originally published: 2012, Image Comics
Optioned for: Film (Shatterglass Films)
What it’s about: One day, in a town in rural Wisconsin, the dead come back to life. Officer Dana Cypress must deal with outside interference from religious zealots and government quarantines while coping with the return of her recently deceased sister Em.
Status: Shatterglass Films’ Luke Boyce will direct a script co-written by Seeley and Sarah Fischer. Production is expected to start in early 2018; in the meantime, here’s the proof-of-concept teaser trailer.

Redshirts by John Scalzi

Originally published: 2012, Tor Books
Optioned for: Television (FX)
What it’s about: In the 25th century, five new recruits on the Starship Intrepid start to notice the suspiciously high death toll happening to their crew… but their investigations uncover a meta conspiracy. A year after Redshirts won the Hugo Award, FX bought the rights for a limited series on television. At the 2014 LA Festival of Books, Scalzi discussed the adaptation: “The book is the book; the book will always be the book. The book is designed for this medium: to be a novel. When we transfer it to television, we have to take what works in the novel that will also work in the medium of television. You have to understand when you get on the Hollywood train that your book is a source.”
Status: Still very much in the early stages. See also: Lock In.

Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Originally published: 1972, Macmillan
Optioned for: Television (WGN America)
What it’s about: This Russian sci-fi novel centers on Red Schuhart (Matthew Goode), who enters “the Zone”—a dimension formerly inhabited by aliens—to collect mysterious artifacts to sell on the black market. But when something goes wrong in his world, Red must return to the Zone over and over again to find answers.
Status: Jack Paglen (Alien: Covenant) is writing the pilot. Interestingly, Roadside Picnic had previously inspired the 1979 film Stalker.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

Originally published: 2011, Doubleday
Optioned for: Film (Dreamworks)
What it’s about: Basically World War Z with robots, Daniel H. Wilson’s novel provides an oral history of the Singularity and its aftermath.
Status: Steven Spielberg has been circling the project for years, but it’s currently been postponed. In late 2014, Wilson clarified that it’s “basically in the queue” behind Spielberg’s other projects. In early 2016, Drew Goddard (The Martian) put a positive spin on the delays: “There are so many times when projects don’t go at a certain release date but find a better home later” and “It was just a joy to see [Spielberg] in action and learn from him.”

Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona

Originally published: 2003, Marvel Comics
Optioned for: Television (Hulu)
What it’s about: Upon discovering that their parents are supervillains, six teenagers steal or embrace newfound superpowers and fight to right their parents’ wrongdoings.
Status: Josh Schwartz (The O.C.) and Stephanie Savage (Gossip Girl) will write the pilot and executive produce alongside Marvel Television’s Jeph Loeb (who had a hand in Jessica Jones) and Jim Chory (Daredevil). The Runaways and The Pride have been cast, but no release date has yet been announced.

The Sandman by Neil Gaiman

Originally published: 1989, Vertigo
Optioned for: Film (Warner Bros/DC Entertainment)
What it’s about: After escaping nearly a century of imprisonment, Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams and one of the Endless, goes about rebuilding his kingdom. Along the way, he visits Hell and Asgard, attempts to undo massive sins, and searches for his missing brother.
Status: The production team, which includes David S. Goyer (Batman v Superman) and Gaiman executive producing, is trying to condense the massive epic into a movie without going straight-up action movie. The production suffered a slight setback when Joseph Gordon-Levitt exited amid creative differences, but it looks as if Goyer and co. are continuing on. No release date set yet.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Originally published: 2016, Simon & Schuster
Optioned for: Film (Universal/Bluegrass Films)
What it’s about: Despite eradicating all disease, hunger, and war, humankind must still keep the population levels manageable, through trained killers known as scythes. Two teens, Citra and Rowan, are unwillingly apprenticed to a scythe, knowing that they must learn this “art” of killing or risk losing their lives instead.
Status: Scott Stuber and Dylan Clark will produce the adaptation for Bluegrass Films, with 10 Cloverfield Laneadapting Shusterman’s YA novel screenwriters Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken .

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

Originally published: 2015, William Morrow
Optioned for: Film (Skydance)
What it’s about: When the Moon unexpectedly blows up, it turns Earth into a ticking time bomb—prompting humans to create a multinational ark in the hopes of finding a new home before theirs is uninhabitable. Five thousand years later, the seven distinct races created from the survivors return to explore the foreign planet Earth.
Status: Director-producer duo Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are reteaming with Apollo 13 screenwriter Bill Broyles to adapt Neal Stephenson’s doorstopper of a generation ship novel.

The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty

Originally published: 2013, Orbit Books
Optioned for: Film (Netflix)
What it’s about: Travel writer Zoe takes a shady job in New York City’s publishing industry… writing a travel guide to the Big Apple for the undead.
Status: Netflix, which has begun releasing other feature films including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny and Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, is counting on The Shambling Guide to hit the sweet spot between YA and urban fantasy with this adaptation.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Originally published: 2013, Mulholland Books
Optioned for: Film (MRC)
What it’s about: Beukes’ celebrated time travel centers on Midwest serial killer Harper Curtis, who discovers a wormhole in a house that allows him to jump through time and hunt down the “shining girls” whose auras compel him; and Kirby Mizrachi, the only victim to survive an attack and (as she grows up) his eventual nemesis.
Status: Previously considered for television, The Shining Girls looks to be a film now. Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game, Passengers) is in talks to direct the adaptation, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davison Killoran producing. Danny Boyle was previously attached to write the screenplay but left the project; perhaps Beukes, who is adapting her novel Zoo City as a screenplay, will take a stab at it.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Originally published: 2010, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Optioned for: Film (Far East)
What it’s about: The novel, set after the melting of the polar ice caps, contemplates a world in which many major cities are underwater and follows a young boy named Nailer who tries to help a girl named Nita escape a blackmail plot.
Status: Oscar-winning writer/director Paul Haggis (Million Dollar Baby, Crash) will direct the adaptation, the first in a planned trilogy.

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

Originally published: 1953, Geoffrey Bles
Optioned for: Film (TriStar Pictures)
What it’s about: The fourth Chronicles of Narnia installment sees Aslan calling upon Eustace Scrubb (from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and his classmate Jill Pole to recover King Caspian X’s missing son and only heir.
Status: TriStar, The Mark Gordon Company, eOne, and The C.S. Lewis Company are rebooting the Narnia movie franchise, with David Magee (Finding Neverland, Life of Pi) writing the script.

Six Months, Three Days by Charlie Jane Anders

Originally published: 2011, Tor.com
Optioned for: Television (NBC)
What it’s about: Charlie Jane Anders’ Hugo-winning Tor.com novellette tracks the doomed relationship between a man who can see the future and a woman who can see many futures.
Status: In 2013, NBC nabbed the rights to adapt the novelette (with Krysten Ritter producing) into “a light procedural” that recasts the man and woman as bickering private investigators who know they’ll fall in love… if they can save him from getting killed in six months and three days. Unfortunately, no update since then.

Skin Trade by George R.R. Martin

Originally published: 1989, Orion Publishing
Optioned for: Television (Cinemax)
What it’s about: George R.R. Martin describes his 1988 novella as an “offbeat werewolf noir”: Private investigator Randi Wade gets involved in a string of gruesome serial killings (taking the skin of victims) that reminds her of her father’s death two decades prior. But when a close friend becomes a target, she’s pulled into a hairy underworld.
Status: Cinemax has ordered a pilot script, to be written by Kalinda Vazquez (Prison Break, Once Upon a Time).

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

Originally published: 2017, Scribner
Optioned for: Television (TBD)
What it’s about: The inhabitants of a women’s prison in a small Appalachian town become shrouded in gauze when they go to sleep every night; if their slumber is disturbed, they turn feral and violent. All except Evie, who seems to be immune…
Status: Michael Sugar and Ashley Zalta (The OA, Maniac) will serve as executive producers.

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

Originally published: 2005, Tor Books
Optioned for: Television (Syfy)
What it’s about: The Big Blackout cuts Earth off from the stars and sun through an alien barrier. With time passing faster outside of the barrier than on Earth, the youngest generation discovers that they may be the last: The sun will die in forty years unless someone figures out how to reverse this apocalypse or find new life on Mars.
Status: Syfy is supposedly planning a six-hour miniseries, but it wasn’t announced with the last crop of premieres, so it’s likely on the back burner.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Originally published: 2014, Knopf Doubleday
Optioned for: Film (Stone Village Productions)
What it’s about: The Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel envisions a post-apocalyptic future twenty years after a flu pandemic wiped out much of civilization. The story is told through Kirsten Raymonde and The Traveling Symphony, a roaming troupe of actors keeping the arts and humanity alive.
Status: Stone Village, who is also adapting Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan, recently acquired movie rights.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Originally published: 1961, Putnam Publishing Group
Optioned for: Television (Syfy)
What it’s about: Heinlein’s classic novel tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who was raised by Martians, and who has to find way to adapt to human society after coming to live on Earth.
Status: Paramount TV and Universal Cable Productions (who have also collaborated on the series Shooter and Pendergast) are teaming up to adapt the novel.

Temeraire by Naomi Novik

Originally published: 2006, Del Rey
Optioned for: Film or Television (TBD)
What it’s about: Alternate-history Napoleonic Wars in which protagonist Captain Will Laurence is part of the Aerial Corps, battling the French forces on the backs of fearsome dragons like his own, Temeraire.
Status: Peter Jackson optioned the rights in 2006 but has not made any moves to develop the project. According to quotes he gave in 2009, it would seem that he had originally intended to make a film trilogy, then realized that the material would be better suited to a miniseries. Unfortunately, that was in a pre-Game of Thrones world where epic fantasies didn’t exist so comfortably on the small screen. There’s been no word since, and Jackson is busy with a number of other projects; but more than one outlet has suggested he turn his attention back to Temeraire.

The Terror by Dan Simmons

Originally published: 2007, Little, Brown and Company
Optioned for: Television (AMC)
What it’s about: In 1847, a Royal Naval expedition crew searching for the Northwest Passage is attacked by a mysterious predator that stalks their ships and crew.
Status: Mad Men‘s Jared Harris has signed on to star in AMC’s anthology series, based on Simmons’ novel.

The Themis Files, from Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

Originally published: 2016, Del Rey
Optioned for: Film (Sony Pictures Entertainment)
What it’s about: After falling through the ground and into the palm of a giant metal hand as a child, Rose Franklin, now grown-up and a physicist, leads a team to discover the answers behind the hand… and where the rest of the body is.
Status: Josh Bratman (Fright Night) and Matt Tolmach (The Amazing Spider-Man) will co-produce the film adaptation.

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Originally published: 2013, Disney Hyperion
Optioned for: Television (Freeform)
What it’s about: When the massive luxury spaceliner Icarus crashes into the closest planet, the only survivors are Lilac LaRoux (daughter of the richest man in the universe) and Tarver Merendsen (a war hero with humble origins). As these literally star-crossed lovers help each other survive, they begin to wonder if they even want to get off their new planet.
Status: Actor and producer Eric Balfour is teaming up with his producing partner Stephanie Varella and Fargo producer Warren Littlefield to adapt the first book in the Starbound trilogy (which includes This Shattered World and Their Fractured Light, both published). Continuum creator/showrunner Simon Barry will write the teleplay.

This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

Originally published: 2016, HarperCollins
Optioned for: Film (Sony Pictures/Safehouse Pictures)
What it’s about: In the dystopian V-City, violent acts have bred actual monsters. One monster, August, can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. But as he tries to tamp down his murderous impulses, he finds himself teamed up with Kate, the daughter of an extortionist, after an assassination attempt.
Status: Sony has optioned the film rights.

Time Salvager by Wesley Chu

Originally published: 2015, Tor Books
Optioned for: Film (Paramount Pictures)
What it’s about: Convicted criminal James Griffin-Mars is a chronman: He jumps back and forth in time to help delay humanity’s demise in the future. But when he brings a scientist from the past into the future with him, they both become fugitives.
Status: Michael Bay will direct the film adaptation, with Wesley Chu executive-producing.

Trees by Warren Ellis (writer) and Jason Howard (artist)

Originally published: 2014, Image Comics
Optioned for: Television (Hardy Son & Baker/NBCUniversal)
What it’s about: Aliens land on Earth, but they don’t make contact—they just stand on the surface, exerting silent pressure, refusing to acknowledge humans as intelligent life.
Status: Tom Hardy’s production company is currently developing the TV adaptation.

The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire

Originally published: 2012, Top Shelf Productions/IDW Publishing
Optioned for: Film (Anonymous Content)
What it’s about: Jack is an offshore oil rig worker who undertakes the dangerous work of underwater welding to repair the rig. Deep on one dive, Jack encounters a supernatural creature that allows him to interact with the ghost of his father.
Status: Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, and Anonymous Content will serve as producers on the adaptation.

Unearthed by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Originally published: 2017, Hyperion
Optioned for: Film (Cross Creek Pictures)
What it’s about: Unearthed is the first book of a forthcoming duology by the writing duo behind These Broken Stars and is described as “Lara Croft meets Indiana Jones, set in deep space.”
Status: Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman is planning to direct the adaptation.

Uprising, from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

Originally published: 1966, G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Optioned for: Film (20th Century Fox)
What it’s about: Heinlein’s Hugo-winning novel depicts the revolt of a former Lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority controlling it from Earth (no doubt where the movie’s title comes from)—a rebellion that counts among its numbers a technician, an academic, and an artificial intelligence committed to the cause.
Status: Fox picked up the movie rights in 2015, with X-Men‘s Bryan Singer attached to direct. This will be the third attempted adaptation of the novel; DreamWorks and Phoenix Pictures both had projects in the works at some point, but each time the rights reverted back to Heinlein’s estate.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Originally published: 2015, Del Rey
Optioned for: Film (Warner Bros)
What it’s about: Plain, clumsy, loyal Agnieszka is handed over to the Dragon, a fearsome wizard who takes one girl from her village every ten years. She never expected to be taken—expected he would take her beautiful, brave best friend Kasia—but as Agnieszka begins exploring the magic she never knew she had, it soon becomes clear why the Dragon felt compelled to take her instead.
Status: Naomi Novik is working with Ellen DeGeneres to adapt the novel.

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

Originally published: 1898, William Heinemann
Optioned for: Television (The Firm/MTV)
What it’s about: An unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his brother in London watch as Martians invade southern London.
Status: Teen Wolf creators Jeff Davis and Andrew Cochran will adapt Wells’ iconic novel for television.

The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett

Originally published: 2009, Del Rey
Optioned for: Film (New Harlem Partnership)
What it’s about: Three young survivors of vicious demon (or coreling) attacks step beyond the safe bounds of warded magic to discover secrets about the past and figure out how to level the playing field between humans and corelings.
Status: After Paul W.S. Anderson’s hold on the rights expired, Spike Seldin (The A-Team) and Hans Futterman picked them up. Brett will adapt his novel into a screenplay. New Harlem is currently meeting with potential financiers and distributors.

The Warriors by Sol Yurick

Originally published: 1965, E.P. Dutton
Optioned for: Television (Paramount TV/Hulu)
What it’s about: When they’re framed for the murder of the leader of New York City’s street gangs, the eponymous Warriors must race back to their home turf of Coney Island before the rival gangs tear them apart.
Status: The Russo brothers (Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Civil War) will direct a script from Frank Baldwin as a one-hour drama.

The Watch, from the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett

Originally published: 1983, Colin Smythe
Optioned for: Television (Narrativia)
What it’s about: Described as a “Pratchett-style CSI,” this procedural would pull from stories about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch from the Discworld novels.
Status: In the Discworld Monthly Newsletter released in November 2015, Pratchett’s assistant Rob Wilkins wrote, “There will be no news from Narrativia regarding the Discworld Watch series until the first day on set.” That would imply that the project is still in some stage of development, without giving any sort of concrete timeline.

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

Originally published: 2010, Tor Books
Optioned for: Film (DMG Entertainment)
What it’s about: The first installment in The Stormlight Archive follows Kaladin, a medical apprentice turned slave; Brightlord Dalinar Kholin, commanding one of ten armies in a war that makes no sense; Shallan, an untried woman seeking to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic; and the fallen Knights Radiant and the Shardblades they left behind.
Status: DMG Entertainment has made a licensing and film deal for the rights to Sanderson’s Cosmere universe. DMG likened the acquisition to obtaining the rights for a comic-book universe, as the Cosmere contains The Stormlight Archive, Mistborn, White Sand, and more. They are currently fast-tracking an adaptation of Way of Kings; screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the writing team behind several Saw films, will adapt the screenplay. DMG is also adapting the Mistborn series for film but has not determined a screenwriter yet. Sanderson will serve as an executive producer. In the meantime, check out our Way of Kings dream-cast.

We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory

Originally published: 2014, Tachyon Publications
Optioned for: Television (Syfy)
What it’s about: Psychotherapist Dr. Jan Sayer brings together the final girls (and final boys) of various horror-movie scenarios for a support group. But in trying to help these survivors, Dr. Sayer unwittingly unlocks the supernatural evils buried within their consciousnesses.
Status: After Wes Craven’s death in 2015, Syfy announced that it still intends to move forward with a number of projects, including We Are All Completely Fine.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Originally published: 1962, Viking Press
Optioned for: Film (Further Films/Great Point Media)
What it’s about: One of Jackson’s best-known stories, We Have Always Lived in the Castle centers on a perverse, possibly murderous family whose isolation from the outside world is upended by a distant cousin (Sebastian Stan) looking to uncover dark secrets.
Status: Michael Douglas is producing the thriller adaptation, from a screenplay written by Stacie Passon (Concussion) and Mark Kruger (Damien, Teen Wolf).

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Originally published: 2003, Doubleday
Optioned for: Film (Narrativia & The Jim Henson Company)
What it’s about: The first of several Tiffany Aching stories, about the young witch-to-be’s discovery of her powers. Armed with her frying pan and common sense, and aided by the Wee Free Men, Tiffany faces off against headless horsemen, dreams come true (in the worst way), and the Elf Queen.
Status: Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna Pratchett announced back in 2013 that she was adapting the novel as a feature-length film, but there were no updates until the project was confirmed at Pratchett’s memorial. The Jim Henson Company will co-produce with Narrativia.

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

Originally published: 1990, Tor Books
Optioned for: Television (Sony Pictures Television)
What it’s about: Everything you need to know is in the Wheel of Time Reread Redux.
Status: In early 2015, a baffling Wheel of Time “pilot” appeared online. Harriet McDougal, the late author’s wife and CEO of the Bandersnatch Group (to whom the movie and TV rights reverted back to in February 2015), released a statement clarifying that the pilot was neither seen nor approved by the Jordan estate. In April 2016, McDougal announced that legal issues had been resolved and “WoT will become a cutting edge TV Series.” A year later came the announcement that Sony Pictures Television would adapt the epic fantasy series alongside Red Eagle Entertainment and Radar Pictures, with Rafe Judkins (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Hemlock Grove, Chuck) serving as showrunner.

Wicked, from Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire

Originally published: 1996, HarperCollins
Optioned for: Film (Universal Pictures)
What it’s about: Maguire’s political and ethical commentary is a revisionist take on the Wicked Witch’s life—reimagining her as Elphaba, the misunderstood, green-skinned girl who befriends another witch-to-be, Galinda, at Shiz University and stumbles upon corruption in the Emerald City.
Status: Technically, the movie is adapting the beloved Broadway musical Wicked, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holtzmann. But since their show was inspired by Maguire’s book, I’m counting it. Universal recently announced the release date: December 20, 2019. The only other information we know so far is that Stephen Daldry and Marc Platt—both producers of the long-running show—will direct and produce, respectively.

Wild Cards, from the Wild Cards series edited by George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass

Originally published: 1987, Bantam Books
Optioned for: Television (Universal Cable Productions)
What it’s about: Martin’s shared-universe anthology tracks the aftermath of an alien virus released after World War II, which killed 90% of those who contracted it but imbued a small number of survivors with extraordinary powers. Some have used them for good, others for evil. The 22 published installments have featured stories by dozens of authors, including Roger Zelazny, Pat Cadigan, Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck, Cherie Priest, Paul Cornell, and more.
Status: Martin recently announced that Universal Cable Productions is adapting the mosaic novels for television, with co-editor Melinda Snodgrass (Star Trek: The Next Generation) as showrunner alongside producer Gregory Noveck from Syfy Films. Martin also invites readers to share their dream casts!

Wildwood by Colin Meloy (writer) and Carson Ellis (illustrator)

Originally published: 2011, Balzer + Bray
Optioned for: Film (LAIKA)
What it’s about: Set in an alternate version of Portland, OR, the middle-grade epic fantasy follows young Prue McKeel, who must enter the Impassable Wilderness after her little brother is abducted by a murder of crows.
Status: LAIKA picked up the rights shortly after publication, but the film, a stop-motion adaptation, has not been released yet.

Witchblade by various authors and artists

Originally published: 1995, Top Cow Productions/Image Comics
Optioned for: Television (Sony Pictures Television/NBC Universal)
What it’s about: NBC’s adaptation will be a police procedural following homicide detective Sara Pezzini, on the hunt for a serial killer only to discover that the bracelet she has worn her entire life is actually the mystical Witchblade amulet, giving her supernatural insight into cases.
Status: Fresh off The Vampire Diaries, Caroline Dries and Brian Young (who wrote the pilot) will executive produce. The last time Witchblade was adapted was as a short-lived TV series in 2001 starring Yancy Butler.

Wool by Hugh Howey

Originally published: 2013, Simon & Schuster
Optioned for: Film (20th Century Fox)
What it’s about: In a post-apocalyptic future characterized by a ruined and toxic landscape, surviving humans live in a silo deep underground. When Sheriff Holston breaks the community’s most important rule, asking to go outside, he is replaced by mechanic Juliette. But as Juliette is entrusted with fixing her silo, she begins to discover just how broken their society is.
Status: Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel screenwriter Nicole Perlman was hired to revise previous drafts of the screenplay. However, there’s been no update on the project since mid-2015.

The Wrong Grave, from “The Wrong Grave” by Kelly Link

Originally published: 2009, Text Publishing
Optioned for: Film (Independent)
What it’s about: Sixteen-year-old Miles Sperry digs up the grave of his girlfriend Bethany Baldwin, who hasn’t been dead for much longer than a year, to recover the bad love poetry he buried with her.
Status: You can follow along with the production on Facebook and the official website.

Xanth series by Piers Anthony

Originally published: 1977, Ballantine Books & Del Rey
Optioned for: Television and Film (SP Entertainment Group)
What it’s about: Anthony’s long-running fantasy saga takes place in the eponymous land of Xanth, whose inhabitants develop their “talent,” or magic, to become powerful magicians while encountering mythological creatures and maybe popping back and forth into Mundania.
Status: Producer Steven Paul’s (Ghost in the Shell, Ghost Rider) SP Entertainment Group is launching development of the Xanth novels into both a feature film and a television series.

Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughn (writer) and Pia Guerra (artist)

Originally published: 2002, Vertigo
Optioned for: Television (FX)
What it’s about: Brian K. Vaughan’s landmark comic book series—and the series that got me hooked on the medium—examines the fallout of a worldwide plague that wipes out everyone with an XY chromosome, except for aspiring escape artist Yorick and his monkey Ampersand. While the female survivors struggle to rebuild society, several groups target the last man and chase him across the Earth.
Status: The producer who wooed Vaughan into adapting his beloved series (which was wrapped up in movie deals for ages) for television? Nina Jacobson, who has a little hit on her hands with the Hunger Games franchise. Fans will be heartened to hear that Vaughan is very involved in the project; in fact, he will co-write the show with showrunner Michael Green (American Gods). Last we heard from FX, the script would be ready by early-to-mid 2017; it will be an ongoing series rather than a limited one.

Zero K by Don DeLillo

Originally published: 2016, Scribner
Optioned for: Television (FX)
What it’s about: Billionaire Ross Lockhart sends his wife Artis Martineau, diagnosed with a terminal illness, to a secret compound where bodies are preserved and death is staved off. With a personal investment now joining his financial stake, Ross hopes that Zero K can help save Artis’ life… but the story is told from the POV of Jeffrey Lockhart, their son.
Status: The rights were optioned before the book was even published.

Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke

Originally published: 2011, First Second Books
Optioned for: Film (Fox Animation)
What it’s about: When her best friend is abducted by an alien doomsday cult, Zita leaps to the rescue—encountering ancient prophecies, doomed planets, and mysterious con men along the way.
Status: Screenwriting duo Morgan Jurgenson and Alex Ankeles (Hyperdrive, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil) will adapt Eisner Award winner Ben Hatke’s Miyazaki-esque graphic novel trilogy.

COMING SOON

American Gods (Television, Starz)

Courtesy of Starz Entertainment, LLC

Adapted from: American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Originally published: 2001, William Morrow
What it’s about: Showrunners Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) and Michael Green (Heroes) are excited to make Gaiman’s novel, about the battles between old gods and new, into a sort of anthology series. (Not to be confused with his reboot of the old-school anthology series Amazing Stories.) That means that in addition to following protagonist Shadow, they’ll also be touching upon other characters, like Bilquis and (we hope) The Technical Boy.
Status: Fuller and his team are hard at work—sharing Twitter gems like this—and making sure they honor the book’s diversity. Most of the cast has been set, with Ricky Whittle as Shadow, Ian McShane as Mr. Wednesday, Emily Browning as Laura Moon, Jonathan Tucker as “Low Key” Lyesmith, and Crispin Glover as Mr. World. Check out this adorable photo from their first table read… then feast your eyes on the first trailer! American Gods will premiere April 30.

Annihilation (Film, Paramount Pictures)

Adapted from: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Originally published: 2014, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
What it’s about: The first installment of VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy follows a biologist (Natalie Portman), a psychologist (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a surveyer, and an anthropologist (Tessa Thompson and Gina Rodriguez, whose roles have not yet been clarified) as they venture into the untamed Area X. They are the twelfth expedition, after their forebears’ explorations ended in violence, madness, and death. The biologist, our narrator, is especially concerned with discovering the secrets of Area X, as they relate to her missing husband (Oscar Isaac). Ex Machina‘s Alex Garland is writing and directing; he talks about the process here.
Status: Comes to theaters sometime in 2017.

Ant-Man and the Wasp (Film, Marvel Studios)

Adapted from: various Marvel Comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: TBD
What it’s about: No official synopsis yet, but presumably the film will focus on Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly).
Status: Comes to theaters July 6, 2018.

Aquaman (Film, DC Entertainment)

Adapted from: various DC Comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1941, DC Comics
What it’s about: No official synopsis yet.
Status: Comes to theaters December 21, 2018.

Avengers: Infinity War

Adapted from: various Marvel Comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1963, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: “Four years after the events of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the Avengers, torn apart after the events of Captain America: Civil War, join forces with the Guardians of the Galaxy to battle Thanos, who is trying to amass the Infinity Stones for a gauntlet that will give him dominion over space, time, and all reality.“
Status: Comes to theaters May 4, 2018.

Beautiful Dreamer (Film, The Colony Media)

Adapted from: “Memories of My Mother” by Ken Liu
Originally published: 2012, Daily Science Fiction
What it’s about: A young woman faced with a terminal illness and two years to live uses space travel and time dilation to visit her daughter every seven years over her lifetime.
Status: After having its West Coast premiere at a film festival in June 2016, this short film should be released online eventually. In the meantime, here’s a calendar of which festivals you can find the film at.

Black Panther (Film, Marvel Studios)

Adapted from: various Marvel Comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1966, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: After the events of Captain America: Civil War, T’Challa “returns home to the isolated, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to take his place as King. However, when an old enemy reappears on the radar, T’Challa’s mettle as King and Black Panther is tested when he is drawn into a conflict that puts the entire fate of Wakanda and the world at risk.”
Status: Comes to theaters February 16, 2018.

The Circle (Film, Playtone/EuropaCorp)

Adapted from: The Circle by Dave Eggers
Originally published: 2013, McSweeney’s
What it’s about: Mae Holland (Emma Watson) thinks she’s landed a dream job at The Circle, a powerful social media company. But when the company’s founder (Tom Hanks) pressures her to become an on-camera presence instead of just being behind-the-scenes, she finds herself bombarded by followers and their expectations, which threaten her identity.
Status: In theaters April 28; watch the latest trailer!

Cloak and Dagger (Television, Freeform/Marvel Television)

Adapted from: Cloak and Dagger by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1983, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: Marvel is expanding its television universe with a show aimed at teenagers on Freeform (formerly known as ABC Family). Tandy “Dagger” Bowen and Tyrone “Cloak” Johnson are an unusual duo, in that their superpowers are incredibly complementary: She can create daggers of light, while he can engulf others in total darkness. No word yet on which of Cloak and Dagger’s many Marvel Comics plotlines the show will actually be based.
Status: Writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Beyond the Lights, An Untamed State) will direct the pilot, and the leads have been cast: former Disney Channel star Olivia Holt will play Tandy, while The Night Of’s Aubrey Joseph will portray Tyrone. The series is expected to premiere in early 2018. Watch the first trailer!

Dark Phoenix (Film, 20th Century Fox)

Adapted from: Uncanny X-Men (“The Dark Phoenix Saga”) by Chris Claremont (writer) and John Byrne (writer/artist)
Originally published: 1980, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: No official synopsis yet, but it will presumably pick up after the events of X-Men: Apocalypse.
Status: Comes to theaters November 2, 2018.

The Dark Tower (Film & Television, Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Adapted from: The Dark Tower by Stephen King
Originally published: 2003, Plume Books
What it’s about: Stephen King has described the series as his magnum opus: Combining themes from sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and Western, it follows a gunslinger (Idris Elba), the Man in Black he’s following (Matthew McConaughey), and his quest to find a tower that is both physical and metaphorical.
Status: Sony Pictures Entertainment is partnering with Media Rights Capital to produce a number of movies as well as a complementary TV series. Screenwriter Nikolaj Arcel (the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), who taught himself English in order to read King’s books, wrote the script. The Dark Tower, the first movie, opens in theaters in summer 2017, after the release date was pushed back from February. (Check out more stills here.) And later in 2017 or in 2018, once the movie is coming to cable or streaming services, the TV show will premiere: Based on Wizard and Glass, it’s a 10-to-13-episode prequel series following a young Roland.

Deadpool 2 (Film, 20th Century Fox)

Adapted from: various Marvel Comics by various authors and artists; created by Rob Liefeld (artist) and Fabian Nicieza (writer)
Originally published: 1991, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: We don’t have an official synopsis yet, but we do know that it will include Cable (Josh Brolin).
Status: Comes to theaters June 1, 2018.

The Defenders (Television, Netflix)

Adapted from: various Marvel Comics characters
Originally published: N/A
What it’s about: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist team up in New York City against a threat (which will somehow involve Sigourney Weaver).
Status: Premieres August 18; watch the latest teaser.

Drink, Slay, Love (Television, Lifetime)

Adapted from: Drink, Slay, Love by Sarah Beth Durst
Originally published: 2011, Margaret K. McElderry Books
What it’s about: After a unicorn stabs her through the heart, eternally-sixteen-year-old vampire Pearl discovers that she’s able to walk around in sunlight without getting burned to a crisp. When the Vampire King of New England chooses Pearl’s family to host his annual feast, she must enroll in high school to procure some fresh meat for the meal. But as she finds friends and love interests in high school, something begins to eat away at her—not bloodlust, but a conscience.
Status: Bella Thorne will co-executive produce Lifetime’s TV movie adaptation of the novel, starring Cierra Ramirez. Premieres in 2017.

Good Omens (Television, BBC/Amazon Prime)

Adapted from: Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
Originally published: 1990, Gollancz/Workman
What it’s about: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett co-wrote this comedy about the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley trying to avoid the End Times, brought about by Satan’s son.
Status: Long rumored, now confirmed: At a recent memorial for Pratchett, Gaiman revealed that the late author wrote him a letter before his death imploring Gaiman to adapt their book on his own. (Gaiman: “At that point, I think I said, ‘You bastard, yes.’”) The six-part miniseries will premiere sometime in 2018.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (Film, Marvel Studios)

Adapted from: Guardians of the Galaxy comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1969, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: “The team struggles to keep its newfound family together as it tires to unravel the mystery of Peter Quill’s true parentage in the outer reaches of the galaxy.”
Status: Comes to theaters May 5.

Inhumans (Television, Marvel Studios/ABC)

Art by Jae Lee

Adapted from: various Marvel Comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1965, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: “After a military coup, the Inhuman Royal Family escape to Hawaii where they must save themselves and the world.”
Status: Debuts September 1 in IMAX theaters, then then rest of the episodes air on ABC beginning September 26.

IT (Film, Warner Bros/New Line Cinema)

Adapted from: IT by Stephen King
Originally published: 1986, Viking
What it’s about: A malevolent being disguises itself as phobias, but mostly as a disturbing clown, in order to hunt a group of children. As adults, they return to their hometown to confront the fear they know only as “IT.”
Status: Comes to theaters September 8; watch the first trailer.

Justice League (Film, DC Entertainment)

Adapted from: various DC Comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1960, DC Comics
What it’s about: Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) assemble a team of superheroes including The Flash (Ezra Miller), Cyborg (Ray Fisher), and Aquaman (Jason Momoa).
Status: Comes to theaters November 17.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (Film, Warner Bros.)

Adapted from: every King Arthur tale ever
Originally published: N/A
What it’s about: In Guy Ritchie’s reimagining of Arthurian legend, Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) doesn’t learn about his royal lineage until he pulls Excalibur from the stone. Fighting alongside the Resistance and the enigmatic Guinevere, he must defeat the tyrant Vortigern to avenge his parents and reclaim his birthright.
Status: Comes to theaters May 12; watch the “dynamic” first trailer.

Marjorie Prime (Film, Passage Pictures)

Courtesy of Fortitude International

Adapted from: Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison
Originally published: 2015, Playwrights Horizons
What it’s about: In the age of artificial intelligence, aging Marjorie (Lois Smith), slowly losing her memories, spends her time talking about her life with her handsome companion, Walter (Jon Hamm)—a hologram of her late husband.
Status: Premieres at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; will likely come to theaters shortly after.

Midnight, Texas (Television, NBC)

Adapted from: Midnight, Texas by Charlaine Harris
Originally published: 2014, Ace
What it’s about: In Charlaine Harris’ series, phone psychic Manfred Bernardo relocates to Midnight, Texas, and then winds up overstaying his welcome—probably because of all the murders. It’s certainly an intriguing town, from the way executive producer David Janollari (Six Feet Under) describes it: “It’s where humans and the supernatural co-exist, and where everyone has a secret. It’s equal parts humorous, sexy, and downright scary.”
Status: Premieres July 25. Watch the latest trailer!

The Mist (Television, Spike TV)

Adapted from: The Mist by Stephen King
Originally published: 1980, Signet
What it’s about: TWC-Dimension TV, which produced the 2007 movie adaptation of The Mist, will take another stab at King’s eerie novella about a Maine town shrouded in a mist filled with supernatural monsters, and what the townspeople do to survive.
Status: Adam Bernstein, who directed the pilots for Scrubs, 30 Rock, and Fargo, will helm the series. Premieres June 22; watch the first trailer.

Mr. Mercedes (Television, Audience Network)

Adapted from: Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
Originally published: 2014, Scribner
What it’s about: When a killer dubbed “Mr. Mercedes” (Harry Treadaway), due to the grisly nature of his automobile crime, taunts retired detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) with a series of lurid letters and emails, Hodges must stir himself from his depression to stop Mr. Mercedes from killing again.
Status: David E. Kelley (The Practice) will serve as showrunner. The series is set to premiere in fall 2017.

New Mutants (Film, 20th Century Fox)

Art by Diogenes Neves

Adapted from: New Mutants by Chris Claremont (writer) and Bob McLeod (artist)
Originally published: 1982, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: We don’t know much, but judging from the title, it’s likely about a team of young mutants fighting to protect themselves in a world that hates them.
Status: Josh Boone (The Fault in Our Stars) will direct. Comes to theaters April 13, 2018.

New Warriors (Television, Freeform/Marvel Television)

Adapted from: New Warriors by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1989, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: “New Warriors centers around six young people struggling to make a difference and learn how to harness their powers … Not quite super, not yet heroes, Marvel’s New Warriors is about that time in your life when you first enter adulthood and feel like you can do everything and nothing at once—except in this world, bad guys can be as terrifying as bad dates.”
Status: Kevin Biegel (Cougar Town, Unlistedis closing a deal) to be showrunner and lead writer. The series is expected to premiere sometime in 2018.

The Punisher (Television, Netflix)

Adapted from: the Marvel Comics character created by Gerry Conway (writer) and John Romita, Sr. (artist)
Originally published: 1974, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: Brutal vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) will bring his own brand of “justice” to Hell’s Kitchen in this spinoff after his supporting role on Daredevil.
Status: Hannibal‘s Steve Lightfoot will serve as executive producer of the series, which is expected to premiere sometime in 2017.

Redliners (Television, NBC)

From the cover of From Dead to Worse

Adapted from: short fiction by Charlaine Harris
Originally published: various
What it’s about: The series, about former spies in suburbia, is described as “a high-octane project that mixes humor, romance and espionage centering on a pair of former operatives who get reactivated and drawn into a larger conspiracy while attempting to maintain their undercover lives.”
Status: Emerald City executive producer Shaun Cassidy and comics creator Kelly Sue DeConnick (also involved with Emerald City) are setting up NBC’s second Harris project, after Midnight, Texas. It’s expected to premiere sometime in fall 2017.

Spider-Man: Homecoming (Film, Marvel Studios/Sony Pictures)

Adapted from: Amazing Spider-Man by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
Originally published: 1963, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: “Thrilled by his experience with the Avengers, young Peter Parker (Tom Holland) returns home to live with his Aunt May. Under the watchful eye of mentor Tony Stark, Parker starts to embrace his newfound identity as Spider-Man. He also tries to return to his normal daily routine—distracted by thoughts of proving himself to be more than just a friendly neighborhood superhero. Peter must soon put his powers to the test when the evil Vulture emerges to threaten everything that he holds dear.”
Status: Comes to theaters July 7. Watch the latest trailer!

Untitled Animated Spider-Man Project (Film, Sony Pictures)

Adapted from: Ultimate Fallout by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli
Originally published: 2011, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: We don’t yet know plot details, but Liev Schreiber teased that the animated film would be a “throwback” for “hardcore Spidey fans.”
Status: Set to be released December 21, 2018.

Thor: Ragnarok (Film, Marvel Studios)

Adapted from: various Marvel Comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1962, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: “Asgard is threatened but Thor is imprisoned on the other side of the universe without his hammer and to escape and save his home world he must fight his former ally and fellow Avenger—the Incredible Hulk!”
Status: Comes to theaters November 3. Watch the first trailer!

The Three-Body Problem: I (Film, Youzu Pictures)

Photo via Xinhua

Adapted from: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu)
Originally published: 2006, Chongqing Press
What it’s about: During China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military program sends signals into space to initiate first contact with aliens. Years later, a physicist uses the virtual reality video game Three-Body to discover a secret organization and uncover what the aliens might actually want from Earth.
Status: The Three-Body Trilogy is being adapted into six movies, directed by Panpan Zhang, the first of which should be released sometime in 2017. In the meantime, check out the stunning stage adaptation of the novel.

The Tick (Television, Amazon Studios/Sony Television)

Adapted from: New England Comics Newsletter by Ben Edlund
Originally published: 1986, New England Comics Press
What it’s about: Deadline sums it up: “The Tick centers on an underdog accountant with zero powers who comes to realize his city is owned by a global super villain long-thought dead. As he struggles to uncover this conspiracy, he falls in league with a strange blue superhero.”
Status: Ben Edlund, who created The Tick and oversaw the first two TV iterations, serves as writer and executive producer. Season 1 premieres August 25. In the meantime, read our review of the pilot!

Venom (Film, Sony Pictures)

Adapted from: various Marvel Comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1984, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: No official synopsis yet.
Status: Comes to theaters October 5, 2018.

Wonder Woman (Film, DC Entertainment)

Adapted from: Wonder Woman comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1941, DC Comics
What it’s about: “Before she was Wonder Woman she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained warrior. When a pilot crashes and tells of conflict in the outside world, she leaves home to fight a war to end all wars, discovering her full powers and true destiny.”
Status: Comes to theaters June 2.

A Wrinkle in Time (Film, Walt Disney Company)

Adapted from: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Originally published: 1963, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
What it’s about: Director Ava DuVernay (Selma) and screenwriter Jennifer Lee (Frozen) will make up for the lackluster 2003 TV movie with their new take on the classic story of Meg Murry and her brother Charles Wallace traveling through space and time via tesseract to save their missing father.
Status: Storm Reid has been cast as Meg Murry, and will be accompanied on her interstellar journey by Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey). The film comes to theaters March 9, 2018.

CURRENTLY ON THE AIR / RETURNING NEXT SEASON

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Television, Marvel Studios/ABC)

Adapted from: various Marvel Comics by various authors and artists
Originally published: 1965, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. must deal with unusual cases and threats from Hydra and Inhumans.
Status: Season 4 premiered September 20; the series has not yet been renewed for season 5.

Daredevil (Television, Netflix)

Adapted from: the Marvel Comics character created by Stan Lee (writer) and Bill Everett (artist)
Originally published: 1964, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: After an accident takes away his sight but gives him heightened senses, lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) must protect Hell’s Kitchen from criminals while dealing with other vigilantes like The Punisher (Jon Bernthal), as well as his ex-girlfriend Elektra Natchios (Élodie Yung).
Status: Season 3 will premiere sometime in 2018, but Daredevil will appear in Marvel and Netflix’s The Defenders before then in August 2017.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (Television, BBC America)

Adapted from: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
Originally published: 1987, Pocket Books (US) and William Heinemann Ltd. (UK)
What it’s about: Max Landis’ adaptation of Adams’ novel (which he once described as a “thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic”) follows the adventures of eccentric “holistic detective” Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett), who believes everything to be interconnected, his sidekick Todd Brotzman (Elijah Wood), and at least one corgi.
Status: Season 2 will premiere in 2017.

Emerald City (Television, NBC)

Adapted from: The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Originally published: 1900, George M. Hill Company
What it’s about: As writer Kelly Sue DeConnick (Bitch Planet) described this new take on the Land of Oz books at HeroesCon, “It is a stunningly beautiful take on that world where Dorothy has a machine gun and Toto is a German Shepherd.” Vincent D’Onofrio will play the Wizard; Florence Kasumba is the Wicked Witch of the East, above.
Status: Read our pilot review! No word yet on if the series will be renewed for season 2.

The Exorcist (Television, Fox)

Adapted from: The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Originally published: 1971, Harper & Row
What it’s about: Father Tomas Ortega (Sense8‘s Alfonso Herrera) investigates the apparent possession of teenager Katherine Rance, whose family are members of his congregation. On the other side of the world, Father Marcus Brennan (House of Cards‘ Ben Daniels) is a modern-day Templar Knight battling the forces of evil.
Status: No word yet on a season 2 renewal.

The Expanse (Television, Syfy)

Adapted from: The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck)
Originally published: 2011, Orbit Books
What it’s about: Hundreds of years in the future, humans have colonized the solar system, but tensions have war simmering among Earth, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt. The disappearance of Julie Mao (Florence Faivre) brings together a hardened detective (Thomas Jane) and a rogue ship’s captain (Steven Strait), pointing them toward a massive conspiracy. Read our reviews of season 1.
Status: Catch up with our season 2 reviews. The Expanse will return for season 3 in 2018!

The Handmaid’s Tale (Television, Hulu)

Adapted from: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Originally published: 1985, McClelland and Stewart
What it’s about: Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a handmaid, or concubine, belonging to a wealthy couple in the totalitarian Republic of Gilead. She narrates the story of how Gilead came to be, as well as her small and large acts of sedition within the established hierarchy, and her search for her missing family.
Status: Premiered April 26.

Iron Fist (Television, Netflix)

Adapted from: the Marvel Comics character created by Roy Thomas (writer) and Gil Kane (artist)
Originally published: 1974, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: Danny Rand (Finn Jones) returns to New York City after 15 years to reclaim his place in his family’s company. But when a threat endangers the city, he must choose between his family’s legacy and his duties as Iron Fist.
Status: Read our coverage of the first season. It seems as if there will be a season 2, though it has not yet been confirmed.

Jessica Jones (Television, Netflix)

Adapted from: Jessica Jones: Alias by Brian Michael Bendis (writer) and Michael Gaydos (artist)
Originally published: 2001, Marvel Comics/MAX
What it’s about: Superhero-turned-private investigator Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) juggles her messy love life and whiskey habit with helping other wayward souls. After facing off with Kilgrave (David Tennant), she concentrates on keeping Alias Investigations open.
Status: Season 2 will premiere sometime in 2018, and Jessica Jones will appear in Marvel and Netflix’s The Defenders (August 2017). We don’t know much about the plot so far aside from the fact that it will be a “personal” story, also “dark and heavy.”

The Leftovers (Television, HBO)

Adapted from: The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
Originally published: 2011, St. Martin’s Press
What it’s about: Three years after an event called the “Sudden Departure,” in which 2% of the world’s population simultaneously disappear in a Rapture-like way, mainstream religions give way to cults. The Garvey family must cope with a post Departure-world, their own guilt, and other interpersonal issues.
Status: The third and final season premiered on HBO on April 16.

