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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Migration
Hey folks, this blog has served me well over the years, but now I believe I’m ready to move forward on to something new. I will leave everything here as it stands, a record of my past, but everything new will be posted to my new blog over at Cosmic Soda. It’s been fun and … Continue reading Migration from S.T. CARTLEDGE https://ift.tt/3lAfJV6 via IFTTT
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Taking Submissions: Moonlight & Misadventure
Deadline: January 15th, 2021 Payment: $10 USD for reprints and $20 USD for previously unpublished Theme: Moonlight & Misadventure Note: Reprints allowed Call for Short Story Submissions     Anthology Title: Moonlight & Misadventure: 20-22 Stories of Mystery & Suspense   Genre: Short story/mystery/suspense   Publisher: Superior Shores Press   Editor: Judy Penz Sheluk   Deadlines: The deadline for submission is January 15, 2021 or until 100 submissions have been received, whichever comes first. Starting December 2020, the website page will be updated periodically with the number of submissions received. Late submissions and/or submissions after 100 entries have been documented will not be considered.   All submissions will be acknowledged within 7 days. If you do not receive an acknowledgment within that time, please Contact Me.   Acceptance/rejections will be emailed to all submitting authors on or before April 1, 2021. Please, no simultaneous submissions.   Publication Date: *June 2021 (trade paperback/Kindle; Kobo, Nook, Apple, and other e-book markets to follow at the publisher’s discretion)   *The Publisher reserves the right to postpone and/or cancel due to unforeseen circumstances or if an insufficient number of qualified stories are submitted/accepted.   Description: A multi-author anthology of 20 to 22 short stories of mystery and suspense, with an overarching theme of Moonlight & Misadventure. Estimated length: 250-300 printed pages in trade paperback format. An introduction, acknowledgments, and author bios will be included.   Submission Guidelines: Both previously published and unpublished authors are welcome to submit. There is no entry fee.   Authors may submit 1 (one) reprint or 1 (one) previously unpublished short story, ideally ranging between 1,500 to 5,500 words (though great stories falling “slightly” outside this range will be considered). Preference will be given to new material; reprint material will not exceed 25% of the collection.   Note: Authors of new... from The Horror Tree https://ift.tt/3kufhGD via IFTTT
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Happy Birthday Robert Louis Stevenson!
Today is the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson and we just wanted to show a quick bit of appreciation. Yes, the man is responsible for quite a few works and two really stick out at the top of the list. While many might initially associate Stevenson with creating ‘Treasure Island’ in 1883, I feel that my fellow authors and readers of fiction likely think of him for the 1886 novella ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’ Yes, this novella is the perfect example of how shorter works can have a huge impact on readers and not everything has to be an epic to stand the test of time. from The Horror Tree https://ift.tt/2GZCMcR via IFTTT
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Indie Bookshelf Releases 11/13/20
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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The Mandalorian Learns a New Way in Chapter Eleven, “The Heiress”
This week a whole lot of questions are finally going to slot into place with the return of a familiar face…
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
Summary
The Razor Crest makes it to the Trask moon (just barely, crashing into the sea and needing a lift out), and Frog Lady’s husband points Din in the direction of a tavern to get his intel. Once there, a Quarren offers to take him by sea to find the Mandalorians he’s looking for. This turns out to be an elaborate ploy; the Quarrens are pirates who let a sea monster swallow Baby Yoda in order to encourage Din after him. They mean to strip the beskar from his body and get rich. Luckily, three Mandalorians jetpack in and disperse the entire crew with ease, rescuing the kid in the process. When they remove their helmets, Djarin is taken aback, insisting they they are not true Mandalorians. What he doesn’t know is that he’s been rescued by Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff), last member of Clan Kryze, an old Mandalorian family. She realizes that Din is a member of the Watch, a splinter sect that means to return Mandalore to its ancient ways, hence their creed never to remove their helmets.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
Bo-Katan is able to direct Djarin to a Jedi as he requests, but only if he’s willing to help in her mission first: She is going to raid an Imperial ship leaving the planet for weapons to outfit her people in the fight to reclaim Mandalore. Din is convinced that Mandalore is a cursed planet, as he was told by his own clan. Bo insists that he shouldn’t believe everything he hears, and that Mandalorians are stronger when they act together. Djarin leaves Baby Yoda with Frog Lady (Misty Rosas) and her husband as her very first egg hatches.
The group board the ship and begin dispatching troopers. They manage to secure the cargo bay, then let the bridge officers know that they’re planning to take the whole ship—which wasn’t part of the original plan Bo-Katan sold to Din. Nevertheless, they move to storm to cockpit, and Djarin takes heavy fire in order to clear out the passageway leading up to it. The ship is also currently crashing because the commander (Titus Welliver) signaled to Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito) about the situation, and the Moff decided that they were already too late to be saved. Bo-Katan’s crew manage to pull the ship up in time, but the captain takes a suicide pill after smugly letting Bo-Katan know that Gideon definitely has the Darksaber. Bo asks Din if he doesn’t want to join their cause because she’d be happy to have him, but he’s determined to get Baby Yoda to the right people. She relents gives him directions on where to find—
—Ahsoka Tano.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
Commentary
This episode makes a lot of lore and cultural issues come clear here, so let’s start by unpacking that…
Bo-Katan Kryze was first introduced in the Clone Wars animated series and then later reappeared in Star Wars: Rebels. She is the sister of Satine Kryze, who was Duchess and ruler of Mandalore during the Clone Wars. Satine and Bo-Katan never quite saw eye to eye; while Bo-Katan was proud of Mandalorian heritage, Satine wanted their people to take a more pacifist route (hence her being Duchess of the people rather than the Mand’alor, as their traditions dictated). That choice in wartime was never appreciated to its full extent, and Satine was eventually killed at the hands of Darth Maul… who was wielding the Darksaber at the time, ironically enough. This led to an era of upheaval right as Chancellor Palpatine was fast approaching his coup to destroy the Republic and create the Empire.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
Later on, Sabine Wren of Clan Wren sought out Bo-Katan when she discovered the Darksaber on Dathomir. The intent was to see Bo-Katan installed as the new Mand’alor to reunite the Mandalorian people against the Empire. We’re not quite sure about the specifics of what happened after, but safe to say, it didn’t work out as planned—Bo-Katan is looking for Moff Gideon because he has taken the Darksaber, the symbol of leadership for her people, an item that she was rightfully chosen to wield in recent memory. She understandably wants it returned, and is doing everything in her power to frustrate Gideon and his cronies.
What Bo-Katan tells Din Djarin is arguably more important, however, and explains the most perplexing aspect of his allegiance to the Mandalorians that we’ve seen thus far. She tells him that his clan is a splinter sect known as the Watch, who seek to restore the ancient Mandalorian ways—which makes it clear why they never remove their helmets. This is more or less what I was expecting in regard to an explanation, and was excellently seeded as well; the Mandalorians who save little Din in last season’s flashback during the Clone War bear the signet of Death Watch, the very splinter group that Bo-Katan is referring to. (Apparently, they’ve shortened their name to just “the Watch” because “Death Watch” probably wasn’t doing them many favors toward inflating their ranks. Cute.) During the Clone Wars, the Death Watch were viewed as a radical terrorist sect who reveled in violence and sought to destroy the new regime of pacifist thinking.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
But there’s another key bit of info that Bo-Katan omits when she’s explaining the rough cut of Mandalorian history to Din: She used to be a member of Death Watch. She was lieutenant to the group’s leader during the Clone Wars, Pre Vizsla (voiced by Jon Favreau, which is the reason why he voiced another member of Din’s clan in the first season—he’s meant to be a descendent of Vizsla). Of course, she had her reasons, but in modern parlance you could argue that it’s pretty close to your standard teenage rebellion phase: My sister wants pacifism, I hate it, time to join a cult for a while. She breaks from Death Watch after they fall in with Darth Maul, who wants to use the group as a means to seize power for himself.
Now, all of this history is well and good, but poor Din is understandably shaken by the information and what it means. Granted, part of that is down to almost losing his kid to a giant sea monster, but you can’t mistake the tremble in his voice after Bo-Katan gives him an updated definition of his own clan and way of life. I really hope the show delves into this for the sake of his character arc, rather than having him skip right over it to a place of fuzzy camaraderie; Din was indoctrinated to the Watch as a child. It’s going to be incredibly hard for him to square that he hasn’t been told the whole truth about the Mandalorian people and heritage. Having him slowly learn more about Mandalore and the full extent of their history, and make his own choices about how he wants to belong—that’s a great story. They should really dig into what that means for a figure in Djarin’s position because it makes him unique.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
And if the long arc of that journey just so happens to lead to the restoration of the Mandalorian people on their homeworld with Bo-Katan Kryze in possession of the Darksaber as the Mand’alor? Sign me up. (Also, the Watch could relax their rules again and let poor Din show his face. Then he could maybe go back and make a nice homestead with Omera? Seems like he’d appreciate that option.) He’s so awed by their competence when they storm that ship, it’s fantastic—the realization of what it could be like to really work with his people toward common goals, even if just for a moment. I also adore how Bo uses the Mando mantra against Din to twist his arm into aiding her, because she knows how Death Watch worked and how it gained loyalty and what her people truly value. She knows that Din is one of them, and she wants them all to be on the same side. Give us more of her.
