Movies & TV Klara and the Sun

Klara and the Sun Isn’t Up to Any Task, Least of All Friendship

That house was pretty great, though.

By Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Published on October 23, 2026

Credit: Sony Pictures

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Credit: Sony Pictures

The thing is, Taika Waititi has adapted books to film before.

The director/writer/actor—who gained rapid notoriety this past decade for crowd pleasing comedies with shrewd depth like What We Do in the Shadows and Thor: Ragnarok—knows how to translate books to a big screen. Hunt for the Wilderpeople was based on Barry Crump’s Wild Pork and Watercress; Jojo Rabbit was based on Caging Skies by Christine Leunens. Both take considerable liberties with the texts they are adapting for film (Jojo Rabbit to the greater degree), and are still complex, thoughtful, moving stories that examine difficult subjects with humor and grace.

So I’m struggling to understand exactly what happened with Klara and the Sun.

Based on the eponymous novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun follows the exploits of Artificial Friend Klara (Jenna Ortega) after she’s purchased for a teenager named Josie (Mia Tharia) by mom Chrissie (Amy Adams). Josie, it turns out, is part of a new class of human referred to as the “lifted”—her genes were altered to make her smarter, a process that any parent with sufficient funds is foisting upon their children. Chrissie already lost one daughter, Sal (Sophia Bryant-Taukiri), to natural causes and her husband along with it, so Josie’s decline is taking a toll.

There are plenty of alterations to the story, and not all of them are outright terrible. But the whole, once assembled, becomes nothing more than a mechanized Velveteen Rabbit parable, and a watery one at that.

The places where the story shines are largely in its design choices: The color palette of the film is warm and saturated, the costumes are an erratic combination of updated retro silhouettes and structured couture nightmares, and the house that Chrissie and Josie live in is an expansive prairie-style architectural dream home. When we see the competition for Klara’s robot cohort at the start of the film, the upgraded units are decked out and paraded by like 2000s Abercrombie and Fitch window models, and you can’t help but laugh.

(I quibble with the natural surroundings, however, which were chosen for aesthetic over reality: While the family is shown to live some hours out from Chicago, their property is surrounded by lush wheat farms? It’s Illinois: your options are soybeans and corn. Fine, some form of world war occurred again, maybe the environment has shifted, but unless the climate/soil has undergone a massive reorg, you are not enclosed by wheat.)

The film continually feels like bad sleight of hand, where the audience is promised more depth only to have it repeatedly snatched away. It seems as though many of the story’s alterations were done with the intention of pulling Josie’s relationship with her mother to the fore and ruminating on the devastation of a parent who has had to mourn their child. The trouble is, there is no more thought given to the concept than the recognition that Chrissie is making some weird choices due to grief. We don’t get to spend any time in her perspective or really dig into her past and her choices.

The same is true for the position of housekeeper Melania (the always brilliant Rachel House). There’s a suggestion toward the start of the film that we might examine some intersectional tension happening in Josie’s home—Melania is the housekeeper but also considers herself a member of the family to some degree. She notes immediately that Chrissie has purchased a “Mexican robot” for Josie and accuses her boss of wanting to remain the only white woman in the home, in a spate of dialogue that feels largely adlibbed (and well done on the part of House and Adams), but is immediately buried under Klara and Josie’s dialogue. She eventually comes to accept the robot, and all of that tension dissolves.

Josie has a boyfriend named Rick (Aran Murphy), a boy she has known since early childhood who remains unlifted, though he’s clearly a bright kid. He is the only person who notes that Klara is essentially a slave, which doesn’t really go anywhere. What also doesn’t go anywhere is Josie’s jealousy when she believes that Rick may be developing a crush on Klara. It’s another thread that ultimately dulls what could have been a stronger story—Josie getting upset over this prevents the audience from spending more time with Josie and Klara and seeing their bond develop, making Klara’s desperation to save Josie from her fate feel like programming and nothing more. Which also could have a been an interesting angle, if exploring that thought had been a core intention of the rewrites… but nothing about where the story goes seems to suggest that.

There’s a lot of capital ‘G’ Good and capital ‘B’ Bad thinking in this film. While Ishiguro examines the concept of lifting—a very real prospect that lingers on our horizon as gene editing offspring is already possible and offered to a lesser degree via IVF clinics and similar companies—within a dystopian context, acknowledging that prejudice will exist for those who cannot afford the service, Waititi’s desire to create comedy from that premise ultimately breaks his film. The point that the story never recovers from occurs when Josie meets other lifted students from an academy she means to attend. Rather than the at-home learning of Ishiguro’s narrative, Josie has a party to host a group of vacant teens, all decked out like Hunger Games Capitol spectators, each of them with their own Artificial Friend that they treat as no more than slaves.

The biggest bully of the group, the one whose behavior extends to outright evil, is blatantly queer-coded. He even sports the stereotypical lisp—because apparently, lifting can make you a genius, but it can’t rid you of vocal tics that mark you as other and worthy of ridicule. I would dive deeper on this, on Waititi’s work in Our Flag Means Death and how that show posited the opposite of what’s shown here. On the difficulty that so many men in comedy seem to have in putting aside guy-with-so-called-“feminized”-attributes as a stock character built to sneer at and belittle in the same breath. But I think I’ll cut myself a break on this one.

The only saving grace of the film is its physical comedy, with Ortega showing such incredible body awareness and control that she puts many real-world clowns to shame. Adams and Tharia meet her in this, and the result is a gorgeous display of women’s comedic abilities. If this was meant to be Ortega’s answering volley to the work she’s doing on Wednesday, showing off some additional skills on the talent spectrum, she more than succeeds on that front.

The film has been accused of being syrupy-sweet, but that frankly isn’t its greatest offense. The truth is, there’s a version of Klara and the Sun that could have been goopy and still affecting. Or even darker than its source material. Or intent on telling a slightly skewed version of Ishiguro’s tale. It achieves none of these things, and it’s all the more puzzling for the attempt. Who needs another Velveteen Rabbit? It’s already done its job.[end-mark]

The post <i>Klara and the Sun</i> Isn’t Up to Any Task, Least of All Friendship appeared first on Reactor.

News Wicker

Wicker’s Sex Scenes Are Steamier Than the Directors Expected

Beds were broken

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on October 23, 2026

Photo Credit: Black Bear Pictures

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Photo Credit: Black Bear Pictures

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Olivia Colman discussed the sex scenes that will certainly become the biggest talking point about her new movie, Wicker. Colman says that she is usually hesitant about performing sex scenes, but praises how effective Wicker‘s sex scenes prove to be. She partially attributes that to the professionalism of the crew.

“Al and Eleanor are a married couple, so they’d demonstrate for us,” Colman says. “Then the intimacy coordinator (Ita O’Brien) … she was a dancer in her youth, and she sort of turns things into a dance routine, so that I’ve got something to follow, and everyone knows where they are.”

Interestingly, the film’s directors admit that they originally sold Colman on the film by downplaying how significant the sex scenes would end up being to the movie.

“We actually said, ‘Don’t worry, the sex scenes are just played for comedy, it is not going to be full on,'” Eleanor Wilson notes. “But Olivia’s just one of those actresses who’s game and makes choices in what she does based on a script.”

What they ended up with, though, were sex scenes that director Alex Huston Fischer describes as “pretty hot.” Wilson also points out the inherent comedy of it all and that the directors “always thought of the sex scenes as the comedy of the film, too. They were supposed to be played for laughs, and they are.”

Wilson actually says that the turning point came when co-star Alexander Skarsgård got into costume and really got to work with Colman and the film’s intimacy coordinator. Together, they helped make those scenes “surprisingly more sexy” than the directors thought they would be. For his part, Skarsgård notes that the costume certainly made everything a bit more difficult but did encourage… experimentation.

“Those early days was also us figuring out how to deal with this costume I was in because, again, it was all practical. There was no CGI, really. Or very little CGI,” Skarsgård recalls in an interview with People. “So, it was figuring out how to move in it. It was still, again, because it was early days, me discovering what the limitations were.”

The crew recalls that there was one point when Skarsgård, Colman, Fischer, Wilson, O’Brien, and cinematographer Lol Crawley were all experimenting with different positions in bed in order to find the best way to practically film them. The culmination of those antics was a scene in which the bed breaks while Colman and Skarsgård were in it. Skarsgård recalls that the pair knew the moment was coming and that it was like “a rollercoaster” as they anticipated the moment. Colman has a succinct yet powerful recollection of that moment.

“Yeah, that was fun.”[end-mark]

The post <i>Wicker</i>’s Sex Scenes Are Steamier Than the Directors Expected appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Clayface

Clayface Writes Checks Its Body Horror Can’t Quite Cash

By Leah Schnelbach

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Published on October 23, 2026

Credit: DC Studios

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Credit: DC Studios

I like a movie that takes a big swing, and Clayface takes a couple. The problem is that you can see the other movies that it might have been, lurking just out of frame, occasionally getting the camera’s attention for a scene before it turns back to the more rote story that takes up a lot of the run time.

You could say that you could see another movie, twisting and screaming, pressing against the flesh of this one so you could spot its torture outline for a moment before it’s swallowed back into the hackneyed shape of Antihero Movie #2.

The parts that work are really good—dark and gross and resonant. Director James Watkins made one of my all-time favorite haunted house movies with 2012’s Woman in Black. I often love Mike Flanagan’s work, and his pitch is seemingly the seed here, while the full screenplay was written by Hossein Amini—and there are moments, when the filmmakers really go for it, that Clayface becomes a joy to watch. I just wish Watkins and Amini had gone even further so most of the movie was that twisted screaming thing, instead of a decent time that easily clears Supergirl, but never reaches the euphoria of last year’s Superman, let alone the body horror classics it draws from.

But first the basic plot!

Actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) has clawed his way up from a rough background in Gotham into a successful career in Coast City. When he gets nominated for an Oscar, Matt goes out and celebrates with his childhood best friend Corey Bowery (Joshua James), get a little too wasted, goes home with the wrong girl, and finds himself on the bad end of crime boss Markos Szabo (David Dencik), whom, it turns out, has an affinity for razors. He turns to Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) for help, and she reluctantly uses him as a test subject for her AI-driven nanotechnology. (See? Never trust AI!) Obviously, experimental science wackiness ensues, and Matt becomes Clayface, morphing into new shapes and increasingly driven by rage and revenge. Meanwhile, Dr. Corr’s fiancé Detective John Borrelli (Max Minghella) tries to figure out why so many of Szabo’s associates keep turning up dead.

And now the good!

The effects are fantastic. There are so many moments where Matt seems fine, only for an eyelid to droop almost imperceptibly before his whole face contorts. When the movie commits to graphic violence, it works well—there are moments that are disgusting and upsetting and FUN. The actors do great work throughout. Tom Rhys Harries is excellent as Matt Hagen, both in the early glow of success and as the darkness takes hold. Naomi Ackie is solid and funny as Caitlyn despite being saddled with the same “highly competent woman defined by her relationship to men” role that most women get in this subgenre. Joshua James, Wil Coban, and Joana Ribeiro all wring fun moments from smaller roles, and there’s a hilarious cameo that blooms into something more interesting halfway through the film.

But, alas, the not as good.

At its core, Clayface is supposed to be about identity. Matt Hagen escaped a bad childhood by taking on the personalities of fictional characters, and then found stardom and all it brings with it. Does he even know who he is, under all those memorized lines? Since we don’t get enough time with him as just Matt, we don’t get a sense of his true personality—or the sense that maybe he really doesn’t have one. Either choice would have made for a fascinating slide into his Clayface persona, but the movie never commits. There are no flashbacks to the painful childhood, even though a moment late in the movie hints that Matt’s dad should have played more of a role in the plot. And Caitlyn never gets to do more than be a dedicated scientist who is maybe vaguely attracted to Matt, while also being in a committed relationship to Detective Borelli.

The movie is choppy. Scenes are just starting to feel real, the chemistry between actors just beginning to bloom, and then we cut to more PLOT. And if this was a by-the-numbers story of a kid getting powers, I’d maybe be OK with that. But Clayface is reaching toward something more like The Fly or The Picture of Dorian Gray. You can feel its fingertips grazing that same darkness, but then we have to know some important crap about Detective Fiancé’s investigation into the murders of various Szabo associates and it kills the vibe.

All the brutal murder in the film works perfectly. There’s a scene of Caitlyn filming Matt in his sleep (for science!) that made me hold my breath, and an incredibly fun sequence in a nightclub that makes the most of Matt’s ability to change his appearance from moment-to-moment. But without more of an underpinning of Matt dealing with his own transformation, nothing has the weight that I was hoping for.