Legion (Television, FX Productions/Marvel Television)

Adapted from: New Mutants #25 by Chris Claremont (writer) and Bill Sienkiewicz (artist)
Originally published: 1985, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: David Haller (Downton Abbey‘s Dan Stevens) is a troubled young man who experiences visions and hears voices in his head… only to realize that his supposed mental illness is actually a mutation, and he may even be the son of a member of the X-Men. Aubrey Plaza, Amber Midthunder, Katie Aselton, and Bill Irwin also star.
Status: Read our review of season 1. The series has been renewed for a second season.

Lucifer (Television, Fox)

Adapted from: The Sandman by Neil Gaiman (writer) and Sam Kieth (artist), and Lucifer by Mike Carey (writer) and Scott Hampton, Chris Weston, and James Hodgins (artists)
Originally published: 1989, Vertigo
What it’s about: Bored of Hell, Lucifer (Merlin‘s Tom Ellis) abandons his throne for Los Angeles, where he opens a nightclub called Lux. But it’s not all fun and games of making people express their darkest desires; when a starlet gets murdered, he decides to team up with the LAPD, even as he’s dodging angels demanding he return to the underworld. Read our pilot review.
Status: Lucifer returns for its spring premiere May 1. The series has also been renewed for a third season.

Luke Cage (Television, Netflix)

Adapted from: the Marvel Comics character created by Archie Goodwin (writer), John Romita, Sr. (artist), and George Tuska (artist)
Originally published: 1972, Marvel Comics
What it’s about: After a sabotaged experiment makes him unbreakable, Luke Cage (Mike Colter) battles for the heart of Harlem while trying to get over the death of his wife Reva as well as his fling with Jessica Jones.
Status: No word yet on when season 2 premieres, but Luke Cage will return in Marvel and Netflix’s The Defenders (August 2017). In the meantime, read our commentary on season 1.

The Magicians (Television, Syfy)

Adapted from: The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Originally published: 2009, Viking
What it’s about: In this adaptation of Lev Grossman’s bestselling series, Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) discovers that the magical world he read about as a child is real when he is accepted to the prestigious (and very secret) Brakebills University. Alongside old and new friends, Quentin learns that magic is just one part of a curriculum that goes live work play study screw drink cram… drink.
Status: Catch up on our season 2 coverage. The series has been renewed for a third season!

The Man in the High Castle (Television, Amazon Studios)

Adapted from: The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Originally published: 1962, Putnam
What it’s about: The Man in the High Castle presents an alternate history where America loses World War II and is split between Nazi Germany and Japan. Juliana Crain (Alexa Davalos) receives a mysterious film reel from her sister, who is then murdered; the film reel contains glimpses of an alternate reality in which the United States won the war. Juliana sets out to find the person who created the reel—The Man in the High Castle. Read our review.
Status: Amazon has greenlit a third season.

Oasis (Television, Amazon Studios)

Photo: Amazon Studios/Chris Raphael

Adapted from: The Book of Strange New Things by Michael Faber
Originally published: 2014, Hogarth
What it’s about: Priest Peter (Game of Thrones‘ Richard Madden) leaves his wife Bea and Earth to answer a higher call: traveling to a distant planet to preach to the native population with his Bible (the eponymous book of strange new things). But when her letters describe an Earth in increasing turmoil, Peter must decide which faith to follow. Matt Charman (Bridge of Spies) is writing the pilot and will serve as an executive producer, alongside director Kevin MacDonald (The Last King of Scotland).
Status: No word yet on if the pilot has been picked up to series. Read our review.

Outlander (Television, Starz)

Adapted from: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Originally published: 1991, Delacorte Books
What it’s about: On a second honeymoon in Scotland in 1945, former WWII nurse Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) is transported back in time to Scotland in 1743, where she falls in love with Highland warrior Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan).
Status: Season 3 premieres in September; watch the first teaser!

Preacher (Television, AMC)

Adapted from: Preacher by Garth Ennis (writer) and Steve Dillon (artist)
Originally published: 1995, Vertigo
What it’s about: After getting accidentally possessed by a heavenly (and hellish) creature called Genesis, Reverend Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) goes on a quest to find God. Joining him along the way are his ex-girlfriend Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga) and wise-cracking Irish vampire Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun).
Status: Preacher recently premiered to overall praise, despite it being more inspired by the source material than a direct adaptation. It’s been renewed for a second season; read our deconstruction of season 1.

Riverdale (Television, The CW)

Adapted from: Archie Comics by Mark Waid (writer) and Fiona Staples, Annie Chu, and Veronica Flash (artists)
Originally published: 2015, Archie Comics
What it’s about: Based on some of the more daring Archie Comics issues of recent memory, Riverdale (executive produced by Greg Berlanti, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, and others) looks to be a mashup of Pretty Little Liars and Twin Peaks: The usual high-school angst and love triangles are all still here, but set against an ominous backdrop that begins with the mysterious death of Riverdale’s golden boy. Watch the first trailer!
Status: Premiered January 26. The series has been renewed for a second season.

Ronja, the Robber’s Daughter (Television, Amazon Prime)

Adapted from: Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter by Astrid Lindgren
Originally published: 1981, Rabén & Sjögren
What it’s about: Ronia, daughter of the chief of a band of robbers, becomes friends with the son of the rival band of robbers while struggling with the eventual responsbility of leading her clan.
Status: Hayao Miyazaki’s son Gorō Miyazaki, working with Studio Ghibli, adapted the beloved children’s book in 2014. The animated series landed in the US and UK back in January. Watch the trailer, and find all 26 episodes streaming on Amazon Prime.

A Series of Unfortunate Events (Television, Netflix)

Adapted from: A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
Originally published: 1999, Scholastic
What it’s about: Orphans Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are sent to live with their odious guardian Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris), who seeks to murder them and steal their inheritance. Over the course of Snicket’s tongue-in-cheek series, the Baudelaires weather adventures more perilous than the last and discover the truth behind their parents’ death in a fire. The 2004 movie, with Jim Carrey as Count Olaf, was underwhelming.
Status: Netflix has renewed the series for even more unfortunate second and third seasons. No release date yet.

The Shannara Chronicles (Television, MTV)

Photo credit: Kirsty Griffin

Adapted from: Terry Brooks’ Shannara series
Originally published: 1977, Ballatine/Del Rey
What it’s about: The Ellcrys, the magical tree keeping demons locked away from the Four Lands, is dying. Elvin princess and one of the Chosen Amberle (Poppy Drayton) sets out with half-Elf Wil (Austin Butler) and thief Eretria (Ivana Baquero) to unlock the ancient magic that will save the Ellcrys. Read our review.
Status: MTV has renewed the series for season 2, and you can learn more about the plot and new characters, but no word yet on premiere date.

Wynonna Earp (Television, Syfy)

Adapted from: Wynonna Earp by Beau Smith
Originally published: 1996, Image Comics (currently published by IDW Publishing)
What it’s about: The great-granddaughter of Wyatt Earp, saddled with the family curse and a six-shooter, fights the demonic Revenants—ghosts of the criminals Wyatt once put down—in her hometown of Purgatory.
Status: Wynonna Earp season 2 premieres June 9; watch the first trailer.

Note: We’re sure we missed a few, but will update the post based on your suggestions!

This article has been updated since its original publication in April 2016.

Natalie Zutter never in all of her dreams thought she’d see this many SFF properties getting adapted at once. Geek out with her about all these adaptations on Twitter.

The Tick is coming to Amazon on Friday, August 25th! The reboot of the show stars Peter Serafinowicz as the titular Tick and Griffin Newman as his sidekick Arthur, and is taking the characters in a somewhat grittier direction as the duo investigates a conspiracy involving a mysterious super villain who may have faked his own death.

Tick-creator Ben Edlund is executive producing along with Barry Josephson and Barry Sonnenfeld. Edlund is also writing, and the show will be directed by Wally Pfister. You can read a review of the pilot here, and click through for a brief-yet-adorable promo!

[via Deadline]

Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.

Today we’re looking at Henry Kuttner’s “The Salem Horror,” first published in the May 1937 issue of Weird Tales. Spoilers ahead.

“He became conscious that he was standing in the exact center of the chamber, in the circle of black stone where the odd design centered. Again he noticed the utter silence. On an impulse he clicked off the ray of his flashlight. Instantly he was in dead blackness.”

Summary

Narrator Carson, author of popular light romances, has retired to an ancient house in Salem, Massachusetts, to finish his latest novel. Locals shun the place because it originally belonged to Abigail Prinn, who sacrificed to a crescent-horned figure and worshiped a dark god who dwelt deep in the hills. She “disappeared” in the Witch Panic of 1692—oldsters whisper that flames could not burn her, so she went to her grave with a stake through her heart to keep her down. Carson scoffs at the stories, but he isn’t thrilled with the resident rats. At least not until one leads him to a hidden door in the basement. Carson shifts open the stone slab and discovers Prinn’s secret Witch Room, a circular chamber with an amazing mosaic floor. The design’s complex: purple curves intertwined with blue and green angles. At its center is a two-foot-wide black disc. An alcove has walls scrawled with indecipherable hieroglyphs. It features an eight-foot disc, iron, like a giant manhole cover, which Carson sees no way to move.

Impressed by the utter silence of the underground room, and apparently never having read in any genre other than his own, he decides it’s the perfect place to write—much better than anything the traffic-noisy house affords. He informs his Boston landlord of the find, gets the Witch Room wired, and sets up a table and chair—right above the black disc at the heart of the mosaic. There he writes easily, his mind clear, free, seemingly disassociated from other things.

Too bad his landlord gossips. Soon Carson’s besieged by historians and occultists eager to see the Witch Room. He’s turning away the latest visitor, occultist Michael Leigh, when Leigh takes him by the shoulders and stares into his eyes. (But sorry, we’re not about to switch over into Carson’s own romance genre.) Leigh apologizes, and his urbanity wins Carson over. They go to the Witch Room together. Leigh’s most interested in the alcove hieroglyphics, which he reads aloud. It’s gibberish to Carson, though he makes out the name “Nyogtha.”

Back upstairs Leigh asks if Carson’s been dreaming. Maybe, but Carson can’t remember anything salient. He rejects Leigh’s suggestion he move out, or at least not write in the Witch Room. Leigh persists: See, beyond human science is a greater science the average person can’t comprehend. Machen described a gulf between the world of consciousness and the world of material. The Witch Room may be a bridge between the worlds, a focal point for malign vibrations, even thought-commands. Will Carson at least let Leigh come again? Will he try to remember any dreams?

Carson nods. And that night he does dream, though waking in agitation, he can only remember an impression of running in darkness. He goes for an early morning walk, ends up at the Charter Street Burying Ground. A crowd’s gathered at its iron railing. They gawp at the dead man who still clutches the bars, face a rictus of terror. What did he see in the boneyard, or what, being one of these “superstitious Polish laborers,” did he imagine he saw?

Shaken, Carson returns home. Leigh’s already there, with news that overnight someone has robbed Prinn’s grave, removing the stake that pinned her and apparently making off with her remains. Maybe the macabre theft is what the dead Pole glimpsed.

Or maybe, Leigh says, Prinn hypnotized Carson into freeing her, so she can finally avenge herself on Salem. And what vengeance it would be! Leigh’s consulted the Necronomicon at the Kester Library. (Yup, yet another copy of this rarest of tomes.) He learned that Prinn’s master Nyogtha is one of the Old Ones, aka the Dweller in Darkness and the Thing That Should Not Be. His followers can summon Him from His subterranean lair; the only way to dismiss Him is to use the looped cross or ankh, the Vach-Viraj incantation, and the Tikkoun elixir. The elixir’s hard to get, but Leigh will seek it. Until he returns, Carson should stay out of the Witch Room!

Carson makes no promise. He has a nasty encounter with a neighbor, who accuses him of scaring her Sarah with a “brown thing” he let run into his house. Head aching, he retreats to the Witch Room and falls asleep at the center of the mosaic, to dream of a black horror rampaging through Salem and a skull-face peering into his own, eyes alight with a hellish glow.

He wakes to see a mummy-like thing emerge from another hidden door. Frozen in place, he watches it chant before the alcove. Slowly the iron disc rises. Black ooze wells “amoeboid” from below, then throws aside the massive disc. Shriveled Abigail Prinn lifts triumphant arms. Carson would scream if only he could.

Leigh rushes in, chanting, looped cross in hand. Nyogtha surges to meet him, but the cross and incantation aren’t Leigh’s only weapons. He throws a tiny glass vial into the monster’s protoplasmic bulk. Nyogtha hesitates, then retreats, shedding stinking chunks of black flesh. With one pseudopod, He seizes Prinn. With another, He pulls the iron disc back into place behind them.

Carson faints. He’s alive, but he’ll never finish his light romance, nor will he ever be able to sell the dark narratives he writes thereafter. Black God of Madness is too morbid, too horrible, his publisher claims. Carson tries to tell him the real story, only to shrink back from the publisher’s incredulity and agree he only dreamt the horror at the Witch House, will forget it in time.

But he won’t, especially not the last thing he saw as Leigh hustled him away: a withered claw of a hand protruding from under the iron disc, Abigail Prinn’s last salute and memento.

What’s Cyclopean: Abbie Prinn made sacrifices to “worm-eaten, crescent-horned” images. A dead body has an expression of “abysmal and utterly shocking horror.” (“Abysmal horror” later also freezes Carson in place at a pivotal moment.) An old graveyard has an “indefinable miasma of antiquity.”

The Degenerate Dutch: Superstitious Polish mill workers are superstitious. Also right. When people tell horror stories that hinge on Other People’s legends being accurate, is the horror in the monster, or in Those People being right about something?

Mythos Making: Leigh makes reference to Machen, and his gulfs between consciousness and matter. Then we get a brand new elder god, Nyogtha… though this may just be yet another face of the Big N himself. This would also fit with the general theme of this story being nearly identical to “The Dreams in the Witch House.”

Libronomicon: Nyogtha is pulled straight from the ever-fruitful and always-unpredictable Necronomicon.

Madness Takes Its Toll: Men called the author of the Necronomicon mad, but really he was just delving deeply into forbidden secrets. Carson’s sanity is also questioned, mostly because he can’t resist explaining his experiences to disinterested editors.

Anne’s Commentary

Henry Kuttner (often in collaboration with wife C. L. Moore) wrote stories across the SFF spectrum, as well as Mythos tales like “The Salem Horror.” He had almost as many pen names as Nyarlathotep has avatars, but I’m not sure he attached any of them to the kind of light romance Carson did so well before he lost all his amorous whimsy points to Nyogtha.

Meeting “living darkness” will do that to a person.

Speaking of Nyarlathotep’s avatars, Nyogtha might be one of them since the two entities share a nickname: “Dweller in Darkness.” And I daresay there are those who’d categorize Nyarlathotep as a “Thing That Should Not Be,” but they’re no fun, and we don’t really like them very much.

Avatar or stand-alone god, Nyogtha is Kuttner’s invention. So is Abigail Prinn, who shares a surname with dark mage Ludwig, author of De Vermis Mysteriis. If the two are related, Abigail went her infamous ancestor one better, for he ended up burned at the stake in Brussels while she proved inflammable in Salem. It’s interesting that the Puritans didn’t just hang Abigail, as they did their other “witches.” Maybe they tried to hang her and that didn’t work either. I can see her oscillating from the gallows tree like a pendulum, smirking all the time and refusing to die or even to be much incommoded. Could be the stake didn’t put out her lights either, just kept her safely underground. There’s a picturesque and gruesome scene for you: the bewigged judges, the soldiers, the 17th century mob in all its gradations of rank, gathered to see Abigail impaled, and she STILL refuses to “lie still,” probably even laughing through her screams like all high-end Mythos baddies who’ve got magical Get-Out-Of-Death-Eventually cards up their sleeves, a la Joseph Curwen. Then all those decades underground, waiting for a susceptible scribe to find her subcellar writer’s retreat. Keziah Mason had it better over in Arkham, since she got to travel around the cosmos with buddy Brown Jenkin while awaiting a physicist with whom to enjoy strange curves and angles.

Brown Jenkin was a smarter familiar than Abigail’s nameless rat minion. No way he would have quailed before a mere cross scratched in front of his burrow. The cross, as powerful Christian talisman, seems out of place in Kuttner’s story and doesn’t reappear. Later we get the crux ansata or ankh that Leigh wields. This gives the anti-Nyogtha spell a more exotic flavor. The Vash-Viraj incantation sounds like the work of Indian magicians, more flavor, and now for the final dash of Tikkoun elixir! “Tikkoun” is close to the Hebrew “Tikkun” or “fixing.” This elixir is supposed to be especially effective against Derleth’s earth elementals, of which Nyogtha is one. Is Kuttner its “inventor?” The same potent potion appears in Lumley, where it discourages Cthonians, and in Eddy C. Bertin’s Cyaegha origin-story, “Darkness, My Name Is.”

Note to self: Ask Mr. Geldman what is in this elixir; also, how much it costs per application.

Interesting that Kuttner chooses Salem as his setting, rather than Arkham (where I kept thinking we were.) Maybe he realized that you couldn’t have two witches as powerful as Abigail and Keziah in the same township—not without turf wars! The Charter Street Burying Ground’s a real Salem place, and plenty spooky enough to serve as Abigail’s not-so-last resting place. I think the Kester Library’s an invention. It just happens to shelve the Necronomicon, even though Lovecraft doesn’t mention that particular copy of the tome. I guess Salem was not to be outdone by Arkham. That, or Leigh didn’t want to drive up to Arkham to peruse Miskatonic’s copy.

This is a solid Mythos tale, but while it introduces a new Old One and a new supercultist, it treads familiar tropes. My favorite part is the Witch Room, insulated against all mundane influences, like traffic noise, barking dogs and yowling infants. Carson’s right—it’s the perfect place to write! I want one in my basement. Only problem, such subterranean retreats probably have bugs as well as rats. Creepy, long-leggedy albino bugs that crawl up your legs or drop onto your head from the fungoid ceiling. No, just no.

I’ll have to hold out for a deep room in a hobbit-hole, which would be similarly quiet, with the added advantage of ale barrels and wine-racks and no ends of worms sticking out of the walls. No ends of other things, either, however protoplasmic.

Ruthanna’s Commentary

Did you like “The Dreams in the Witch House”? Would you like to read it again, only without the geometry-infested dreams or Brown Jenkins, and with more hyper-accurate Polish superstition? If so, “The Salem Horror” might be the story for you.

We read a certain amount of derivative stuff in this series. It’s sort of inevitable—Lovecraftian horror ranges from stories that get the mood pitch perfect and contain no Mythos references whatsoever, all the way down to stories that are half recap of Howard’s stuff. In between are awesomely original takes on Shub-Niggaroth, cheerful efforts to build brand new Mythos canon, pieces that depend entirely on the reader already being terrified of shoggothim, and attempts to recreate the frisson of Lovecraft’s originals by recreating their form. The latter were probably extremely welcome in the ’50s, but for the most part they just don’t work for me. This week’s story is a good example of why: it may have the form down to a clone, but it misses everything that was exultantly cool about the original.

See, “Witch House” wasn’t just a particularly spiffy haunted house story. It wasn’t just a fable about how you shouldn’t work in houses, rooms, or obvious occult diagrams that once belonged to a scary, scary witch. Walter Gilman wasn’t merely possessed, or trying to get through writer’s block—he was genuinely tempted by the mathematically enabled visions offered up to him. And we saw enough of them to get tempted ourselves. Wild rides through the space outside the universe? Glimpses of alien architecture? Souvenirs broken off from alien architecture by irresponsible tourists? More, please! Carson’s complete failure to remember his own dreams for most of “Salem” bespeaks a failure of imagination on someone’s part, and certainly a failure of temptation.

I did note something interesting, which is that our Reread’s traditional headers make a pretty good scale of Lovecraftian style. The easier it is to fill in a logical response to “What’s cyclopean?” and “Who’s degenerate this week?” the more the author is treading carefully in old Howie’s footsteps. I originally developed these categories partly as a coping strategy—making a game out of spotting this week’s racist invective made even the most obnoxious stories enjoyable on a geeky problem solving level. By now, I get a happy little shot of dopamine every time I spot a $50 adjective or someone being driven mad by a book. On that level, “The Salem Horror” was pretty rewarding. Truly Pavlov was a dude who knew what was up.

Another of “Salem’s” innovations over “Witch House” is the addition of The Guy Who Explains Things. Long a staple of genre fiction, the Occult Explainer is convenient if your protagonist just won’t put two and two together. Carson is a particularly passive protagonist, making little effort to resist Abbie’s mind control machinations even at the end, so he definitely needs an Explainer. But again, I rather miss Gilman, who at least made some effort to figure out what was going on for himself. If Leigh is going to do all the work, I’d honestly rather see the story from his perspective, without him having to as-you-know-Bob his way through someone else’s tale. The inclusion of Guys Who Explain Things as positive role models in fiction has probably not been a boon to civilization, and it does no one any favors here either.

Next week, Caitlín Kiernan offers another taste of ghoulish art in “Pickman’s Other Model.” You can find it in New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird, among other places.

Ruthanna Emrys’s neo-Lovecraftian stories “The Litany of Earth” and “Those Who Watch” are available on Tor.com, along with the distinctly non-Lovecraftian “Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land” and “The Deepest Rift.” Winter Tide, a novel continuing Aphra Marsh’s story from “Litany,” is now available from Macmillan’s Tor.com imprint. Ruthanna can frequently be found online on Twitter and Dreamwidth, and offline in a mysterious manor house with her large, chaotic household—mostly mammalian—outside Washington DC.

Anne M. Pillsworth’s short story. “The Madonna of the Abattoir” appears on Tor.com. Her young adult Mythos novel, Summoned, is available from Tor Teen along with sequel Fathomless. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwen’s underground laboratory.

“How Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth”
Written by Russell Bates & David Wise
Directed by Bill Reed
Animated Season 2, Episode 5
Production episode 22022
Original air date: October 5, 1974
Stardate: 6063.4

Captain’s log. A probe scanned Earth and then self-destructed. It left a disruption trail that the Enterprise can track, and they do so, eventually finding a ship on the same course as the probe. The ship is twice the size of the Enterprise, it’s surrounded by a huge energy field, and it’s made of crystalline ceramic. The alien ship surrounds the Enterprise with a force globe that traps them, even though they were travelling at warp when they were surrounded by it.

The ship then hits the Enterprise with some kind of beam. Kirk orders phasers to be fired, which stops the beam from hitting them, but they’re still trapped and still being probed.

Then the ship’s energy field changes shape, and the ship now appears to resemble a serpent-like being, which Ensign Dawson Walking Bear at the helm recognizes as Kukulkan, a Mayan deity.

Only then does the ship communicate, expressing gratitude that someone on the Enterprise remembers the deity, who then transports Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Walking Bear over to the other ship. Walking Bear says that legend has it that Kukulkan went away and would some day return. It seems the probe was that return…

The ship becomes a re-creation of an ancient city of some sort. Kukulkan instructs them to learn the purpose of the seeds he had previously sown on Earth. The landing party recognizes bits from many Earth cultures. Walking Bear explains that Kukulkan told the Mayans to build a city according to the calendar he provided them, and when they finished it, he would return.

