Invite the First Trailer for What We Do in the Shadows Into Your Home
The first trailer for FX’s What We Do in the Shadows is here! And it introduces us to Guillermo (Harvey Guillen), who acts as a familiar to the ancient vampire Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak) and...
View ArticleReading the Wheel of Time: The Heron Names Him True in Robert Jordan’s The...
Welcome back to the Read of The Great Hunt! Today is the last day of The Wheel of Time’s second novel, and although the climax is over, there are still a few gaps to fill in, and a few choices left to...
View ArticleHow to Handle the Baron Harkonnen in a Modern Dune Adaptation
As Denis Villeneuve’s Dune beings to take shape, I find myself with all sorts of questions. Can they condense such a complex novel into one or two films and do it justice? Will they change too many...
View Article5 Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Dystopian Tests That Aren’t What They Seem
Whether a story takes place in a dystopian near-future, a far future somewhere in the stars beyond Earth, or a fantasy world that is both the distant past and distant future of our planet, people like...
View ArticleJenn Lyons’s The Ruin of Kings is Darkly Beautiful and Deliciously Complex...
Any fan of the type of complex epic fantasy world-building found in works like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion or Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series will understand the excitement I felt when I...
View ArticleBuilding Love, and the Future We Deserve: The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn...
In 2016, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination published my survey “A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction” (now hosted here). Since then Tor.com has published 23 in-depth essays I wrote...
View ArticleRecasting Fairy Tales: Snow White Learns Witchcraft by Theodora Goss
Theodora Goss was an award-winning writer of short stories (and poems) before she took to novels (The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman) but her...
View ArticleSleeps With Monsters: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
I’m behind the curve when it comes to watching—and writing about—the new re-invention of She-Ra, whose showrunner and executive producer is the young and talented Noelle Stevenson (previously known for...
View ArticleArticulated Restraint
Being a Lady Astronaut means being twice as dedicated, and twice as good as everyone else. And sometimes, handling a test run that has turned deadly serious. Mary Robinette Kowal visits an off-stage...
View ArticleOn the Origins of Modern Biology and the Fantastic: Part 8 — Isaac Asimov and...
“To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well.” —Salvor Hardin, Foundation by Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov loved a cozy mystery, the kind involving few suspects that are solved...
View Article7 Fantasies Told from Multiple Points of View
One of our favorite techniques in writing is the use of multiple close points of view. While it has an exalted history in fantasy—Tolkien jumped all over Middle-earth in The Lord of the Rings—what...
View ArticleThe High Costs of Fantasy Sainthood
The defining feature of fantasy is the reality of the supernatural within the narrative—whether the supernatural element in a given story involves magic or gods or some other force-yet-to-be-defined....
View ArticleVictor LaValle, N.K. Jemisin, Maria Dahvana Headley, Sam J. Miller, and Alice...
A vibrant new anthology from editors Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, A People’s Future of the United States (a riff on Howard Zinn’s classic work of corrective scholarship, A People’s History of...
View ArticleAn Unquiet Revolution: A People’s Future of the United States
There are a couple of ways to judge an anthology. The simplest way to appraise one is to reduce the book down to its constituent parts. An anthology is, after all, a collection of stories. And A...
View ArticleThe Perils of Genealogical Research, Part 57: August Derleth’s “The Seal of...
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. This week, we’re...
View ArticleOathbringer Reread: Chapter Sixty-Four
Top of the morning to you, oh fine rereaders of the Oathbringer! Welcome back to the excruciatingly detailed investigation, as we sit in on a highly informative conversation between Dalinar and the...
View ArticleKeeping Your Fantasy Novel Organized with a Bullet Journal
Have you ever heard of bullet journaling? Its basic concept is simple: instead of using a day planner with formally assigned pre-printed pages, a bullet journal starts out completely blank. You assign...
View ArticleMichael B. Jordan to Produce Movie Adaptation of Marlon James’ Black Leopard,...
Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan has signed on to adapt Marlon James’ epic fantasy novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf for Warner Bros. Jordan will produce with his company Outlier Society, which...
View ArticleFive Fantastic Recent Books about Humans Colonizing Other Planets
Humanity has accomplished a great many things since we started mastering technologies like writing and agriculture. But we still remain confined to this one tiny planet, without even a permanent...
View Article5 Requests I Have for Megan Whalen Turner’s Return of The Thief
So, so, so. After discovering that there was more than one sequel to The Thief about a decade after every other Megan Whalen Turner fan, I’ve gotten caught up on The Queen’s Thief series by devouring A...
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