I’m still not sure what the intention was with the Frog Lady and her partner, and having Baby Yoda around for the birth of her first child. Are we supposed to infer that the kid has learned something about the sanctity of life now that he sees that the egg brought forth another baby? Is this going to lead to him being more sensitive in the future? Did anyone even consider how awkwardly that whole concept is positioned here? Because either way, my issues with how this was handled in the last episode still stand—treating it as a comical aside that he ate a bunch of her potential kids wasn’t great. It also feels particularly off-base when the point is that Din knows he can leave the kid with them because they’re parents… but shouldn’t because he knows what happened last time the kid was around the eggs. The tonal shift of how seriously we’re supposed to take Frog Lady’s motherhood from moment to moment is enough to give you whiplash.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
And that’s without getting into how aggravated I am that the show racks up tension during the opening crash sequence by continually suggesting that the pod holding her eggs might not survive the landing, which… she could literally set the thing down between her feet while holding that lever—this is Cheap Nail-biting 101 going down here.
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A lot of questions here in regard to the zealotry of the Imperial remnants we’re seeing. We already know Moff Gideon is a piece of work, and it stands to reason that a lot of the leftover officers and troopers of the Empire are going to be a little… intense, given what they’ve survived following the regime change. But we haven’t been given much information so far about what these troops think they’re contributing to, or where their resources are coming from. Is this a group that will eventually be folded into the First Order, or are they the last fundamentalist gasp of the Empire’s power? And how have they lasted this long?
In any case, we’ve got a lot to think about, and with any luck… next week we’ll come face to face with Ahsoka Tano. *grabby hands*
Things and Asides:
Katee Sackhoff was the voice actor for Bo-Katan on the animated series side of things as well. While not every voice-over actor from those shows will get to play their on-screen counterparts, it’s hardly a surprise that they ported Sackhoff over, given how beloved she is for playing the role of Starbuck on the rebooted early aughts version of Battlestar Galactica. She’s just perfect here, and getting to see that armor rendered in physical form is… ugh, it’s so good.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
The other two Mandalorians on Bo’s team are Axe Woves (Simon Kassianides) and Koska Reeves (Mercedes Varnado). While you might recognize Kassianides from films and TV, Varnado is best known for embodying the wrestling persona of Sasha Banks. They also all enjoy making fun of stormtroopers for not being able to shoot straight.
I forgot to mention that Paul Sun-Hyung Lee from last episode is best known for his work on Kim’s Convenience! (On Netflix, give it a watch.) But more importantly, he’s a giant cosplaying nerd who got to wear Biggs Darklighter’s helmet in that episode, so I’m still crying over that.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
Within the Legends canon (that’s the old Expanded Universe books and comics), the Death Watch were very similar to what we currently have on screen, a splinter sect that meant to return the Mandalorians to their ancient ways. In that canon, they were founded by a fellow named Tor Viszla (lol) and opposed Jaster Mereel’s True Mandalorians.
The Trask moon is a watery planet full of Mon Calamari (yes, that is Admiral Ackbar’s species and if you didn’t know they named them after a tasty fried snack, then I am happy to bestow this knowledge upon you) and Quarren, two groups that are often found together, though their history is fraught. They share the homeworld of Mon Cala, and were pitted against each other during the Clone Wars by Separatist forces. Obviously, they’re both aquatic species.
All I’m saying is, if they’d had ship-hauling cranes like that on Dagobah, Luke wouldn’t have had to worry so much about crashing his X-Wing into a swamp.
Screenshot: Lucasfilm
The Empire has electric suicide pills now? That’s… that’s dark, y’all.
See you next week, folx!
Emmet Asher-Perrin is probably going to spend the next week quietly chanting “Ahsoka, Ahsoka, Ahsoka” under their breath. You can bug them on Twitter, and read more of their work here and elsewhere.
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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SF Grandmaster Brian Aldiss Remembered in New Photo Book
Science fiction Grandmaster Brian Aldiss died 2017, leaving behind hundreds of books and short stories that spanned a decades-long career.
He was also survived by his daughter, Wendy, who has put together a photo book that documents the possessions that he left behind with his death.
The project, titled My Father’s Things, is now on Kickstarter, where it’s fully funded. The 250-page book “is at once a depiction of one man’s property, a record of design across the decades and a meditation on the extraordinary nature of ordinary things.”
In the project video, Aldiss notes that she hadn’t set out to create a book: she just wanted to create a portrait of her father “in the only way that was left to me.” Following his death, she began to take pictures of his possessions, from the mundane, like shoes and ties, to the shelves of his books and magazines.
The resulting book, Aldiss says, is an attempt to cover all aspects of his life, from his work as a writer and critic, to his collections of stamps and letters, to his life as a father and human being. The book will also come with a foreword by Christopher Priest, and an essay by cultural sociologist Dr. Margaret Gibson.
The book is slated to be sent out to backers in December 2020 (as with all crowdfunding campaigns, there is the possibility that the project’s release date could shift). The book itself runs for £35 (about $45), and each of which will come with a unique bookmark that Aldiss used in one of the books in his library. (US backers should note that shipping to the United States is expensive; it runs about $40.) Other tiers include a signed copy (£40), a book and calendar with additional images (£60), two copies (£75), signed copy, print, and calendar (£100).
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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All the New Horror and Genre-Bending Books Arriving in November!
Head below for the full list of horror and genre-bending titles heading your way in November!
Keep track of all the new releases here. You can also find a list of other horror titles scheduled for 2020 here. All title summaries are taken and/or summarized from copy provided by the publisher. Note: Release dates are subject to change.
  WEEK ONE (November 3)
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020—Diana Gabaldon, John Joseph Adams (eds.) (Mariner Books)
The best science fiction and fantasy stories from 2019, guest-edited by author of the mega-best-selling Outlander series, Diana Gabaldon.
Today’s readers of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to read about spaceships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. Contemporary science fiction and fantasy looks to accomplish the same goal as ever—to illuminate what it means to be human. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and Diana Gabaldon, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today.
  WEEK TWO (November 10)
Secret Santa—Andrew Shaffer (Quirk Books)
Out of work for months, Lussi Meyer is desperate to work anywhere in publishing. Prestigious Blackwood-Patterson isn’t the perfect fit, but a bizarre set of circumstances leads to her hire and a firm mandate: Lussi must find the next horror superstar to compete with Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Peter Straub. It’s the ’80s, after all, and horror is the hottest genre.
But as soon as she arrives, Lussi finds herself the target of her co-workers’ mean-spirited pranks. The hazing reaches its peak during the company’s annual Secret Santa gift exchange, when Lussi receives a demonic-looking object that she recognizes but doesn’t understand. Suddenly, her coworkers begin falling victim to a series of horrific accidents akin to a George Romero movie, and Lussi suspects that her gift is involved. With the help of her former author, the flamboyant Fabien Nightingale, Lussi must track down her anonymous Secret Santa and figure out the true meaning of the cursed object in her possession before it destroys the company—and her soul.
  WEEK THREE (November 17)
Eartheater—Dolores Reyes, transl. Julia Sanches (HarperVia)
Set in an unnamed slum in contemporary Argentina, Eartheater is the story of a young woman who finds herself drawn to eating the earth—a compulsion that gives her visions of broken and lost lives. With her first taste of dirt, she learns the horrifying truth of her mother’s death. Disturbed by what she witnesses, the woman keeps her visions to herself. But when Eartheater begins an unlikely relationship with a withdrawn police officer, word of her ability begins to spread, and soon desperate members of her community beg for her help, anxious to uncover the truth about their own loved ones.
This Is Not a Ghost Story—Andrea Portes (HarperTeen)
Daffodil Franklin has plans for a quiet summer before her freshman year at college, and luckily, she’s found the job that can give her just that: housesitting a mansionfor a wealthy couple.
But as the summer progresses and shadows lengthen, Daffodil comes to realize the house is more than it appears. The spacious home seems to close in on her, and as she takes the long road into town, she feels eyes on her the entire way, and something tugging her back. What Daffodil doesn’t yet realize is that her job comes with a steep price. The house has a long-ago grudge it needs to settle… and Daffodil is the key to settling it.
  WEEK FOUR (November 24)
No new titles.
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Terry Pratchett Book Club: Sourcery, Part IV
It’s time to reshuffle the world back to the way it was. We’re here to complete Sourcery!