Kirk theorizes that Kukulkan went to several civilizations on Earth and gave them instructions on how to build his city, and he never returned because nobody got it completely right.

There’s a pyramid at the center of the city. Kirk climbs up its huge staircase, while McCoy, Scotty, and Walking Bear stay on the ground surrounding the pyramid. Walking Bear realizes there are three serpent-head statues at the four corners of the pyramid, and Kirk finds a piece of stained glass on top. Kirk instructs the others to turn the serpent heads toward the pyramid, at which point they catch the sun’s rays and reflect them onto the stained glass. When all four beams hit the glass, there’s an explosion of color, and a winged serpent appears. This is Kukulkan, daring them to use their weapons on him—they must hate him because they fired on him. Kirk assures him that they don’t hate him, they were just defending themselves after he fired first. Kukulkan archly points out that he’s their master and he can do what he wants. Okay, then.

Kukulkan then transports them to what looks like a zoo. Each creature is in a cage but is mentally in their natural habitat. It turns out the landing party was as well. Kukulkan explains that he is the last of his species. He went to Earth to teach them peace, hoping that they would construct his city properly and summon him. They never did, so he sent the probe, finally, and found what he deems a savage, warlike race.

On the Enterprise, Spock figures out how to escape the globe, and the Enterprise is free. Which is handy, as that action distracts Kukulkan from trying to kill the landing party. While he’s distracted, McCoy suggests freeing the Capellan power-cat that Kukulkan has captured—those animals, which give off an electric charge, hate captivity, and if it realizes it’s caged, it’ll run rampant.

That’s precisely what happens. Kukulkan is livid, more so when the Enterprise fires on Kukulkan’s ship, damaging it. The power-cat moves to attack Kukulkan, and Kirk uses one of McCoy’s hypos to tranquilize the animal.

Kirk speechifies to Kukulkan, and convinces him that humanity doesn’t need his help anymore, and that progress is better accomplished naturally than when being led by the nose. Kukulkan agrees and lets the quartet go.

Can’t we just reverse the polarity? Spock discovers that the globe Kukulkan uses is only elastic in one direction at a time, so he uses the physical push of the Enterprise and the pull of the tractor beam to shatter it.

Fascinating. When asked by McCoy if Vulcan was ever visited by aliens like Kukulkan, Spock says that they were, and the aliens came away from the experience much wiser.

I’m a doctor, not an escalator. The day is saved by McCoy, who recognizes the Capellan power-cat (no doubt from when he was stationed on that world) and also provides the tranq that keeps the cat from zapping Kukulkan.

Hailing frequencies open. Uhura expresses concern over why Spock isn’t trying to locate the landing party, and Spock snottily points out that he needs to focus on getting the Enterprise free, and why isn’t Uhura monitoring the alien ship like he asked? (Lovers‘ spat, maybe?)

Ahead warp one, aye. No Sulu in this one so we can have Walking Bear as the helmsman.

I cannot change the laws of physics! The sum total of Scotty’s contribution to this episode is to figure out that you can turn the heads of the statues.

Forewarned is three-armed. The sum total of Arex’s contribution to this episode is to turn on the viewscreen once.

Channel open.

“You don’t deserve it, Yeoman, but you’re getting a few days’ bed rest.”

–McCoy showing off his bedside manner right before Kukulkan kidnaps him.

Welcome aboard. The only extra voices beyond the big three are Nichelle Nichols as Uhura and James Doohan as everyone else: Scotty, Arex, Walking Bear, and Kukulkan.

Trivial matters: The episode’s title derives from Shakespeare, specifically King Lear: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is / To have a thankless child—Away, away!” Kirk and McCoy quote the line at the episode’s end.

Nobody told William Shatner how to pronounce “Kukulkan,” and since the actors didn’t all record their dialogue together, he pronounces it differently than everyone else. (Then again, that happened with DeForest Kelley several times on the live-action series, and he was in the same room as everyone…)

The Capellan power-cat presumably comes from the same world that we saw in “Friday’s Child.” McCoy was established as having once been assigned to Capella in that episode, and he’s the one who recognizes the animal.

Walking Bear appears in the novels The Fire and the Rose and Allegiance in Exile, both by David R. George III.

Co-writer Russell Bates is Kiowa, and while he pitched several stories to the animated series, D.C. Fontana didn’t go for any of them, instead asking him to pitch something that made use of his Native heritage.

Gene L. Coon, the show-runner for the second half of season one and the first half of season two of the live-action series, had died in 1973, and he and Bates were close friends and colleagues. Bates patterned the story after “Who Mourns for Adonais?” as a tribute to Coon.

To boldly go. “Intelligent life is too precious a thing to be led by the nose.” I want to love this episode a lot more than I actually do. But I do like it a lot.

My main source of adoration is that we get the gods-were-really-aliens trope, but it isn’t a god from Europe or North Africa, as is often the default in such tales. The only deities even mentioned in the episode, beyond Kukulkan, are Quetzalcoatl and the dragons of Asian myth.

My main issue, unfortunately, is yet another use of the gods-were-really-aliens trope. Yes, co-writer Bates patterned the story after “Who Mourns for Adonais?” as a tribute, but the line between tribute and copy is a bit fuzzy here, and Bates and Wise dance on both side of it quite a lot.

I do find it hilarious that a 1973 kids show is more willing to give us a Native character and actually identify his nationality (Comanche), something a 1995 live-action spinoff of this show couldn’t manage. And just in general, I like Walking Bear as a character, even though his primary function is to provide exposition. But his secondary function is the same as that of Sulu, Uhura, and Chekov: it ain’t just white folks who have gone out into space.

Still, the story itself is pretty standard. I find it particularly hard to swallow that the whole reason why Kukulkan never came back after providing his “gift” is because it never occurred to anyone to rotate a few statues? I guess? I dunno, it’s kind of weirdly specific, and by itself isn’t really much of a sign that you’re a maturing civilization. Or that you’re dedicated to your god, for that matter.

I will give James Doohan credit on this one, his voice work is excellent. Walking Bear, Scotty, Arex, and Kukulkan all have distinctive voices. In addition, William Shatner’s work is much improved. His speech to Kukulkan is delivered with much more passion than the actor was able to arse up earlier in the animated run.

On the one hand, this is a total retread of “Who Mourns for Adonais?” On the other hand, we get a cool flying serpent instead of Michael Forest in a shiny toga, which is trading up.

Ultimately, while I have to ding the episode for repetition of a very old theme, I love the look at non-white religious traditions. It’s nice to see the alien species actually checking out the humans in pre-colonial America and Asia for a change…

Warp factor rating: 7

Next week: “The Counter-Clock Incident”

Keith R.A. DeCandido will be at Zenkaikon 2017 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania this weekend, alongside fellow author Charles Dunbar; actors Steve Blum, John Patrick Lowrie, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Ellen McLain, and Sonny Strait; performers Cosplay Burlesque, Cosplay Pro Wrestling, the Slants, Uncle Yo, and Greg Wicker; and cultural presenter Kuniko Kanawa. His schedule can be found here.

At Readercon last summer, when I saw that Ada Palmer was hosting a kaffeeklatsch, I jumped at the chance to join in. Having just read her debut, Too Like The Lightning, a few months earlier, I was thrilled at the prospect of having an hour to sit with her and other fans and pick her brain about the vast, complicated world of Terra Ignota and the future of 2454 that she had painstakingly created. During the discussion, someone asked something about how she had written a utopia, to which Ada chuckled for a moment, possibly thinking over all the complications—all the wrenches she’d thrown into the gears, basically—when it came to creating her world. Then, she said, “Well, it’s not quite a utopia, as it is utopian,” which she went on to explain means that while the world itself is utopian in nature, the future itself is far from a perfect utopia. She’s actually gone into a bit more detail about this distinction on her blog, stating:

 …[W]hen I talk about a “utopia”–a work intending to depict an ideal future–that is not quite the same as a work which is “utopian” i.e. addressing the idea of utopia, and using utopian positive elements in its future building, while still focusing on people, characters and events, and exploring or critiquing the positive future it depicts, rather than recommending it. 2454 as I imagine it is not a utopia.  There are many flaws and uncomfortable elements…. It is using utopia and commenting on utopia without being a utopia.

Which, of course, got me thinking.

[Spoilers for Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders below.]

A utopia is, in itself, a static thing. A society has achieved perfect balance, all conflicts are at an end, and as far as every day life is concerned, everyone is pretty happy. This usually involves free healthcare, most illnesses at an end, lifespans extended, little to no scarcity, and an overall increase in the quality of life for even the least important or powerful of its citizens. And despite the surface level engagement of a world where everything is stable, there seems to be little to nowhere one can go when it comes to a plot. It stands to reason that utopias might be considered boring, because nothing ever changes: the status quo is peace, and on a narrative level, that can be stifling. However, with Palmer’s Terra Ignota, which is utopian in flavor, sure, but not at all short on conflict, I was curious as to why that is, and how her books negotiate this line between utopian elements and actual utopia.

Palmer joins a wide-ranging group of writers interested in the complications that come with a seemingly perfect world.Sure, Starfleet gets involved in conflict on a galactic scale, but for the average citizen of Earth under the Federation, people are doing pretty well.

Likewise, Malka Older’s Centenal Cycle is heavily invested in a near-future that—while not quite utopian in flavor—is in far better shape than our current 21^st-century society in different ways. With the power of micro-democracies dictating the way the future works, nations and national governments have been abandoned, and citizens are in a far better position to invest in and live in territories known as centenals, “microdemocracies” that allow them to live under governments they agree with. With their preference chosen, they get to live easier, not having to worry about battling with opposing parties over healthcare, federal oversight, elections, etc., since their government is something they got to choose according to their values and priorities—though there are still plenty of things that can go wrong even in this seemingly ideal system.

By all measures, the Terra Ignota series is actually quite invested in what delineates a utopian world from a utopia, as Palmer defines it. To the average citizen of this world, it is a utopia: human lives have been extended well into their mid-hundreds; there is little to no scarcity; transportation is not instantaneous, but getting from Buenos Aires to Tokyo only takes about forty minutes; everyone has a job, and you only have to work about twenty hours a week. Compromises are necessary, of course, as the social structure of the world demands certain concessions from individuals, seeking the good of their bash or the Hive overall, and the dissolution of organized religions and gender norms of any kind can, it may be argued, lend more fuel, not less, to the fire of cultural conflict. However, the average citizen of Terra Ignota doesn’t worry about these things; in fact, as far as they are concerned in their day-to-day lives, they are living in a utopia and are content to do so—potential advances that may come from conflict be damned.

Palmer neatly sidesteps this issue in two ways: one of which is that the point of view characters she is utilizing in order to introduce this world to her readers are the elite, main players of nations, of creeds, of organizations, of Hives, and society at large, who are either obsessed with keeping the status quo as is, or in changing it for their own benefit. Second—and this strategy is more evident in the second book in the series, Seven Surrenders—Palmer has these power players actually questioning the nature of a utopia, and whether or not it is a benefit to the world at large.

Ironically, the one Hive in this society most obsessed with this question are the Utopians. Forward thinking, equipped with technology beyond compare, and utterly dedicated to bringing about the interstellar future that humanity has been dreaming of for years, the Utopians, and one individual in particular, are the characters most consumed with the idea that by crafting the utopia Earth has become in the year 2454, humanity no longer has any interest in pushing itself further. As stated above, a functional utopia is ultimately stagnant: it doesn’t give its citizens anything more to strive for. And for a group of people dedicated to living on Mars in two hundred years, the Utopians are terrified at what Earth’s stagnant society could mean for them—especially since there are other powers at work looking to shatter the peace and promote a type of conflict that hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years: war.

Palmer’s choice to have Mycroft Canner act as the voice of the series—a character whose earnest heart, brilliant mind, and tortured soul have been shaped so directly by the world itself–is especially interesting. For Mycroft is an infamous criminal, a mass murderer whose criminal actions can be seen as a direct result of what the world has become. Fearing that this utopia had in effect neutered humanity’s ability to become monstrous, fearing that the benign, banal lives of everyday citizens would muddy the waters of human passion, he and his partner set out to prove humanity’s newfound sense of peace and acceptance wrong, to show that at the end of the day, humanity’s impulses remain primal. Seeing him live in this world, after his capture and penitent torture, makes for a very fascinating, complex, and conflicted point of view.

This kind of fascinating, seemingly unsolvable contradiction is a defining characteristic of Palmer’s Terra Ignota series, and exemplifies the kind of abstract, profound, complex thinking that captures the hearts of science fiction readers. Nothing is clear-cut, and everything is at stake. By focusing on those in power, and those who fear for the future, she is able to outline every argument for what a utopia means, both good and bad, to its citizens and to those who safeguard its structure. The central question driving Too Like The Lightning could be said to be: if this is what the future has become, what other conflicts could there be? The central questions underlying its sequel, Seven Surrenders, would then be: if this is the utopia we’ve earned, then what will we do to protect it? And are we worthy of it? Palmer doesn’t shy away from these heavy questions, and with brilliant prose, and ocean-deep character study, she toils away at them with heart and intelligence. The answers are still in the works, as there are still two more books to come in the series, but I look forward to reading them, and struggling with the answers, just as the citizens of Terra Ignota do.

Too Like the Lightning and Seven Surrenders are available now from Tor Books. Book 3 in the Terra Ignota quadrilogy, The Will to Battle, publishes in December 2017.

Martin Cahill is a contributor to Tor.com, as well as Book Riot and Strange Horizons. He has fiction forthcoming at Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Fireside Fiction. You can follow his musings on Twitter @McflyCahill90.

If you’re familiar with Neil Gaiman’s work, then you know that music tends to play an important part in his writing, both on and off the page. This is certainly the case with American Gods, a road trip novel with its own offbeat, colorful soundtrack. When Emily Asher-Perrin and I launched our American Gods Reread five years ago, I decided to keep track of each song mentioned or alluded to in the novel, to see how the music fit in with the events of each week’s chapters. Along the way, I added in some song choices of my own, where they seemed to fit in. Now that Starz is about to premiere their TV version of the novel, I can’t wait to see how music plays into the show, and if any of these songs pop up along the way…

The songs below range from classical music to classic rock, pop songs to power ballads, show tunes to traditional folk melodies, and each song plays a part in the larger narrative—I’m still surprised by how much the musical references can inform and illuminate one’s reading of the text, once you start paying attention. I’ve covered each song in greater depth in the individual chapter by chapter Mix Tape posts, but without further ado, here’s the complete American Gods Mega-Mix for your listening enjoyment!

Please note that all page numbers correspond to American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition (Author’s Preferred Text); any songs without page numbers are my own additions. And of course there are spoilers for the novel, below.

Chapters 1 & 2

“Nottamun Town,” (Page 23): Thanks to one of our commenters, CHip137, who caught this rather sneaky reference: Gaiman borrows the name of this surreal and haunting folk song as the location for Jack’s Crocodile Bar. The song’s lyrics mirror Shadow’s confusion as his world is suddenly, but irrevocably, turned upside down….

“Walkin’ After Midnight,” Patsy Cline (Pages 24, 32): Patsy Cline’s classic tune of lost love and longing plays twice at Jack’s, possibly foreshadowing the return of Laura, who will soon pay a late night visit to her grieving husband.

“Iko Iko,” The Dixie Cups (Pages 29-30): A Mardi Gras standard, the lyrics about a confrontation between two New Orleans “tribes” might foreshadow the war that Wednesday is setting into motion; the allusion to Mardi Gras and Lent, just as Shadow and Wednesday seal their pact with meat and mead, also seems significant.

“Who Loves the Sun,” The Velvet Underground (Page 36): Mad Sweeney plays this song on the jukebox at Jack’s; later that night, he accidentally gives Shadow the sun-coin, which brings Laura back to life, throwing Wednesday’s carefully laid plans out of whack.

“The Fool on the Hill,” The Beatles (Page 41): The first of several references to The Beatles in American Gods, Shadow hears the song in a gas station bathroom on his way to Laura’s funeral; could be a reference to Wednesday, who plays the fool to con people, or possibly to Shadow himself—the big, quiet guy who’s much smarter than he looks at first glance? (Update: the original Beatles version/footage is no longer on YouTube, although you may be able to see it here.)

“Shadow and Jimmy,” Was (Not Was); (cowritten by Elvis Costello & David Was):

According to Neil Gaiman, this song (called “a chilly tale of two strange fish” by Elvis Costello) furnished him with a name for the novel’s protagonist, Shadow Moon.

Chapters 3 & 4

“Heartbreak Hotel,” Elvis Presley and “Immigrant Song,” Led Zeppelin: No songs are specifically referenced in Chapter 3, but given Shadow’s dark night of the soul at the Motel America (before and after being visited by his dead wife), and the violent Viking interlude at chapter’s end, it seemed like an ideal time to slip some Elvis and Led Zeppelin into the mix.

“Midnight Special,” Traditional song, (Page 65): The chorus of this folk song, thought to have originated with prisoners in the American South, starts off the fourth chapter, in which the midnight sister, Zorya Polunochnaya, plucks the moon from the sky and gives it to Shadow for protection.

“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” Bob Dylan, (Page 67):

In keeping with all the references to “the coming storm” in the novel, Dylan’s vision of horrors (bloody branches, bleeding hammers, wolves, etc.) is one that grim Odin himself would have to appreciate, as he and Shadow drive to meet Czernobog in Chicago. (If you like your apocalypses with more of a glam rock edge, though, be sure to check out Bryan Ferry’s cover of the song, which I love beyond all reason…)

Night On Bald Mountain, Modest Mussorgsky/Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov: While the Disney version of the Slavonic “black god” has more to do with Satanic imagery than the original mythology suggests, the “Chernabog” of Fantasia is still pretty impressive, even if the chain-smoking, hammer-toting Czernobog we meet in the novel might not see the resemblance.

“I Have the Moon,” The Magnetic Fields: A fitting song for Shadow and Laura, in their current predicament: Laura has the sun-coin, Shadow has his silver moon-dollar, she’s dead (but still around), he’s alive (but arguably dead inside)—they’re about as star-crossed as lovers can get; they basically have their own solar system of dysfunction.

Chapters 5 & 6

“Sweet Home Chicago,” performed by The Blues Brothers:

Okay: we’ve got two con men, one recently released from prison, tooling around Illinois on a mission from god? The first ten pages of this chapter, in which Shadow and Wednesday suavely commit a felony, might as well be The Blues Brothers with bank robbery in place of musical numbers and Czernobog instead of Cab Calloway. Or maybe not, but it’s a great song, regardless!

Boléro, Maurice Ravel, (Page 107): Produced by a player piano at The House on the Rock, Ravel’s Boléro is the first of several classical pieces of music wheezed out by a variety of mechanical devices during Shadow and Wednesday’s visit, lending an air of gravity to its kitschy collection of oddities.

Danse macabre, Camille Saint-Saëns, (Pages 109-110): Based on an old French superstition, Danse macabre was originally paired with a poem relating the antics of Death as he summons the dead from their graves, bidding them to dance as he fiddles until dawn. Gaiman later worked the legend into The Graveyard Book, and this version by Béla Fleck was recorded for the audiobook.

“Octopus’s Garden,” The Beatles, (Page 111): Another great song by the Beatles; given the multiple references to the band in this novel, I’d argue that they’re treated like deities belonging to a kind of pop culture pantheon along with Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and other iconic figures. This video certainly helps the argument, capturing the kind of hysterical, orgiastic worship the Fab Four inspired in fans at the height of Beatlemania.

The Blue Danube, Johann Strauss II, (Page 115): Played as The World’s Largest Carousel revolves majestically, like a prayer wheel, transporting Shadow and the gods behind the scenes for Wednesday’s summit.

The Emperor Waltz, Johann Strauss II, (Page 125): Written to commemorate a toast of friendship between Austrian emperor Franz Josef and Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Emperor Waltz celebrates friendship and political accord between world leaders, making it an interesting (or possibly ironic) choice as Wednesday plays the politician, sweet-talking the old gods into declaring war.

“(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” Blue Öyster Cult: A bonus track in honor of Laura Moon, newly minted (and highly effective) undead killing machine; her drive to protect Shadow is as touching as it is terrifying as she makes short work of the men who’ve abducted and interrogated him.

Chapters 7 through 11

“TV Eye,” The Stooges:

What better song to capture the utter creepiness of the scene in which Lucy Ricardo propositions Shadow from a motel room television? As with the Lucy encounter, aggression and sex and voyeurism are all mangled together in the lyrics and the raw feel of the song, as Iggy grunts and growls like an escaped maniac channeling Howling Wolf.

“Cat People (Putting Out Fire),” David Bowie: I imagine that Bast would appreciate the slinky intensity of this Bowie/Giorgio Moroder collaboration, the title song for the movie Cat People (1982).

“Sally MacLennane,” The Pogues: We could easily make a separate mix tape of songs to accompany Mad Sweeney’s wake. This was my first choice, but there were some excellent suggestions: commenter Sittemio suggested “The Body of an American,” an equally magnificent Pogues song; another commenter, Crumley, mentioned the Dropkick Murphys’ “Your Spirit’s Alive” along with the Flogging Molly songs “Us of Lesser Gods”and “Speed of Darkness,” and hummingrose nominated “The Night Pat Murphy Died” by The Great Big Sea —all of which seem like wonderful additions to any proper Jameson-fueled leprechaun wake.

“Little Drummer Boy,” Performed by Grace Jones (Page 208): This holiday classic provides the festive soundtrack to Shadow and Wednesday’s Christmas lunch (featuring Wednesday’s favorite two-man con games and a casual waitress seduction on the side).

“Tango Till They’re Sore,” Tom Waits (Page 231):

Chapter 10 kicks off with a quote from the chorus: “I’ll tell you all my secrets/But I lie about my past/So send me off to bed for evermore” —and of course, this sentiment applies to nearly everyone in Lakeside, from Shadow and Hinzelmann to the friendly townspeople who turn a blind eye to the dark secret at the heart of their community.

“Winter Wonderland,” performed by Darlene Love (Page 233): Shadow starts humming this, “[a]n old song his mother had loved,” just as he starts to realize that walking into Lakeside in dangerously low temperatures might have been a huge mistake. Throughout the novel, when Shadow’s faced with danger or the unknown, he seems to habitually think back to memories of his mother for comfort; through his memories, she becomes a rather strong presence in her own right.

“Help!” The Beatles (Page 234): We’ve had a McCartney song and a Ringo song, but when faced with mortal peril, Shadow finds himself channeling this John Lennon tune, appropriately enough. If The Beatles are pop culture deities, does humming along to “Help!” count as a prayer? Luckily for poor, freezing Shadow, it seems to work like one….

