We are delighted to start off a brand-new year of Tor.com short fiction with three original stories written by Harry Turtledove featuring everyone’s favorite sasquatch governor of the Pacific Northwest state of Jefferson, Bill Williamson.
A Soviet political prisoner is ordered to use her unique talents to explore a strange scientific phenomenon. It could be a trap…or a way out.
The Devil made a mirror. A physicist broke it and shards fell through reality and changed everything forever.
A prequel to the magical novella Made Things, out now from Tor.com Publishing.
Salipa and Telo have perfect lives in the virtual reality world that humanity has retreated to after bacteria and viruses resistant to all medications take over the outside world. But when the robots that take care of their necessities in the dirty outside world start glitching, Salipa must figure out what it means to truly live if they can never return to the outside world.
Security through physicality. Security through redundancy. Security through obscurity.
How do immortal artificial intelligences defend themselves? With an air gap. With a security force that has no connection to anything that can harm them. With a young woman, trained to fight and to die who, along with her cohort must keep them safe. But In Xanadu things don’t always go as planned…
It’s the classic romantic moment of Star Wars, arguably one of the best-known on-screen kisses of all time. Han Solo has been arguing with Princess Leia for a third of film over whether or not she’s into him, and happens to spot her as she’s doing ship repairs while they’re hiding in an asteroid. He wraps his arms around her under the guise of helping, she shoves him off. He takes her hand when she appears to have pinched it in the machinery, she tells him not to do that. He says she likes him because he’s a scoundrel, she insists that she likes nice men. He counters that he is a nice man, and before she can finish her protestation, he kisses her.
This aligns with most of what you see in romantic plot lines throughout the history of cinema, and corresponds with a tactic that many men are encouraged to use in real life on women: The Wear Her Down Method. And the problem with said method is that it not only easily slips into harassment—it also often ignores the concept of consent entirely.
[Spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker ahead.]
It’s the time of year that hard-working book reviewers publish lists, declaring the “Best of 2019!” and so on. Now, organized reviewers have theirs lists done by early December, thus missing out on most of a month of releases. I’ve waited until the very end of December before drafting my own list. Sometimes procrastination pays.
Adaptations are difficult. It takes ingenuity and attention to detail to translate hundreds of pages of thorough exposition and worldbuilding into a compelling visual spectacle. Whenever a novel becomes a film or a TV series, artistic minds are set on a collision course. That collision of ideas results in different visions of the same characters, topics, and themes; as a result, not all viewers accept the adaptation, however good it may be on its own merits. Netflix’s new Witcher series is no exception to this rule. Like all other television adaptations, the series deviates from the books. In the case of The Witcher, however, many of these changes, in my opinion, are largely unnecessary and do not make for a coherent story.
Like many longtime Witcher fans, I grew up on Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels. Admittedly, trying to distance myself from the characters I’ve grown attached to doesn’t come easily, but I tried to remain objective and open while waiting for the adaptation to finally arrive. By the time the show premiered in late December, I was curious to see how the showrunner and writers would interpret the novels, and was willing to accept the likely omission of the various Slavic elements and themes prominent in the books, as well as the clever literary and linguistic references and wordplay on the part of the author that would inevitably be lost in translation. Despite my scepticism about certain casting choices, I do not mind my opinions being challenged and tested—after all, a successful adaptation offers a unique glance into someone else’s mind. It allows you to access a different vision of the material you think you know and understand. In the case of The Witcher, however, the show challenged and altered the internal logic of the Witcher’s world while not adding great value to the story. As a result, the overall lack of context turns the show into a generic fantasy while ignoring the books’ unique elements and the subtle, but crucial, aspects of Sapkowski’s worldbuilding that set the Witcher saga apart in the first place.
Isabel Ibañez kicks off the year as one of the first authors to debut in the New Roaring Twenties. If the rest of the debuts are this promising, then we’re going to have a very good year. Woven in Moonlight draws inspiration from Bolivian politics and history to create a fantastical world. In fact, YA fantasy hasn’t seen a world like the Kingdom of Inkasisa. Full disclosure: As someone born and partially raised in Ecuador, I’ve been waiting my whole life to read a book that takes the Andean history of the Spanish and Inca, and transforms it in a fantastical setting.
Woven in Moonlight follows Ximena Rojas, the decoy Condesa of the secondary world of Inkasisa that has been upturned by revolution. Ximena is an Illustrian, the former ruling class, who are now relegated to living in a fortified keep. Ximena has had to pretend to be someone else for a decade. Ten years of being Condesa Catalina, the last living royal. Ximena’s longing for her own identity is clear, as is her fierce loyalty to the real Condesa and her Illustrian people. She fumbles as a decoy ruler quite a bit, usually by being unable to say the things people want to hear. It’s refreshing to see her faults and the promise of her strength as a character. Her only solace is her brand of magic. All people of Inkasisa possess traces of magic—reading the stars, tremors, healing, etc. Some, like Ximena can pull moonlight and weave it like wool to create tapestries.
Since it was published in 1965, Frank Herbert’s Dune has become one of the genre’s most popular novels, and has been adapted over the years for film and television. Now, it’s getting a new adaptation in graphic novel form.
Entertainment Weekly has revealed a first look at the upcoming graphic novel, which will be written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, and illustrated by Raúl Allén and Patricia Martín, with covers by Bill Sienkiewicz.