Summary
Rincewind goes into the Tower of Art and finds the Librarian, the Patrician, and Wuffles, along with most of the library’s books—they flew from the blaze. The Librarian is busy repairing the books that got a bit singed and damaged on their way out. Rincewind is determined to stay out of what’s going on, but the Librarian takes his hat and threatens to cut it up, and Rincewind is obliged to stop him and admit that he probably should do something about what’s going on. Conina, Nijel, and Creosote are dropped off a ways from Ankh-Morpork right outside a tavern. They give up on the lamp and steal three horses to make it the rest of the way. Those three horses happen to belong to War, Famine, and Pestilence, who are drinking in the tavern with Death. Coin and the wizards are channeling all their energy into stopping the hat and Abrim and his tower, and Carding is upset, knowing he should have listened to Spelter before. But while he’s working on getting past Abrim’s defenses, the Luggage arrives, distracting the grand vizier well enough to kill him. His tower and the Archchancellor’s hat are destroyed in the process. Carding realizes that what they’ve done has opened avenues for other things to come into their world and tries to smash Coin’s staff, but it kills him instead.
Death heads out on Binky insisting that the other Horsemen can’t ride on his horse because it messes with the aesthetic of the thing. War decides they should go back into the tavern and have another drink in that case. Coin is upset to find Carding dead, and wants to help him, but the staff takes over. Coin insists that they needn’t worry about the Dungeon Dimensions because they now run a world full of magic and nothing can stand against them—but it is pointed out that the gods could. Rincewind heads out of the Tower of Art to go face down Coin, who is busy imprisoning the gods in a thought that is now the size of a pearl. Rincewind arrives with half a brick in a sock and realizes this is all wrong, that Coin is at the mercy of the staff and he can’t fight a little boy. Death arrives, and Rincewind assumes he’s come for him, but he’s actually there for Ipslore. Coin tries to smash the staff, tries to toss it away, but it rolls back and demands to be picked up. Coin decides he didn’t throw it far enough. The wizards move to abandon the Tower, expecting everything to self-destruct at this point. Rincewind can’t leave the kid alone, so he returns to grab for the staff and they both vanish—leaving only Rincewind’s hat behind.
Conina, Nijel, and Creosote are riding through the sky on the horsemen’s pilfered horses and notice that there’s a terrible snowstorm coming. They call on the genie to figure out what’s happening, and he explains that the gods are gone—releasing the Ice Giants, whom they imprisoned ages hence. Then the genie liquidates this particular lamp and leaves them there. Nijel decides they should try to explain to the Ice Giants what’s going on and why they shouldn’t destroy the world. No one has a better idea, so they go for it. Rincewind wakes up in the Dungeon Dimensions next to Coin, who briefly roots around in his head to learn more about where they are. He realizes that the Things there are trying to break into their world, and he can’t use magic because that will strengthen them. So Rincewind decides he’s going to distract them with a sock full of sand. (Meanwhile in Al Khali the Luggage breaks free of the wreckage of Abrim’s tower.) Nijel tries to talk to an Ice Giant, but they’re not really interested in hearing reason, and Conina has to save him from an untimely death. Rincewind tells Coin to run toward the light while he distracts the Things; he requests that Coin tell people that he stayed there and write it down somewhere for posterity. He also tells Coin that he must remember who he really is and not let other people remember for him (which he’s also telling himself). Coin doesn’t run when he’s told, not until Rincewind quotes his father to him, and then he finally runs toward the light, emerging in Ankh-Morpork where the Librarian waits.
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Coin wants to go back after Rincewind, but the Librarian isn’t going to the Dungeon Dimensions, and suddenly the Luggage appears and charges in after him. The Librarian then takes the small pearl from Coin’s hands and smashes it, freeing the Disc gods, who are none too happy. Nijel decides he is going to make a last stand against the Ice Giants, and Conina elects to make that stand with him, but before anything happens, the gods put the Ice Giants back. They head to the city, dropping off War’s horse at a livery stable. The books are busy flying back from the Tower of Art to the reconstructed Library—the city having basically reconstructed itself back to normal—and Conina and Nijel ask the Librarian if he can direct them to Rincewind. He brings them to Coin instead, who explains what happened, but then erases their memories and tells them to live happily ever after. Coin is panicked because he can’t stop effecting the world, until he realizes the solution: He creates his own pocket universe, steps into it, and seals himself away. Creosote steps into the Mended Drum and is given all the liquor he could ever want by the landlord’s daughter, who just happens to know hundreds of stories. The Patrician is back to normal, only vaguely remembering his time as a reptile. The Librarian checks the Library and goes to sleep beneath his desk, while Rincewind’s hat sits propped in a corner.
Book Club Chat
The thing that catches me up at the end of this book is the textbook abusive parenting we get from Ipslore the staff (I’ve taught you everything; I gave you everything; you’re so ungrateful), and honestly… I wish more of the book was devoted to this. Because we know that the staff is making Coin do all of this, we know that Coin is truly just a little boy with access to unimaginable power, and we have some background on what filled Ipslore with vengeance. But we don’t get a lot of detail. We don’t get anything from either of their perspectives really, and that seems like a missed opportunity to do some digging on this premise.
Because, really, the whole thing kind of hangs on this concept of knowing what you are, and being sure of that knowledge on your own terms. Rincewind is reminding himself of this at the end: He’s a wizard, he knows it because of the hat, the very same one the Librarian called his attention to and now keeps in a corner of the Library, awaiting Rincewind’s return. And while it’s nice to see Rincewind stick to himself, we don’t get to see this lesson as carefully applied to the person who needs to internalize it the most. Coin doesn’t get the chance to truly know himself because he spends his life being directed and filled up with knowledge by the staff that’s his dead dad. Additionally, Ipslore is a full-tilt villain who only gets the barest hint of nuance and character in his first pages. It would have been nice to get just a bit more of him, too, of their relationship and how it unfolded into this massive terrifying thing.
Which is really just another way of saying, this book has too many characters that need to be important, and really only enough time to focus on a couple of them. The machinations are still super fun to read, but I want a bit more of everyone. Even Conina and Nijel—the point at the end where they’re seemingly about to die and Nijel can tell that Conina was interested in them maybe being Mr and Mrs Harebut, and when she vaguely confirms that he asks “Which one did you intend to be?” Hey now, come on. Gimme just a little more of that.
That said, I do have a lot of respect for Rincewind doing the hero bit with all this usual groaning and dismay. It’s hard to do hero things when you’re not the Hero Type, even in fiction, which is supposed to make room for not-heroes becoming Hero Types.
Getting into this Good Omens angle is honestly a thing that will come up again, even after this book, because Pratchett has a few aspects within the Discworld series that he clearly just wanted on the page somewhere, but work much better in a story that is oriented toward specifically Christianized parody. This whole bit with the Horsemen (who were brought up before in Mort, of course) is just sort of awkwardly there? It’s fun, but it doesn’t make too much sense. The only thing about it that’s really enjoyable is the suggestion that Death left them all behind at the tavern because he knew that the world wasn’t ending today, and was just heading to pick up Ipslore as intended from the start. If we go from that assumption, at least it’s funny that he rides off without them because no, it just looks all wrong, sorry gang, you’re on your own.
But the idea of imposing a largely Christian conceit of apocalypse upon the Discworld is awkward to my mind, as it is in every place where the Disc gets a little extra Christian. (And before anyone asks, no, I don’t count Hogswatch or the Hogfather in that because Christmas itself has such deeply pagan roots as a holiday that it doesn’t imbue the same biblical sense on anything.) And I can’t help but suspect that Pratchett knows this and just does it anyway because the jokes are fun. He can sort of get away with it because he makes room for all beliefs on the Disc—this is made clear with the idea that when people die, they go wherever they believe they’re going. But there’s a difference between “you go to the afterlife you believe in” and “if the world ends, the Christian Horsemen will ride as their Apocalypse demands.” There’s no indication of why that would occur here, or whether other faiths are having their own doomsday groups triggered, as it were.
Of course some people are shouting “but they’re conceptual, they apply to all of humanity!” and sure… if they were more like the Endless and just always around, I’d give it to him. But they’re not. They’re the Four Horsemen of the Christian Apocalypse. Except Death isn’t, he’s Discworld’s Death. I just want some clear delineation, is what I’m saying. (Which I know we get a bit more of in The Thief of Time, but that’s way later in the game.) I’m picky like that.
Asides and little thoughts:
“Other things besides the cream floated to the top, he reflected sourly.” Aside from the fact that this is a great quote, it’s also a good chance to bring up Tom Swifties, reference to a series Pratchett has winked at before (namely in The Light Fantastic), using this particular sequence of word matching (in this case “sourly” is a reflection upon the content of the sentence itself). It’s all very silly.
Creosote saying that he thought snow came up from the ground like mushrooms just reminds me of Lucy shouting “It comes up, Charlie Brown, snow comes up!” in the song “Little Known Facts” in the musical You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown.
Given how descriptive terms for white women’s skin so often angle toward unwarranted glorification (“ivory” and “alabaster” and “milk” are fine, I guess, but really?), there is something particularly enjoyable in having the landlord’s daughter of the Mended Drum described as the color and shape of “unbaked bread.”
Pratchettisms:
The interior of the tower smelled of antiquity, with a slight suspicion of raven droppings.
The particular thing nearest Rincewind was at least twenty feet high. It looked like a dead horse that had been dug up after three months and then introduced to a range of new experiences, at least one of which had included an octopus.