There’s a scene on an airplane that perfectly exemplifies the problem. Matt has an unexpected transformation mid-flight, during turbulence, and runs to a bathroom to try to deal with it. The movie could have stayed in the bathroom and allowed his terror to fuel the scene. Or it could have cut between protracted scenes of him and his contorting face, and the other passengers yelling and flinching as the plane bounced through the sky. Either way we’d get the sense of him trapped in a tiny claustrophobic room and trying to cope with his body’s collapse, in counterpoint with being trapped in an already claustrophobic metal tube sailing through the sky in defiance of the laws of Nature. (Sorry, I just got off a plane last night and I’m still a mess.) Instead the film parks an annoyed flight attendant right outside the bathroom, so she can pound on the door and yell at him to go back to his seat. She seems steady and fine, just pissed off that a passenger is causing a problem, even even though at a certain point she’d have fallen, or maybe even given up to strap in like everyone else. Her interruptions distract us with a much lesser social anxiety when what the movie should focus on is Matt’s terror of HOLY FUCK MY FACE IS FALLING OFF Matryoshka Dolled inside the larger HOLY FUCK THIS IS IT THE PLANE’S FALLING OUT OF THE SKY.

One of the issues with Clayface is simply that we’re almost 30 years in on “superheroes” as their own subgenre. There’s a lot of Darkman here. To mention another Raimi, there’s an absolutely hilarious version of Green Goblin giving an evil peptalk to a remorseful Norman Osborn, and a scene where an otherwise intelligent young woman living in a chaotic city chooses, of her own free will, to walk down the sketchiest alley that ever sketched. The Gotham Criminal Underworld element obviously calls to mind Penguin and Birds of Prey—but both Penguin and Birds of Prey have strong main characters whose points-of-view color how we see their stories—literally, in Birds of Prey’s case—where Matt Hagen is never given much beyond “I worked my way up from nothing to become a successful actor”. His abusive mobbed-up dad should affect more of the story, but he’s only mentioned a few times to remind us of Matt’s bad childhood—which, Netflix did two versions of that backstory better with both Matt and Fisk in Daredevil.

And sure there’s nothing new under the sun, but Clayface does have a really interesting body horror element that none of those stories had! But it felt like the movie kept remembering it was a superhero adjacent story and stopping to give us the kind of scene we’d expect from the genre.

There’s a point where Matt tells Caitlyn that her work is a “miracle”, but part of my issue with the movie is that it never quite feels miraculous. The Fly works because, at least if you’re the right kind of person, you cry your eyes out at that ending. For all that Cronenberg is a fucking freak (very complimentary) his people have recognizable human emotions under all the mucous and New Flesh. Dorian Gray works because we see the gradual decline of Dorian’s humanity, we check in with his Picture every so often, we watch him feel despair and attempt reform. Mr. Wilde didn’t just write “Dorian experiences moral twink death, the end” and turn the book over to his publisher.[end-mark]

The post <em>Clayface </em> Writes Checks Its Body Horror Can’t Quite Cash appeared first on Reactor.

News Carrie

Carrie Season 2: Everything Mike Flanagan Has Teased About What’s Next

Yes, there will be a second season of Carrie. Here’s what we know about it

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on October 22, 2026

Photo Credit: Prime Video

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Photo Credit: Prime Video

To the surprise of some, Prime Video confirmed that Mike Flanagan’s Carrie has been renewed for a second season. More than a surprise, actually, that news will likely come as a shock to those who did not watch the show and suddenly have a lot of very good questions about how that is possible. I won’t get into the specifics of that in too much detail here, but you can find more information about how the show makes some major changes to the book right here.

Besides, this is hardly the first time that we’ve heard about multiple seasons of Carrie. Flanagan has been very clear about his desire to continue this show and expand the story well beyond the scope of the original novel. In fact, he’s already revealed quite a bit about his intentions for future seasons of Carrie. Here are the biggest things we know about the future of the show now that we know the show does indeed have a future.

Carrie’s Survival Was Planned from the Beginning to Allow Her Story to Continue (Ideally for Three Seasons)

First off, Flanagan has been very open about the fact that the decision to have Carrie live at the end of the show’s first season was largely made to give Flanagan the chance to tell further stories starring Carrie White. Flanagan has even said that he has a three-season story for the character in mind.

“In my dream scenario, I think it’s three seasons,” Flanagan said at the Toronto International Film Festival. “In my dream scenario, I think Carrie has a wonderful three-step arc. It’s a trilogy, really.”

So far as the first season’s ending goes, Flanagan said that he did construct it as a proper finale in case the show didn’t get renewed… but you get the impression that he was holding out for the possibility.

“Our priority was really just to make it as satisfying as possible when we did cut to black, but also let Carrie White go out into the world, whether we’re allowed to follow her or not. We thought she’d earned that… But it was very much on my mind that there was so much potential for it to expand further, and we wanted to leave room for that too.”

So, while the phrase Carrie Season 2 immediately raises eyebrows, Flanagan has been consistent in his assertion that he sees this as a multi-season story and that he’s particularly excited about what comes next. So, the groundwork for that future is certainly in place.

Stephen King’s The Institute Could Provide Some Clues About What Comes Next

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Flanagan said that he “definitely talked about” the 2019 Stephen King novel The Institute when working on the Carrie series. That novel revolved around a secret organization that kept tabs on kids with psychic abilities and similar powers in order to use them for militaristic purposes. While Flanagan doesn’t say that he is directly adapting that novel and its ideas in any way, he does indicate that Adelaide (the mysterious woman seen at the end of the first season played by Kate Siegel) and her crew will play a bigger role moving forward.

Similarly, Flanagan has indicated that he is interested in taking that idea in the Carrie novel that there are women throughout the world with similar abilities to Carrie White and really running with it in future stories.

“I thought seeing the legacy of what the world does to extraordinary women throughout history, and having Carrie learn she’s part of something much bigger than herself, might be equal parts comforting and very frightening depending on who she’s with, was irresistible,” Flanagan says. “If you’re a King fan, you know the expanded universe is kind of part of the appeal. So you want to know what level of the Tower this is all happening on. You want to understand that kind of. So yeah, it was always baked in, and it was something that excited Steve early on, too.”

On paper, the setup seems pretty simple. Carrie is on the run and will have to rely on the help of other psychic fugitives to outrun and fight what we’ll temporarily call “The Institute.” Now, things don’t go too well in The Institute in that story, but it doesn’t seem like we can read too much into that book’s plot for possible spoilers beyond the basic setup.

Diving Deeper Into the History of the Gifted Girls

Beyond obviously featuring more characters with powers similar to Carrie’s, it has been suggested that future seasons of Carrie could dive much deeper into the history of women who have possessed those abilities throughout the years.

Now, it’s not entirely clear what that means. Furthermore, we’re very much in uncharted territory so far as that goes. However, whether through flashbacks, case files, or word of mouth, Flanagan has certainly expressed an interest in exploring how Carrie’s story relates to the much larger history of people like her. The dive into that topic could very well be bolstered by the next big thing we know about future seasons of Carrie.

Stephen King Helped Determine What the World of Carrie Will Look Like Beyond the Original Novel

Speaking with The National, Flanagan said that Stephen King was actively involved with shaping the story direction of Carrie‘s first season and that “Most of his direct ideas and suggestions came to bear with the character of Emaline.” Furthermore, the development of that character required King to expand upon the “world” of Carrie (such as it is) beyond what we saw in the novel.

Again, it’s not entirely clear how involved King was in shaping what comes next (or how involved he could eventually be), but in terms of Carrie‘s first season laying the groundwork for those possibilities, it certainly sounds like the author not only approved of the idea of expanding the narrative but contributed quite a bit to that process.

Carrie and Emaline Could Become Heroes or Villains

While the stage for Carrie’s grand conflict is seemingly set, Flanagan has been clear that taking the Carrie story into relatively uncharted territory means that we shouldn’t make assumptions about her legacy. Speaking with The Playlist, Flanagan discussed that uncertainty.

“It takes us completely out of anything predetermined. Let’s see where this character goes. Are we seeing the origin of a hero or a villain? I don’t know,” Flanagan says. “Does she know? I have an idea. We’ll find out. But let’s let the character decide. I don’t get many chances like that in my career.”

Similarly, Flanagan has noted that the decision not to have Carrie be solely responsible for the prom massacre at the end of the first season was made to ensure that she remains a more sympathetic (and perhaps morally ambiguous) protagonist.

“We also struggled with we’re never gonna be able to love this character as much as we do and then watch her intentionally murder so many people. Carrie’s culpability became a major question,” says Flanagan. “How do we allow the tragedy to unfold in a way that she’s still responsible, but that she isn’t a monster herself?”

So, perhaps hero and villain are too broad of terms in this instance. Flanagan could choose to keep Carrie in a morally gray area for quite some time as she navigates what to do in what will almost certainly become a much more morally complicated situation. Regardless, her methods and motivations will certainly be a bigger part of the show moving forward.

Much of the same is true of Carrie’s new friend Emaline. The first season of Carrie certainly made it easy to read Emaline as a “bad influence,” though certainly an empowering one. Flanagan has hinted that the show will continue to explore the influence of Emaline and dive much deeper into the possibility that Emaline isn’t quite who she claims to be or, at the very least, that she too sees Carrie as a tool to achieve her true goals.

Flanagan Says Carrie Could Serve as a Backdoor into The Dark Tower

Flanagan previously noted that Carrie exists on a certain level of the Dark Tower, but he’s also hinted that the expanded Carrie story could end up being a kind of backdoor entry point into his eventual Dark Tower series. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, as reported by Gizmodo, Flanagan discussed the possibility.

“I may have asked this very question several times along the way,” says Flanagan regarding the chance that there is a close connection between Carrie and The Dark Tower. “It’s certainly not impossible. There are characters in the Tower canon who would serve a very specific purpose in that story, who audiences wouldn’t necessarily recognize because they only exist in certain books.”

Given that Flanagan is involved with multiple King properties (including an upcoming adaptation of The Mist) and that he has previously spoken about the challenges of adapting The Dark Tower when the multiverse story includes so many other studios’ properties, it makes sense that he would want to start consolidating those stories as much as possible. How far he goes in that direction remains to be seen.

On that note, Flanagan deliberately used the word “shine” in the first season of Carrie, which could certainly come into play later with the Dark Tower of it all.[end-mark]

The post <i>Carrie</i> Season 2: Everything Mike Flanagan Has Teased About What’s Next appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Dark Matter

Blake Crouch Explains How Dark Matter Season 2 Is Like an Album

In an interview with Reactor, the show’s creator explains how those two standalone episodes came to be.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on October 23, 2026

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Warning: Mild spoilers ahead for the fifth and eighth episodes of Dark Matter season two.

The second season of Apple TV’s Dark Matter has a compelling storyline, with several characters (and several versions of characters) trying to deal with the repercussions of a certain Jason creating a box that lets human travel to different realities. The ten episodes take us on a journey, but two of them are standalone, existing outside of the season’s major story arc and, in one case, has the camera never leaving a single room.

“I know that two episodes that some people might think are filler in a ten-episode season might sound indulgent,” show creator Blake Crouch said in an interview with me. But Crouch and the rest of the creative team, including Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry, who co-wrote all the episodes with him, explained how those two episodes came to be.

The fifth episode, where we follow the path of an alternate Jason, was an idea Crouch said came up in their blue sky sessions before the first season was even greenlit. “We were just trying to figure out if we should do a season two… and I didn’t want to extend the show if it wasn’t going to be something truly different and new,” he said. One new idea was following one of the peripheral Jasons we met at the end of season one.

These Jasons were fundamentally similar the show’s hero, but no longer had any hope. How would those Jasons deal? Episode five follows one of those Jasons, who starts out in complete despair but, over six or so years, builds a new life. The concept made Crouch “really excited,” and he also thought that the episode should be a quiet one, though at the time he wasn’t even sure what that meant.

The second one, the eighth of the season, is a true bottle episode, with multiple versions of characters stumbling into the reality where the box is in the house of a woman named Laurel, played by Margo Martindale. “The last two episodes of this season are two of the biggest that we’ve ever done, especially the finale,” explained Crouch. “We needed to steal some days and some money from some other episodes.”

That need to create a low-budget episode resulted in what I’d argue is one of the best episodes of the series. That cost pressure, Crouch said, “made the episode so much better because it put pressure on the writing to sustain [the story] over an hour in one room that we never leave.”

As work on the season continued, Crouch added that he “really started thinking of season two as an album, and those are the two radiant ballads in the otherwise chaos of it.”

He added, “We never know what tomorrow might bring… I hope there’s a season three. There might not be. You never know. I don’t know how long I’m gonna get to do this, so the opportunity to do two wildly different episodes was just so appealing to me.”

The season two finale of Dark Matter premieres on Apple TV on October 30, 2026.[end-mark]

The post Blake Crouch Explains How <i>Dark Matter</i> Season 2 Is Like an Album appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Lanterns

Let’s Talk About the Best Scenes in Lanterns

With a season this strong, it can be hard to pick favorites.