“One Last Hope,” from Disney’s Hercules, performed by Danny DeVito (Page 247): Margie Olsen’s son Leon is enthralled by this movie (“an animated satyr stomping and shouting his way across the screen”) when Shadow stops by to introduce himself. I’d love to read it as a clue about whether Shadow is actually a hero, a demigod destined to do great things, like Hercules or Cuchulain, but it may just be an very sly bit of cleverness on Gaiman’s part…

“Viva Las Vegas,” Elvis Presley:

Given Shadow and Wednesday’s side trip to Sin City, I couldn’t resist including this ultimate paean to Vegas and its siren song promising good times, fast women, and the chance to win or lose a fortune with every passing minute. “Viva Las Vegas” is a weirdly intense song, for something that seems so silly and campy at first glance—the language invoking fire, stakes, burning, and devils always seemed intentionally dark and ritualistic to me, albeit in the campiest possible way….

“Why Can’t He Be You,” Patsy Cline (Page 252): In Las Vegas, among the gods and the Elvis impersonators, a Muzak version of this song plays, “almost subliminally.” It’s an interesting choice in a place where almost everything is meant to represent something else—a castle, a pyramid, Paris, New York, Real Elvis—perhaps the song is included as a comment on trying to replace something real with something not-quite-real, a concept which might apply to any number of characters and situations in the book (Shadow, Wednesday, Laura, Lakeside, and so on).

“San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” Scott McKenzie, (Page 269): When Wednesday, annoyed with Shadow for stirring up trouble (albeit in his dreams), announces that they’re heading to San Francisco, he snaps, “The flowers in your hair are optional” before hanging up. You’ve gotta love a sarcastic reference to the ultimate flower-powered hippie anthem coming from the guy who lives for battle, gore, and blood sacrifice.

“Marie Laveau,” Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show/“Marie Laveau,” Oscar “Papa” Celestin: Two different songs based in the legends surrounding famed Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, who appears as the Widow Paris in the interlude at the end of Chapter 11.

“Litanie des Saints,” Dr. John:

A song which celebrates the Voodoo tradition of New Orleans and pays tribute to the staying power of the deities mentioned, including Papa Legba (Ellegua), Oshun, Obatala, Shango, and Baron, most of whom originated in West Africa, as part of the Yoruba religion. Most of the gods referenced here would have been familiar to Wututu/Mama Zouzou, though perhaps in different incarnations.

Chapters 12 & 13

“Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian),” Paul Revere & the Raiders: Technically speaking, Shadow and Wednesday meet up with Whiskey Jack and Apple Johnny on Lakota land, not Cherokee; then again, Samantha Black Crow and Margie Olsen are both half Cherokee—all things considered, this song seemed like a good fit in light of the visit at the reservation and Shadow’s conversation with Whiskey Jack a bit further on in the book.

“The Lord’s Been Good to Me,” from Disney’s Johnny Appleseed: This version of John Chapman’s life is pretty much what you’d expect from a 1948 Disney cartoon—he’s best friends with a cartoon skunk, he doesn’t have a dead wife whose passing causes him to go crazy, there are some catchy tunes, and at the end a folksy angel collects him to go plant apple trees in heaven.

“Dark Am I Yet Lovely,” Sinead O’Connor/“Material Girl,” Madonna (referenced in the Interlude, pages 328-334): Bilquis’s fervent recitation of the Biblical Song of Songs (interpreted here by Sinead O’Connor) overlaps with The Technical Boy’s snide, sadistic parody of “Material Girl” in this chapter, playing off of one another in interesting ways. The contrast between the two brings the old god’s authenticity and wisdom and the new god’s soulless, empty rhetoric into stark relief.

“Old Friends,” written by Stephen Sondheim (Page 339):

Chapter 13 opens with a quote from “Old Friends,” one of the signature songs from Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. While it might seem like a positive, upbeat song, it’s actually rather sad in the context of the show, as the old friends in question do their best to console one another and pretend that things are fine, even as their relationships falter and implode. In the book, Shadow undergoes a traumatic series of events, building up and getting worse as the chapter moves forward, and it’s full of characters who could be defined as “old friends” of either Shadow or “Mike Ainsel,” making the opening quote seem grimly perfect by chapter’s end.

“Where Everybody Knows Your Name,” Gary Portnoy: The theme song to Cheers, which Shadow is watching when the opposition break in with a live feed of Wednesday’s assassination. Ironically, his safety depended on living in a town where nobody knew his real name; walking into a bar and hearing a familiar voice yell “Shadow” was the beginning of the end of his stay in Lakeside.

“Cabaret,” Liza Minnelli (from Cabaret): Only tangentially referenced via a bumper sticker that Shadow remembers fondly (reading “Life is a Cabernet”), but it’s an interesting connection. “Cabaret” is a song about seizing life by the horns sung by a character who can only function when she’s playing a part. As characters, Shadow and Sally Bowles don’t have much in common, but in different ways, they’re both avoiding life, or at least failing to be active participants in reality. But at least for Shadow, that’s all about to change.

Chapters 14 through 16

“In the Dark With You,” Greg Brown (Page 375): In his acknowledgments at the end of American Gods, Neil Gaiman credits two specific albums without which “it would have been a different book.” One is The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs, and the other is Dream Café by Greg Brown, and of course a verse from the second song on that latter album serves as an epigraph to Chapter 14. And of course, in the sense of being lost, searching, uncertain, this is probably the darkest chapter in the book, between the death of Wednesday and Shadow’s vigil on the tree.

“Magic Bus,” The Who: Picturing Czernobog, Nancy, and Wednesday chugging all over the country in 1970 VW bus like a bunch of Not-At-All-Merry Pranksters just makes me so happy, from the minute Czernobog sees their new ride and says, “So what happens when the police pull us over, looking for the hippies, and the dope? Eh? We are not here to ride the magic bus. We are to blend in.”

“Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” Traditional song, performed by Dave Van Ronk, (Page 408):

A verse from this song begins Chapter 15, as Shadow hangs from the world tree, in relative comfort at first, then in increasing pain which gives way to unbearable agony. Originally, I posted The Grateful Dead’s more mellow take on the song, “I’ve Been All Around This World,” so thanks very much to commenter Hal_Incandenza, who provided me with a link to the Dave Van Ronk version, which is a much better fit.

“Death is Not the End,” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Nick Cave’s brilliant reworking of a Bob Dylan song; the imagery here just seems so perfectly in tune with the events of the novel at this point, from the darkness and uncertainty and violence to the “tree of life,” that I had to include it on the mix.

Chapters 17 & 18

“Cold Wind to Valhalla,” Jethro Tull: No specific songs are mentioned in Chapter 17, but given the epic battle about to start and the first death dedicated to Odin (by Loki), “Cold Wind to Valhalla” seems like an excellent fit. Ian Anderson’s lyrics even include the line “We’re getting a bit short on heroes lately”—and with Shadow out of the picture throughout this chapter, the feeling is particularly apt.

“The Ballad of Sam Bass,” Traditional folk song: Technically, Gaiman quotes the commentary on this song, and not the song itself, at the start of Chapter 18, to underscore the distinction between truth, reality, and metaphor, and the idea that “none of this is happening…never a word of it is literally true, although it all happened.” And yet the song itself gives us an idea of what poetry gives us, in place of fact, and how it can turn a young outlaw into a legend (or even a culture hero).

“Thunderbird,” Quiet Riot: Sure, the title might be a bit on-the-nose, but in an awesome power ballad-y way, the song encapsulates Shadow’s connection with the thunderbird, and his realization that eagle stones aren’t a simple magical solution to his problems, but a violent act of sacrifice that he’s unwilling to consider. The elegiac tone also seems fitting for a chapter that is full of goodbyes, from Shadow’s final confrontation with Wednesday to his last moments with Laura—it’s a song about mourning and moving on, which Shadow is finally able to do after the storm has finally passed.

“City of Dreams,” Talking Heads:

This song fits so well thematically with the novel as a whole that it could go anywhere in the mix, but I included once we’d reached Whiskey Jack’s explanation of how America works on a spiritual level (avocados and wild rice and all). The lyrics should certainly resonate with fans of Whiskey Jack, the buffalo man, and American Gods as a whole.

Chapters 19, 20, & Postscript

“What’s New Pussycat,” Tom Jones (Page 487): Mr. Nancy’s first karaoke selection; I’m sure watching Nancy belting out the lyrics and charming the crowd would be a joy to behold (and given Anansi’s earlier story about teasing Tiger, the song selection could be a winking reference to the old trickster god’s favorite adversary).

“The Way You Look Tonight,” performed by Fred Astaire (Page 487): Nancy’s “moving, tuneful” rendition of the Jerome Kern classic gets his audience cheering and clapping. The fact that he chooses this particular song to help get his mojo flowing again—a song that’s all about making other people feel good—just ratchets up his already considerable appeal, in my book.

“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” The Animals (Page 488)

Allowing himself to be pushed up onstage and to perform is a big step for Shadow, so it’s fitting that the karaoke track he chooses to sing is basically a song about being alive: occasionally getting angry, being joyful, feeling worried and regretful sometimes, but trying to be a good person. It’s about dealing with the ups and downs of life, and reacting to the different emotions involved—not being stoic, keeping your head down, and staying quiet, as he did for so long. For Shadow, it’s a song of triumph, of no longer being “a big, solid, man-shaped hole in the world,” and embracing the business of living. (For good measure, you should also check out Nina Simone’s stellar live interpretation of the song here…)

“Closer To Fine,” Indigo Girls: Samantha Black Crow’s fondness for the Indigo Girls is made clear from her closing time routine at the coffee shop, as she puts on a CD an sings and dances along to the music. Since there’s no mention of a specific song or album, I’m going to go with “Closer to Fine,” one of the duo’s best-known songs—given the lyrics about not taking life too seriously and not tying yourself down to one set of answers, dogma, or belief, I think Sam would find it appropriate. And maybe even dance-worthy.

“American Tune,” Paul Simon: In many ways, “American Tune” provides an echo of Shadow’s mood following the climactic events of the final chapters—tired, confused, having been through so much, but ultimately all right, as he takes a break from his homeland (telling himself that there’s nothing to go back for, but knowing at the same time that it’s not true). Despite the notes of sadness and uncertainty, the song’s focus on carrying on, in spite of trauma and loss, gives the sense that hope remains, after all.

“Beyond Belief,” Elvis Costello & the Attractions

Last, but not least: if I had to pick a single, all-encompassing theme song for American Gods, “Beyond Belief” would be it. Without being too on-the-nose, Costello’s idiosyncratic lyrics give a sense of intrigue and secrets, conflict, maybe even a femme fatale in the mix, and the line “But I know there’s not a hope in Hades” offers a convenient mythological link. Plus, I can never hear the lyric “You’ll never be alone in the bone orchard” without thinking of Shadow’s dream about the “Bone Orchard,” a phrase Low Key/Loki was fond of using. The song even mentions an “Alice” (through a two-way looking glass), which puts me in mind of “The Monarch of the Glen.” Any echoes between the song and the world of the novel are completely coincidental, of course, and yet the idea of being “beyond belief” neatly encapsulates the events of American Gods, for me—everything that happens is beyond belief, and yet the trick with both gods, myths, culture heroes and good fiction is that they make us believe in spite of ourselves.

This is an updated version of a post that originally published in November 2012

Bridget McGovern is the managing editor of Tor.com. Once again, she is losing her battle with all these earworms; it’s like Dune in her head right now. Well, Dune with less sand and more guys named Elvis.

First great thing: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis went on movie dates to see blockbuster films. Second great thing: They reviewed them in letters to their friends.

Atlas Obscura has highlighted a passage from the J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, an out of print reference text, that describes Lewis taking Tolkien to see Disney’s Snow White in 1938. The article’s author Eric Grundhauser pulls in other reference material–letters from Lewis and reactions from scholars–to get a more complete picture of just how rankled the authors got over Disney’s depiction of fairy tales.

From Lewis, in what very much reads like an internet troll comment but was really just a letter to his friend A.K. Hamilton:

Dwarfs ought to be ugly of course, but not in that way. And the dwarfs’ jazz party was pretty bad. I suppose it never occurred to the poor boob that you could give them any other kind of music. But all the terrifying bits were good, and the animals really most moving: and the use of shadows (of dwarfs and vultures) was real genius. What might not have come of it if this man had been educated–or even brought up in a decent society?

It should be noted that according to the sequence of events that Grundhauser has reconstructed, Lewis saw the movie alone, had that reaction, then goaded Tolkien into going with him to see it again. “Hey Tolkien, come hate-watch this with me!” essentially said the lauded author of the classic Narnia fantasy series.

The author goes into much more detail in the Atlas Obscura piece, including Tolkien’s likely opinion on Disney’s depiction of dwarves and what may or may not have been Disney’s winking response to the two authors. It’s a great, fun read.

(Tor.com’s own Mari Ness rewatched the film in 2015 and notes: Everyone always forgets the tortoise.)

Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale is such an intimate first-person account that, while it depicts a dystopian world in horrifying detail, we sometimes forget that it is the experience of just one Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. The 1990 film adaptation did away with Offred’s interiority and supplanted that with a few scenes that Offred is not privy to, a combination that rendered the final product mostly unrelatable. Hulu’s television adaptation, however, walks a fine line between both storytelling strategies: It resurrects Offred’s narration while also expanding every aspect of the world—the private traumas and tribulations of other Handmaids and Wives, and Gilead’s deadly consequences for crimes that (for now, at least) exist outside Offred’s frame of reference.

But what a frame it is. From the first lines, you know that screenwriter Bruce Miller (The 100) and the rest of the production team took the source material as seriously as Scripture: Offred’s narration, describing the constraints of both her room and her life as a Handmaid, is lifted almost verbatim from Atwood’s text, so that the rich language describing the most harrowing horrors quickly establishes the world. But then the writers do an incredible thing: They build on Offred’s monologue, supplementing the formal language of her mantras—My name is Offred, and I intend to survive—with a running commentary that’s so acerbic, so shockingly vulgar and wonderfully snarky in this repressed society, that it makes you laugh out loud in disbelief.

This approach could also describe the adaptation as a whole: The writers, directors, and producers took the novel’s foundation and built on it, enhancing Atwood’s original ideas with subtext that feels so painfully acute that you would be forgiven for thinking that this was written in only the last five months. Because the women depicted in this series—independent, outspoken, queer, sexually autonomous women of color and white women—could have been raising their voices and signs in the Women’s March. But they also could have been the women who chose not to march, who voted on the opposing side to these women in the election. The smartest thing that the showrunners did, in adapting this story to television, was to give every single one of these women a voice.

Spoilers for the first three episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale. Any book spoilers will be whited out.

In the first three episodes, women are brainwashed through the mantra of It was her fault, and we witness at least two scenes of institutionalized rape; a deluded woman steals a baby while a more sympathetic woman contemplates the same; one Handmaid is made a literal example of the Scripture verse If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, while another suffers the same treatment to a very different part of her body. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

The dystopian trappings are both foreign and familiar. If you’re new to the story, you’ll recognize that this is the progenitor to Divergent’s faction system built on color and values, or The Hunger Games’ rebellion against the Capitol. It is a consistently amazing fact that Margaret Atwood dreamed up this dystopia over thirty years ago, and its relevance has grown rather than diminished. Yes, the women are dressed in hyper-stylized, color-coordinated outfits that more bring to mind medieval handmaids than anything from the near-future. But these contrasts—red Handmaids, teal Wives, hospital-green Marthas—are a striking demonstration both of how these women are segregated by the system and how they choose to set themselves apart from one another. The outlandish strictures enacted by Gilead upon its inhabitants are really just trumped-up ways of representing universal, timeless women’s struggles: judgment or punishment for any sort of sexual autonomy; men feeling that they are owed women; politicians and leaders intruding upon what women do with their bodies, just because they’re capable of conceiving and giving birth—intrusions that prioritize the well being of a hypothetical baby over that of the body that would carry it.

Photo: George Kraychyk/Hulu

But even as these women are funneled into different classes, their identities stripped from them, they do not lose their sense of self—as demonstrated by Offred’s delightfully sharp internal monologue. While shopping with fellow Handmaids and Ofglen neutrally remarks about how Offred’s Commander likes oranges, Offred thinks, I don’t need oranges, I need to scream. I need to grab the nearest machine gun. When Nick blandly inquires as to why Offred is leaving the house, despite her comings and goings being strictly regulated for the same handful of errands, she silently snarks, No, Nick, I’m gonna knock back a few at the Oyster House bar, you wanna come along? And when she’s cornered—when Ofglen gets transferred, or the entire household believes she’s pregnant—Offred simply thinks, Fuck. It’s her true voice, the one she used in her daily life before Gilead. The one that’s forbidden now.

It could be a stretch, but I also think that the writers are incorporating the novel’s frame story. (Book spoilers, highlight to read.) Offred’s formal monologues are so different from her imagined comebacks that they almost seem to exist in a separate narrative, elevated above the day-to-day. The sound quality is also different—not quite echoing, but sounding as if it inhabits a physical space as well as a figurative one. Which is to say, please let this series end with someone finding a footlocker full of cassette tapes. (End book spoilers.)

Just as important as the aural elements are the visual ones. The interviews with costume designer Ane Crabtree (who was responsible for making Westworld look so authentic) are fascinating, from little details like sewing down the grommets of the Handmaids’ shoes so that they forget they ever had shoelaces, to the dozen different pieces that make up the Handmaids’ modest yet complicated attire. So too was the choice of a menstrual red for the gowns—really, for all of the women’s color schemes. The Marthas’ clothes are so pale as to nearly blend in with the walls of their homes. And instead of the standard blue we saw in the movie, which pits primary color shades of red and blue against one another, the Wives’ dresses are more of a teal, which clashes harshly with the red every time they share space with the Handmaids.

Then there’s the Ceremony. While every adaptation’s take on this institutionalized rape has not dimmed the horror of the act, the TV series has by far the best interpretation. And by “best,” I mean the most disturbing: The camera mostly lingers on Offred’s paralyzed expression and dead eyes, as she mentally disassociates from the moment even as she is being physically jerked up and down in Serena Joy’s lap, back and forth, as the Commander does his duty. Little details, like Serena Joy pulling her foot over Offred’s face to get up after it’s over, or the Commander cleaning himself before zipping up, make it all the more chilling.

For these and other scenes in the Commander’s household, it’s important that we’re in Offred’s head. But by moving from strictly first-person to a sort of omniscient third-person, the narrative both depicts Offred’s individual experiences while also transcending just her version of events.

A major criticism of the novel is the segregation of race among Gilead’s women: The Handmaids all appear to be white, with the black women sorted into the Martha class of domestic servants. While Elisabeth Moss’ Offred/June is still white, she’s in the minority among the people dearest to her: Her best friend Moira (Samira Wiley) and her husband Luke (O-T Fagbenle) are both black, and Luke and June’s daughter Hannah (Jordana Blake) is biracial. Race is not a sticking point, either, at least not in the first few episodes; I’m commenting on it more now than the series has at all so far. No longer is a straight white woman our only narrator; there are multiple points of entry for viewers.

Photo: George Kraychyk/Hulu

Similarly, Moira isn’t the sole queer character; Ofglen (Alexis Bledel) reveals, when talking about their lives before, that she had a wife and a son. In the book, Ofglen is something of an enigma, acting as little more than Offred’s tipoff that there is dissent swirling beneath the surface in Gilead. By giving her a family to fight for and an identity that makes her a “gender traitor” by Gilead’s standards, she becomes more than a seditious Handmaid. It’s also, I suspect, an opportunity to dramatize what could have happened to Moira, as a queer woman, had she lived out her life as a Handmaid with Offred and the others.

Photo: George Kraychyk/Hulu

In addition to communicating with the shadowy resistance, Ofglen has also committed an equally grave crime: She has engaged in a relationship with a Martha. The consequences, as they unfurl in episode 3, “Late,” are gutting: she and her lover are put on trial, with muzzles strapped over their mouths so that they cannot say a word in their defense as they are declared traitors. Then “Martha 6715301” (we never find out her real name) is hanged—in an especially shocking detail, by a crane—while Ofglen is forced to watch, helpless and screeching like a wounded animal. But she isn’t granted the same fate, because not even her treason could erase the fact of her fertility. She awakens post-surgery to discover that her genitals have been mutilated—not enough to prevent her from conceiving or giving birth, but to remove any association with pleasure.

Photo: George Kraychyk/Hulu

This violation of Ofglen—who at this point is finally referred to by her real name, Emily—and Janine’s plucked-out eye are both details added to the show. In the book, Aunt Lydia reminds her charges that she can mutilate their hands and feet because those do not matter for their purposes. The showrunners simply took that viewpoint to a more shocking and devastating end—because as far as the Aunts are concerned, a Handmaid does not need to look appealing to be part of the Ceremony, or experience an orgasm during it. They are simply, as Offred puts it, two-legged wombs.

Photo: George Kraychyk/Hulu

Even Janine/Ofwarren, the Handmaid who swings wildly between smarmy complacence and unhinged grief, is an object of sympathy. She may parade her pregnancy through town, but it’s a communal joy for every Handmaid: One of their ranks fulfilled her purpose and reinforced how relevant they are to the new world order. She has also created a new life, which despite its violent conception, is still precious. But whereas the birth was the peak of Janine’s story in the book, viewers stick with her through her postpartum struggle. Her daughter Angela was handed directly to the Wife after birth; Janine gets to hold her only when the baby needs to nurse. While Janine believes that she is essential to the household, what she has failed to grasp is that as soon as the baby has stopped nursing, she’ll be shuttled off to another household to do this all over again. But right now, she has tricked herself into believing that “Charlotte” (“her real name”) is hers and that the Commander loves her and their child, and is planning an escape for the three of them, this odd family linked only by blood.

Photo: George Kraychyk/Hulu

When contemplating Luke’s fate in the novel, Offred dreams up at least three different scenarios, struggling to reconcile alternate and contradictory versions of Luke in her mind. The show’s decision to follow different Handmaids through key events is much the same, a way of playing out different potential paths for Offred. “I’m not that kind of person,” she demurs to Ofglen when the latter first mentions the resistance—but what if she finally gave voice to her inner monologue? Offred’s supposedly missed period immediately elevates her to a place of privilege within the Commander’s household, with Serena Joy catering to her every need and actually thanking her for answering their prayers. Though Offred must break the news that she’s not pregnant—in a scene that made me ache for Serena Joy but also squirm away from the Wife’s cold fury—in Janine she sees the bittersweet position she could inhabit if she could only conceive. And, of course, she witnesses how dangerous it is to believe that your Commander could actually care for you simply because he fucks you and you happen to get pregnant. While Offred has not achieved the latter, her secret Scrabble game with Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) is a much more dangerous form of intimacy.

Photo: George Kraychyk/Hulu

Despite the specific details of her account, book Offred is still an Everywoman, a vessel into which readers can project themselves to imagine what if this happened to me? Perhaps this is why Atwood never explicitly named her, to emphasize that anyone could become Offred if she were cycled out of the Commander’s household and someone new were brought in. Instead, the TV series has Offred name herself at the end of the pilot, conjuring up the name that used to define her—June, a nod to the long-held reader theory—and then does the same for the other Handmaids. Offred is no longer the Everywoman, but any woman.