“Are you alive?” he said. “If you’re not, I’d prefer it if you didn’t answer.”
Sourcerers never become part of the world. They merely wear it for a while.
Night spread across the Disk like plum jam, or possibly blackberry preserve.
  ]Next week we’re getting into Wyrd Sisters! This one is a tad longer, so we’ll be doing it in five parts instead of our usual four. We’ll be reading up to:
And afterward, he told himself, I’ll get the armorer to send me up a file.
Until then!
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Five SFF Books for the Goth in Your Life
It is an aesthetic born of counterculture. One defined by a potentially insufferable amount of black clothing, wearing a lot of straps on your pants for seemingly no reason (it looks cool, okay), and copious amounts of eyeliner. The subcultures that have fractured from the original are too many to number but there’s something to be said for the defining factors of listening to music that’s outside the norm and creating art that’s meant to be a little out there and a little (or a lot) provocative. It’s counterculture, so that means relishing a bit in the over-the-top, in the grit, in the glamor, in the dark.
Also, sometimes one is just extremely lazy and an entirely black wardrobe makes getting dressed in the morning easy, but I’d like to think there’s more to it than that. So I have five books that I think cut to the heart of it all and are extremely Goth.
  Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
A book that asks the incredible question: What if corpse paint—a popular make up style in black metal bands, for the uninitiated—was a legitimate part of the world building? What if everyone in the cast was extremely goth? What if one of the main characters was a girl so goth that she wears a human skeletal ribcage as a chest piece? Not only all of that, but Gideon is the first true Goth Jock I’ve ever seen in a book. I have yearned for that Goth Jock representation. Gideon the Ninth is a mystery and a hack ‘n’ slash and the most fun you can have with a skeleton (probably?). It’s about two girls who absolutely spitting hate each other and are forced to work together when Harrow, a necromancer, is called to become one of the Emperor’s closest contingent of necromancers, but a necromancer can’t ascend without their cavalier, and thus Gideon is dragged—not entirely willingly—along for the ride. Give this one to all goths, honestly, every kind of goth.
  Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
Perchance the proto-Goth fantasy? The original? Possibly not, but one that every weird Goth should read. Gormenghast is a dense narrative about a doomed lord, a villainous kitchen boy determined to rise above his station, and the myriad of unusual and bizarre individuals who populate a sprawling and decrepit manor. It is a grotesquery of prose, absolutely drenched in the most exquisite, over the top imagery. Fuchsia Groan is for every teenage goth girl who has wanted to be extremely dramatic all the time because no one—absolutely no one—can understand what she’s going through. If you’re looking for something with a fast plot, turn your gaze elsewhere, but if you want to really settle in Gothic Weirdness, then Titus Groan is the book for you.
  The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht
This book is an oil slick. It’s a revelation. It revels. In a city in its death throes, Johann discovers he cannot die. When he meets a young nobleman with a vicious streak bent on revenge, well, very little can stand in their way. There’s knives! There’s a plague! There’s a delicious twisted romance! There’s an incredible amount of worldbuilding for a package that’s less than two hundred pages. Horror and fantasy with a streak of decadence for the goth that likes things more than a little bit grungy.
  The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson
Immanuelle must navigate a stiflingly patriarchal world where witchcraft is answered with a pyre, and her own dark powers put her in danger. This book has plagues! Feminism! A lightly unhinged boy who has prophesies but is doing his best! One of the most gloriously wild and bloody endings to a book I’ve ever read! The Year of the Witching is an extremely fresh take on the conflict between religion and magic. Perfect for all witchy Goths and those who love riveting horror.
  Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones
Wintersong is for the drama goths, the ones who watched Phantom of the Opera (2005) at an extremely impressionable age and never quite recovered. Or, an even more apt comparison, the ones who watched Labyrinth at an extremely impressionable age and never recovered. When Liesl’s sister is taken by the Goblin King, she takes it upon herself to go into the Underground to bring her back. Darkly romantic and atmospheric in all of the best ways, this book reads like a fever dream you never want to wake from.
  Originally published in May 2020
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Emily A. Duncan is the New York Times bestselling author of Wicked Saints. She was born and raised in Ohio and works as a youth services librarian. She received a Master’s degree in library science from Kent State University, which mostly taught her how to find obscure Slavic folklore texts through interlibrary loan systems. When not reading or writing, she enjoys playing copious amounts of video games and dungeons and dragons.
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Taking Submissions: Green Inferno
Deadline: November 30th, 2020 Payment: Flash: $25 plus 2 comp copies.. Short Fiction pays $.04/word plus 4 comp copies. Theme: Weird Horror, atmosphere, dread, and slimy things. Thanks for your interest in Green Inferno! What We Are: A quarterly 120-page trade paperback anthology of original short comics and fiction centered around Terrestrial Horror: stories that take place on or involving our planet, often (but not always) with an environmental or ecological bent. That is to say: not every story has to be Man v. Nature— that would get old pretty quick!– but Man v. Nature is a good germination point for what Green Inferno seeks to be, and it definitely falls under the umbrella. Here are some stories that, in our opinion, fall under the umbrella of Terrestrial Horror: The Fog – John Carpenter The Low Low Woods – Carmen Maria Machado & Dani Swamp Thing – Alan Moore & others Threshold – Caitlin R. Kiernan The Godzilla franchise The Southern Reach Trilogy – Jeff VanderMeer The Birds – Alfred Hitchcock *Even Cosmic Horror like The Color out of Space, though extraterrestrial in origin, explores the horror wrought on Earth. We’d say that falls well within our purview. So, yeah, it’s a big umbrella, but we do think the title sums it up quite nicely: Green Inferno. The World Celebrates Your Demise. What We’re Looking For: Short Stories (8000 words or less) and Flash Fiction (1000 words or less). How Do We Want to Scare You Today…? -We love Weird Horror, atmosphere, dread, and slimy things. -Splatterpunk or moody Gothic creepiness are both super keen. -Throwback-y and uber-contemporary are equally great. -Sci-Fi and Fantasy angles welcome, but please keep it Earthbound (terrestrial) for now. -We like Horror comedy… sometimes. Everyone’s “funny” is different, but give it a shot! For Fiction Submissions: We are seeking Short Stories (8000 words or less) and Flash Fiction (1000 words or less). Flash Fiction pays $25 plus 2 comp copies. Short Fiction pays $.04/word... from The Horror Tree https://ift.tt/3nwT7ph via IFTTT
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Sheree Renée Thomas Is the New Editor for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
One of the genre’s oldest publications has a new editor: Sheree Renée Thomas will take over as editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from C.C. Finlay, who assumed the role in 2015.
Thomas will take the helm of the magazine for its March/April 2021 issue, and will reopen submissions in January 2021.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is one of the last legacy publications in the field. Originally founded in 1949, it was a mainstay of the speculative fiction genre in the 20th century alongside the likes of Astounding Science Fiction (now Analog Science Fiction and Fact), Asimov’s Science Fiction Galaxy Science Fiction, and Amazing Stories, and was a home to authors such as Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison and James Tiptree, Jr., and more, and serialized such classics as Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon.
From 1991, Kristine Kathryn Rusch took over as editor, and was succeeded by Gordan Van Gelder, who took over the magazine as publisher in 2001. He continued to edit the magazine until Finlay’s tenure. Over the course of his time at the magazine, Finlay was nominated for the Best Short Form Hugo award in 2020, and was a finalist for both the Locus Award and World Fantasy Awards.
In an interview, Thomas told me that she got her love of the genre in the same place that most fans have gotten it: her parents. “My father was in the Air Force, and we traveled a bit when I was younger.” One of the places that left the biggest impression on her was White Sands in New Mexico, where the US Army tested nuclear bombs in the Second World War. In addition to the unreal surroundings and landscape, she noted, “whenever we went on and off the base, you are surrounded by these giant replicas of rockets and spaceships.”
Her parents were both readers who read a lot of science fiction, and she says that her first encounter with The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was when she was out shopping with her mother, and caught sight of an issue on a shelf, and asked her mother for it. “That’s where I first encountered stories by Howard Waldrop, Greg Bear, and others.”
She later went on to attend Clarion West in 1999, where she studied under instructors including Bear and Waldrop, as well as Nancy Kress, Octavia Butler, Gwyneth Jones, and Gordon Van Gelder.
After attending Clarion, Thomas began publishing short stories in anthologies like Mojo: Conjure Stories (edited by Nalo Hopkinson), So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy (Hopkinson), Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New Wave Trajectory (Marleen S. Barr), Jalada 02: Afrofuture(s) (Moses Kilolo), Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany (Bill Campbell and Nisi Shawl), The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (2020), and in collections such as Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems (2011), Sleeping Under the Tree of Life (2016), and Nine Bar Blues (2020). Her fiction has also appeared in places like Apex Magazine, Fiyah Literary Magazine, and Fireside Magazine.
In addition to her own fiction, she’s edited a number of publications, including Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, as well as a pair of anthologies: Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones.