Rising Son
S.D. Perry
Publication Date: January 2003
Timeline: April-August 2376; the Epilogue of this book syncs up with the Epilogue of Mission Gamma, Book Four: Lesser Evil
Progress: A Gamma Quadrant Tosk (the species we met in “Captive Pursuit”) discovers a mysterious “crystalline chunk of matter the size of a fist, of a luminous tint that seemed to shift between orange and red.” Touching it transports him elsewhere for an instant, and this experience instills in the Tosk a desire to find “something that was not the Hunt.”
Jake records a log on the shuttle Venture, recapping his decision (prompted by Bajoran prophecy) to enter the wormhole in search of his father. Unfortunately, he’s come up empty. Systems failing, Jake believes the end is near, and then thinks he hears the voice of the Emissary telling him that everything is going to be all right.
Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker wasn’t supposed to be real.
The book, a young-at-heart tale of talking trees and sarcastic owls, of dangerous mermaids and captivating queens, only existed within the story of the shadowy world of Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame. A charming, and increasingly important, respite from the intrigues in McGuire’s 2019 novel.
But sometimes a book decides what it wants to be without you.
Within the world of science fiction television, it seems as though there’s one series above all that most fans would want to see a return to: Joss Whedon’s Firefly. Running in 2002 on Fox with a meager 13 episodes, the series came to an abrupt end, only to gain a fervent fanbase when the series was released on DVD.
At the winter Television Critics Association, the topic of a Firefly revival came up with the inevitable question directed at Fox executives: have they considered a return to the ‘verse? The answer was: yes. And they’re “wide open” on the possibility, “if there’s a way to reinvent it for today so it’s as resonate now as the original was.”
When I was a little girl, my father would tell me the same bedtime story every night.
It was a story about a mother coyote who was looking for her lost son. She traveled from town to town looking for him, describing him in the way loving mothers often do: He was strong and healthy with beautiful, shining fur. No one had seen him. They had only seen a mangy, emaciated animal, dead on the side of the road. Anguished, the mother cried out that that was her son. Based on a Mexican indigenous fable, it was a cautionary tale about deception and truth, and as an impressionable eight-year-old, it stuck with me.
There are stories whose words embed themselves in your soul. They stay there, long after the last page has been turned, and hold the warmth of an old friend’s embrace.
The first time I read a Silvia Moreno-Garcia book, the words didn’t just hug me, they wrapped themselves around my beating heart and squeezed. They demanded my attention and feelings—all of them.
Netflix has released the first trailer for its upcoming horror series, Locke & Key, based on the graphic novel by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. The trailer is our first look at the long-overdue adaptation of the series, and it shows off a series that looks close to what we saw in the original comics.
Ever wonder about the science of centaurs, hippogriffs, or nifflers? A new documentary exploring the magical critters that populate the Potterverse will be right up your Diagon Alley! BBC One’s Fantastic Beasts: A Natural History—narrated by none other than Stephen Fry—will investigate the real-life inspirations, historical origins, and myths behind the titular beasts.
It’s been a busy few months for geek TV between Baby Yoda fever, Watchmen blowing our collective minds, and The Witcher adaptation swinging swords and crooning songs. But January 23rd will deliver something new, something that carries a decades-long weight of hope, nostalgia, and reverie. Twenty-six years after Q told Jean-Luc Picard that he would “see you…out there” in the series finale of Star Trek: The Next Generation and 18 years after “a generation’s final journey” in Star Trek: Nemesis, Patrick Stewart’s stoic, compassionate, iconic fan favorite will finally return to TV screens, along with some new companions as well as some familiar faces.
Of course, that legacy comes with a lot of content to revisit. If you’re only looking at TNG, that’s 178 episodes across seven seasons as well as four feature films—and when you factor in Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine, she’s in three seasons of Star Trek: Voyager, and who knows what other established canon material will play into the new series… Even if you’re planning a full rewatch, you don’t have to squeeze all of it into the next couple of weeks; instead, you can follow this time-friendly guide to the key episodes and films that will bring you up to date just in time for the Picard premiere…
Some of your favorite shows are returning for another season on The CW! The network announced 13 early orders for the 2020-2021 season on Tuesday, and the line-up includes Arrowverse mainstays like The Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, as well as newcomer Batwoman.
We are delighted to start off a brand-new year of Tor.com short fiction with three original stories written by Harry Turtledove featuring everyone’s favorite sasquatch governor of the Pacific Northwest state of Jefferson, Bill Williamson.
Apple has unveiled a first look at its upcoming original series Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, a comedy about the team developing a fantasy video game. Created by Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, it looks a bit like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia mashed up with Silicon Valley.
Amazon has apparently (re-)found its lead star for its upcoming Middle-earth series: Robert Aramayo, who played the younger version of Ned Stark in HBO’s Game of Thrones.
What if you knew how and when you will die?
Csorwe does—she will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice.
But on the day of her foretold death, a powerful mage offers her a new fate. Leave with him, and live. Turn away from her destiny and her god to become a thief, a spy, an assassin—the wizard’s loyal sword. Topple an empire, and help him reclaim his seat of power.
But Csorwe will soon learn—gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.
A.K. Larkwood’s debut fantasy, The Unspoken Name, is available February 11, 2020 from Tor Books. Read chapter four below, or head back to the beginning with chapter one. Check back here for additional excerpts up until the book’s release.
Protecting her identity means life or death in Stealing Thunder by Alina Boyden, an immersive epic fantasy inspired by the Mughal Empire — and we want to send you a copy!
In a different life, under a different name, Razia Khan was raised to be the Crown Prince of Nizam, the most powerful kingdom in Daryastan. Born with the soul of a woman, she ran away at a young age to escape her father’s hatred and live life true to herself.