Why should you watch this show? Because it’s already surprised me, someone who knows the story inside and out.

Natalie Zutter cannot believe she has to wait a week for the next episode. Find her on Twitter and Tumblr.

Welcome back to the Warbreaker reread! Last week, Siri continued her search for information, and Vivenna continued to meet with criminals. This week, Siri gets a new definition of beauty while Vivenna, Vasher, and Lightsong ponder their options.

This reread will contain spoilers for all of Warbreaker and any other Cosmere book that becomes relevant to the discussion. This is particularly likely to include Words of Radiance, due to certain crossover characters. The index for this reread can be found here.

Click on through to join the discussion!

Chapter 29

Point of View: Siri, Vivenna, Vasher
Setting: The God King’s Palace, the D’Denir garden, a street nearby
Timing: The morning after Chapter 28

Take a Deep Breath

Siri and Susebron converse quietly in the bedroom after the night’s performance. He is interested in her background and her homeland because he is interested in her, but the conversation accidentally shifts to discussion of religions. This is disturbing for him, partly because he’s never realized that worship of the Returned is exclusive to Hallandren, and partly because it seems so strange for a god to have a wife who doesn’t believe in him. He brings the conversation back to her, though it again wanders—this time into beauty and BioChroma. Even though, or perhaps because, they are discussing uncomfortable topics, they continue to grow closer and are rapidly coming to love one another.

Vivenna stands with a crowd of onlookers gaping at four bodies in the D’Denir Garden. While she first focuses on the details of life and death with her enhanced vision, Denth points out the bizarre look of the wounds—a telltale sign that these men were killed by Nightblood. Denth stews about a way to deal with it; Tonk Fah suggests stealing it, but Denth refuses to consider touching it. He wants Vasher to draw it, to be forced to use it until it either kills him or weakens him so that Denth can take him down, refusing to accept that Vasher could have beaten Arsteel fairly. Vivenna is unsettled by the morning’s events, and realizes that she is being watched by someone with a lot of Breath.

Vasher looks down at the departing group from the top of a nearby building. Nightblood cheerfully suggests going down to talk to Denth, and asks where Shashara is; as usual, he either can’t or won’t remember that Shashara and Arsteel are dead, and that Denth is now Vasher’s mortal enemy. Vasher, however, is merely frustrated with Vivenna’s activities and the related disruption of plans; he knows he’ll have to deal with this bunch, but decides to wait for now.

Breathtaking

But you don’t believe in worshiping the Returned?

Siri shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet. My people teach strongly against it. They’re not fond of the way that the Hallandren understand religion.”

He sat quietly for a long moment.

So… you do not like those such as me?

“What? Of course I like you! You’re sweet!”

He frowned, writing. I don’t think God Kings are supposed to be “sweet.”

“Fine, then,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re terrible and mighty. Awesome and deific. And sweet.”

Much better, he wrote, smiling. I should very much like to meet this Austre.

Okay, to be honest, I don’t really have anything in particular to say about this. I just love it, so I quoted it for you. There you have it.

Local Color

The annotations, as they so often do, address the most interesting points of discussion. One is the way in which the Siri-Susebron romance provides a light counterpoint to the danger and tension of Vivenna’s plot, and the soul-searching and intrigue of Lightsong’s. Speaking of Susebron, yes, he did get better at spelling too fast. Did you really want to read more chapters of misspellings? A lesser issue is that the location of the bodies (the D’Denir gardens) is purely coincidental—in-world, of course. It’s handy for the author and the characters, but Vasher didn’t use the location just because Vivenna had been there the day before. It would be a non-scene, but the conflict between Denth and Vasher needs to be A Thing for the reader. Finally, there’s a quick summary of the Pahn Kahl religion, and the clarification that the religion itself isn’t driving the actions of the Pahn Kahl people; it’s the way they’re taken for granted and all but ignored as a people that is the problem.

Chapter 30

Point of View: Lightsong
Setting: Lightsong’s Palace, Hopefinder’s Palace
Timing: Unknown; probably soon after Chapter 27

Take a Deep Breath

Blushweaver watches in astonishment as Lightsong makes a horrible mess with clay and a pottery wheel; he concludes that pottery is definitely not one of the skills carried over from his previous life. Juggling fruit, however, is… as is mathematics, sketching, and a surprising knowledge of sailing terminology. He’s been experimenting, and along with pottery has shown no affinity for dyeing, horses, gardening, sculpting, or foreign languages. As they walk away together, Blushweaver is bemused by his fascination with his former life; she insists that she wouldn’t want to know, because she was obviously boring before.

Together they arrive at the palace of Hopefinder the Just, god of innocence and beauty. He is a bit of a paradox—the youngest of the gods by apparent physical age, but fifth oldest in order of Return. He and Blushweaver take opposing views of the current political situation; where Blushweaver is confident of the approach of war, Hopefinder is convinced that affairs are growing more stable. As they debate the matter, Lightsong mostly listens, and discovers that there’s a lot going on in the city of which he was completely unaware: rumors of the presence of a second Idrian princess in the city, for example. Listening for other points of interest, he muses on the oddities of a god who Returned as a very young child, combining as he does many mature traits with others that are distinctly child-like.

As this rambles off into musings on cultural ideals as reflected in the gods, he is abruptly brought back to the conversation by Hopefinder rebuking Blushweaver’s attempts to seduce him. This brings it to a point: he knows that her real purpose in visiting him is to try to obtain his Lifeless Commands. He proposes a bargain: his command phrase in return for her votes, to be directed as he wishes. To everyone’s surprise, she accepts the deal. Lightsong is disturbed by this evidence of Blushweaver’s conviction that war really was coming, and equally disturbed by Hopefinder’s willingness to give up what should have been a sacred obligation. As Hopefinder prepares to release his Commands, Lightsong sees a vision—a shining room made of steel; a prison.

As Hopefinder leaves, Blushweaver is pleased to now hold the Commands for two of the four Lifeless contingents: Mercystar gave hers to Blushweaver the previous day, encouraged by Lightsong’s interest in solving the mysterious death of her servant. She assumes this was his ultimate purpose, but he denies it; his primary interest is in the mystery of his former identity.

Breathtaking

“Eleven years. Eleven years of peace. Eleven years to grow to sincerely loathe this system of government we have. We all attend the assembly court of judgment. We listen to the arguments. But most of us don’t matter. In any given vote, only those with sway in that field have any real say over anything. During war times, those of us with Lifeless Commands are important. The rest of the time, our opinion rarely matters.

“You want my Lifeless? Be welcome to them! I have had no opportunity to use them in eleven years, and I venture that another eleven will pass without incident. I will give you those Commands, Blushweaver—but only in exchange for your vote. You sit on the council of social ills. You have an important vote practically every week. In exchange for my security phrases, you must promise to vote in social matters as I say, from now until one of us dies.”

The pavilion fell silent.

“Ah, so now you reconsider,” Hopefinder said, smiling. “I’ve heard you complain about your duties in court—that you find your votes trivial. Well, it’s not so easy to let go of them, is it? Your vote is all the influence you have. It isn’t flashy, but it is potent. It—”

“Done,” Blushweaver said sharply.

In a way, it does seem like a bizarre form of government, where assignment of responsibility has nothing to do with either the interests or aptitudes of the individual. It’s easy to see the god of bravery holding a quarter of the army, but why the goddess of matrons and families? The god of innocence and beauty? The goddess of kindness?

For that matter, who decides what the political assignments are? Who names the Returned? Who decides what attribute(s) they represent?

Local Color

The annotations reveal that Lightsong (who isn’t the first, but is the first of his generation, to investigate his own past) was actually the son of a potter. They also clarify some of Lightsong’s musings about the nature of the Returned and the aging process they undergo if they return while very young children. Finally, they address the underlying depth of personality of both Blushweaver and Lightsong, both of which are becoming more apparent in the text itself by this point.

Snow White and Rose Red

This week, Siri and Vivenna occupy the same chapter, but with vastly different situations. Siri, while she really is trying to find out if/why/from whom her life is in danger, and likewise Susebron’s, at the same time is in a comfortable life where she is learning to fit. She’s also totally falling in love with her husband, and thoroughly enjoying her time with him. While there is a certain tension emanating from Bluefingers’s warnings and from the attitude of the priests, it’s overwhelmed by the increasing intimacy and the delight she feels in his company.

Vivenna, despite her relatively wealthy status, has no such joy to balance her many discomforts. She’s out of her depth politically and socially, she is deeply uncomfortable with all the color and ostentation (not to mention Awakening), she’s even more deeply uncomfortable with the large stock of Breath she holds, she’s unsure about the validity of their more criminal activities even in ostensible service to her homeland, and she has no one she can confidently rely on. She’s got Parlin, who she likes and trusts but doesn’t really respect. She’s got the mercenaries, who she sort of likes (well, some of them) but doesn’t understand at all and doesn’t entirely trust. And she’s got Vasher watching her with unknown motives.

So far, we’ve seen Siri go through stages of carelessness, rebellion, fear, fascination, cautious acceptance, familiarity, determination, and growing confidence. Vivenna started out calm and confident, but every time we see her she’s got more doubts and less confidence… and the slide has only begun.

Clashing Colors

A few chapters ago, we saw the difficulty Vivenna had with understanding the Hallandren religion. This chapter brings up the same subject, but this time it’s a difficulty between Susebron and Siri:

Siri flushed, hair blushing as well. “I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t talk about other gods in front of you.”

Other gods? he wrote. Like those in the court?

“No,” Siri said. “Austre is the Idrian god.”

I understand, Susebron wrote. Is he very handsome?

Siri laughed. “No, you don’t understand. He’s not a Returned, like you or Lightsong. He’s… well, I don’t know. Didn’t the priests mention other religions to you?”

Other religions? he wrote.

“Sure,” she said. “I mean, not everybody worships the Returned. The Idrians like me worship Austre, and the Pahn Kahl people—like Bluefingers… well, I don’t actually know what they worship, but it’s not you.”

That is very strange to consider, he wrote. If your gods are not Returned, then what are they?

There’s a lot more, but I can’t quote the entire section. Susebron is understandably disturbed by the realization that his wife, who he is coming to care about very much, doesn’t actually believe that he’s a god at all. Worried that it makes him sound petulant, he is nonetheless honest with her about his concern. It’s a touching little scene, as they struggle to understand each other’s point of view. So many things that Susebron has always taken for granted, Siri simply doesn’t believe—but it’s her lack of belief that helps her work out the mechanics of his actual abilities. It’ll be a lot more chapters until he fully believes her and acts on this understanding, but as with many “minor details” it will be critical to the plot solution.

In Living Color

Siri’s breakthrough understanding about the difference between Susebron’s Divine Breath and the thousands of additional Breaths was probably a lot more stunning the first time through… This time, we’ve been talking about it enough already that it feels like she’s just finally catching up. She’s right, in any case: he can indeed make use of all those additional Breaths to Awaken, but they still don’t know how to do it without the ability to speak. She’s wrong on some other things, naturally, but still pretty close. Also, his reserves are growing faster than she’d been told, since sometimes he gets three or four Breaths each week while only consuming one.

Denth & Vasher, while not actually doing anything, are busy lurking around in the background being ominous. Also, they really don’t like each other.

Probably the biggest revelations about the Returned in these chapters, though it’s more world-building than plot-building, is the musing on Hopefinder’s development. Returned as a two-year-old, he now has the body of an extremely impressive thirteen-year-old, with the maturity of a much older person. As is the way with all Returned who are very young at the time, during his first year his mental and communicative abilities matured very rapidly, so that in many ways he was an adult in a three-year-old’s body. Assuming he doesn’t give up his life first, he’ll continue to mature until he reaches prime adulthood, and then stop aging. Nice gig if you can get it.

You have to wonder, though, what makes Endowment give the occasional two-year-old (or baby) the opportunity to Return, and what makes them accept it…

This segues pretty handily into Lightsong’s musings (more world-building) about the way the appearance of each Returned reflects their own ideals. A lot of it is cultural—what are the current societal standards of beauty? Some of it is simply individual self-image—Lightsong is an example of this, where his physique reflects his own mental image of what the god of bravery ought to look like. It’s a clue, which we’ll see borne out at the very end of the book, that once they understand how it works, Returned can actually change their appearance at will.

Don’t Hold Your Breath (Give it to me!)

Nightblood is, as always, a bizarre combination of hilarious and creepy. How much does he understand and refuse to acknowledge, and how much is just the limitation of a hunk of steel given sapience? He never remembers for more than a few minutes that things are no longer the way they were when he was created. He remembers the people he collects along the way, from Shashara and Vasher at the beginning, to Denth (Varatreledees) and the other scholars, to Vivenna in the present. He just doesn’t seem to comprehend the passage of time or the permanence of death.

Exhale

I saved my favorite piece for last, with sort of a half excuse that it didn’t fit very well in any of the other units. This is Susebron’s perspective on beauty, which is both natural to his condition and a lovely insight on true beauty.

I suspect that the mountains are beautiful, as you have said. However, I believe the most beautiful thing in them has already come down to me.

On the surface, that’s quite a pick-up line. (Can you use a pick-up line on your own wife? I guess…) On a slightly deeper level, it’s an exquisitely beautiful thing to say to your bride. And on a purely practical level, it’s completely amazing.

I have thousands of Breaths, he wrote. It is hard to see as other people do—only through the stories of my mother can I understand their ways. All colors are beauty in my eyes. When others look at something—a person—one may sometimes seem more beautiful than another.

This is not so for me. I see only the color. The rich, wondrous colors that make up all things and gives them life. I cannot focus only on the face, as so many do. I see the sparkle of the eyes, the blush of the cheeks, the tones of skin—even each blemish is a distinct pattern. All people are wonderful.

He erased. And so, when I speak of beauty, I must speak of things other than these colors. And you are different. I do not know how to describe it.

I can’t quite articulate what I love about this. Something to do with the factual nature of what it’s like to have the Tenth Heightening, coupled with a personality that seeks to understand the nature of another person. Something to do with the kind of sight that no longer sees physical beauty as exceptional, because to him all people are equally beautiful. Something about how it would be nice if we could all do this, but for reals like Susebron—it’s not that he has somehow overcome the distraction of physical appearance, which is the best we can hope for; it’s that he really does, unavoidably, see beauty in the appearance of every person and every object around him.

Welp. That’s clearly going to just go in circles, so I’ll quit. But I hope you see it too; I think it’s a pretty cool aspect of the magic that Sanderson chose to bring out.

And that’s it for the blog—now it’s time for the comments! Join us again next week, when we will cover chapters 31 and 32, in which Vivenna gets two very difficult lessons, and Siri gets a much more pleasant—if confusing—one from a white-haired storyteller.

Alice Arneson is a SAHM, blogger, beta reader, and literature fan. If you Facebook, you can join her in the Tor-Sanderson-rereader-specific group known as the Storm Cellar; since it’s a closed group, you have to ask to join. Identify yourself as a Tor friend, and one of the moderators will add you. Also, the Oathbringer progress bar is currently at 44%. Just sayin’…

Actress and producer Anika Noni Rose has optioned film and television rights to Daniel José Older’s The Shadowshaper Cypher series, the bestselling YA urban fantasy series with an Afro-Latina heroine who can shape magic through paintings, music, and stories. This is Rose’s (via her company Roaring Virgin Productions) second collaboration with Older; in 2015 she optioned his Bone Street Rumba series.

Shadowshaper was published in 2015 and was named a New York Times Notable Book. The synopsis:

Sierra Santiago planned an easy summer of making art and hanging out with her friends. But then a corpse crashes their first party. Her stroke-ridden grandfather starts apologizing over and over. And when the murals in her neighborhood begin to weep tears… Well, something more sinister than the usual Brooklyn ruckus is going on.

With the help of a fellow artist named Robbie, Sierra discovers shadowshaping, a magic that infuses ancestral spirits into paintings, music, and stories. But someone is killing the shadowshapers one by one. Now Sierra must unravel her family’s past, take down the killer in the present, and save the future of shadowshaping for generations to come.

“Shadowshaper was a book I couldn’t put down,” Rose told Deadline. “At a time when so many are feeling powerless, Sierra Santiago is a young Afro-Latina heroine who finds her power within herself. Through a strong spiritual connection to her ancestors, the discovery of the magic living in her art, and with the help of some amazing friends, she saves her family, and her Brooklyn neighborhood from certain destruction. A face and culture we rarely see on screen; she is the heroine we’ve been searching for, only to find she lives right next door.” You can also listen to Older talk about the book on the Midnight in Karachi podcast.

On Twitter, Older expressed his excitement about the potential adaptation in the most fitting way—through emoji:

✨✨✒@AnikaNoniRose

— Daniel José Older (@djolder) April 27, 2017

Shadowhouse Fall, the second book in the series, will be published this September.

By 2000, Pixar was doing well enough that Steve Jobs finally—finally—agreed to let the company move from its then-shoddy offices in a questionable neighborhood to a brand new production facility. Taking advice from old Disney hands, who remembered the way that an earlier change in production facilities had led to less communication and creativity between artists, Pixar created a large, open space that would, the company hoped, encourage conversation and collaboration. And just in time—Pixar had new projects in the works that presented new technical challenges, including animating individual strands of fur and creating a new underwater world. No longer content with studying fantastic parts of the regular world, Pixar was now ready to create an entirely new world of its own, inhabited by monsters. Friendly monsters, at that.

If the studio could manage the fur.

Pixar’s Pete Docter initially pitched the concept of a monster movie back in 1994, as part of a general pitch session intended to come up with potential ideas for the studio’s next three promised films for Disney. As Docter later explained, he spent his childhood convinced that yes, yes, monsters really did live in his closet—a common childhood fear (though in my case, those monsters were under the bed, not in a closet, and don’t try to tell me that the monsters weren’t there because THEY TOTALLY WERE). The concept of monsters in the closet (or under the bed) just waiting to come out and attack small children seemed a natural follow-up to the concept of Toy Story, where toys came to life. But although John Lasseter embraced the idea with enthusiasm, he decided—for the first time in Pixar history—to step away from the project, leaving the monster film in the hands of Pete Docter, allowing Lasseter to focus on overseeing all of Pixar—not to mention the production nightmare of Toy Story 2.

Docter spent the next two years tinkering with the story. His initial concept—that of a 30 year man still tormented by the monsters in his closet—was eventually tossed out in favor of a tale that would instead focus on a growing relationship between a small child and a monster—and on the monster’s world, a world filled with mostly friendly monsters who shared several human characteristics, such as regular jobs and a need for something to keep their appliances on. The new focus would allow Pixar to explore an entirely new world, a world which, bonus, offered the potential of a new toy line of cute and cushy monsters. It would be a world that would both echo our own while also drawing power from it.

The concept of friendly monsters dates back to at least ancient times, with later fairy tales offering a range of monsters from evil to friendly to (in the case of Beauty and the Beast) potential marriage partners. More recently, Sesame Street had popularized the idea of friendly monsters living on the same street as real humans, willing to help small children learn math, the alphabet, and bits of Spanish. But an animated film exploring an entire world of monsters—many with fur—was new.

Monsters, Inc. was not, of course, the first film to showcase computer animated, realistic looking, moving fur—that credit belongs to the talking animals of the 1995 Babe, who required significant CGI and fur work, winning the film an Oscar for Best Special Effects. But it was the first computer animated/CGI project to require quite so much fur—2,320,413 separate pieces of hair on Sulley, one of the two main monsters of the film. (Not at all incidentally, this is why Mike and Randall, the other two most prominent monsters in the film, have no hair or fur whatsoever.) Pixar animators not only had to make all of this fur move, but they had to account for the way that hair can cast shadows on other hairs. And they had to finish all of this in a more or less reasonable time period, which, the way Disney saw it, meant by late 2001, no ifs, ands or buts—even if, over at the main Disney studios, Disney animators were struggling to keep up with their own deadlines.

To solve the technical problem, Pixar turned to a technical solution: more computer processors. As it was, Toy Story 2 had needed 1400 processors. Monsters, Inc. needed 3500. It was enough—just barely enough—to allow animators to create colorful, realistic looking fur and a final elaborate chase scene and, for good measure, to add something that the first three Pixar films didn’t have: a T-shirt that wrinkled as its wearer moved. Pixar animators were thrilled. How much of this was appreciated by audiences remains an open question, but Monsters, Inc. did represent a significant step forward in computer animation.

Meanwhile, following the success of booking celebrity voices for the two Toy Story films and A Bug’s Life, Pixar hired comedians John Goodman and Billy Crystal to play the main two characters, Sulley and Mike, and Steve Buscemi to play the conniving Randall, along with a number of other famous voices now eager to work on a Pixar film.

For Boo, the toddler, Pixar turned from the usual animation practice of having an adult voice childlike sounds, and instead, found an actual child of about that age, Mary Gibbs, daughter of story artist Rob Gibbs. Mary Gibbs, then three, was just a touch too young to read a script, so Pixar sound engineers simply followed the child with a microphone, catching the appropriate sounds and matching them to the animation, until screams were necessary, at which point, animators encouraged her to scream. (There’s an adorable picture of her and John Goodman at the film premiere floating around the internet, and a rather less adorable picture of Pixar staff trying to get the small child to scream on cue.) Mary Gibbs, I should note, did survive the experience, continuing on from this to voice other children’s roles for Pixar before choosing a less screaming life as a yoga instructor.

If, with the exception of toddler Boo, Pixar stayed with their usual method of hiring celebrity voices, they did try something else new for this film: assigning each character a specific lead animator—something that had been Disney policy since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but something that Pixar had previously avoided in favor of having lead animators focus on specific scenes. It was a method that Pixar would continue to toy with in future films: for this specific film, the process helped lead animator John Kahrs figure out how to make a massive figure like Sulley move quickly—something else relatively new to animation.

After all this—a shift in production facilities, new computers, following around a small child, and a different approach to animating characters—is the film any good?

Well, it’s definitely cute.

Monsters, Inc. tells the story of Sulley and Mike, who work together with other monsters to collect screams from small children to power up their world. As their company motto states, “We scare because we care!” Alas the screams—and thus the power—are getting harder and harder to get; as the monsters note: “Kids these days. They just don’t get scared the way they used to.” (To be fair, this is in part because kids these days are getting to see fun stuff like Monsters, Inc. instead of terrifying stuff like Dumbo on the big screen, but I digress.)

Exactly how all this works is an excellent question, and I also can’t help wondering what the monsters did with the screams of small children before they industrialized their world and needed to power up a lot of lamps: did they use those screams to start fires? Power windmills? Not that anyone in the monster world has time to answer this, since—GASP—a small human child (eventually named Boo by the monsters) has entered the monster world, threatening to doom every monster there. If Sully and Mike can’t return the kid to her own world, their world may be doomed—or at the very least, their jobs are, which is just as serious. And they might get exiled.