Now, Thomas takes on the formidable task of helming The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She joins the magazine at a time when short fiction is increasingly moving online, and as new platforms allow for drastically different types of stories than had been written when the magazine was first introduced. But despite those changes, “in terms of what I see as a ‘Fantasy and Science Fiction’ story, it’s this kind of excitement and newness that I can imagine readers would have felt when they read The Dark Tower, or when they read some of the [magazine’s] most iconic stories, like ‘The Women that Men Don’t See’ by James Tiptree Jr., right?”
“So of course, I think any publication, whether you are print like F&SF, Asimov’s, Analog, or if you’re digital like Fiyah and Strange Horizons, and Uncanny, you want a story that you’re going to remember, you want a story that has a sense of wonder in it, that transports you from where you are, that has a love of language.”
Thomas mused about some of the structural changes that the science fiction and literary industry has undergone, noting that she’s had an unconventional career, working in all aspects of the publishing industry. She noted that she was the first Black editor to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Editor for Dark Matter (twice, in 2001 and 2005), and that “for me, I’m about bringing more great people to the table, more great people into the room, more great stories for people to read and enjoy.”
Thomas was nominated for the World Fantasy Award’s Special Professional Award earlier this year. “There’s wasn’t a conversation about what the contributions for the genre were. I was thinking—when is that conversation going to happen? Because I’m happy to have it—I’ve been waiting to have it for 20 years! There are Pulitzer Prize winners, National Board, National Book Award Finalists, Bram Stoker Award Winners, all these amazing New York Times bestsellers, all these amazing people that came out of those two [Dark Matter] volumes in the field that told us we didn’t exist initially.”
Now at the head of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she’s well-positioned to have that conversation. “I’m just going to continue the work,” she said. The magazine’s existing staff have been hard at work for more than a quarter century, and she hopes to keep their work going into the years to come.
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Read an Excerpt From C.M. Waggoner’s The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry
A down-and-out fire witch and a young gentlewoman join forces against a deadly conspiracy…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry, a new fantasy novel from C. M. Waggoner—publishing January 12, 2021 with Ace Books.
Dellaria Wells, petty con artist, occasional thief, and partly educated fire witch, is behind on her rent in the city of Leiscourt—again. Then she sees the “wanted” sign, seeking Female Persons, of Martial or Magical ability, to guard a Lady of some Importance, prior to the celebration of her Marriage. Delly fast-talks her way into the job and joins a team of highly peculiar women tasked with protecting their wealthy charge from unknown assassins.
Delly quickly sets her sights on one of her companions, the confident and well-bred Winn Cynallum. The job looks like nothing but romance and easy money until things take a deadly (and undead) turn. With the help of a bird-loving necromancer, a shapeshifting schoolgirl, and an ill-tempered reanimated mouse named Buttons, Delly and Winn are determined to get the best of an adversary who wields a twisted magic and has friends in the highest of places.
    Chapter One
Wherein Dellaria Hunts About for a Wayward Relation, Is Not the Recipient of Maternal Warmth, and Is Presented with an Opportunity for Gainful Employment
  Dellaria Wells had misplaced her mother.
That maybe wasn’t so accurate, to be very fair to herself, which Delly preferred to be. To be very fair to Dellaria, she didn’t have to do too much to misplace her mam. Her mam had a way of misplacing herself, like a cat who’d dart for freedom if you left the kitchen door open. But it’d been two weeks now, and even as gristly an old cat as Delly’s mam ought to have gotten hungry and come home after a fortnight of roaming. Something had gone wrong, then, and as dreadful as her mam might be, it made Delly’s stomach take disagreeable turns to think that she might be sleeping in a garbage pile somewhere. Delly, curse her eyes, was going to have to do something about it.
If you asked her mam, she’d probably say that her not having a place to stay was all her daughter’s fault. That was the way it was when you paid someone’s way: it went straight from you doing them a favor to them thinking you doling out cash was all part of nature’s plan, like a bee making honey. But Dellaria hadn’t yet discovered how to make a moneycomb, and at the moment she was so damn broke that she couldn’t cover her own rent, let alone the rent of her dreadful brigand of a mother. She’d lost the steady work she’d had as a barmaid two weeks ago, when a regular got a little too insistent about trying to kiss her and she’d used her fire witchery to set his beard on fire. Now she was down a job and forced to live off of her wits alone. Her wits, as it turned out, made for very unsatisfying dining.
She was so presently impoverished, in fact, that she’d been avoiding her landlady for a week by only entering and exiting her room via the back alley. On this particular occasion, though, Mrs. Medlow was lying in wait for her by the kitchen door. “Dellaria,” she said. “You know the rent’s been due for a regular span now, dearie.”
“Oh, might it so, ma’am, might it so,” Delly said, thinking at her fingertips a bit. “I was just going to say when I saw you next, ma’am—and me having found it very right peculiar how I haven’t seen you in some time, ma’am, right peculiar indeed—that I present you with ten sen of interest per day I’ve been late, ma’am, if that might be ensatisficating to your fine self?”
At that her landlady got a considerationary gleam in her eye, which she attempted to cover over with a delicate and motherly twitter. “That’ll do very nicely, dearie,” she said, “if you’ll let me put another very wee hard promise on you.”
Delly drew herself up a bit at that. Her landlady wasn’t all that much of an expert wizard—just a gutterwitch, like Delly herself—but she could cast a hard promise with the best of them. Since the Lord-Mage of Hexos invented the parameters for the damn things ten years ago, half of the ill-intended gutterwitches and debt collectors in Leiscourt had learned to cast a hard promise—there was nothing like them for extracting money out of the recalcitrant—but Mrs. Medlow’s could have been used as examples in a course on the subject. Get your rent to her an hour late and you’d break out in throbbing pustules at best. “That ain’t needful, Mrs. Medlow,” she said. “I’ve always been as good as my word with the rent, you know that.”
“You’ve always been as good as your word because I’ve put hard promises on you when you looked likely to run off to Monsatelle, dearie,” Mrs. Medlow said, to which Delly was forced to concede a trifle. Let your landlady curse you once with an itchy rash on your haunches and you’re unlikely to cross her a second time.
Delly narrowed her eyes at her. “Maybe I ought to take my custom elsewhere, then,” she said. “To some kind personage less likely to set vile curses upon their paying guests.”
“You might,” said Mrs. Medlow, with wonderful placidity. “And pay eleven tocats a month for the privilege. That’s the going rate these days, dearie, and here I am charging you six out of kindness, even in such hard times.”
Delly sighed. Mrs. Medlow, though a dreadful old cat, had an air of plain honesty about her personage. Delly wasn’t new enough to the copper-rubbing life to not know that any new room you moved into would inevitably be more expensive than whatever room you’d just been kicked out of for not being able to pay the rent. Enough of her memories had also survived her attempts to drown them in gin for her to understand that if by some thankful gift of the gods she managed to scrape together a bit of extra money this month, she wouldn’t necessarily make the same the next. If she wanted to save herself from her own damn turnip-brained self, she knew very well what she should do: swallow her clever talk, keep the room, find some way to make some money, and pay as much rent as she could up front before she could waste her last sen on liquor and cards because she didn’t have the self-control of a dog with a lamb chop. Which was what inspired her to open wide her gin-hole and say, “The hard promise, then. I get you your money in three weeks at latest, with interest compounding the whole while, or you hit me with what you like.”
Mrs. Medlow twittered like a lark. “I would find that very agreeable, dear Miss Wells,” she said, and grasped Delly’s hand to force a hot bolt of magic through it.
Delly winced and shook her hand out. “What’s my curse to be, then?”
“Pustules,” Mrs. Medlow said, very cheerful-like. “The seeping kind. On the face, mostly.”
Delly decided not to inquire as to where the type that weren’t on the face would be. Instead she just gave Mrs. Medlow a resignated nod and headed out the door to search for her damn mother.
She knew better than to think that Mam might have managed to pay for another week’s rent on her own. Still, she hoofed it down to Crane Street to check on the old bird’s last known address—she wasn’t there, no surprise—and then took a moment to buy a cup of coffee and a withered sandwich from a dingy coffee shop, sit on a bench in a park that was more a sanitarium for wan crabgrasses, and have a bit of a restful luncheon.
Thus refreshed (or close enough to it), she rose back up onto her trotters and started to look for her mam again. The real key with her mam, she thought, was to think of places where you could sleep for free without getting your head wet or having to listen to any sermons. Delly herself would much rather nod piously along to the sermon, soup, and predawn alarm if it kept her out from under bridges, but her mam had a way of advancing on people with her hand out, spouting off exactly the kind of thing that’d make even the most even-tempered hall officiant’s ears go red, and then striking very radical and antiestablishmentary attitudes after they kicked her out of the meeting hall, by way of indicating that she hadn’t wanted any of their damn soup in the first place.
Not that Delly really had any room to criticize the way her mam chose to live, when she herself had to get herself cursed with seeping mostly-on-the-face pustules before she could be trusted to pay her damn rent.