By Alex Brown

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Published on October 22, 2026

Image: John Johnson/HBO Max

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Image: John Johnson/HBO Max

I’ve often said I’m not a DC Comics person, but what I mean is I’m not interested in a certain kind of DC portrayal. The grimdark, hours-long slogs of wealthy, conventionally attractive men punching other wealthy, conventionally attractive men could not be less appealing to me. What I like are the movies and TV shows that explore the bigger context of these characters and what they mean for the world—like the 2025 Superman movie, the CW Arrowverse, Peacemaker, or Lanterns. Lanterns is the next turn in the conversation that HBO’s Watchmen started. It’s a stunning take on being Black in America, power, and resistance and how being a superhero alters and is altered by all of those things. In honor of my newest obsession, I bring you one scene I loved from each episode. 

Major spoilers ahoy!

Episode 1: “Pilot” — Hal interrogates the alien

More specifically, it’s the interstitial conversation between Kerry and John. At one point, Kerry says, “If you care about people, you know, husband, wife, parent, kid, then you’re scared of losing them. First time he strutted up to me I could tell Jordan doesn’t care about anybody. And nobody cares about him. He’s not fucking fearless. He’s lonely.” The first time I heard it, I felt a little sad. On my rewatch, it was a gut punch. 2016 Hal cares about nothing and nothing cares about him… and he knows it and hates it. It’s part of why he treats John so badly; he is jealous and resentful of what he thinks John has: his family. The season arc is all about how fearlessness is as debilitating as fear. In terms of Hal, I love that the way Waylon gets revealed is his complete ignorance of racism and white supremacy. The aliens could have chosen any form, but like the Guardian, they all picked cis white people. How ‘bout that.

Favorite quote: Hal, seated on the same stadium bench he will later die on, saying to John about Kerry, “The answer to that mystery is heading right to you.” 

Episode 2: “Trust Fall” — John snoops around Hal’s house

Hal’s empty, new money mansion is for John like being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future. This gaudy-ass palace has nothing downstairs but a giant wall TV with a beach chair sat a few feet in front. Upstairs there are a few framed photos of Hal with celebrities, on the floor propped against the wall. His bedroom is a mattress and a box spring with plain gray sheets. His closet is half empty, and the Lantern suits are sealed in garment bags. He exists in that house, but doesn’t live there. Earl’s conservatory is the only room that feels lived in. It’s a lush little paradise, full of tomatoes on the vine and orchids. Hal clearly spends a lot of time there. It’s both so sweet and so sad. It makes me happy knowing that after Hal dies, Earl will be taken in by John’s parents. 

Favorite quote: “Your marriage is unsmooth?”

Episode 3: “OutKast” — Bernadette takes out the trash

I could write an entire essay just on this episode. Up to this point, the audience has assumed John Senior is the tough one pushing John Junior to become a Lantern. But no, Bernadette is the driving force. Not because she wants to live vicariously through her son or to have her son achieve something her husband could not, but because she wants to protect him. It’s Black Excellence and the Talented Tenth and “work twice as hard to get half as far.” It’s knowing that she’s raising a Black boy in a world where Black men are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white men, where Black men in their early 20s are killed by police at three times the rate of white men, and where even a Harvard professor and a bird watcher cannot live their lives without being accosted. She and John Senior were raised in the wake of the assassinations of Civil Rights leaders and the prosecution of Black Power activists. The Clinton Crime Bill passed in 1994 and it kickstarted mass incarceration targeting people of color. That is the social storm they’re navigating and why Bernadette did what she did. She thought it was the best way to not protect her son but to open doors that would otherwise be closed to him simply because of his race. Open doors for John means open doors for the rest of them, something else we see later this season. Was it the right choice? Perhaps. Did she go about it in an awful way? Definitely. But you can never doubt that she loves her children fiercely. It’s also worth noting that the Guardian could have chosen any form—the Manhunter chose to be a South Asian woman, after all—and she picked an affluent, midcentury-dressed white woman. She dipped herself into racial politics and then acted like she was a neutral being. “By Black you mean brown skin?” Girl. Shut the hell up.

Favorite quote: John Sr: “He’s gonna hate us.” Bernadette: “So be it.”

Episode 4: “The Weenie” — John digs a tunnel

The brief hesitation when John puts on the ring is when Aaron Pierre finally sold me on what a good actor he is. You can see the debate John is having with himself writ large on his face, but he also taps into this deeper well of everything that’s been building with his parents, his up-and-down relationship with Hal, and how he is both letting himself be manipulated by that Guardian white lady and also manipulating her to keep her happy. Once in the tunnel, when John’s concentration flickers at Hal’s revelations about losing his parents, Pierre sells it so well. John’s resentment of his parents’ choice is in full force, but he still loves them. If Bernadette spent his whole childhood being afraid for him, John has spent his life being afraid something would happen to his family.

Favorite quote: “Yeah. I’m creative.”

Episode 5: “Lights Out” — Kerry shoots at Hal

Kerry is right that Hal “just doesn’t get it.” Yes, she helps Zoe because she owes her—Zoe could have intervened to save her at any time but waited until she was injured and hopeless and out of options, just like she did with John and the burning car. And yes she also helps Zoe out of fear—Zoe could eradicate Rushville in a blink of an eye and not shed a tear. But mostly it’s because of Noah. The audience and Hal don’t yet know he’s a Manhunter, but Kerry does. When Hal offers to help them escape, it’s the same argument they have a decade later, but this time he lives to face the consequences of his actions. 

Favorite quote: “If I come out white, deal’s off.”

Episode 6: “Bad Optics” — John doesn’t want any fucking pancakes

2026 John is angry. I don’t blame him. He had most of his life taken over by the Guardians and his parents. He lost bonding time with his brothers and peers. He was shaped and groomed and manipulated into becoming the perfect little soldier when he wanted to be an artist. He can’t figure out how to be John Stewart Junior and the Green Lantern of Sector 2814, but trying to separate those parts of himself isn’t working out for him either. Being John Junior is as much of a performance as being the Green Lantern apprentice, and Hal is the only person who can crack that façade. 

Favorite quote: “Maybe it was just easier to fly than to stay on the ground.”

Episode 7: “The Jordan Boys’ Legacy” — Hal won’t give up the ball

God, this origin story, it’s up there with John’s for me. Three generations of Jordan boys who desperately needed therapy. Martin Jordan was afraid all the time, so he sought moments where he could play the part of the Fearless Brave Man. Hal put on that same costume, and only Kerry and John Junior (and Earl, I suppose) could see through it. Hal’s bravado doesn’t work on John the way Martin’s did on Hal. John isn’t a kid idolizing his father; he’s a Black man forced to wait until a white man decides he’s ready to step aside. 

Favorite quote: “Shut up, John.”

Episode 8: “Dirt and Stars” — John and Noah talk

Eight hours of television all building to this one conversation between two emotionally wrecked men caught between their programming and their performances. They were programmed to be fearless, to not let personal connections override their missions, to focus on the job at the exclusion of all else. But where John’s programming came from his parents, Noah’s mother poured her energy into counteracting Zoe’s programming. That Noah is struggling with what kind of person he wants to be is the clearest sign possible that he isn’t a monster. Like John, he will spend the rest of his life pushing that programming down. A boy willing to go to jail to protect his mother—instead of killing John to keep her secret—is a good egg. I hope he can keep it together and have the normal life he wants.

Favorite quote: “My mother held her breath for my entire childhood.”[end-mark]

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News The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

All Roads Lead to Ruin (and One Ring) in Season 3 The Rings of Power Trailer

Sauron is ready for a party at Mordor. (And by party, I mean a get together where thousands die)

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on October 21, 2026

Credit: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video

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Credit: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video

The third season of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is headed our way this November, and today the streamer released a video that shows Sauron (Charlie Vickers) very busily forging his One Ring to rule them all, while the humans, dwarves, and elves (and wizards and harfoots) of Middle-earth aim to stop his evil quest for power.

The official synopsis of the season lays everything out:

The trailer does give us a little bit more. It shows Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) fighting against the powers of darkness and also making out with Celeborn (Jamie Campbell Bower). Exciting stuff!

The first four episodes of the third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiere on Prime Video on November 11, 2026. The fifth and sixth episodes will be available to stream on November 18, while the final two episodes of the season will be released on November 25.

Check out today’s trailer below. [end-mark]

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News VisionQuest

VisionQuest Showrunner Teased Butcherbird’s Importance Months Before the Big Reveal

It turns out Marvel can stop themselves from revealing everything through marketing when they really want to

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on October 22, 2026

Photo Credit: Disney+

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Photo Credit: Disney+

This article contains spoilers for VisionQuest

Well, that was surprising. After a somewhat slow start, VisionQuest threw a considerable wrench in the works by expanding the role of the serial killer known as Butcherbird. In the series’ fourth episode, we learn that Butcherbird is actually the synth known as Jocasta who was created by the AI researcher Dr. Josephine Carrington. Of course, Jocasta/Butcherbird is having a bit of an identity crisis at the moment, but… well, one thing at a time.

The funny thing about Butcherbird is that they are seemingly positioned to be a significant part of VisionQuest moving forward. Leading up to the show, though, there was no indication that this character would be involved with the series, much less that they would become as important as they are positioned to be thanks largely to their true identity. Interestingly enough, in an old interview with Collider, VisionQuest showrunner Terry Matalas discussed the decision to hide Butcherbird/Jocasta from the show’s marketing as much as possible (Jacosta was briefly shown in the trailer but not elaborated on). It turns out that it may have had less to do with preserving the Butcherbird twist and more to do with the decision to keep the performance of actress T’Nia Miller a surprise.

“We have purposely kept her character out of a lot of the promotion of the show because T’Nia’s performance is revelatory,” Matalas said. “Chilling, nuanced, and even a little heartbreaking. I can’t wait for everyone to see it.”

At D23 earlier this year, Matalas also said that Jocasta would be “one of the standout characters of the MCU” despite the fact that some reports at the time suggested that Miller was not included among the show’s primary cast members. This again suggested that Miller would have a memorable small role (or perhaps play a character that would become more important in future stories) but not that they would prove to be such an integral part of the series.

For Miller’s part, the actress only ever vaguely referenced the character in previous interviews (she told Diva magazine that Jocasta is “badass” and “beautiful to play”), which only furthered the mystery of what Matalas was on about when he spoke so highly of the actress and Jocasta. Now that we know the true (or full) identity of Jocasta, it all starts to make a little more sense.

There’s actually another clever wrinkle here. Jocasta is a much different character in the Marvel comics. In those stories, Jocasta was originally created by Ultron to be his bride (though she eventually joins the Avengers to oppose him). So, going into the series, every reasonable expectation suggested that we’d see a similar version of Jocasta in VisionQuest. Having the character turn out to be wildly different, incredibly significant, and, so far, the best part of VisionQuest is a welcome break from those expectations.

So, kudos to the Marvel marketing team for actually managing to keep all of that a secret instead of going the Doomsday route by giving us a little too much marketing material for something that a lot of people are going to see anyway. Was that so hard?[end-mark]

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News Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

Pip Adam’s Audition Wins the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

The recognition comes with $25,000.

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on October 21, 2026

Pip Adam photo credit: Ralph Brown

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Pip Adam photo credit: Ralph Brown

The Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation announced today that Audition by Pip Adam is the 2026 recipient of the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, a $25,000 cash prize given to writers Le Guin spoke of in her 2014 National Book Awards speech—realists of a larger reality, who can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives to how we live now.

“Words fail me and this is why I love writing and reading. I believe there is an incredible magic in the labor of trying to use words to describe the unspeakable or to write that which doesn’t yet exist,” Adam said in her acceptance speech, which you can watch here. “I live about as far away as it is possible to from where the work of Ursula K. Le Guin was written, but when I talk about where my work, my thinking and my activism comes from, she is always there. So my first thanks must go to Ursula K. Le Guin. Not just for showing me a way to write but for showing me how to live as a writer and a human being—to speak up when staying silent would be easier, to stand up no matter what the risk.”

The prize was first issued in 2022, with previous winners including Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s The House of Rust, Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality, Anne de Marcken’s It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over, and Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall.

The panel that reviewed this year’s shortlist included authors Nicola Griffith, Mat Johnson, Fonda Lee, Darcie Little Badger, and Peter Rock.  Here’s what they said about Adam’s book:

[end-mark]

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News From

From Is Finally on Netflix, and You Really Should Be Watching It

From has been rescued from MGM+, so you can finally check out the eternally underrated sci-fi horror series

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on October 21, 2026

Photo Credit: MGM+

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Photo Credit: MGM+

From was recently added to the Netflix library, so now you have no excuse not to watch the sci-fi horror story now that it has been rescued from the depths of MGM+. Unless, of course, you don’t have Netflix and don’t care to subscribe to it. In which case, that’s also a really good excuse.

Anyway, Netflix somewhat quietly announced that the first three seasons of From have been added to the streaming service. The official announcement touts the series as your “next obsession,” which really is the way that the show’s fanbase has described the series as they desperately plead for more people to check the show out so that they have someone to talk to about it. Given that the show has only previously been available to stream via Epix and MGM+, though, it hasn’t exactly been easy to convince people to make that commitment. Hopefully, this temporary move to Netflix will help finally bring the series to a wider audience.