The rest of the film focuses on their various hijinks, as well as their discovery that their world can be powered more efficiently by children’s laughter, instead of their screams—a discovery that works both to save the monsters from having to live without power (as a thorough urbanite, I gasp) and to reassure the smaller members of the audience that no, monsters aren’t really out to get them. Well, not now, anyway.

It’s all cute, often funny, and yet, at the end, somewhat unsatisfying. This is partly, of course, because it’s a Pixar film, but one that lacks the emotional depth of many of the other Pixar films, and partly because, despite the rich possibilities offered by a world inhabited by monsters, Monsters, Inc. never really tries to explore any of this. The monster world is just a light parody of our own, offering the same things: books, cars, fine restaurants that take months to get a reservation unless you’re a celebrity, paperwork, and so on. The monsters look different than humans do, but that’s it. Amusing, certainly, but almost a waste of the concept. To his credit, John Lasseter would later insist that Zootopia, essentially another parody of our world, make at least an attempt at figuring out how a world inhabited by talking animals would differ from our world, but in Monsters, Inc. it all feels rather like a lost opportunity—especially after the explorations of the worlds of toys and bugs in the previous Pixar films.

Beyond this, Monsters, Inc. suffers from a more fundamental storytelling problem: that although the background and the world of Monsters, Inc. change, the characters themselves barely do. Sully is still a tall, goodnatured monster; Mike is still a short, neurotic monster. They continue to work as partners, only changing who gets to enter the bedrooms of small children.

Only Boo gets any real development—shifting from a babbling little girl terrified of monsters in her closet to a babbling little girl unafraid of monsters in her closet—even missing one of them very very much. But throughout the film, Boo is more of an object than a character, someone to be either used or rescued. So this development, while welcome, does little to add any depth to the film.

On the other hand, Monsters, Inc. does give us Roz, the nightmarish bureaucratic monster who manages to not only terrorize her staff, but also—with the accidental help of Sully and Mike—shut down business corruption and stop an attempt to torture a small child.

So the film has compensations.

Pixar had learned something from the frantic last minute overwork for Toy Story 2, which meant less of a scramble to get Monsters, Inc. to Disney by their deadline. For a terrifying moment, however, it seemed that all of Pixar’s work would be wasted, as Disney and Pixar found themselves facing a preliminary injunction against releasing Monsters, Inc.—with the hearing scheduled for November 1, 2001, just one day before the film’s planned theatrical release.

The timing was accidental: the injunction had been sought by songwriter Lori Madrid months earlier, and just happened to land on the pre-release date thanks to a heavy court caseload. Disney attorneys and Pixar witnesses explained, in depth, just how much money had been spent in marketing the film already—$3.5 million just on a premiere and special screenings, not including trailers, posters and a huge publicity blitz. Failing to release the film on its release date would, Disney executives argued, create a snowball effect, not just on the initial box office receipts but on later DVD sales and ancillary revenue. The argument convinced the judge, who dismissed the injunction on the basis that it would cause far too much financial harm to Disney. (Not to mention the potential emotional harm to parents who had promised to bring small children to the film.) A year later, the judge dismissed the suit, saying the film and Lori Madrid’s poem did not have that much in common—even if Madrid had shopped her poem/story to Chronicle Books in 1999, which had later printed a Monsters, Inc. art book in 2001.

(Note: although Chronicle Books had published Star Wars books under a licensing agreement with Lucasfilm, the prior owners of Pixar, Disney and Pixar attorneys note that by 1999, Monsters, Inc. was already well into development; in addition, Pixar and Chronicle Books only began discussing the art book in 2000, after Monsters, Inc. was in production.)

A second copyright infringement suit was launched against Pixar, Disney and Chronicle Books in 2002 by artist Stanley Miller, alleging that the character designs for Sulley and Mike were based on characters he had developed for a potential animated film—and that Pixar’s art department had seen his cartoons. (Pixar’s art department did have at least some of Miller’s cartoons; whether they had seen the specific cartoons alleged to have inspired Sulley and Mike was another question.) In this case, the judge did not dismiss the suit; Pixar and Disney settled for an undisclosed amount.

Despite the near-injunction and the financial settlement, Monsters, Inc. was another financial success for both Disney and Pixar. The film garnered mostly positive reviews, and eventually brought in $577.4 million at the box office—at the time, below only The Lion King, and—perhaps even more importantly from the point of view of a still-irritated John Lasseter—well above the $484.4 million brought in by rival Shrek that same year. (Shrek took its revenge the following year, when it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Picture, leaving Monsters, Inc. clutching the Oscar for Best Song.)

Better prepared this time, Disney also released a line of merchandise, including toys, clothing, mugs (some of which, I must say, were/are kinda creepy looking) and video games. Sully and Mike made appearances at the theme parks, both in Character Meet and Greets and Parades. Three Disney parks created Monsters, Inc. attractions: Mike & Sulley To the Rescue at Disney California Adventure; Monsters, Inc. Ride & Go Seek at Tokyo Disneyland; and Monsters, Inc. Laugh Track at the Magic Kingdom, which incidentally ended up employing one of my friends as a comedy monster.

It all was enough to make Disney quite excited about the potential of another Monsters film—if, admittedly, one to be made by their in-house computer animation department, not Pixar, a company they were on increasingly poor terms with. But before that, Disney and Pixar had a few more contracted films to produce and distribute together. Including a film about a little clownfish.

Finding Nemo, coming up next month.

Mari Ness lives in central Florida.

One of the things I’m passionate about is community development. In trying to figure out how to do this using writing, I became a part of an arts collective called The Learning Tree. We’re a group of organized neighbors that specializes in Asset Based Community Development (ABCD). We identify and invest in the individuals, organizations, and the community to see and celebrate the abundance in our neighborhood. Simply put, our neighbors are our business partners.

The community I work in, like other communities, is rich with gifted talented individuals who care about each other and their community but don’t have financial stability. The problem is that poor people aren’t being seen. There is a misrepresentation of poor people, in terms of who they are and what their capacity is to effect change within their communities. The dominant narrative about poor people or neighborhoods is that they are impoverished, broken, and filled with needs. Most stories of the poor focus on their economic and personal failures. Stories define a people. Stories reflect a people. Stories shape our perception, from the news to media to politics. The thing about stories, to paraphrase Neil Gaiman, is that it’s easy to let a bad one in you. Once labeled, it’s a constant battle not to live into that label.

Inspired by the book Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day (by Stuart Rutherford, Jonathan Morduch, and Daryl Collins), I was hired on as the staff writer to help collect the stories of our neighbors. Our thinking is that people in the neighborhood need to see themselves, their potential, their gifts, their talents, something to show the best of themselves. And there’s no better mirror than story. We pay attention to people’s gifts, seeing them as cultural, social, and productive assets within the community rather than consigning them to economic exile. As a part of getting to know our neighbors, I write profiles emphasizing their social capital, their skills, talents, and passions; their ability to fix things, trade goods, grow things. I write about how they commercialize their hobbies, invent, produce art, produce music, educate, and care for one another.

Where the system falls short, poor people slip through society’s cracks. We measure our neighborhood’s economic vitality and map their assets. We discover the informal economy outside of the consumer one. As we know people’s social capital, continue to build trust and cooperation, we organize. So what does this look like in action?

One day a group of neighbors from our community stumbled upon 25 doors dumped in an alley. This was a perfect metaphor of how our neighborhood was seen from the outside: someone in the city decided we were no longer useful or had any value so we’d been discarded and left to be forgotten. One of our artist neighbors came up with the idea to have the artists in our neighborhood—we had come to know over two dozen—paint their stories. As word got out, people started donating doors to us. We have about 70 painted doors which have been a part of several exhibits and are now traveling around the country.

It’s not just art for art’s sake, but rather using art to bring economic development for our neighborhood residents. We want to build their financial portfolio through employment and vocational opportunities. Through grants and investments, we pay our artists. We hire folks the system chews up and spits out, for example, formerly incarcerated young men to curate our art galleries. So for us, art is about survival.

Art brings people together. From music to story, narratives are important. Narratives shape. Narratives build capacity. Narratives are educational, with people learning from one another. This year we want to explore using story even more with a project we’re calling Sawubona 46208 (“Sawubona” is a Zulu greeting meaning “I see you”). We will take the stories of some of our neighbors, create short plays and monologues, and stage those stories on the porches of abandoned houses and street corners to reclaim those spaces (and quietly highlight the issue of gentrification in our community). Stories of the history and legacy of segregation in the city. Stories of the experiences with the criminal justice system. Stories of struggle, survival, and hope. We will film the productions to eventually create a documentary on the story of our neighborhood.

We’ve already assembled our Design Team—hip hop artists, actresses/actors, poets, visual artists, videographers, musicians—all from within the community. Each were artists out in the community largely doing their own thing. We thought it important for us to see and get to know one another. To see what sort of resources we had within the community so that we can support what each other s doing. And to show each of us that we weren’t out there alone anymore.

For a long time I struggled with the notion that “I’m only a writer, what can I do?” and, if I’m completely honest, used it as an excuse to do nothing. Art lifts community. Story creates identity. If we don’t control our own narratives, others certainly will. Our communities are more self-sufficient, more capable, than the dominant narrative wants to portray. Through art, through writing, we can catalog the positive things happening in our neighborhoods, we can make the invisible visible, and be the change we want to see. Through art, we resist.

Maurice Broaddus is the author of the urban fantasy trilogy The Knights of Breton Court. Some of his stories have been collected in The Voices of Martyrs, out now from Rosarium Publishing, and he has a novella, Buffalo Soldier, available now from Tor.com Publishing.

Once a steeplejack, Anglet Sutonga is used to scaling the heights of Bar-Selehm. Nowadays she assists politician Josiah Willinghouse behind the scenes of Parliament. The latest threat to the city-state: Government plans for a secret weapon are stolen and feared to be sold to the rival nation of Grappoli. The investigation leads right to the doorsteps of Elitus, one of the most exclusive social clubs in the city. In order to catch the thief, Ang must pretend to be a foreign princess and infiltrate Elitus. But Ang is far from royal material, so Willinghouse enlists help from the exacting Madam Nahreem.

Yet Ang has other things on her mind. Refugees are trickling into the city, fleeing Grappoli-fueled conflicts in the north. A demagogue in Parliament is proposing extreme measures to get rid of them, and she soon discovers that one theft could spark a conflagration of conspiracy that threatens the most vulnerable of Bar-Selehm. Unless she can stop it.

Author A. J. Hartley returns to his intriguing, 19th-century South African-inspired fantasy world in Firebrand, an adrenaline-pounding adventure available from Tor Teen.

CHAPTER 1

The thief had been out of the window no more than a minute but had already shaken off the police. The only reason I could still see him was because up here we got the full flat glare of the Beacon two blocks over, because I knew where to look, and because he was doing what I would be doing if our positions were reversed. Moments after the theft had been reported and the building locked down, he had emerged from the sash window on the fourth floor of the War Office on Hanover Street—which was probably how he had gotten in in the first place—and had climbed up to the roof. Then he had danced along the steeply pitched ridgeline and across to the Corn Exchange by way of a cable bridge he had rigged earlier. The uniformed officers in the pearly glow of the gas lamps below blocked the doorways leading to the street, milling around like baffled chickens oblivious to the hawk soaring away above them. If he hadn’t shot one of the guards on his way into the strong room, they wouldn’t have even known he had been there.

But he had, and he was getting away with a roll of papers bound with what looked like red ribbon. I didn’t know what they were, but I had seen Willinghouse’s face when the alarm had been raised and knew how badly he needed them back.

Not Willinghouse himself. Bar-Selehm. The city needed them back, and I, Anglet Sutonga, former steeplejack and now… something else entirely, worked for the city. In a manner of speaking.

The thief paused to disassemble his cable bridge and, in the act of turning, saw me as I rounded a brick chimney stack. His hand went for the pistol at his belt, the one that had already been fired twice to night, but he hesitated. There was no clearer way to announce his position to those uniformed chickens below us than by firing his gun. He decided to run, abandoning his dismantling of the bridge, betting that, whoever I was, I wouldn’t be able to stay with him up here on the ornamented roofs and towers of the government district.

He was wrong about that, though he climbed expertly. I gave chase, sure-footed in my familiar steel-toed boots, as he skittered down the sloping tiles on the other side and vaulted across the alley onto a metal fire escape. He moved with ease in spite of his formal wear, and the only time he looked away from what he was doing was to check on my progress. As he did, he smiled, intrigued, a wide hyena grin that made me slow just a little. Because despite the half mask he was wearing over his eyes, I knew who he was.

They called him Darius. He was a thief, but because he was also white, famously elegant, and limited his takings to the jewelry of wealthy society ladies—plucked from their nightstands as they slept inches away—he was known by the more romantic name of “cat burglar.” I had never been impressed by the title. It seemed to me that anyone whose idea of excitement—and it clearly was exciting for the likes of Darius—involved skulking inside houses full of people was someone you needed to keep at a distance. I’ve stolen in the past— usually food but sometimes money as well—and I wouldn’t trust anyone who did it for sport, for the thrill of standing over you while you slept. For all his dashing reputation and the breathless way in which the newspapers recounted his exploits, it did not surprise me in the least that he had killed a man tonight.

I was, I reminded myself, unarmed. I didn’t like guns, even when I was the one holding them. Especially then, in fact.

I too was masked, though inelegantly, a scarf of sooty fabric wrapped around my head so that there was only a slit for my eyes. It was hot and uncomfortable, but essential. I had a job that paid well, which kept me out of the gangs and the factories that would be my only tolerable options if anyone guessed who I really was. That would be easier if anyone realized I was Lani, so my skin stayed covered.

I crossed the wire bridge, slid down the ridged tile, and launched myself across the alley, seventy feet above the cobbled ground, dropping one full story and hitting the fire escape with a bone-rattling jolt. Grasping the handrails, I swung down four steps at a time, listening to Darius’s fine shoes on the steps below me. I was still three flights above him when he landed lightly on the elegant balcony on the front of the Victory Street Hotel. I dropped in time to see him swinging around the dividing walls between balconies, vanishing from sight at the fourth one.

He might just have hidden in the shadows, waiting for me to follow him, or he might have forced the window and slipped into the hotel room.

I didn’t hesitate, leaping onto the first balcony, hanging for an instant like a vervet monkey in a marulla tree, then reaching for the next and the next with long, sinewy arms. I paused only a half second before scything my legs over the wall and into the balcony where he had dis appeared, my left hand straying to the heavy-bladed kukri I wore in a scabbard at my waist.

I didn’t need it. Not yet, at least.

He had jimmied the door latch and slipped into a well-appointed bedroom with wood paneling and heavy curtains of damask with braided accents that matched the counterpane.

Fancy.

But then this was Victory Street, so you’d expect that.

I angled my head and peered into the gloom. The bed was, so far as I could see, unoccupied. I stood quite still on the thick dark carpet, breathing shallowly. Unless he was crouching behind the bed or hiding in the en suite, he wasn’t there. The door into the hotel’s hallway was only thirty feet away, and I was wasting time.

I took four long strides and was halfway to the door when he hit me, surging up from behind the bed like a crocodile bursting from the reeds, jaws agape. He caught me around the waist and dragged me down so that I landed hard on one shoulder and hit my head on a chest of drawers. For a moment the world went white, then black, then a dull throbbing red as I shook off the confusion and grasped at his throat.

He slid free, pausing only long enough to aim a kick squarely into my face before making for the hallway. I saw it coming and turned away from the worst of it, shrinking and twisting so that he connected with my already aching shoulder. He reached for the scarf about my head, but I had the presence of mind to bring the kukri slicing up through the air, its razor edge flashing. He snatched his hand away, swung another kick, which got more of my hip than my belly, and made for the door.

I rolled, groaning and angry, listening to the door snap shut behind him, then flexed the muscles of my neck and shoulder, touching the fabric around my head with fluttering fin gers. It was still intact, as was I, but I felt rattled, scared. Darius’s cat burglar suaveness was all gone, exposed for the veneer it was, and beneath it there was ugliness and cruelty and the love of having other people in his power. I wasn’t surprised, but it gave me pause. I’d been kicked many times before, and I always knew what was behind it, how much force and skill, how much real, venomous desire to hurt, cripple, or kill. His effort had largely gone wide because it was dark and I knew how to dodge, but the kick had been deliberate, cruel. If I caught up with him and he thought he was in real danger, he would kill me without a second’s thought. I rolled to a crouch, sucked in a long, steadying breath, and went after him.

The hallway was lit by the amber glow of shaded oil lamps on side tables, so that for all the opulence of the place, the air tasted of acrid smoke, and the darkness pooled around me as I ran. Up ahead, the corridor turned into an open area where a single yellowing bulb of luxorite shone on intricate ceiling moldings and ornamental pilasters. There were stairs down, and I was aware of voices, lots of them, a sea of confused chatter spiked erratically with waves of laughter.

A party.

More Bar-Selehm elegance and, for me, more danger. I had no official position, no papers allowing me to break into the hotel rooms of the wealthy, nothing that would make my Lani presence among the cream of the city palatable. And in spite of all I had done for Bar-Selehm—for the very people who were sipping wine in the ballroom below—I felt the pressure of this more keenly than I had Darius’s malevolent kick. Some blows were harder to roll with.

I sprang down the carpeted stairs, turning the corner into the noise. The hallway became a gallery running around the upper story of the ballroom so that guests might promenade around the festivities, waving their fans at their friends below. Darius was on the far side, moving effortlessly through the formally dressed clusters of startled people. He was still masked, and they knew him on sight, falling away, their mouths little O’s of shock. One of the women fainted, or pretended to. Another partygoer, wearing a dragoon’s formal blues, took a step toward the masked man, but the pistol in Darius’s hand swung round like an accusatory fin ger and the dragoon thought better of his heroism.

I barreled through the crowd, shoving mercilessly, not breaking stride. The party below had staggered to a halt, and the room was a sea of upturned faces watching us as we swept around the gallery toward another flight of stairs. As I neared the corner, I seized a silver platter from an elegant lady in teal and heaved it at him, so that it slid in a long and menacing arc over the heads of the crowd below and stung him on the shoulder. He turned, angry, and found me elbowing my way through the people as they blew away from him like screws of colored tissue, horrified and delighted by their proximity to the infamous cat burglar. And then his gun came up again and they were just horrified, flinging themselves to the ground.

He fired twice. The gilded plaster cherub curled round the balustrade in front of me exploded, and the screaming started. Somewhere a glass broke, and in all the shrieking, it wasn’t absolutely clear that no one had been seriously hurt, but then someone took a bad step, lost their balance, and went over the balustrade. More screaming, and another shot. I took cover behind a stone pillar, and when I peered round, Darius had already reached the stairs and was gone.

I sprinted after him, knocking a middle-aged woman in layers of black gauzy stuff to the ground as I barged through. My kukri was still in my hand, and the partygoers were at least as spooked by the sweep of its broad, purposeful blade as by Darius’s pistol, though it had the advantage of focusing their attention away from my face and onto my gloved hands. A waiter—the only black person in the room that I could see—stepped back from me, staring at the curved knife like it was red-hot. That gave me the opening I needed, and I dashed through to the stairs.

Darius had gone up. I gave chase, focusing on the sound of his expensive shoes. One flight, two, three, then the snap of a door and suddenly I was in a bare hall of parquet floors, dim, hot, and dusty. A single oil lamp showed supply closets overflowing with bed linens and aprons on hooks. The hall ended in a steel ladder up to the roof, the panel closing with a metallic clang as I moved toward it.

He might be waiting, pistol reloaded and aimed. But he had chosen this building for a reason. Its roof gave onto Long Terrace, which ran all the way to the edge of Mahweni Old Town, from where he could reach any part of the northern riverbank or cross over into the warren of warehouses, sheds, and factories on the south side. He wouldn’t be waiting. He was looking to get away.

So I scaled the ladder and heaved open the metal shutters as quietly as I could manage. I didn’t want to catch him. I wanted to see where he went. It would be best if he thought he’d lost me. I slid out cautiously, dropped into a half crouch and scuttered to the end of the roof like a baboon. Darius was well away, taking leaping strides along the roof of the Long Terrace, and as he slowed to look back, I leaned behind one of the hotel’s ornamental gargoyles out of sight. When next I peered round, he was moving again, but slower, secure in the knowledge that he was in the clear.

I waited another second before dropping to the Long Terrace roof, staying low, and sheathing my kukri. The terrace was one of the city’s architectural jewels: a mile-long continuous row of elegant, three-story houses with servants’ quarters below stairs. They were fashioned from a stone so pale it was almost white and each had the same black door, the same stone urn and bas-relief carving, the same slate roof. Enterprising home owners had lined the front lip of the roof with planters that, at this time of year, trailed fragrant vines of messara flowers. The whole terrace curved fractionally down toward the river like a lock of elegantly braided hair. For Darius it provided a direct route across several blocks of the city away from prying eyes.

The nights were warming as Bar-Selehm abandoned its token spring, and the pursuit had made me sweat. We had left the light of the Beacon behind, and I could barely keep track of Darius in the smoggy gloom, even with my long lens, which I drew from my pocket and unfolded. At the end of the terrace, he paused to look back once more, adjusting the tubular roll of documents he had slung across his back, but I had chosen a spot in the shadow of a great urn sprouting ferns and a dwarf fruit tree, and he saw nothing. Satisfied, he shinned down the angled corner blocks at the end of the terrace and emerged atop the triumphal arch that spanned Broad Street, then descended the steps halfway and sprang onto the landing of the Svengele shrine, whose minaret marked the edge of Old Town. I gave chase and was navigating the slim walkway atop the arch when he happened to look up and see me.

I dropped to the thin ribbon of stone before he could get his pistol sighted, and the shot thrummed overhead like a hummingbird. He clattered up the steps that curled round the minaret and flung himself onto the sand-colored tile of the neighboring house. He was running flat out now, and I had no choice but to do the same. I jumped, snatched a handhold on the minaret, and tore after him, landing clumsily on the roof so that I was almost too late in my roll. Another shot, and one of the tiles shattered in a hail of amber grit that stung my eyes. I sprawled for cover, but Darius was off again, vaulting from roof to roof, scattering tile as he ran, so that they fell, popping and crackling into the street below. Somewhere behind us, an elderly black man emerged shouting, but I had no time for sympathy or apologies.

As the narrow street began to curl in on itself, Darius dropped to the rough cobbles and sprinted off into the labyrinth which was Old Town. The streets were barely wide enough for a cart to squeeze through, and at times I could touch the buildings on either side of the road at the same time. There was a pale gibbous moon glowing like a lamp in Bar-Selehm’s perpetual smoky haze, but its light did not reach into the narrow ginnels running between the city’s most ancient houses. Down here his footfalls echoed in the dark, which was the only reason I could keep up with him as he turned left, then right, then back, past the Ntenga butchers’ row and down to the waterfront, where I lost him.