In any case, her mam did sometimes choose to appear more than once in the same location, which made her not completely impossible to track down. Delly went to a few choice bars on Six-Bend Island first. It took a bit of self-restraint to keep from bellying up and buying herself a drink. Her Elgarite refutation of fleshly wants was rewarded at the third bar, where the girl wiping the glasses said that ol’ Marvie had been in a few times that week. Delly’s dear old mam had been in the company of a fellow named Squint Jok, who had his bolt-for a few blocks away on Maiden Street. Delly could only think that it could be worse: Squint Jok could just as easily be Drunk Jok, or Fleabite Jok, or Worryingly Murderous in His Aspect Jok, any one of which wouldn’t be the type of Jok you’d like to see in close association with your dear old mother.
She went to the house in question and gave it a good squint of her own. The door and windows at the front were all boarded over, which was a good sign in terms of the chance that her mam might be holed up inside. There was a side alley: she went down it and found a fence around what she supposed to be the back garden. At the bottom of the fence there was a hole large enough to admit a medium-sized dog. Delly gave a low groan, got down into the dirt, and endeavored to force her larger-than-medium-dog-sized carcass through the gap. She made it into the yard thoroughly besmeared with dirt and grass stains, with her dress ripped and her arms scratched and her good cheer considerably rumpled.
The house wasn’t any more beguiling from the rear. Though she wouldn’t hold that against it: the same could be said for Delly. Almost all of the windows back here were boarded over, too, except one that had had its boards pried off and the glass smashed out. There was also a trampled-down path in the weeds straight to the door. Delly followed it and tried the door handle. It worked, in that the handle didn’t turn but the door swung open after she gave it a good shove.
Then she was in what had probably been a kitchen once. Delly tried not to look around herself too closely. Her mam had never been much for the domestic arts, but as the years had gone by she seemed to have made strides past simply ignoring the filth and toward actively cultivating it. If Delly’s mam had been born with any gift of magic she would have made a fine necromancer of crumb-eating insects and pernicious creeping molds.
After the kitchen there was a hall, and then what she supposed must be a sitting room, as it had a number of people sitting in it. One of them gathered himself up and said, “Hey,” by way of expressing either surprise or annoyance at discovering an intruder in their midst. Then, exhausted by his efforts, he slumped back against the wall again.
“Mam?” Delly said, giving the murky air about her a good slicing squint. “You in here? It’s me, your daughter. Dellaria Wells,” she added, thinking that her mam might need a bit of brain dusting when it came to clarifying the name and identity of the young fruit o’ the maternal bough.
“Delly?” came a voice from the corner. Her mam rose up in a tide of shawls—she was always a devoted wearer of shawls, Delly’s mother—and then came toddling toward her on the uncertain hooves of the recently indisposed. “That’s you, then?”
“Might it so,” Delly said. “Won’t you come out into the air, Mam?”
Her mother followed her out into the backyard, where they gazed at each other for a moment through a thick fog of familial irritation. “Whaddya want, then, Dellaria?”
Mam’s eyes looked strange. Like scuffed buttons. Delly’s own eyes went grape-shaped. “You ain’t just had a gargle then, Mam.” She didn’t look just drunk.
Her mam scowled. “What’s it to you, Dellaria?”
“Well, I passed through you on my journey into this reliving, for what it’s fucking well worth, Mam,” Dellaria said. “What’re you taking? I thought you hated drip.” Drip was what most people were taking hereabouts to make themselves go button-eyed. Dellaria herself steered clear. Drip was like love, she figured: all good enough fun, but you’d better not let yourself get too used to it or it’d take you apart as sure as knives.
Dellaria’s mam went all dreamy, like her new fella had a job with a steady wage. “But before I hadn’t dripped the red, so.”
Delly made a sound that expressed her feelings a mite. A squawk of sorts. Then she said, “The red’s the killing kind, Mam.”
“Might be you could call it that,” Delly’s mam said.
“It ain’t about what I call it,” Delly said. “It’s what it is, so.”
Delly’s mam looked back at her with her button eyes. “You want something from me, Dellaria?”
It was a fool’s game to want anything from Marvie Wells, but it was a game Delly had been playing since the day she was born. “Nah, Mam,” she said, slipping further into the West Leiscourt alleychat they’d both grown up swimming in. “Only to get mirrors on thee, see if th’art still chewing air, so. If I manage to find the clink to pay for it, will you take a bolt-for I rent for thee, Mam?” Delly thought she’d get her into a boardinghouse for women this time, if she could scrape together the cash. It probably wouldn’t keep whatever miserable drip-dealing Jok Mam was going around with these days away from her, but it might be some kind of start, at least.
“Might it so,” Mam said, with a sly smile that made Delly want to slap her lips off.
She didn’t do that, though. She just said, “Will I be able to find thee here, then, Mam?”
“Might it so,” Mam said again. “Until the cops catch us or the place burns down.” Delly expected that was the best she would get, so she took her leave of the mean old trout and let her inward currents pull her back toward her room, and the gin that lay below it.
  Delly lived in a bare little room in a boardinghouse above a bar called the Hangman’s Rest. She’d always figured that the name was meant to be a nod to the culmination of the career paths of some of the regulars, so in that way it suited her fine. It was a good little room. The floor didn’t slant too badly, the ceiling only leaked a little bit in the one corner during heavy rain, and it was right above the bar’s back room. She liked that. It gave her a comforted feeling to sleep above so much gin. If the floors gave out at least she’d have a softish landing.
After a few drinks downstairs she laid out all of her money and trinkets on the bed—she’d never bothered to buy a table—and her gut straightaway started to lurch. As treasure troves went, a beetle might turn up its nose at it. She licked her lips and tried to do the math. She owed Mrs. Medlow six tocats on rent for this month, plus the interest she’d promised her, and the bartender downstairs two more. She had two tocats six sen tied up in the toe of an old stocking she had hidden under a loose floorboard, and about another tocat in scrap metal she’d stripped out of an abandoned house a few days earlier, assuming she’d be able to sell it for half what it was worth. That left her four tocats four sen short with no real time to make up the difference before she’d have to sleep under a bridge with seeping pustules all over her ass. To say nothing of her mam, who’d be dead of either exposure or the red drip at any moment, at this rate.
She was, to put it delicately, fucked up a tall tree without a ladder.
Delly, at this juncture, went to her basin to wash her face and have a ponder. The pondering went nowhere, but the face washing refreshed her to the point that she was emboldened to embark upon her armpits. Once those were taken care of she sat back down on the bed to gather up her courage a bit more. She needed to scrounge up some money, and sharpish. That meant she was going to have to run a game.
She wasn’t looking forward to it.
A game was a delicate thing. Not all that hard to start with, but it’d complicate itself all on its own, like a cat made kittens even when you could’ve sworn it hadn’t gone out the window in months. For one thing, you needed to trust yourself to lose enough money to reel in the marks before you started to earn it. For another, you needed the right marks. You might get five of them in three hours and be in gin and whelks for a week, or you might waste time, entertain the criticisms of the passersby, and then be chased off by the constabulary. For either outcome you needed nerve, and today Delly felt that she lacked it.
It was a sad fact, though, that Delly was too poor to lack nerve. Lacking nerve was a problem for women who had servants to fan their foreheads after they swooned on the chaise. Delly wasn’t disinclined toward swooning on principle, but she didn’t have a chaise to swoon on, to say nothing of the fanning servants. What she did have was a landlady, and it was her mental portrait of her glaring face that got her back up onto her feet and out the door.
She set herself up a few blocks away from her place, on a corner where she liked to work because bankers’ and lawyers’ clerks walked past it. A lawyer would ignore a youngish, plainish, plumpish lass running a game, but a clerk might sympathize or see a chance to flirt and throw her a few sen to play.
There was someone on her corner already when she arrived. Bessa, looking cool and fresh with her black curls peeping out from under her white bonnet. That was all right by Delly. Bessa was an Objectionist heretic, and she also sold meat pies. The heresy was refreshing, which helped wash down the pie. The pie, unfortunately, was stodgy as all of the releft.
Delly bought a pie, just to be neighborly, set herself up on the ground, and then asked for some heresy. “What’s hell like, Bessa?” She assumed that Bessa, being a good businesswoman, would be unlikely to draw any direct comparisons to her pies, but you never really knew until you asked.
“Bright white,” Bessa said right away. “A bright white plain covered in ice and snow. It’s too bright to open your eyes, and the wind burns at your face and steals your breath, and every few steps you slip and fall, and your head pounds from the glare.”
“Sakes,” Delly said, impressed. “Sounds awful.”
“Which is why you ought to change your ways, Dellaria Wells,” Bessa said.
Delly nodded slowly. “Ought to indeed. Might be that I’m too short for it, though.”
Bessa pursed her lips. “How does your height signify?”
“I reckon that sin, being denser than air, tends to settle close to the ground,” Delly said. “That’s why as a rule you’ll find your drunks lying in gutters and your great thickets of pious young ladies up in choir lofts.”
