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The Medieval Origins of Easter
Back in December, I wrote an article about “The Medieval Origins of Xmas.” Among other things, we took aim at the timing of the holiday and that jolly ol’ heretic-puncher, St. Nick. Today, it’s time to...
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When Gender Bias Extends to the Animal Kingdom: C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and His...
All I remembered of C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy before yesterday when I sat down and read it again was the part about the horse teaching the boy how to ride. That was going to be the subject of...
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Doctor Who Reaches Way Back to Its Roots for Season 10 Premiere
Doctor Who is always a new show. Every couple of years it transmutes itself into something new and different, and every time fans wonder if they will like that something. So there’s no way to predict...
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Amazing New Star Wars Books Include Ken Liu’s Take on Luke Skywalker
The first trailer for Star Wars: The Last Jedi may have been the biggest news to come out of Star Wars Celebration last week, but it wasn’t the only news: Lucasfilm also quietly announced several new...
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“I’ll Find You”: Watch the Outlander Season 3 Trailer
Though the “Droughtlander” will last another five months, Starz has appeased fans of Outlander with the first trailer for season 3 of the time-travel romance. Based on Voyager, the third book in Diana...
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Perfectly Gonzo: Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash
Authors, I think, are the sum of many parts. One component that makes up our narrative DNA is surely who we are, what we think, where we come from. It’s us. But another part of it isn’t us—just as our...
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Amazon’s Oasis Pilot: Thoughtful SF That Deserves a Series
There’s a point early on in Oasis, one of the contenders in Amazon’s new pilot season, which grounds the episode perfectly: Peter Leigh, a recently widowed priest with some serious concerns about his...
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Rereading the Vorkosigan Saga: Ethan of Athos, Chapters 6-8
In any given moment, in any given story, what we’re reading is about the past, the time the story was written, or the present. And likewise, at any given moment, we’re learning about the setting, the...
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The Empire’s Ghost Sweepstakes!
We want to send you a galley copy of Isabelle Steiger’s The Empire’s Ghost, available May 16th from Thomas Dunne Books! The empire of Elesthene once spanned a continent, but its rise heralded the death...
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Create Your Own Lovecraft Horror: Knitting the Great Race of Yith
I have terrible luck with SFnal toys. It’s not just the usual issue with the female action figures being impossible to find, though I’m as grumpy as anyone about the difficulty of tracking down an...
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Essential Works By A Surrealist Master: The Complete Stories and Down Below...
“Her two feet are left over still, but if you have a little bag, I’ll eat them later in the day.” So speaks a hyena on page six of “The Debutante,” the opener to The Complete Stories of Leonora...
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The Trial of Galadriel
She was warned—that leaving Valinor would mean exile. She was given an explanation—indeed, it was made clear to all the Elves that following the vindictive Elf Fëanor boded poorly. Nevertheless, she...
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Sleeps With Monsters: Katabasis and Anabasis
Katabasis means a going-down, a descent. It’s a word sometimes used to describe journeys to the underworld. Anabasis is its opposite, a going-up: the most famous narrative is Xenophon’s Anabasis, the...
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Gallows Superstitions and the Repurposing of Corpses
While writing my steampunk murder mysteries, I read a lot about dead bodies and hangings. Gallows superstitions—those associated with executions—were rife in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries. Got...
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David Lynch’s Dune is What You Get When You Build a Science Fictional World...
There were many attempts to get Dune to the screen on the wave of its popularity. The version that finally came through was David Lynch’s 1984 film, made after both Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ridley...
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Bodies in Space: Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan
Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan is so much more than just a retelling of the story of Joan of Arc. Let’s get plot out of the way: In the near future, the Water Wars have ravaged the Earth. Those...
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Star Trek The Original Series Rewatch: “Albatross”
“Albatross” Written by Dario Finelli Directed by Bill Reed Animated Season 2, Episode 4 Production episode 22019 Original air date: September 28, 1974 Stardate: 5275.6 Captain’s log. The Enterprise has...
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Borne Sweepstakes!
We want to send you a copy of Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne, available April 25th from Farrar, Straus & Giroux! In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half...
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The Guns Above: A Tussle in the Woods
They say it’s not the fall that kills you—for Josette Dupre, the Corps’ first female airship captain, it might just be a bullet in the back. On top of patrolling the front lines, she must also contend...
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So If Westeros Were Real the Bears Would Kill Everyone?
Naturalish over at Medium recently took a look at the various creatures of Westeros and discovered: There are too many top predators in too small an undifferentiated space! While the article isn’t...
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