While it’s best to avoid knowing too much about From if you haven’t seen it, the basic idea is that the show is set in a small town that people can’t seem to leave once they enter it. Making matters worse, those who are stuck in the town must battle mysterious monsters that come out of the woods at night to hunt. Though the show initially focuses on the town’s sheriff and a family that just arrived in this peaceful little hellhole, it grows to tell a sweeping story that is both consistently engaging and genuinely surprising. It’s honestly a pretty perfect chaser for Widow’s Bay, which may be part of the reason why Netflix was so eager to finally get its hands on the show.

So far as that goes, there are a couple of details about this arrangement you should know. First off, only the first three seasons of From are currently available to stream on Netflix. The show’s fourth season (which concluded earlier this year) is not currently available to stream on Netflix. Furthermore, it’s been indicated that this is a limited arrangement, though it’s not clear when From will be pulled from Netflix. The terms of the deal, as they’ve been outlined, suggest that this is very much meant to be the hook that gets you started on the show before you eventually subscribe to MGM+ to watch the rest. Honestly, that might prove to be surprisingly effective.

In related news, From was renewed for a fifth and final season that is expected to start airing sometime in 2027 (though that is unconfirmed). So it’s a pretty great time to start binging it. You won’t be missing anything funny. I’ll just be sitting here reading this grownup’s newspaper.[end-mark]

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Column 80s Fantasy Film Club

Beetlejuice: Still the Ghost With the Most?

Do we actually love this movie, or do we love the version of the movie we tend to remember?

By Tyler Dean

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Published on October 22, 2026

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

In this column, we’re looking back at the 1980s as their own particular age of fantasy movies—a legacy that largely disappeared in the ’90s only to resurface in the 2000s, though in many ways, the fantasy films of the Eighties are far weirder and less polished than what we got in the aughts. In each of these articles, we’ll explore a canonical fantasy movie released between 1980 and 1989 and discuss whatever enduring legacy the film has maintained in the decades since.

For a more in-depth introduction to this series of articles, you can find the first installment here, focusing on 1981’s Dragonslayer. Last time we looked at George Miller’s enduringly weird and grotesque The Witches of Eastwick, this time we are turning to another fantasy film with horror comedy bona fides, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. 

I grew up with Beetlejuice as a film on semi-regular, but not constant, rotation. But before I ever saw the original movie, I was already familiar with the character from the Canadian-American Nelvana cartoon based on it. That series reimagined goth teen Lydia’s relationship with the titular ghoul as two mismatched friends going on wacky adventures in the Netherworld, rather than leaning into the original film’s contention that he is a disgusting demon and she is the child-bride that he is attempting to kidnap and drag to hell. It’s a bonkers direction to take the Beetlejuice franchise in, but it kind of works? Lydia, clad in a bright red, spider-web patterned poncho was an early crush for me (and, I’m sure, for a ton of other Xennials) and the show was basically just a spookier version of old Looney Tunes setups. And that’s kind of the entire deal with Beetlejuice as an intellectual property: it’s a movie whose importance and status as beloved classic is always a little bit at odds with the content of the film itself. Let’s get into it… 

In the sleepy town of Winter River, Connecticut, Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) are drowned following a car accident and find themselves transmuted into ghostly apparitions, confined to their sprawling hilltop home with only a copy of The Handbook for the Recently Deceased for guidance. As they struggle to figure out their afterlives, their home is sold to the formerly city-dwelling Deetz family: real estate developer patriarch Charles (Jeffrey Jones), his depressed teen daughter, Lydia (Winona Ryder, in one of her earliest roles), and second wife Delia (the inimitable Catherine O’Hara), who brings along her emotional support gay friend, the arch-dilettante Otho (Glenn Shadix). 

Lydia’s goth spookiness allows her to see and communicate with the Maitlands but, even with her attempts to intervene on their behalf, the house continues to be remade to Delia’s postmodern specifications. Trapped in their increasingly unfamiliar home (lest they be transported to the sandworm-infested moon Titan), exploited by the Deetz’s desire to make money off of living in a haunted house, and sidelined by the Netherworld’s bureaucratic labyrinth, the Maitlands reluctantly employ the services of demonic grifter, crude sex pest, and “bio-exorcist” Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton—and yes, the film’s title renders the name as the slightly more English-legible “Beetlejuice,” while the character retains the original spelling). 

The Maitlands quickly terminate his services after Betelgeuse’s antics prove too dangerous, but he refuses to go gently, eventually convincing Lydia to invoke him to stop Otho from summoning (and inadvertently torturing) Adam and Barbara as part of the Deetz’s scheme to turn Winter River into an occult amusement park. Betelgeuse agrees to stop the exorcism if Lydia will agree to marry him, which will allow him to remain in the mortal world. Adam and Barbara intervene at the last minute to stop the wedding ceremony, banishing Betelgeuse to Titan where he is immediately eaten by a sandworm. A few months later, The Maitlands and the Deetzes have learned to live in harmony with the guidance of a new tome—The Living and the Dead: Harmonious Lifestyles and Peaceful Co-Existence. Meanwhile, Betelgeuse appears in the Netherworld’s waiting room, annoying everyone around him and having his head shrunk by a witch doctor after attempting to cut in line.

Beetlejuice debuted to largely positive reviews and set a box office record for Easter weekend before going on to be one of the top-grossing films of the year. It won an Oscar for Best Makeup and a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film. 

Beetlejuice is, obviously, regarded as a classic, but how does it hold up almost 40 years later? Does it deserve its place in the ’80s canon, and in our hearts? What was striking on this rewatch is just how much the film is carried, almost exclusively, on the strength of its performances. The pacing is slow and odd, the writing isn’t particularly inspired, and it’s thematically all over the place, suggesting a lot of interesting possibilities but not really making good on them (more on that later). 

But that’s all mostly beside the point, because every single actor is selling it as hard as they can. Betelgeuse is the sort of character that should be infinitely grating, but Keaton’s gravelly motormouthed shtick powers a performance that’s capable of anchoring a film that barely features him. Baldwin and Davis are charming in slightly thankless roles. They are, nominally the protagonists, but Burton is profoundly uninterested in normies and, as the wide-eyed newly dead, they are about as normie as it gets in the film’s world. 

But where the cast really truly shines is with the Deetzes and their coterie of weirdo artists and oddballs. Burton seems to have envisioned Lydia as an explicitly Goth update of Tootie (the macabre little sister played by Margaret O’Brien from Meet Me in St. Louis), and Ryder is just the right blend of vulnerable, petulant, and edgy to make the whole thing work. She’s enough of a memorable and commanding presence in the film that both the musical adaptation and sequel film choose to make her the protagonist.

Catherine O’Hara is absolutely magnetic as Delia. She is meant to be an easy target for derision—the high-strung, pretentious stepmother who runs roughshod over her husband and stepdaughter—but O’Hara imbues her with a hint of something deeper and fills her screen time with a surprising amount of physical comedy. Her largely silent, Valium-addled rise from slumber to shut off the TV is one of the film’s funniest moments. I would contend that Beetlejuice is far from O’Hara’s best work, but so high is the ceiling for her talents that even a mid-range Catherine O’Hara always steals the show.

Even Jeffrey Jones, arguably playing the hopelessly square straight man to the women in his life, brings a long-suffering pique, buried under forced smiles, that is clearly of a piece with his more villainous roles (like Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) but sanded down to something a little more sympathetic and appealing here—he’s a much better dad than he needs to be for the role he’s in. (To address the elephant in the room: It’s difficult to praise Jones’ performance without bringing up the actor’s later history as a sex offender, which has been well-covered elsewhere. It feels necessary to acknowledge it here, but also acknowledge that those details are beyond the scope of our immediate discussion.)

And the cavalcade of hipsters and art-world snobs in the Deetzes’ orbit is equally delightful. Legendary late-night interviewer Dick Cavett gets in about two minutes of screen time as Delia’s agent. Artist and designer Adelle Lutz manages to channel deadpan humor in being both profoundly bored and desperately unhappy as Beryl, a literary editor and Otho’s frenemy/plus-one for the climactic dinner party. And Glenn Shadix, one of the all-time undisputed kings of queer-coded camp, absolutely kills it as Otho. His kimono-clad delivery of “I know just as much about the supernatural as I do about interior design” is about as arch as one can get without shattering the camera lens. 

Of course, there are many other aspects of the film that deserve praise. The movie’s main theme is undeniably one of composer Danny Elfman’s best works, and probably serves as both the template for and zenith of his decades-long collaboration with Burton. Where Elfman’s music isn’t present, it was an inspired choice to punctuate the film with Harry Belafonte music throughout the film. “Day-O” and “Jump in the Line” got a second life as pop culture touchstones thirty years after their original release because of their inclusion in the film, and it is telling that the Beetlejuice musical, (which does not use any of Elfman’s leitmotifs) incorporates both songs into the show, so synonymous are they with the film.

In terms of the look of the film, Alan Munro, supervising a team of talented artists, creates some truly memorable visual effects—filled with charming stop-motion that comfortably walks the line between cartoony and genuinely scary. The movie’s production designer, Bo Welch (who also collaborated with Burton on Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns), married Catherine O’Hara a few years after they first met on the set of Beetlejuice; they remained together until her untimely death earlier this year. The makeup, costumes, and production design are all delightfully bold and feel like a proof of concept for what nearly every Tim Burton film would look and feel like for the next three-plus decades (for better and for worse).

If the movie has any major flaws, they can definitely be traced to the script. Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren’s original draft was famously much more of a straight horror film where the Maitlands and Deetzes are terrorized by a far more malicious and demonic incarnation of Betelgeuse. Maybe it’s some of that DNA lingering from those early drafts that throws the whole thing off. It’s paced very oddly, with Adam and Barbara centered as the protagonists for the first two thirds of the film before becoming largely underutilized maguffins in the final act. Betelgeuse is clearly the film’s antagonist, but his scenes actually feel out of place in a movie whose main conflict revolves around the Maitlands’ and Deetzes’ differing visions for the home they both reside in.

That might be Burton’s fault; as he so often does, Burton cherishes the (as Lydia puts it) “strange and unusual” even when it’s thematically to the detriment of his films. Despite the fact that the script pits small-town wholesomeness against big city soullessness, it’s weirdly undeniable that Delia Deetz’ aesthetic is precisely Burton’s own and one finds oneself asking why all the teeth have been taken out of a story satirizing postmodern art, new wave aesthetics, and the disappearance of rural America. Those tensions, however, largely get massaged away by the film’s end, as there is a genuine and abiding sweetness to its denouement, in which Charles and Delia are a welcome part of the warm and loving home the Maitlands end up building with Lydia. For a film that was, by all rights, much crueler and darker in its original form, it’s a pretty upbeat ending about acceptance and found families. 

So what legacy did Beetlejuice leave behind? Other than the truly misguided Saturday morning cartoon mentioned in the intro (1989-1991) and a trio of tie-in videogames related to the series, Beetlejuice got a popular Broadway adaptation that premiered in 2018, and a direct sequel, the cleverly titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which reunited Keaton, Ryder, and O’Hara, in 2024. Both musical and sequel—through plot retcons and changes in characterization—interestingly give us versions of Beetlejuice that feel truer to its fan reception than they are to the original film. Centering Lydia as the protagonist makes a lot more sense than focusing on the Maitlands (who don’t really have much of an arc in the movie), and both newer texts recognize that Delia is a far more interesting and sympathetic character than the original movie holds her out to be—giving her two different versions of a full redemption arc. But that’s the power of the original film: The fond memories its fans got out of it are powerful and appealing enough to shape its legacy far differently than the actual text would suggest. 

The movie’s success set Winona Ryder on a path towards superstardom that made her the avatar of a certain kind of goth-adjacent icon. Without Beetlejuice giving her those spiky bangs and impressive eyerolls, we might not have gotten her performances in Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Reality Bites, or Stranger Things. 

And, of course, this really is Tim Burton’s finest hour. I love Pee-wee’s Big Adventure but this was the film that really made him synonymous with the Gothic and macabre. As a Gothic literature professor, I’m not sure I personally count that as a good thing. Burton has a very narrow and intense set of aesthetic interests, easily parodied, but they are all on display and possibly at their best in Beetlejuice: the black and white stripes, the oddly-built sets that turn every shot into a Dutch angle, the cutesy/gruesome character design, a disgust for suburbia. We can love or be impatient with various entries in his filmography but it’s hard to conceive of the modern cinematic landscape without touchstones like Edward Scissorhands, Big Fish, Sleepy Hollow, or The Nightmare Before Christmas (not to mention his two Batman films), and none of them would exist in quite the same way if it weren’t for Beetlejuice’s runaway success. 

But what do you think? Am I selling Beetlejuice and its legacy a little short? Am I overhyping O’Hara and Shadix’s contributions (unlikely)? Are you, like me, blown away to just be finding out that the voice of Betelgeuse in the cartoon was Stephen Ouimette, star of early 2000s’ Canadian cult comedy Slings & Arrows? Let me know in the comments, and be sure to join us next week as we close out our October quartet of ’80s fantasy/horror crossovers with the Giant Marshmallow Mascot in the room: 1984’s Ghostbusters.[end-mark]

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Excerpts Epic Fantasy

Read an Excerpt From Blood to the True Crown by Sung-il Kim

The Empire faces a reckoning that could destroy the world itself. But hope can be found even in the darkest despair.