Bessa sighed. “You’ll be going straight up to the white lands, Dellaria,” she said, and then favored a young man who wanted to buy a pie with a smile.
Delly eyed up the other young fella standing around waiting for his friend to pay, then slipped him a wink. “Try your luck with a game while your fella eats his pie?”
“He’s not my fella,” the fella said straight off. “He’s householded to a clanner.”
Delly rumpled up her face, sympathetic-like. “I had a girl who did that. A lady who wore pearls took a liking to her, and she was householded before the year was out.”
“Hard times,” the fella said.
“Hard times,” Delly agreed, though she reckoned that her girl up and leaving her had had more to do with Delly’s own bad behavior than it did with the nation’s economy. Then she said, “Interest you in a game?”
“Might be,” the fella said, and threw down five sen.
Delly ran her game. She let him get pretty far: far enough that a crowd started to gather. Far enough that she started to sweat. If he was a clever fella he’d walk now and take her for a few tocats. He wasn’t, though, and he didn’t, so she ended up a tocat ahead, with her heart pounding and three new marks lining up behind him. It looked like the day might be in Delly’s favor after all.
Delly ran a few more games—let one pretty girl walk away with two tocats, for the sake of winning a smile as much as for the sake of keeping the game running—then took a break to stretch her legs, eat some whelks, and read the bulletins posted on the public board a street over. Sometimes the bulletins had something useful in them: she’d found work from one once before, helping a crew of workmen to strip pipe out of an old building. It’d paid well enough, and she’d fucked a nice burly workman from the northlands out behind the site privy, so it had all around been a bulletin to lift the spirits and incline the soul toward thankful contemplation.
There was nothing of too much interest in the first few ads she looked at. Lots of comfortable sorts looking for sober and upstanding young women to scrub out their underthings. Seeing as how Delly was often drunk, was never upstanding, and was barely prepared to scrub out her own underthings on any kind of regular schedule, most of these postings weren’t of much interest to her. Then one in particular caught her eye.
WANTED
Female Persons, of Martial or Magical ability, to guard a Lady of some Importance, prior to the celebration of her Marriage, during her period of Matrimonial Seclusion. Inquiries may be made at 332 Barrow Street, Elmsedge, Leiscourt, at the rear entrance. NO MEN to be considered for any positions.
Delly ate another whelk. This was one to engage the organs of ponderation, all right. Elmsedge, that was Clanner Hill, and only real steel-stayed traditionalists still practiced matrimonial seclusions. A good family, then, the type who had the one girl just to scrub out the underthings and another to dust the mantels and a third to make the cream cakes while a sober gent sat down in the cellar and tabulated the expenditures. But what the hell would a girl like that need a whole herd of bodyguards for? You had to be important to have people who wanted to murder you. Or rather, you had to either be important or be related to someone who owed someone else a hell of a lot of money, and if you owed someone that much cash you’d probably be better off setting up a payment plan than you’d be hiring a bunch of lady pugilists to guard you. This, then, was something interesting, and Delly was a long-standing enthusiast of being interested.
She memorized the address, then headed back to her corner. The crowds had thinned out some, but there were still enough folks milling about for her to get a new game going, so that’s what she did.
She was down a few sen and preparing to take a particularly prune-faced old geezer for a tocat or two when a matched set of cops lifted their boots in her direction. “Dellaria Wells?”
Delly looked about herself like she was looking forward to seeing some other silly old creature getting taken away in chains. The officer nearest her leaned in and grabbed her by the wrist. “Dellaria Wells,” he said, “I am arresting you in the name of the First Headman.”
Delly said, “Well, shit.” Then she used a bit of magic and set her own skirt on fire.
The resulting conflagration was large enough to startle, amaze, and generally annoy the arresting officers, but not large enough to facilitate any escaptionary maneuvers. There was some shouting and hopping about, and then some helpful citizen of the fair republic tossed a glass of beer over Dellaria’s person, which served very well to extinguish both the flames and Delly’s hopes of sleeping in her own bed tonight. She gave the cops a smile. “Horribly sorry, fellas, only that just always happens to me when my nerves are on edge. Nervous flaming, is what it is.”
“Right,” said the taller of the two fellows, and gave her a bit more of a shake than Delly thought was really needful before marching her off at a lockupwardly slant.
  Excerpted from The Ruthless Lady’s Guide to Wizardry, copyright © 2020 by C.M. Waggoner.
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Taking Submissions: THEMA – A Postcard from the Past
Deadline: March 1st, 2021 Payment: short story, $25; short-short piece (up to 1000 words), $10; poem, $10 Theme: A Postcard from the Past ALL SHORT STORIES, ESSAYS, POEMS, PHOTOGRAPHS and ART MUST RELATE TO ONE OF THE PREMISES SPECIFIED ABOVE. NOTE: Previously published pieces are welcome, provided that the submission fits the theme and that the author owns the copyright. The premise (target theme) must be an integral part of the plot, not necessarily the central theme but not merely incidental. Fewer than 20 double-spaced typewritten pages preferred. Indicate premise (target theme) on title page. Be sure to Indicate target theme in cover letter or on first page of manuscript. Include self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) with each submission. Rejected manuscripts unaccompanied by an SASE will not be returned. Response time: 3 months after premise deadline.  NO READER’S FEE. Mail to: THEMA, Box 8747, Metairie, LA 70011-8747. Outside the US: email [email protected] On acceptance for publication, we will pay the following amount: short story, $25; short-short piece (up to 1000 words), $10; poem, $10; artwork, $25 for cover, $10 for interior page display. Copyright reverts to author after publication. THEMA isn’t for everyone. To find out why, click here. New to submitting manuscripts to journals? Click here to download a PDF file of a few basic guidelines. Unlike many publishers, we prefer works submitted by the authors themselves, without the involvement of an agent. Be sure to indicate premise and include SASE for each submission.  BE SURE to include a separate SASE for each premise. No handwritten manuscripts will be considered. NOTE: We do not accept e-mailed submissions EXCEPT from authors who live outside the U.S. For those living outside the U.S., submit manuscript as an email attachment (readable by MSWord ― either as a DOC file or an RTF file), and include the following information on the title page: target theme, title of work, name of... from The Horror Tree https://ift.tt/36BoGHE via IFTTT
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Explore the Map From the 10th Anniversary Edition of Matched
We are thrilled to share the first ever map of the Matched universe in celebration of the 10th anniversary of Ally Condie’s explosive YA dystopia series. Matched takes place in a flawed utopia trusted to make the right choices for its people, and centers one girl who dares to question her life’s predetermined course.
A deluxe anniversary edition—available now from Penguin—features an extensive retrospective Q&A with Ally Condie and Soman Chainani, bestselling author of the School for Good and Evil series, a bonus story, “Green Girl in a Green Dress,” and a discussion guide. The gold edition will also include this first official map of the Matched trilogy world, created with a professional cartographer and based on Ally Condie’s own drawings.
In the Society, Officials decide. Who you love. Where you work. When you die. Cassia has always trusted the Society’s choices. And when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, she is certain he’s the one—until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now she is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s ever known and a path no has dared to follow… between perfection and the truth.
Map art copyright © 2020 by Maxime Plasse (Click to enlarge)
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Ally Condie is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Matched trilogy and co-author of the Darkdeep middle grade series. She is also the author of the novel Summerlost, an Edgar Award finalist. A former English teacher, Ally lives with her family outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. She has an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is the founder and director of the nonprofit WriteOut Foundation.
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Epeolatry Book Review: After Sundown ed. Mark Morris
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “Waking Moments”
“Waking Moments” Written by André Bormanis Directed by Alexander Singer Season 4, Episode 13 Production episode 182 Original air date: January 14, 1998 Stardate: 51471.3
Captain’s log. Janeway, Tuvok, Kim, and Paris are all dreaming. Janeway dreams that she enters the mess hall to find it full of cobweb-covered corpses of the crew, because she didn’t get them home in time. Tuvok reports to the bridge completely naked. Paris is in a shuttle that suffers a catastrophic failure and he can’t get through to Voyager for help. And Kim is seduced by Seven. They all see an unfamiliar alien in the dream.
Janeway, Paris, and Kim are all late for their shift on the bridge. (Tuvok, of course, is on time anyhow.) Janeway arrives and notices that Kim and Paris are late, and she tells Chakotay of her dream—Paris arrives in the middle of it, and we learn that Chakotay also had a weird dream involving him hunting a deer. And they both saw a strange alien, and Paris and Tuvok admit that they saw a similar alien in their dream.
Kim still hasn’t reported, and he’s not answering comms. The computer says he’s in his quarters, so Janeway and Tuvok go there to see Kim in a deep sleep and apparently unable to wake up.
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Turns out, he’s not the only one. Several crewmembers are now in sickbay, in a deep enough REM sleep that they defy all of the EMH’s attempts to revive them. The still-awake members of the senior staff jointly compose an image of the alien. Seven doesn’t recognize the species as one the Borg has encountered. And there are no planets that can sustain life or ships in sensor range.