The river wasn’t as high as it had been a couple of weeks before, but it filled the night with a constant susurration like wind in tall grass. As the carefully maintained cobbles gave way to the weedy gravel around the riverside boatyards and mooring quays, any footfalls were lost in the steady background hiss of the river Kalihm. I clambered down the brick embankment that lined the riverbank and revolved on the spot, biting back curses as I tried, eyes half shut, to catch the sound of movement.

There. It may have been no more than a half brick turned by a stray foot, but I heard it, down near the shingle shore only fifty yards away. It came from the narrow alley between a pair of rickety boathouses that straddled a concrete pier. I made for the sound, opting for stealth rather than speed, one hand on the horn butt of my kukri, picking my way over the rounded stones, my back to the city. Even here, in the heart of Bar-Selehm, when you faced the river, you stepped back three hundred years, and there was only water and reeds and the giant herons that stalked among them.

I heard the noise again, different this time, more distinct, but in this narrow wedge of space between the boathouses, almost no light struggled through. The river itself was paler, reflecting the smudge of moon in the night sky and touched with the eerie phosphorescence of glowing things that lived in its depths, but I could see nothing between me and it.

Or almost nothing.

As I crept down the pebbled slope, I saw—or felt—a shape in front of me as it shifted. Something like a large man crouching no more than a few feet ahead. A very large man. I slid the kukri from its sheath, and in that second, the shape moved, black against the waters of the Kalihm. It turned, lengthening improbably as it presented its flank to me. It was, I realized with a pang of terror, no man. It was as big as a cart, and as it continued its slow rotation to face me, a shaft of light splashed across its massive, glistening head. I felt my heart catch.

The hippo rushed at me then, its face splitting open impossibly, eyes rolling back as it bared its immense tusks and bellowed.

CHAPTER 2

I scrambled up the riverbank, knowing the hippo could easily outrun me and that those jaws would fold and break me like a steam hammer. My boots slid on the wet stones. I was falling.

I felt the mad, blood-rushing horror of dropping to the ground in front of the great beast. I knew how it would trample me, toss me, rip me apart.

And then, somehow, I was recovering my balance.

In a blind madness of terror, I vaulted the embankment, feeling the hippo snapping its great coal-hatch door of a mouth inches behind me. Then I was clear and shooting up the slope toward the dim huddle of domes and spires that was the edge of Old Town.

The hippo roared again: a tremendous, window-rattling wall of noise that raised every hair on my head. I squeezed my eyes shut and slammed my hands against my ears, even though I knew it couldn’t get over the embankment. Or not there, at least. In places where the brick had crumbled, it was not unheard of for hippos to blunder into the outskirts of the town. I needed to move on.

My feet took me instinctively away from the snorting hippo in the dark of the riverbank, but I had no conscious idea where to go next. I had lost Darius completely.

Or so I assumed. In fact my detour to the river had taken only seconds. As I looked back, I caught the movement of a distant figure standing alone on one of the long brick jetties.

It couldn’t be.

But it was. He must have lost me when I went down to the river, and he was no longer hiding. He was, in fact, waiting.

I dropped into a balled crouch, then skulked crablike along the embankment wall to the head of the jetty and peered over. The hippo was grunting restlessly below me, some twenty yards to my left. Darius was perhaps three times that distance away. I watched as he drew something from inside his jacket and adjusted it. A white light leapt from his hand, vanished, then came back.

Luxorite. Probably a signet ring or locket he had purloined from some opulent bed chamber.

The light came again, then went. He was signaling.

I pulled out my long lens and started scanning the water, still aware of the heavy, shuffling breaths of the hippo in the dark, but I saw nothing beyond Darius’s dim silhouette. On the far side of the river, a half mile away, there was a distant glow of firelight: some large warehouse or factory on the south bank was ablaze. I smelled the smoke despite the distance, a strange and unpleasant stench quite unlike wood fires. I checked my surroundings, my eyes fastening on the rusty scaffold of a crane that loomed over the nearest boathouse. Its gantry stuck out over the river, the end well past Darius’s spot on the jetty.

Perhaps from there I would have a better view.…

I moved, stepping carefully, not looking back to Darius till I had reached the foot of the girdered tower. He had resumed signaling, his attention elsewhere. I grabbed the rust-bitten edges of the iron struts and began to climb. Pushing my boots into the triangular holes where the support beams intersected, I worked my way up, thirty feet, forty, till I reached a catwalk that gave onto the operator’s winch. In operation, the chains would be connected to a steam engine below, but the pulleys and cables were brown and furred with rust, as if the crane hadn’t been used for months, even years. The great arm of the main boom stuck out over the water into the night, pointing indistinctly toward the burning building on the other side. If it wasn’t structurally sound, I might not know till it was too late.

I pulled my way up over the cab and onto the lattice boom through which the main hoist ran. It had a triangular cross section, a yard wide on top, the bottom a single beam, the whole crisscrossed by supports like the rungs of a ladder. I crept out on my hands and knees, staring through the boom as I left the wharf and inched out over the dark and steadily moving water.

I was halfway along before I saw the rowboat approaching Darius’s position from the south bank of the river, and two thirds of the way along when someone stepped onto the arm of the crane behind me.

I stared as he hauled himself up. Not Darius, who was still down on the pier. Someone else. This new person, a white man in an incongruous suit and tie, stood tall on the girders of the boom, hands at his side, a revolver in one and what looked like a small pickax in the other. It sparkled coldly. Even at this distance, I could see that he was smiling as he took his first step toward me.

It was a cautious step, but he seemed quite composed, staring fixedly at me, his blond hair blowing slightly in the breeze that came up off the river, and as he took another, his confidence seemed to grow. Soon he was walking toward me with easy, measured strides, despite being fifty feet up in the air. It felt less like the skill of a steeplejack and more like the carelessness of someone who thought himself beyond harm.

It was frightening.

I kept crawling, though I had no idea where I would go when I reached the end of the crane’s jib. Maybe the cable would be hanging, and I would be able to swing to safety.…

Maybe. Probably not. But the alternative was the man with the gun and the pickax and the smile. It was the last that scared me most. He came on, a man who could not fall, eyes locked on mine. I struggled to my feet and drew the kukri, knowing that it was futile against a man with a gun. His smile widened, and I was first baffled, then terrified, as he slipped the pistol into his pocket and kept coming.

He wanted to fight me.

I felt the breeze stir my clothes as I stood up on the narrow boom, my weight balanced over my feet. I held the kukri by my right ear and extended my left hand toward him. He didn’t even slow. He took three more steps, slightly faster now, and I swung the kukri at him, a broad, slashing chop at his shoulder. He leaned away from it fractionally. The blade cut through the air, and I almost overbalanced as my arm came round. Instantly, he reached and tapped me on the side of the head with the pick as if he were striking a bell in a temple.

The blow stung like a wasp. I clapped my free hand to it. It came away slick with blood. He smiled again, and I knew that to him, this was sport. Entertainment. I stepped back unsteadily, then dropped to the boom, grabbed it with my hands, and scythed a kick at him.

He jumped. High up above the river and with nothing but two slim rails of metal to land on, he actually jumped over my kick, landed, and tagged me again with the spike of the pickax, this time in the small of my back. I cried out at that, less in pain—though it was real— and more in terror.

This, I thought with absolute certainty, is how I die.

I stepped forward and swung wildly at his face with my balled fist. He pivoted back out of range, and my momentum turned me away from him. As he closed in, I regained my balance and seized his outstretched wrist, trying to tug him off the boom, but I succeeded only in plucking his cufflink free. It arced through the night, sparkling bluish, and bounced on the iron frame before falling out of sight. He felt blindly at his flapping cuff, and a pulse of irritation went through his hard, pale eyes. He would kill me for that alone.

I couldn’t fight him. That much was clear. He was too strong, too fast, too skilled. Nor could I get past him. My only choice was to scramble to the very limit of the crane’s boom. I turned and half stepped, half jumped to get out of his range. He did not lunge after me, not right away. Seeing how futile my retreat was, he approached more cautiously. I backed away as far as I could, but in a few feet, I was out of room and there was nothing below me except a long fall into deep water.

There was a flash in my peripheral vision and an almost instantaneous bang. I looked down. The boat had reached the jetty, but as Darius had stooped to extend a hand toward it, the boatman had shot him down. The cat burglar crumpled, and the man in the boat reached up to tug the document roll Darius had been carrying free. The dead man spilled softly off the jetty into the water, his luxorite lamp lighting the river up with a greenish, dreamlike haze from below, as the boatman pushed off and rowed away.

I tore my gaze away and turned to the man on the crane, who moved almost close enough to touch. He held the pistol loosely at his side once more, but his right hand, the one with the pick, was taut and ready. Its spike was already tipped with the smallest touch of crimson. My blood. He was making no attempt to hide his face. A very bad sign. He did not intend for me to live long enough to tell anyone who I had seen. He was still smiling, a bland, unsettling smile at once ordinary and terrible. Though he could easily have shot me where I was, I knew instinctively that he would prefer to use the pick.

I jumped.

In fact it was more a fall, a desperate lunge into the airy nothing above the water, and I had just enough time to remember the hippo before I hit the surface.

Hit the surface I did. Hard. I have always been healthily afraid of water, because I can’t swim and I know what lives in and around the Kalihm, yet it had never occurred to me that falling into water would feel like falling onto concrete. I slammed into the river, my left knee, thigh, hip, and shoulder taking the full impact. The pain shocked the air out of me. For a second I was incapable of my own distress, stunned into inaction, turning over and over as I sank.

Then I was drifting to the surface again, borne toward the ocean by the current. All I felt was pain, so that I was not even able to keep my eyes and mouth closed. Before I broke the surface, my throat was full of the warm, soiled water of the Kalihm. I coughed it up and promptly swallowed more. My body screamed with the agony of impact and my lungs filled.

I was dying.

CHAPTER 3

“Well, obviously I survived,” I said.

Willinghouse watched me, his face stern, while the man I had known as Detective Andrews—now Inspector Andrews, thanks to his part in the Beacon affair—motioned one of his men to replace the sopping blanket around my shoulders with another.

My left arm was dislocated, and they had strapped it in place till someone from Saint Auspice’s could tend to it properly. My face throbbed. Most of my left side was suffused with a deep and coloring bruise that made the slightest movement painful. More to the point, as Willinghouse’s very first question had made clear, I had neither the stolen plans nor any clue to the identity of who had orchestrated the theft. The police had recovered Darius’s body and were planning to put notices in the papers requesting assistance from the public to confirm the cat burglar’s real name.

I had described the man with the pick, but he was nondescript in everything but the strange detachment with which he had planned to kill me, and I couldn’t put that into words they understood.

“He was white,” I said. “Blond. Ordinary-looking but well dressed.”

Willinghouse, never a man to hide his disappointment in me, scowled and looked away across the river to where a thick smudge of smoke hung over the remains of what ever had burned the night before. I had drifted only a few hundred yards down the river, my barely conscious body pulled into a central channel too deep— mercifully—to run afoul of the nearby hippo pod. I had snagged upon a raft of driftwood on the central stanchion of the shifting and rickety Ridleford pontoon bridge and been spotted by Mahweni longshoremen on their morning ferry ride to work. They had alerted the coast guard, who were out in unusual numbers.

“What burned last night?” I asked, following Willinghouse’s green eyes.

“What?” he asked, as if just remembering I was there. “Oh. Nothing. An abandoned factory. It’s not relevant.”

And that was Willinghouse. There was work—which was relevant—and there was everything else. I hopped from one category to the other like a secretary bird hunting snakes.

“Why all the coast guard boats?” I asked. I could see three this side of the Ridleford pontoons. They had armed men in their bows, and one seemed to be towing another vessel—actually more a raft bound together with rope and buoyed up unevenly on rusted barrels— crowded with people. Black people. Thin and ragged looking. Almost all women and children.

“Illegals,” said Andrews. “Trying to sneak into the economic paradise that is Bar-Selehm.”

I watched the people on the raft as they gazed from one shouting officer to another, uncomprehending and scared, the children huddled around their mothers, their faces tear streaked.

“How are you feeling?” asked Andrews. He was a thin-faced, cleanshaven white man whose eyes had a predatory intensity, but his voice was soft, and his concern sounded genuine.

I reached for my injured shoulder with my right hand, but couldn’t grasp it before the pain became too much. I winced, and he nodded.

“Anything other than your shoulder?” he asked. “That was quite a fall.”

“Just my pride,” I said, still watching the children as they were lifted from their listing raft and into the arms of the police who clustered around in the thigh-deep water. One of the women—wearing a filthy and soaking orange sarong that stuck to her sticklike limbs—was nursing a tiny infant.

“Why did you jump?” asked Willinghouse, peering at me from behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “You couldn’t have, I don’t know,
fought them off or something?”

“No,” I said.

“I thought you were more adept at this kind of thing.” He didn’t sound critical as much as curious, and when I glared at him, he shrugged. “What?”

“The one who came after me was too strong, all right? Too skilled.”

“And you saw nothing to identify either him or the gunman in the boat?” Willinghouse pressed.

I shook my head, feeling stupid and useless, looking back to the ragged immigrants, then caught myself.

“There was something,” I said. “He lost a cufflink as we fought on the crane. It might have fallen in the river, but it might not.”

“Where?” asked Andrews.

“I’ll show you,” I said, getting to my feet with the inspector’s help. I scowled at Willinghouse, but he was watching the raft and seemed to have forgotten me entirely, so I led Andrews along the riverbank to the steps and the pier and the crane, a uniformed officer trailing us, uninterested. The hippo was still there, its back turned to the water, pinking in the sun.

“There,” I said. “We were at the midpoint of that boom when he lost the cufflink. It went behind him and hit metal on the way down.”

I shrugged apologetically. It wasn’t much of a clue.

“Benson!” called Andrews to the uniformed officer, pointing.

“Down there, sir?” protested Benson. “There’s a bloody great hippo!”

“Well, keep your distance from it,” said Andrews, not very helpfully.

Benson gave me a baleful look.

“Was it luxorite?” said Willinghouse suddenly.

“What?”

“The cufflink your assailant dropped. Did it contain luxorite?”

“I don’t think so. It was bright but only by reflection. Why?”

“If it was luxorite, he would have had an easier time finding it in the dark,” Willinghouse said with a noncommittal shrug. “Unless it fell into the river, in which case the point is rather moot.”

He said it sourly, the scar on his cheek tightening, as if where the item had fallen was somehow my fault. I talked to push away the sense of failure.

“Probably just crystal or enamel,” I said, “but large and blue.”

It took a moment for this to register in my employer’s face, but the transformation was marked.

“Blue?” snapped Willinghouse. “You’re sure? What shape?”

“I didn’t get a good look at it—”

“Diamond shaped?”

I thought hard, sensing how much he needed me to remember more than I had seen. I shrugged, and my shoulder cried in protest.

“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “Could have been.”

“On a white background?”

“White or silver, yes,” I said. “You know it?”

“Oh yes,” said Willinghouse, and there was something more than pleasure in his face. His jaw was set in grim resolution. He hurried away and was soon poring over the ground behind Andrews and Benson, who was peering into the water below the crane’s piers, keeping a watchful eye on the hippo some thirty yards away. I joined the hunt, but only for a moment. Willinghouse suddenly straightened up with a cry of “Huzzah!” He held the cufflink aloft, and his face was full of grim triumph.

“What is it?” asked Andrews.

“Elitus,” said Willinghouse, holding out the cufflink for Andrews to inspect it. It was indeed a blue crystalline diamond on a silvery white enamel background. “A club. Very exclusive.”

“Never heard of it,” said Andrews.

“No,” Willinghouse answered. “You wouldn’t have. No offense meant. If it’s any consolation, they wouldn’t have me as a member either.”

Andrews raised his eyebrows. Willinghouse was only a junior member of Parliament, but he was a man of considerable means, which was how he was able to employ me.

“Excuse me!”

We all turned to look down to the shore, where Benson gazed up at us with a look of considerable unease. “Did you find what you were looking for? Only, this hippo is eyeballing me something awful… ?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, man!” exclaimed Andrews. “Yes, we found it. Get up here.” He turned back to Willinghouse irritably. “You were saying you wouldn’t be allowed to join this Elitus club. Why not?”

Willinghouse smiled mirthlessly.

“Well, I’m not a member of the right party for one thing, but…” He hesitated. “Let’s just say that the cufflink’s white background is… symbolic.”

Andrews looked taken aback, embarrassed even. He knew that Willinghouse was a quarter Lani, though it wasn’t clear from his appearance. His hair was jet-black like mine, but his eyes were green, and most people would assume he was merely a little tanned by the Feldesland sun. His socialite sister, Dahria, passed even more completely for white.

“Did he see your face? Your skin?” asked Willinghouse.

I bit back my irritation.

“Are you asking if he saw who I was or what I am?” I said.

“Both. Either.”

I looked away.

“My face was masked,” I said. “He didn’t get a good look at me. Whether he could tell I was Lani… I don’t know. Maybe.”

Willinghouse scowled, dissatisfied.

“There’s no need for that, old fellow,” said Andrews. “Miss Sutonga has had a singularly trying experience—”

“I don’t dispute that,” Willinghouse shot back. “I’d just like to know whether our enemy realizes the government has a Lani agent working for them.”

“Your concern is noted,” I said, frostily, “but I can look after myself.”

“My concern,” said Willinghouse, “is that if they do, in fact, know that the person who pursued their agent was Lani or, for that matter female, then your use value just went into a sharp decline, wouldn’t you say?”

Fury got the better of me.

“My use value?” I spat.

“Your function as a government operative.”

“You’re not the government,” I said, swinging wildly now. “You’re a member of Parliament in the opposition’s back benches.”

“Who serves the interests of the city with the means available to him,” Willinghouse retorted.

“Meaning me? I’m the means available to you?”

“Meaning… no,” he said, stuttering to a frustrated halt. “I meant using my family’s fortune, a small part of which has been used to secure your services.”

“And excellent services they are too,” inserted Andrews, trying to keep the peace.

We both glared at him. There was a long silence.

“I’ll also remind you,” said Willinghouse pompously, “that while my party is not currently in power, this is an election year and the Brevard membership has high hopes of—”

“This Elitus place,” I said. “How do I get in?”

Andrews frowned.

“Miss Sutonga,” he said, “these people, whoever they are, have already demonstrated they are quite ruthless. Two people have already died trying to stop them. The documents are gone. The enemy have them, and nothing we do now will change that.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“That is confidential information,” said Andrews. “Even I don’t know—”

“Plans for a new machine gun,” said Willinghouse.

Andrews and I both gaped at him. I had seen a machine gun in use once before. I did not know how they could be made more lethal than they already were, but if someone had that knowledge, someone I had failed to stop…

“The documents were stolen from the War Office,” said Willing-house. “I was in a meeting across the street when the alarm was raised, which is why I was able to alert you to what was going on before the thief made his escape. The shadow secretary for defense spoke to me in the heat of the moment and was, you might say, unguarded in his speech. Something he now regrets. Anyway, yes, the plans are for a new machine gun, and word in government circles is that it’s the Grappoli who took them.”

“Of course,” said Andrews. “They always suspect the Grappoli.”

The Grappoli were the city’s colonial rivals, and they controlled considerably more of Feldesland, the continent of which Bar-Selehm was the jewel, than we did. Bar-Selehm had been established three centuries ago by King Gustav II of Belrand, a country on the northern continent of Panbroke: a pro cess equal parts military conquest, barter, and legal sleight of hand. The city-state eventually became an industrial sprawl unrivaled in Feldesland, but pretty isolated from its neighbors. It had leeched parcels of land away from the indigenous Mahweni over the years, but Bar-Selehm’s total holdings still amounted to no more than a few thousand square miles. The Grappoli’s native lands were in southeast Panbroke, their people still white, but tending to darker hair and eyes than the Belrandians, and their expansion across the sea to Feldesland had been a more concerted effort to dominate the continent. They had taken over whole countries in the north and west and seemed to be perpetually looking to expand farther. It was one of those bitter colonial jokes that when anyone referred to the “Feldish,” they meant the white colonists from Belrand, not the Mahweni who had always lived on the continent and who had called the land something different. I didn’t know what.

Willinghouse nodded.

“I know,” he said. “But this time… the Grappoli are moving east, north of the Hagrab desert. They are claiming obscure legal pre cedent based on settlements made a century or more ago. Reports suggest that they are fuelling tribal conflicts that are driving the locals off the land, and the only modern military resis tance they are encountering comes from local warlords who are fighting only to protect their opium fields. The people who live there are caught in the middle. We don’t know for sure what is happening yet, and there is no suggestion that the conflict might expand south toward Bar-Selehm, but it’s a mess, and a bloody one. Trade routes are being watched; sanctions against the Grappoli are being drawn up. Potential deals between Bar-Selehm and the Grappoli that might in any way augment their military capacity are being debated even as we speak. Some of my more hawkish colleagues are suggesting we send troops north to support the cartels, while others say that the drug lords are clearly the lowest of the very low, and that if we are to take sides at all, we are better lining up alongside the Grappoli. My party’s position is that the Grappoli’s current landgrab may not involve us at all, but we must ensure that Bar-Selehm does not support it, however indirectly. In the long term, the consequences could be dire.”

“The long term?” I said. “What about the northern tribes whose land is being taken now?”

“Miss Sutonga, let’s not make this a crusade, shall we?” he said. His eyes flashed to the now-empty raft surrounded by the coast guard, and I made the connection.

“Them?” I demanded. “That’s what this is? You said they were illegal immigrants.”

“They are!” said Willinghouse.

“But they are also refugees?”

“The lands north of the Hagrab desert are not Bar-Selehm’s concern,” said Willinghouse. “The people who live there have sovereignty over their own territory. Interference on our part would merely spark diplomatic discomfort. The results could easily escalate into trade sanctions, the closing of embassies, the collapse of interna.
tional trade agreements—”

“We’re talking about the Quundu, yes?” I said.

“There are various tribal territories involved,” said Willinghouse wearily, “but yes, the Quundu, the Delfani, the Zagrel—”

“Who all have their own sovereignty,” said Andrews.

“Yes,” I said. “You know what else they have? Spears. Shields covered with buffalo hide. Knives. While the Grappoli have machine guns. But let’s be sure not to spark diplomatic discomfort.”

“You can’t take things like this personally,” said Willinghouse. “It impairs your judgment.”

I watched where the police and coast guard were gathering the weary huddle of women and children together on the shore. Some of them had collapsed. How long had they been at sea? Days? Weeks? There were bodies on the raft that I had thought were sleeping, but they had not moved after the others disembarked. One wailing woman splashed through the water toward a small body, while a policeman pulled her back.…

“How do I get into Elitus?” I asked again, turning back to Willing-house, my tone neutral.

“I really don’t think—” Andrews began, but I cut him off with a look.

“How do I get in?”

“If someone of my status can’t get into Elitus,” said Willinghouse, “how on earth am I going to get a full-blood Lani girl in?”

“I have no idea,” I said. “But I can’t wait to find out.”

Excerpted from Firebrand, copyright © 2017 by A.J. Hartley.