By Sung-il Kim

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Published on October 22, 2026

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We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Blood to the True Crown, the conclusion of the Bleeding Empire epic fantasy series by Sung-il Kim (translated by Anton Hur), publishing with Tor Books on November 17th.

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Blood to the True Crown

Sung-il Kim

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Blood to the True Crown

Sung-il Kim

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Echeya

Echeya’s tribe had no name, so she could not answer when the Imperial centurion asked her what it was.

“The name of your tribe,” he said, yawning. “Are you even listening?” The centurion distractedly whipped out his handkerchief from his belt and waved it at the mosquitoes that buzzed around him. A bead of sweat crawled down his face and caught a beam from the sun, which was a finger’s length away from disappearing behind the western canopy of the jungle. The heat was slowly subsiding in the damp air. He would feel the cool respite of the jungle night soon enough, but Echeya wouldn’t—not after this.

Without a word, Echeya stared as the village her people had settled only a fortnight ago burned before her eyes. It had taken them days just to clear enough of the bleeding spine trees to create this small space in the dense jungle that barely fit their seven huts. But the Empire couldn’t abide even that. The twenty or so Imperial legionaries lazily watched as the fires they’d set to the flimsy huts began to go out. Gray plumes of smoke tinged with blue rose from the embers that used to be roofs thatched with resin-cured leaves.

The jungle tribes of Thang’avala did not originate in this moss-covered wetland where crocodiles and leopards roamed under the thick canopy that sunlight struggled to breach. Most of them were descended from, or had been themselves, landed peasants in the northern plains. They had their lands stolen, and were run out from the fields and the pastures through trickery or force, into this humid, insect-infested place not meant for human life. Still, in their exile they had managed to carve out a home in this inhospitable wilderness. They had made clearings where sun would shine through, built villages of wooden huts. They had hunted, foraged, and gardened to take what they could from the unyielding landscape.

This was the third such village for Echeya’s tribe since she had joined them as an orphan more than ten years ago. The Empire always came eventually to destroy all they owned, claiming her people had violated some law and forcing them to start anew. But this time, there was no starting over—not for Echeya, whose life was going to end soon.

This time, her tribe’s crime was daring to steal from the civilized north. The recent flood had destroyed the tribe’s gardens right before the harvest, but the huge farms to the north had bushels of sorghum stored in granaries that were several times bigger than Echeya’s whole village. A desperate few, with children to feed, had quietly snuck into one of the farms and run away with whatever they could carry on their backs, including two small goats.

The legionaries, before setting the village to the torch, told them they were all guilty of raiding. And the flooded gardens of the village were evidence of other crimes too: unauthorized cultivation and destruction of forested land.

All the children, the elderly, and the sick had managed to escape deeper into the jungle, but those who had stayed behind to buy time for their brethren’s escape had now been either killed or caught. Echeya turned her gaze to her friends who still lived, their hands tied behind their backs like hers. There were only four of them left—the bodies of the other tribespeople were sprawled on the ground before the dying flames, without even a shred of cloth to cover their faces.

“Do you not understand Imperial or something? What is the name of your tribe?!”

The centurion pressed again, annoyedly wiping sweat off his brow. Echeya still did not answer the centurion except to stare at him. She felt no ire toward him, as any such emotion had long ago been bled dry from her in a life where persecution and fear were simple facts of existence, like storms and predators. But a single question burned in her heart, one she had held close for as long as she was capable of memory.

How had her people become prey?

Excerpted from Blood to the True Crown, copyright © 2026 by Sung-il Kim.

The post Read an Excerpt From <em>Blood to the True Crown</em> by Sung-il Kim appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV VisionQuest

“I’m surrounded by broken machines” — VisionQuest’s “Reboot” and “Malware”

Some context on the machines created by Tony Stark…

By Keith R.A. DeCandido

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Published on October 21, 2026

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Apparently Marvel Studios and Disney+ are going to be releasing VisionQuest two at a time for the first three weeks, then releasing episodes 7 and 8 individually after that. Not sure of the rationale, but I don’t think anybody has figured out what’s the best way to release a show on streaming yet, so whatever.

I’m sad to say that J.A.R.V.I.S. remains deleted, and the other AIs even go so far as to have a funeral for him. This also marks the first time Dum-E and U get dialogue as the former gives a very eloquent eulogy and the latter sings “Danny Boy.”

We’re no closer to finding out who hired Paladin to find Vision, but the mystery client does fire Paladin, which I had to admit was one of my favorite touches in these two episodes. The clichés of television dictate that the person be given one more chance to do the job, but truly there are plenty of bounty hunters in the world—and in the MCU there are likely others that have fancy-ass gadgets and/or super-powers—so why keep using the guy who can’t seem to get the job done? We also learn that, while the Dread Pirate Rober— er, that is Paladin is usually an inherited mantle, this particular Paladin was adopted after the previous Paladin killed his father.

Todd Stashwick doesn’t appear at all in “Malware,” but somehow I doubt this is the last we’ve seen of Paladin. I also love when his handler lists all the injuries he’s suffered of late, including a metal billy club to the head, to which Paladin replies, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of Hell’s Kitchen,” which means he fought Daredevil at some point, and I’m annoyed that we’re unlikely to actually see that fight…

However, we get something even better, and it does constitute something vaguely resembling a spoiler. Generally, these reviews are pretty spoilerific, but I’m going to hold off on the exact nature of this plot thread. I’ve got three more reviews to write of this series, and there’ll be lots of opportunities to discuss this particular thing in depth then.

That thing is something that felt like a throwaway last week: Ultron watching a true-crime TV show about the Butcherbird killer. “Reboot” opens with Ultron watching a news story about a recent Butcherbird murder and then we see another one in real time, in which we learn two things: the Butcherbird killer is a synthezoid like Vision, and presents as female.

She’s also pretty brutal, and does some serious damage to Paladin, who is fired after he takes on Butcherbird, thinking her to be the Vision, because nobody told him there was another synthezoid wandering around, and he tracked her via emissions and such that track with Vision’s specs—but also apparently hers.

Most of “Reboot” is spent with Vision trying to heal himself from the damage Paladin did to him in “Theseus.” To that end, he cauterizes a wound with sulfuric acid in a car battery and eventually has to reboot himself. (Turning it off and turning it back on always works!!!!!) Along the way, he and Thomas also make vague and really hilariously terrible attempts to bond with each other. Vision—probably because of the experiences of the sitcom life in Westview in WandaVision—keeps defaulting to acting like a sitcom Dad with Thomas (e.g., lecturing him about not using his turn signal when he drives). Meanwhile, Thomas just wants to know how he suddenly has all the memories of Tommy Maximoff, and how the hell a robot can be a father. It’s amusing, actually, that we’ve seen several guesses as to how Tommy’s consciousness wound up in Thomas’, but nobody’s guessed the truth: it was put there by Billy in Agatha All Along’s “Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End.” In fact, we find out that Thomas read a book about the Snap (one of many no doubt published during the five-year Blip), and it had a whole chapter on Vision and Wanda. Vision then promotes the theory that this is all a delusion in Thomas’ head, that he wants a family so badly he created one based on something he read in a book. Of course, this doesn’t explain how Thomas has Tommy’s super-speed, “inherited” from Wanda’s twin brother Pietro, a speedster killed during Avengers: Age of Ultron.

On top of that, Vision lies to Thomas. He has to assure the young man that he’s not glitching when he’s talking to the other AIs, and he explains that he downloaded other AIs to help him out. But he only mentions J.A.R.V.I.S., F.R.I.D.A.Y., E.D.I.T.H., Dum-E, and U (emphasizing that he did not come up with the latter two names), leaving out Ultron entirely. Ultron, of course, comments on this, especially toward the end of “Malware” when Vision mentions the five AIs he talks to and Thomas notices the differing number. (“Welcome to Freudian slip—how human of you.”)

One of the best things about these two episodes is the banter between Vision and Ultron, which mostly is Paul Bettany playing James Spader’s straight man. At one point, Vision asks him, “Are you going to join or snipe?” and Ultron replies, “Snipe,” which is pretty much his role in this series in a nutshell. At one point, the pair of them hack into Interpol’s database to find out who all the victims of the Butcherbird killer are, and that is a hilarious sequence where Vision and Ultron are confronting security bots to get through using Interpol agent IDs they’ve stolen. Working out the password was funny, but the best was the entire “how many pictures have fire hydrants?” bit.

These two episodes also provide some fascinating revelations relating to the Stark AIs. One of the things that has held true about the MCU since its inception in 2008 with Iron Man is that Tony Stark has more or less been the main character, with much of what has happened revolving around or being connected to some combination of him, his ancestry, and his legacy. As soon as we saw James D’Arcy as Howard Stark’s butler Edwin Jarvis in Agent Carter, we assumed that J.A.R.V.I.S. was based on him, and here we find out that F.R.I.D.A.Y. and E.D.I.T.H. were also based on real people. F.R.I.D.A.Y. was based on Howard’s “girl Friday,” a very efficient assistant who apparently helped raise Tony, and E.D.I.T.H. was based on a Stark Industries test pilot whose husband died, but who carried on after that. The latter is particularly moving, given that E.D.I.T.H.—which is an acronym for “Even Dead, I’m The Hero”—was created to be the AI used by Spider-Man after Tony’s death. Knowing he named it after someone who carried on after tragedy adds poignancy to that particular background bit in Spider-Man: Far From Home. The scene where this is revealed is a beautiful low-key dialogue between an unusually kind Ultron and a gobsmacked E.D.I.T.H.—Spader and Emily Hampshire absolutely nail it.

Of far more interest, however, is the revelation about the creation of the Stark AIs, which aren’t actually Stark’s. There’s a great bit in an old issue of Cerebus by Dave Sim in which the title character and a wealthy politician named Weisshaupt are talking and the latter mentions that he accomplished something via magic. “Your magic,” Cerebus asks, “or someone else’s?” Weisshaupt’s response: “I paid for it—my magic.”

Turns out that the AIs Stark used in the Iron Man armor and Spider-Man’s suit weren’t his magic except in Weisshaupt’s sense. It was developed by a team of scientists at Markridge Biotech who sold it to Stark—and who, it turns out, are the victims of the Butcherbird killer. One of the scientists, Jo Carrington, died in 2008 (a year that I’m sure was deliberately chosen, given that it was the year Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk kicked off the MCU), and only one is still alive after the brutal murder at the top of “Reboot”: Katerina Wells, played with dignity and aplomb by the great Mary McDonnell.

The masterpiece of these two episodes is the beautifully constructed scene where Vision admits to Thomas that Ultron is one of the AIs in his head. Thomas grew up in the foster system (he actually should refer to it as “in care,” as they do in the UK; “foster system” is the American term for it), and he came across a lot of Sokovia refugee orphans, and he’s absolutely disgusted that (a) Vision has kept him “alive,” and (b) that he lied about it.

That scene, beautifully played by a guilt-ridden Bettany, a pissed-off Ruaridh Mollica as Thomas, and a snarky Spader providing his usual sniping, is made even better by scripter Michael Taylor and director Gandja Monteiro, as it’s intercut with Wells’ speech about accountability and guilt and the landmines of creating AIs, as you have the bad in Ultron, but also the good in Vision. McDonnell’s intensity is impressive, and also fascinating to watch because in this speech she admits to feeling guilt about Ultron—something we didn’t see in footage of older interviews with her shown earlier in the episode. One wonders if that particular change of heart was less due to her maturing and more due to her colleagues all being brutally murdered…

The event Wells is speaking at includes a display of the first-ever artificial person, created by Dr. Phineas Horton, called J.I.M. This is a riff on one of Marvel’s first-ever super heroes, the original Human Torch, who debuted in Marvel Comics #1 in 1939. The robot Torch was also known as Jim Hammond, and the MCU version that Wells discusses apparently felt emotions so keenly that he literally caught fire. We saw J.I.M., a.k.a. “the Synthetic Man,” as an exhibit at the Stark Expo in Captain America: The First Avenger, and it’s nice to finally have that Easter egg be given airtime fifteen years later. 

The episode ends—and yeah, okay, this is a spoiler—with Vision reluctantly giving control of his body over to Ultron in order to stop the Butcherbird killer, who arrives at the event in order to kill Wells. The fight with her goes badly, and Ultron convinces Vision to let him take the wheel.

This is, of course, a massive mistake, as all the other AIs are locked out. In Vision’s mindscape this is shown as the AIs being locked in a single room while in his attic, Ultron is now steering with a boat’s wheel. In the real world, Spader’s voice is dubbed over Bettany’s, but Bettany also alters his entire body language so that his gait and facial expressions match that of Spader as well. It’s an amazing performance.