Chakotay suggests contacting them via dreams—specifically a lucid dream, one in which the dreamer is aware that they’re dreaming. With the help of his vision quest gadgets, Chakotay can induce a lucid dream and try to communicate with the alien. He uses an image of Earth’s moon as an anchor point, and will tap his wrist three times to wake up.
He finds himself on Voyager holding a spear, hunting a deer. He sees Earth’s moon in a window, and knows then that he’s in a dream, but aware of it. The deer morphs into the alien, who is shocked to see that Chakotay is aware that he’s dreaming. He says that he believes Voyager to be a threat. Chakotay assures him that they aren’t. They’re just passing through, and the alien tells him to go to a six-planet star system less than a parsec away. That’s the outermost border of their space.
Chakotay wakes himself up and shares what happened. Tuvok finds the six-planet system on sensors and Paris sets a course. As they approach the system, Kim and the others finally wake up. Seven asks Kim to go with her to the same Jefferies Tube that Seven invited him to in his dream for smooching, and Kim backs off saying he’s still recovering. Torres, Paris, Kim, and Tuvok discuss their dreams in the mess hall, including Torres teasing Kim when he won’t give details of his.
Suddenly, the ship is under attack. The aliens lured them into a trap, and they board Voyager and take everyone in the crew hostage. While Janeway and Chakotay are trying to find a way to escape from the cargo bay where they’re being held, Chakotay catches sight of Earth’s moon—
Screenshot: CBS
—at which point he realizes that he never woke up from the lucid dream. He taps his hand three times, and wakes up for realsies this time. According to the EMH, he’s been asleep for two days, and the entire rest of the crew has also fallen asleep—except for the doctor, anyhow. Based on the brainwave patterns of the entire crew, they’re all having the same dream. Chakotay realizes that the aliens put them in a joint dream. The EMH has also detected a neurogenic field on board, and Chakotay hits on the idea of trying to find a neurogenic field to locate the aliens.
In the shared dream, Janeway and the others figure out that they’re all dreaming, but they have to act as if they’re still on Voyager trying to take the ship back. Janeway, Tuvok, and Torres manage to escape the cargo bay and head to engineering. Torres tries to kill the alien dampening field, but instead trigger a warp-core breach—which doesn’t actually destroy the ship or kill everyone. That proves it’s a dream, and the aliens’ weapons can no longer harm them.
After falling asleep again, and only realizing he’s dreaming when he sees the moon in the viewscreen, Chakotay pilots the ship to the aliens’ planet. He beams down, carrying a stimulant the EMH gave him in case he nods off again. But he decides to give the stimulant to one of the aliens and tells him to shut the neurogenic field off, or he’ll have the EMH blow the planet up.
While Chakotay nods off and winds up in the shared dream, his threat is taken, and the aliens turn off the field. However, the crew finds itself unwilling to go back to sleep after that…
Can’t we just reverse the polarity? The device Chakotay uses to induce vision quests (seen just last episode with Neelix) can also induce a lucid dream, apparently. Lucid dreams are a real thing, by the way, and writer André Bormanis has had many such dreams in his time, which is what inspired the episode.
There’s coffee in that nebula! Janeway’s nightmare is that she won’t get the crew home before they all die.
Screenshot: CBS
Mr. Vulcan. Tuvok has the standard anxiety dream of showing up for duty naked, but in his case, he’s obviously more perturbed at being out of uniform (and from the humans’ discomfort) than from any particular taboo against nudity, as he acts in no way embarrassed nor does he try to cover up when he realizes he’s naked.
Everybody comes to Neelix’s. Neelix’s nightmares were sufficiently bad that he accidentally pours cooking oil into Paris’ coffee mug.
Half and half. Torres is now wearing a jacket with several tools in a pocket. This wardrobe change was done to accommodate Roxann Dawson’s pregnancy, which was starting to become very visible at this point.
Forever an ensign. Sigmund Freud once said that every dream is a wish. Kim’s dream is for Seven to seduce him, so Freud was probably right.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH once again proves invaluable by virtue of not being organic, as his lack of need for sleep keeps him safe from the aliens. (“No rest for the not-weary.”)
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. Paris’ nightmare causes him to oversleep and miss a breakfast date with Torres. Meanwhile, Kim’s dream is of Seven seducing him, which is the only one of the four we see in the teaser that isn’t really a nightmare. (And yes, the last thing she says before smooching Kim is, “Resistance is futile.”)
Screenshot: CBS
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. Torres and Paris arrange a date on the holodeck for the upcoming Friday, while Kim and Paris play hoverball on the holodeck in order to avoid going to sleep at the end.
Do it.
“Let’s go skiing. How about St. Moritz?”
“We went skiing last time.”
“And you loved it! You’re getting really good, y’know.”
“I just thought maybe we could run a program where the wind-chill factor wasn’t thirty below zero, like Fiji or Samoa.”
“There’s nothing to do there.”
“And you can be warm while you’re not doing it.”
“How about a compromise? Spring skiing in Chile? Much warmer…”
“A compromise? How about Tahiti?”
“Tahiti. As long as I can go waterskiing, fine.”
“You’re on.”
–Paris and Torres trying to figure out their upcoming holodeck date.
Welcome aboard. The only guest is Mark Colson as the alien. Neither the alien himself nor his species ever get a name.
Trivial matters: This was Alexander Singer’s last work in the biz, as it were. He was 69 years old when he directed this episode, and it’s also his last credit, as he has remained retired since. His career goes back to the early 1950s, and he’s directed for dozens of TV shows since 1961 from Lost in Space to The Fugitive to The Monkees to Mission: Impossible to Police Story to Police Woman to Lou Grant to Dallas to Cagney and Lacey, to each of the first three Trek spinoffs.
This is the fourth time a Trek actor has gotten pregnant. Like with Gates McFadden on TNG, Roxann Dawson’s is being written around. (Though the holodeck character she’ll be playing in “The Killing Game” two-parter will be pregnant to accommodate her.) The others, Nana Visitor on DS9 and Martha Hackett here on Voyager, were written into the storylines.
Screenshot: CBS
Set a course for home. “If I don’t contact my ship, you and I are both going to die in our sleep.” This is a nifty little episode, nothing world-changing, but it works. It’s a good vehicle for Chakotay with only minimal fake-Indian bullshit (limited mainly to one utterance of the nonsense phrase “ah-koo-chee-moya”). But lucid dreaming is a real thing, and while it didn’t need to be Chakotay who suggested it, it makes sense, especially given that he’s got experience with induced altered states through the vision quests.
I also like the way André Bormanis’ script plays with expectations. The revelation that Chakotay is still sleeping is an effective twist—much like the revelation in TNG’s “Ship in a Bottle” that Picard, Data, and Barclay are still in the holodeck—and it casts doubt on everything that happens after it, as you never know if Chakotay is really awake or asleep.
The only part of the episode that rings false is Kim’s “nightmare,” which is him being seduced by Seven. Kim’s crush on the ex-Borg has been pretty ineptly handled thus far this season, and this doesn’t really help matters. Everyone else had a legitimate nightmare—okay, Tuvok’s was low-stakes, but still.
It’s not clear how, exactly, these aliens could have evolved, but the script hangs a lantern on that by having the crew wonder the same thing. It would’ve been nice if they had come up with a bit more Star Trek-ish a solution than threatening to blow them up, but not everyone is going to come around and want to talk, I suppose.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido will be one of the author guests at the virtual Philcon this weekend. He’ll be doing a reading, a panel, and a tribute to a friend. Read the full schedule on his blog.
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abibliophobiaclub · 3 years
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WandaVision Won’t Bring Sitcom Bliss to Your Screen Until January
At long last, we know when WandaVision will appear on Disney+! The much-anticipated Marvel show lands January 15, 2021. Which is kind of a bummer, since Marvel previously said it would come out this year. But a firm date is still good news.
The date was announced in a cute lil’ tweet:
A new era arrives. Marvel Studios’ #WandaVision, an Original Series, is streaming Jan. 15 on #DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/5pBd438tCi
— WandaVision (@wandavision) November 12, 2020
This week, Entertainment Weekly has a cover story on WandaVision that digs into the production details—the live studio audience! the period-appropriate lights and lenses!—while staying very light on meaty details. As the trailer shows,  WandaVision finds Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and a somehow not-dead Vision (Paul Bettany) living in a strange kind of suburban sitcom bliss—but missing memories of how they got into this situation. Why are they skipping through decades? Why is Vision wearing his old-school comics costume? And how does the grown-up Monica Rambeau, recently seen in Captain Marvel as a child, fit in?
WandaVision wasn’t meant to be the first of Marvel’s Phase Four shows to air; that honor was supposed to go to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but the pandemic shut down production on that series. With Black Widow among the films bumped to 2021 and no word on the Loki series, WandaVision may be all the Marvel goodness we’re getting for a while.
WandaVision‘s January 15 premiere date also officially makes 2020 the first year since 2009—roughly 5 billion years ago—without any “official” Marvel Cinematic Universe on screens, although Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Helstrom have filled the gap somewhat. Make of that what you will.
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