And a brutal cliffhanger, as that’s where we leave off at the end of “Malware.” More—including a more in-depth discussion of who the Butcherbird killer actually is—next week.[end-mark]

The post “I’m surrounded by broken machines” — <i>VisionQuest</i>’s “Reboot” and “Malware” appeared first on Reactor.

News Clayface

James Gunn Recommends 12 Body Horror Movies Ahead of Clayface

And I add a few more recommendations for those who are really into body horror

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on October 21, 2026

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

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Courtesy of Warner Bros.

It’s the season to yell at your friends about which horror movies they should watch (HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD WORD ABOUT LET’S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH?!?!?), and James Gunn has gotten in on the fun by sharing his list of body horror films that are “close to his heart” and will help you get in the mood for DC’s upcoming body horror film, Clayface.

For reference, here is the list of movies that Gunn shared via Threads:

• Altered States, directed by Ken Russell
• Basket Case, directed by Frank Henenlotter
• Cronos, directed by Guillermo del Toro
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Philip Kaufman (1978)
• Re-Animator, directed by Stuart Gordon
• Shivers, directed by David Cronenberg
• Slither, directed by James Gunn
• The Blob, directed by Chuck Russell
• The Brood, directed by David Cronenberg
• The Fly, directed by David Cronenberg
• The Thing, directed by John Carpenter
• Videodrome, directed by David Cronenberg

To be honest, there’s not a bad movie in the bunch. Unsurprisingly, Gunn recommends nearly all of the body horror works of director David Cronenberg: the most influential figure in the history of the film subgenre. If you’ve never dived deep into the works of Cronenberg… well, there might be better places to start if you consider yourself particularly averse to the entire body horror concept. The Fly is arguably the body horror movie, but its popularity is a testament to its quality rather than its status as a relatively tame entry point. The unlisted Dead Ringers (which is really more of a spiritual and thematic body horror film) may be your better Cronenberg starting point before you work your way into Videodrome, The Fly, and eventually, Shivers and The Brood.

Cronos, Altered States, and The Thing are slightly more friendly entry points for newcomers. Cronos in particular is a fantastic way to familiarize yourself with the concepts of the body horror genre within the confines of an exceptional vampire story. Invasion of the Body Snatchers may be the biggest “must-watch” of the bunch, though, due to both its status as arguably one of the greatest horror films ever made and its thematic relevance to the Vince Gilligan series, Pluribus. It’s also funny that Gunn included Chuck Russell’s Blob remake alongside his own Slither. Both are very good, but the former was quite certainly an influence on the latter.

Re-Animator and Basket Case are really best for those who are more acclimated to the body horror genre. If that describes you, here’s a list of similarly intense films in that genre I recommend:

• Tetsuo: The Iron Man
• Society
• In My Skin
• The Autopsy of Jane Doe
• Possessor

And there is, of course, Clayface, which we’ll be bringing you more coverage of after its release on October 23.[end-mark]

The post James Gunn Recommends 12 Body Horror Movies Ahead of <i>Clayface</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations

Publishing Nightmares and Stories of Authorial Woe

Four books unjustly doomed by circumstances beyond their creators’ control.

By James Davis Nicoll

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Published on October 22, 2026

Photo: Thom Milkovic [via Unsplash]

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Photo: Thom Milkovic [via Unsplash]

While Donald Westlake’s 1984 A Likely Story isn’t science fiction or fantasy, the novel is horror-adjacent… for anyone who dreams of being an author or an editor. If you are an editor or an author, this comedic novel may well trigger a certain level of post-traumatic stress.

Protagonist Tom Diskant has a simple dream: solicit appropriately-themed stories from a wide variety of authors, assemble them into the ultimate Christmas-themed coffee table book, release The Christmas Book in time for Christmas, enjoy success, wealth, fame, and the unquestioning adoration of at least one of the women with whom he is romantically entangled. What could go wrong?

After convincing an assortment of authors to contribute (which is accomplished fairly easily), the answer turns out to be “everything can go wrong.” The book is orphaned when Diskant’s editor leaves for a better job. The book is orphaned again when Diskant’s next editor—with whom he is having an affair—takes maternity leave. The next editor sticks around, but unfortunately that editor is a well-meaning idiot. There’s no sign of unquestioning adoration from any of Diskant’s legion of lovers¹ …and Isaac Asimov won’t stop sending in new essays with alarming regularity.

A reader unfamiliar with publishing might well wonder if Westlake drew from real life for inspiration². Anyone who has had the slightest contact with publishing’s backstage will be certain that he did… then toned everything down for plausibility.

Consider these four works, each one unjustly doomed for reasons beyond their creator’s control.

Imaro by Charles R. Saunders (1981)

Imaro’s mother broke Illyassai law by refusing to marry Chitendu, the man selected for her. and compounded her sin by having a child by a non-Illyassai. By so doing, she saved the Illyassai from sorcerous Chitendu. Therefore, she was not executed out of hand. Instead, she was allowed to raise Imaro until he was five, then exiled.

The Illyassai provided Imaro with two key assets needed for a life of adventuring. First, they provided him with the skills needed to survive adventuring. Second, they never failed to remind Imaro that he was not truly one of them. This ensured he would one day walk away from his mother’s people to explore the rest of vast continent of Nyumbani.

Although Imaro bears similarity to Conan—solitary, skilled, and intelligent³—DAW for some reason elected to compare Imaro to an entirely different character, one whom Imaro resembled in almost no respect. The first printing of Imara had the cover quote “The Epic Novel of a Black Tarzan,” which drew the ire… and more importantly, the lawsuit… of the Burroughs estate. The first printing was pulped, in no way an asset to sales⁴.

Readers curious about Saunders may want to seek out 2026’s To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy by Jon Tattrie.

The Interior Life by Dorothy J. Heydt (1990)

The Interior Life (published by Heydt under the pseudonym “Katherine Blake”) divides its story between two worlds: that of housewife Sue and that of Lady Amalia. Lady Amalia faces the relentless spread of Darkness across her world. Sue’s endless challenges are purely mundane; not as existential as Lady Amalia’s, but just as urgent to Sue as Lady Amalia’s are to the Lady.

Is Lady Amalia’s world a figment of Sue’s imagination, a welcome distraction from mundane woes? Or is it a real world to which Sue has some mysterious connection?

As I recall Dorothy’s account on rec.arts.sf.written, her friend Karen Anderson prevailed on Jim Baen to publish The Interior Life. Not every publisher is suited to publish or promote every book. Baen’s particular strengths at that time did not lend themselves to making a success out of a novel which was in large part about a housewife’s travails. The variable fonts Heydt used to distinguish the different story sections proved a challenge to print. Finally, the cover failed to fully convey the Nazgûl-esque rider Heydt had in mind. Those who read the novel loved it, but few had the chance, as book went out of print so quickly it might have been printed on sheets of thiotimoline.

Faery in Shadow by C. J. Cherryh (1993)

Caith pursued vengeance beyond the bounds of reason and propriety. Also beyond all that which he knew, into the realm of the unexpected. He finds himself cursed to wander the wilderness, accompanied by untrustworthy pooka Dubhain and under the directions of the faery lord Nuallan.

Ceannann and Firinne (who pose as husband and wife but who are in fact twins) offer Caith hospitality. When the witch Moragacht’s minions descend on Ceannann and Firinne’s humble cottage, Caith feels honor-bound to help the pair⁵. By so doing, Caith greatly raises the stakes of the conflict.

Cherryh rewrote Faery in Shadow and self-published a fully revised and expanded version of the story in 2009’s Faery Moon. In the latter, she included a list of the calamities that had befallen Faery in Shadow:

• Cherryh’s Del Rey editor Lester del Rey⁶ died suddenly.
• Del Rey’s replacements hated the book.
• Lightning struck Cherryh’s computer, erasing her copy of the manuscript.
• The UK trade paper edition (published by Legend Books) appeared before the Del Rey hardcover, apparently offending Del Rey, as a result of which the Del Rey edition was poorly distributed.

Bound by Blood and Sand by Becky Allen (2016)

As I have not (yet) read Bound, I am not going to try to describe it. (Such things only lead to discovering that some fool has slipped the ChatGPT description into the Wikipedia entry.) I only discovered the book existed at all when Allen linked to a blog post discussing the book’s success. Or lack thereof. To quote:

Because oh boy, did the book flop. And fun fact, if the first book in a series flops, then the second book flops even harder because no one picks up the sequel to a book they haven’t read. Over the last ten years, Bound by Blood and Sand has sold somewhere shy of 1500 copies. Freed by Flame and Storm has sold fewer than 500. So, to put it mildly, they did not meet publisher expectations.

And I haven’t sold anything since.

So sit back and grimace with me as I walk through how it feels to fail at your dream, the aftermath, and what comes next.

I read Allen’s account immediately after reading Cherryh’s tale of woe about publishing Faery in Shadow, which led this essay.

It is alarming to realize that books can tank for reasons far outside the author’s control. However, as Allen points out, at least the authors have done something that most people will never do and most probably cannot⁷: they wrote a publishable book. Even if Fortuna did not then smile on the work, publication is something to cherish.[end-mark]

1. Because Tom Diskant is an idiot whose long-suffering wife should have divorced Tom and taken him for everything he owned. The main reason the novel may not be horror is because Diskant clearly deserves some kind of horrible fate, which never appears—or maybe it is horror because he simply skates on all the romantic crap he pulls. ︎
2. Obviously, not in the matter of an ever-growing list of poorly considered affairs. Also, Westlake is careful to note that: “The famous names herein are just that: famous names. In looking behind them, the reader will not find the actual human beings who hold those names, nor satires on those human beings. The reader will find only what I believe is the generally held view of that famous name’s public self. The same, of course, is true of the obscure characters within this book. As for myself, gentle reader, I am a figment of your imagination.” ︎
3. Except in the matter of woman characters surviving their first appearance, where Imaro is more akin to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. ︎
4. Not only did I never see a copy of the first printing, I’ve never seen a scan of its cover. ︎
5. Not least because he suspects that he brings ill-fortune in his wake, and so in a sense is to blame for his hosts’ bad luck. ︎
6. There’s an essay topic to be found in the confusion that results when a book line is named for someone, or as in this case, his wife, Judy-Lynn. If I say DAW, do I mean the company or Donald A. Wollheim? If I say Baen, do I mean the company or Jim Baen? With Del Rey vs del Rey, there’s a simple distinguishing feature: the company is upper case D (Del Rey) and both Judy-Lynn and Lester’s surname is lower case d (del Rey) … unless for some reason I begin a sentence with their surname. ︎
7. I have a recurring dream in which I discover that in the 1980s I wrote an SF novel so comprehensively unremarkable that even I forgot it existed. Imagine my real-life surprise when I discovered that while I have never written a novel, I did in fact edit and then forget my involvement in a roleplaying game, Dreaming Cities (2005). I pulled my copy out of a box and was astonished to spot my name in the credits. ︎

The post Publishing Nightmares and Stories of Authorial Woe appeared first on Reactor.

News Wicker

Alexander Skarsgård Was Made for Olivia Colman in Final Wicker Trailer

They had me at “horniest, most tender film of the year”

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on October 20, 2026

Courtesy of Black Bear

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Courtesy of Black Bear

If you told me a year ago that a movie starring Olivia Colman as a fisherwoman who gets Peter Dinklage to create for her an Alexander Skarsgård-shaped husband out of wicker would be my most anticipated movie of the year, I would have said, “Of course it is!”

How can you not love a weird, horny movie where Skarsgård and Colman play off each other with such panache (assuming the trailers and the critical reception adequately convey the film)? We got our final trailer today, which is a bit tenderer than the horny romp we got in an earlier one, though it still looks utterly delightful.

The movie comes from writer-director duo Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, whose previous credits include 2020’s Save Yourselves! They adapted the film from Ursula Willis’ short story, “The Wicker Husband,” which was also apparently adapted into a musical.

(Want to read “The Wicker Husband” before seeing the film? I’m happy to report that I just placed a hold on Libby for it—both eBook and audiobook—though you can also get it on eBook for $1.99. You’re welcome.)

If you’re impatient, don’t fret: Black Bear Pictures will distribute Wicker to select theaters on October 23, 2026, and then expand to additional venues starting on October 30, 2026. Get ready to be seated.

While you count the minutes, check out the final trailer below. [end-mark]

The post Alexander Skarsgård Was Made for Olivia Colman in Final <i>Wicker</i> Trailer appeared first on Reactor.

News Crystal Lake

Crystal Lake’s Project Argonaut Gives Jason Voorhees a Controversial Origin Story

You can explain everything…

By Matthew Byrd

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Published on October 20, 2026

Photo Credit: Peacock

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Photo Credit: Peacock

This article contains spoilers for the Crystal Lake series

All eight episodes of the Friday the 13th prequel series Crystal Lake dropped last Thursday (instead of on the 13th or on a Friday… I digress), and I can’t help but rant a bit about the most signifcant part of the show: the introduction of Project Argonaut and the Jason Voorhees backstory nobody asked for.

So, we actually covered this a little while back when we talked about a Crystal Lake trailer that hinted at the introduction of some kind of secret organization and whatever happens behind their branded closed doors. The context of that preview caused some to wonder if the show was actually going to explain that Jason is the result of some kind of Stranger Things-like experiment. The speculation became so rampant that Crystal Lake showrunner Brad Caleb Kane sent out the following message via Instagram.

“It’s not the CIA. He’s not a gov’t super soldier or an Eleven. He’s probably just a Chud. Or at worst a Trog. In any case, all will be known Oct. 15. Y’know, they called Copernicus a heretic at first, too. And look how that turned out! Well, bad for him, I guess. Nevermind. Enjoy!!! #NotRoy #NotDemonicParasite #NotSpaceX”

An… unusual message, to be sure, but one that was seemingly designed to assure fans that their biggest fears about the show revealing Jason’s origin story by explaining his ability to keep coming back to life were not going to play out the way they thought they would. In retrospect, that message was only technically correct.

In the seventh episode of Crystal Lake, we learn about an organization called Bellflower Chemical that is working on a top-secret project known only as Project Argonaut. Through a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that Project Argonaut is the organization’s attempt to develop a human being that can survive during a nuclear apocalypse and pretty much everything else. It’s worth noting that the show’s modified timeline places these flashbacks around the year 1959, which was near the height of Cold War paranoia. It’s also worth noting that part of this project was designed to mimic the biology of cockroaches in the hopes of recreating their widely believed (and incredibly exaggerated) ability to survive a nuclear blast. One supposes replicating a Twinkie would have been too ridiculous.

In an interview with Dread Central, Kane discusses how the culture of the United States at that time played into the idea of basing Jason’s origins on such experiments.

“This was a time of real transformation in our nation from when we trusted all of our institutions — marriage, government, and the people looking out for us — to a time when Nixon happened, the Vietnam War, and Watergate,” Brad Caleb Kane notes. “We realized everyone was lying to us and people started getting divorced because the whole construct of the perfect American dream was falling apart. That gave America a real identity crisis.”

Speaking of broken families, Jason’s father, Elias Wittering (played by the always delightful Hamish Linklater), is secretly involved with those experiments. He convinces Pamela to undergo an experimental procedure when a pregnancy complication raises the threat of a miscarriage. Pamela and her unborn child soon become unwilling participants in Project Argonaut. Pamela eventually discovers what is happening, but it’s too late.

Jason becomes the first known “successful” result of the Project Argonaut experiments. What does that mean? We get a glimpse at the results a little later on when a young Jason seemingly drowns in a bathtub only to survive when he’s finally pulled from the water by Pamela. Some of the specifics are kept vague, but it seems that the experiments left Jason with super strength, greatly enhanced survivability, and regenerative capabilities. Unfortunately, those experiments (and subsequent experiments that Jason undergoes throughout his life) also involved prolonged exposure to radiation and other chemicals that help explain his physical alterations throughout the years.

So, no, Jason was not altered by the CIA, and he’s not technically meant to be a soldier. However, Jason’s seemingly supernatural abilities can be attributed to the experiments conducted by a secret research program rather than any of the other vague fan theories that have been floated around throughout the years.

So did the movies ever even suggest that possibility? Well, with help from a memorable cameo by David Cronenberg, a scientist in Jason X did say that the United States government had captured and contained Jason Voorhees in the hopes of determining whether he possessed regenerative abilities and whether or not those abilities could be utilized for future scientific and medical research. So yeah, the vague idea that Jason has this innate ability to regenerate that can be attributed to some internal factors has been floated before. Of course, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday also suggested that Jason’s soul can be passed from person to person and that he can only be killed by a blood relative. But much like Bruno, we don’t talk about that movie.

Actually, Kane addressed the previous… misadventures of Jason Voorhees during that Dread Central interview.

“I took a swing, but I didn’t send him to Hell. I didn’t send him to space. I didn’t put him up against Carrie White— all things that people have done in this series. I took a much more grounded swing,” Kane says. “Hopefully there’s still enough fan service and candy in there for fans like me. We’ve got direct recreations that are shot-for-shot from the movies that fans will hopefully appreciate and grant me a little bit of grace with Jason’s origin.”

And as Kane also notes, there is certainly a factual basis for the idea of corporations performing potentially dangerous experiments for the purposes of product advancements (specifically when it comes to pregnancy). As far as potential Jason origin stories go, it’s hardly the most far-fetched option that has officially or unofficially been tossed out into the world. It’s also very much worth noting that Crystal Lake is a Pamela Voorhees show. It’s long been argued that Pamela and Jason were victims before they were killers, and Crystal Lake certainly runs with that idea and takes it to new places.

But given the reaction to the possibility of such an origin, it is worth wondering if Jason needed an origin story at all. It’s a familiar argument in an age of legacy sequels, prequels, reboots, and other follow-ups that often argue that anything unknowable should be known. Is there an explanation (any explanation) that would have pleased fans? Kane himself acknowledges that “some fans will have their machetes out because they like Jason to be a revenant, mysterious, and supernatural” and that he grants “them that.” For those who would have rather the whole thing be left alone, the argument for the narrative justification of this decision may be separate from the argument against the idea that it should be part of this story. Then again, with how difficult it is to get original stories made at this level, perhaps the tale of a woman subjected to the horrors of such real-life atrocities only gets the chance to be told if it is part of a franchise such as this. The mind boggles at the many Catch-22s of modern life.

Regardless, the somewhat mixed reaction to Crystal Lake overall does raise the odds that the show may eventually be defined by this creative decision.[end-mark]

The post <i>Crystal Lake</i>’s Project Argonaut Gives Jason Voorhees a Controversial Origin Story appeared first on Reactor.

News The Prestige

Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige Is Heading to Theaters in 2027

For the first time, it will be available for your viewing pleasure on 70mm and IMAX

By Vanessa Armstrong

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Published on October 20, 2026

Screenshot: Buena Vista Pictures

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Screenshot: Buena Vista Pictures

Christopher Nolan was in the public zeitgeist this summer with the release of his film, The Odyssey. Those looking to revisit one of his earlier works, however, will get the chance in the new year.

On January 29, 2027, in recognition of the film’s 20th anniversary (well, 21st, since the film premiered in October 2006), The Prestige will be heading back to theaters, with versions playing for the first time on 70mm and IMAX formats. The movie will also play in 35mm and Digital 2D formats.

“I’m very excited to bring The Prestige back to the big screen, and particularly thrilled to offer audiences the chance to see it on 70mm film, and on IMAX for the first time,” Nolan offered up in an anodyne statement.

The Prestige, for those who need a refresher, stars Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, and Scarlett Johansson. It centers on the rivalry between Jackman’s charismatic showman, Robert Angier, and Bale’s illusionist, Alfred Borden. The two magicians ruthlessly try to learn each other’s secrets, but nothing, as all good magic tends to be, is what it seems. David Bowie also appears in the film as Nikola Tesla, along with Andy Serkis, Rebecca Hall, and Ricky Jay. Christopher Nolan directed the movie, with a script from him and his brother, Jonathan Nolan. The story is based on the novel by Christopher Priest.

Check out today’s teaser, which, at 10 seconds, is very much that, but fun for those eager to look closely at the film in its new format:

The post Christopher Nolan’s <i>The Prestige</i> Is Heading to Theaters in 2027 appeared first on Reactor.

Books Reading the Weird

The Things We Do For Tenure, Redux: Rebecca Campbell’s “A Hole Cut in the Wall of the World”

By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth

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Published on October 21, 2026

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Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover Rebecca Campbell’s “A Hole Cut in the Wall of the World,” first published in Campbell’s The Other Shore collection in 2025, and reprinted in Michael Kelly’s The Best Weird Fiction of the Year, Volume 2 in 2026. Spoilers ahead!

Early September 1976: The 6 am ferry runs through the San Juan Islands, a maze-like archipelago off British Columbia. MacCauley “Mac” Annan’s destination is Cuernos de Cabra, an aptly-named island dominated by a goat-horned mountain and home to wild goats that “stare with strange eyes at any human interloper.” At sundown, you might see a giant human figure silhouetted on the summit ridge. He’s probably a trick of light and mist. Even so, you may suppose him “a hole cut in the wall of the world, revealing what lies behind the sky.”

* * *

Mac drives his old VW from the ferry, accompanied by a young couple he’s met along the way. They’re bound for property that they’ve purchased with a community of fellow adventurers. They mean to build a cabin and terraced gardens, but first they’ll dance, pray and sing among the wild goats. Reminded of the “hopeful, tempestuous undergrads” populating his first-year literature surveys, Mac drives them to their projected Shangri-La before heading for his own interview with Haro L. Davies, the reclusive poet.

Despite early promise, Mac’s failed to publish his dissertation. His best hope for promotion beyond assistant professor is to place a book with a major press. His girlfriend Linda suggests Davies as a topic. He’s cited as an influence by a dozen contemporary poets. As a bonus, his off-grid hermitage is close by. Armed with Linda’s copy of Davies’ selected poems and her extensive marginal commentaries, Mac has inveigled Davies into meeting. He’ll pay her back in his book dedication.

Davies’ house is a grotto sunk into a cliffside. As Mac weaves through lush vegetation, he glimpses a woman in a one-shouldered white shift, a “confusion of curves and sunlight that [writes] itself on his retina” before she vanishes.

Davies greets Mac with easy courtesy. The poet touches two door-framing stones as they enter the house. One, Davies says, is from Stonehenge; the other from the Parthenon. Both stolen, but Davies feels those places’ spirits would appreciate a trickster. His family came to the island in 1920, then the only permanent residents. Now it’s crowded. Some magic’s faded away, “despite the goats.” Has Mac noticed how Davies’ poetry became “quite elegiac” by 1940? It’s a trade, Mac suggests. One should know what one is surrendering, Davies counters.

Mac’s eager to get at his tape recorder and Linda’s interview prep notes. He wings an interpretation of Davies’ work, which Davies tersely disagrees with. The talk turns to local legends, such as the “dark watchers” seen at twilight on mountain ridges. Davies looks for them on cloudy evenings, hoping they’ll speak to him. Mac files this as a future conference anecdote.

Finally the “real” interview begins. The tape recorder runs as Mac fills a notebook with hurried gleanings. Davies speculates that societies of more than 120 “souls” degenerate into specialization, and a subsequent loss of connection to spontaneous magic. Davies’ new work, his unpublished poems, explore this. He’s come to believe that “poetry is as close to magic as we may come… in the off-island world.” Or perhaps “song may be all we have left.” The poems should be performed in “a chorus, in the ancient manner.”

The mention of new poems thrills Mac. He could edit them for his monograph, offering a whole re-evaluation of Davies. His book will be handsomely bound, with his name on the title page. The interview consumes multiple cassette tapes. The last ferry departure looms. It’ll return Mac to Linda who’ll clarify his thoughts, type transcripts, and index them. But Davies has new poetry to share, and the evening’s show of fluorescing phytoplankton. Think of “being so fundamental to a place that you work in happy concert with billions of creatures you do not know…it might as well be magic, or some ancient god with a mind so large it engulfs your own…”

Is it a dream that the girl he glimpsed earlier joins them by the sea, or that under Davies’ calloused hands her shift falls from her shoulder?

* * *

Davies sends Mac off with coffee to catch the 5am ferry. He will carry home all the talk, the poems, the girl golden-skinned among the trees. The poetry echoes in his head, Paean. Panic. Paon. Pan… In the lecture room, Mac recites it to the students before him, and they listen…

* * *

Linda finds his cassettes. She wonders how Davies answered Mac’s questions. They came from her ideas mostly, and it’s she who sent Mac toward what she loved most: “re-enchantment, the Cuernos de Capra and Davies’ stone house.” She listens to the tapes, but finds most of Mac’s notes an undecipherable scrawl “ancient looking [as] cuneiform or hieroglyphic.” She finds Davies’ new poems disappointing, “old exhausted woodland fantasies” of Pan and nymphs. And yet she repeats his words, “now I seek your wild favor…”

“And this time, something on the other side of the sky heeded the call.”

What’s Cyclopean: Davies’ house is connected to the “superlunary world,” Mac thinks, a clever “casual reference to Mircea Eliade” that will appeal to Oxford University Press.

The Degenerate Dutch: In the ’70s, you could dedicate a book to your girlfriend who helped write it, instead of giving her co-author credit.

Libronomicon: Linda inspires Mac with her old copy of H.L. Davies’ selected poems. Also with her questions, her thematic interests, and her willingness to type up and organize his notes. Hopefully Ms. Magazine will point out that she can do better.

Ruthanna’s Commentary

With this story on the schedule, I finally read Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality, which won the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize in 2023. It makes a good pairing with “A Hole Cut in the Wall of the World.” Both take place on islands near Vancouver, embedded in the British Columbian ecosystem and wrapped in arbutus trees. But the characters in Arboreality are isolated by climate crisis, and Mac is isolated by… something else.

He’s a prick, in the mundane sort of way that was extremely common among intellectual, academic men in the 70s. Older female colleagues have told me stories about their experiences at the time, and the low, low bar set for “respectful” men. (Anne has a couple of choice anecdotes below.) A guy who would dedicate his book to you, never mind that you did most of the writing and had most of the ideas, might be a decent catch. At least he’s not responding to your conference talk by complimenting your sweater. Though I may be giving him too much credit; we don’t, after all, get to see how he treats female colleagues between tossing off literary anecdotes to impress tenured men. Academic culture encouraged this sort of extractive approach to human relationship.

Davies is a prick of a different sort. He’s made a hobby out of desecrating sacred architecture, lining his grotto with chips from Stonehenge and Delphi and the Parthenon. He’s also poised halfway through the transformation from poet to latter-day Aleister Crowley, or possibly fairy king. His “new work” is full of chanted names, more sensory than sensible, meant for a druidic procession rather than a chapbook. Campbell is good enough to put poetic excerpts on the page, and I rather wanted to hear them chorused aloud. Which would not, necessarily, be a wise idea.

Mac’s enthralled by Davies—I think in both metaphorical and literal senses of the word. He’s gone underhill. “We’re here for good now.” I was a little surprised that, when Mac finally took the ferry to the mainland, Linda was still alive and his classes were still waiting.

“One should know,” says Davies, “what one is surrendering.” Mac seems all too unaware. He’s full of publication fantasies rich as fairy wine, and as likely as fairy gold to turn into leaves in the morning. When Linda looks over his hours of notes, they’re scribbled runes that are about as likely to make a good book proposal as that so-brilliant middle-of-the-night dream.

Davies seems a natural hermit, who prefers to be alone with the goats and the wild. But at this point—maybe he’s not Oberon, actually. Maybe he’s the hole in the wall of the world, projecting his shadow as a door in the mist. Or he’s making the hole with his words. “One can be called to pass the threshold into the wild.” Is he called, caller, or threshold?

His first call to Mac is the line “Limen sali.” It’s from the “Carmen Arvale,” a fragment of Roman liturgy to the goddess Dia (AKA Ceres). The line itself means “leap over the threshold.” In context, it seems to be a command to Mars to leap out and leave everyone alone, but let’s allow it as a command to a smug academic to leap in. Leap in to the “unmediated relationship with the sacred,” and away from the interpretive language that’s so necessary for tenure. But don’t worry, smug guy. The unmediated wild includes beautiful sylphs.

I snark, but Davies is trying to save something real. He tells Mac about climate change, which puts him on the right side quite early. He also mentions nuclear tests: “Do you prefer nuclear weapons to Pan?” An easy question to answer, however hazardous an encounter with Pan might be.

Thus the next call: Paean. Panic. Paon. Pan. Paon, the only word there that I didn’t already know, appears to be French for peacock. Praise and fear and showing off your glam, all at once: sounds Pan-like for sure. Parts of that poem echo in Linda’s head too, despite her cynicism about “a horny forest-dweller whose desire always usurped [a nymph’s] own.”

So is Mac going to get a book out of those runic notes? I suspect not. I suspect he’s been changed by his time underhill, unmediated. Now he’s preaching poetry to his students. Linda, too, has drawn something’s attention, calling down wild favor. Being a hole in the wall of the world, it seems, is catching.

Anne’s Commentary

Ah, Mac. You rank high on my list of Fictional Characters I Loathe Most. You’re a prime example of the Charming User, Academic Subtype, of whom I knew too many when I worked for a psychology department that yearly brought in fresh batches of postdocs. The most appalling specimen was ejected from our program for trying to pass off as his own work a dissertation actually written by his long-suffering fiancée. (He tried to charm me into typing the final copy of said dissertation. He figured a fair fee would be his undying gratitude. I figured otherwise.)

I suspect it was Linda and her enabling predecessors who polished Mac into the “bright star” he appeared in “every department since undergrad.” It’s Linda who suggests Haro Davies as a potential subject that will rocket Mac to tenure and beyond. It’s her notes in the margins of Davies’ poetry collection she lends Mac that he “borrows” to persuade Davies to meet him. It’s her interview notes that he itches to get out of his briefcase when his own insights don’t dazzle. And it’s her who’ll be waiting at home to hear how the interview went. To “clarify” his thoughts. To type transcripts of the recordings and index them too. Because, as Mac allows, she’s good at those menial academic labors. Meanwhile, he’s doing the cerebral work, such as squirreling away Davies’ quirks and anecdotes to produce (offhand, of course) at conferences and in footnotes, thereby establishing his intimacy with the great man. It’s all about Mac—when Davies confides he has UNPUBLISHED POEMS, Mac’s heart quickens not with an aesthete’s anticipation but at the thought of his monograph in a handsome edition from Oxford University Press. Nor will ultimate triumph lie in Davies’ transcendent work but in MacCauley Annan’s name on the title page.

The problem with being a user is that it doesn’t shield you from being used. It may even make you more vulnerable to a superior user. Davies knows what Mac’s about, as (we’ll later see) Linda also does. The difference is that Davies knows just how to twist Mac’s manipulation toward his own goals, which are much broader in scope than those of a self-serving “amanuensis.”

Davies, a poet after all, starts dropping powerful words early in their interaction. He starts with “Limen sali,” a Latin phrase meaning “leap across the threshold,” or “cross the border.” The phrase “reverberates” in Mac’s mind, familiar but “newly strange.” He’s probably heard it tossed out in academic banter, but does he associate it with the chant by which the Fratres Arvales, an order of ancient Roman priests, would call upon Mars to enter the mortal plane?

The deity Davies wants to summon isn’t Mars, however. He talks about the wild goats, indications that the island is a place certain “entities” might find “comfortable.” One entity might be the woman in diaphanous white, as at home in the woods as any nymph. Can satyrs be far off? Can their Lord, whose name as a prefix means all, the everything, the whole?

Paean. Panic. Paon. Pan. The song of praise. The descent into heedless fear or anger. The pasturer or herdsman. The herdsman’s god, god of the wild, god of nature itself, the whole.

Davies recites a new poem structured around the names of nymphs and of the Paneides, Pan’s sons. The poem’s narrator rests his head on a fragment of the sacred Greek artifact called the omphalos, the center or “Navel” of the world. From this position, the narrator seeks “your wild favor.”

Paean. Panic. Paon. Pan.

Mac must imagine being like the phytoplankton, “billions of creatures…in happy concert.” Imagine being “part of something so vast, so elaborate in its workings, that it might as well be magic, or some ancient god with a mind so large it engulfs your own.”

Paean. Panic. Paon. Pan.

Knowing the world must end, would Mac “prefer nuclear weapons to Pan?”

As from a trance, Mac returns to the city on a ferry carrying hazardous materials, of which he may be the most hazardous, the patient zero infected with words to cut a hole in the wall of the world. He recites those words to a lecture room of students, and they listen. At home, he’s left Linda with the tapes that Davies was so eager for him to record. Linda, who’s sought “re-enchantment” through Davies’ poetry, now listens to him recite while reading notes that disintegrate from Mac’s handwriting into an undecipherable scrawl. At first she’s disappointed in Davies. Isn’t his new work the “same old exhausted woodland fantasies?” But as Davies “intones” the summons, Linda mouths it, too: Now I seek your wild favor.

Without Mac telling him, Davies knew he was involved with a woman. He knew her name was Linda, and that she sounded “like a reasonable creature.” Did he also know that when she sought wild favor, “something on the other side of the sky” would heed the call?

Next week, we wrap up The Island of Doctor Moreau with Chapters 19-22![end-mark]

The post The Things We Do For Tenure, Redux: Rebecca Campbell’s “A Hole Cut in the Wall of the World” appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews

A Small Delight: The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City by Susanna Clarke

Alex Brown reviews a new story from the GOAT.

By Alex Brown

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Published on October 21, 2026

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If The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City came from anyone other than Susanna Clarke, I don’t know that I’d bother with something so slight. But if you’re familiar with her work, you’ll know that nothing she does is insubstantial or superfluous. This slim volume may hold only a short story and an essay, but it is greater than the sum of its parts.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was published in 2004 and is one of those genre-defining works. It’s a doorstopper of a novel, nearly a thousand pages of British history reimagined through a fantasy framework. Fairies, magicians, wars, and academic spats all converge onto the two eponymous men and their associates. The novel takes place in the early 19th century and centers on the return of John Uskglass, also known as the Raven King. The Raven King plays a pivotal role in the lives of Strange and Norrell. The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City is at its most basic, a prequel about how the Raven King came to sit on the throne of Northern England. Yet it’s also a tale of the death of childhood, the fierceness of political ambition, and the casual cruelties of the rich and powerful.

Without getting too mired in the history of England, William conquered England in 1066, but it took until 1070 to bring the North to heel. William had a castle built, and soon Normans crossed the channel from what is now France and settled across the isle. In Clarke’s England, one of those Normans is Ranulf Flambard, the Bishop of Durham. Uprisings and resentments rose and fell in the North, and unlike his real-world analog, Walcher, he isn’t murdered by pissed off Northumbrians. 

In Clarke’s history, the Fairy Host appears seemingly out of nowhere and spreads across the northeastern edge of England. In the south, King Henry I is negotiating a treaty, but the North is cut off. When the Host reaches Durham, where Bishop Ranulf waits, it’s not soldiers but trees that surround the city. An impenetrable forest that cannot be reasoned with or destroyed is not something even a well-provisioned stronghold such as Durham can survive. By the following February, Ranulf is ready to concede. He heads to New Castle that stands upon the Tyne to offer supplication to the Raven King. The journey is as startling as it is magical. Once we meet the young king, a human boy raised by fairies, there are hints to what Strange and Norrell deal with centuries later with the mysterious John Uskglass. That said, you don’t need to have read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in order to understand The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City. It certainly helps, as both stories inform and shape each other, but they can be read as standalones.

Buy the Book

The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City

Susanna Clarke

Buy Book

The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City

Susanna Clarke

Buy this book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble
• iBooks
• IndieBound
• Target

The book also includes an essay, “Childish Things.” Although it’s almost longer than the short story, it provides some fascinating context to the Raven King and Clarke’s relationship to writing and to fantasy fiction. I don’t want to tell you anything about this essay other than those little tidbits. It’s an exceptional work of creative nonfiction from a literary powerhouse. It makes me long for more creative nonfiction from Clarke. What I wouldn’t do for a whole book of essays. 

The story is illustrated with stunning interior art from Victoria Sawdon. Not only are there splash pages between each chapter, but each page is bordered with its own unique, decorative scene. The imagery is solidly Medieval, like it was taken from a vellum manuscript or the Bayeux tapestry. The reviewer’s copy I had was in black and white, and from what I can tell, the final version will be the same. As tired as I am of publishers using sprayed edges and fancy covers as a way to make me pay more for an already expensive hardcover, I’d be willing to pay extra for a special edition of this book with the interior art in full illuminated manuscript color. 

With her trademark wit and fantastical imagery, Susanna Clarke has once again charmed the hell out of me. The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City is the perfect topper for long-time fans who are missing Strange and Norrell, and enticing for readers who might be intimidated by a thousand page historical fantasy. It’s a delightful amuse-bouche that is also somehow lavish enough to be a full meal.[end-mark]

The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City is published by Bloomsbury.

The post A Small Delight: <i>The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City</i> by Susanna Clarke appeared first on Reactor.

Column Science Fiction Film Club

A Clockwork Orange: Crime and Punishment and Cinematic Controversy

Kubrick’s flawed but fascinating adaptation asks uncomfortable questions that we still don’t know how to answer…

By Kali Wallace

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Published on October 21, 2026

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

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Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

A Clockwork Orange (1971) Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Written by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel by Anthony Burgess. Starring Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, and Anthony Sharp.

Content notes: I doubt anybody is going into this unaware, but A Clockwork Orange is about sexual violence and state-sponsored torture, and this article will be discussing those topics.

After hours of researching, I came across a line at the end of a 2019 article by film critic Adam Nayman in The Ringer: “In truth, we don’t need another essay on A Clockwork Orange.”

Nayman was talking about his own experience writing about the film decades after its release, but I admit I did sort of stare dully at my screen for a few moments thinking, yeah, he’s right, we really don’t. Everybody has written an essay about A Clockwork Orange. It’s been interpreted from the perspectives of sociology and psychology and political science and feminist theory and every other angle you can think of. Film studies majors in universities around the world produce tomes of writing about A Clockwork Orange ever year.

But I’ve never let that stop me before! So here we are.

I read A Clockwork Orange when I was in high school and watched the movie not long after that (maybe college? doesn’t everybody watch it in college?) but never really thought much about either of them, aside from a general acknowledgement of their cultural significance. Now that I’ve rewatched the movie, with both a better understanding of both film in general and the specific era in which it came out, I appreciate it more than I did the first time around. I wouldn’t count it among my favorites, but it’s a visually stunning work with some provocative things to say about the world, some equally provocative flaws, and all of it is built around one of the most genuinely iconic lead performances on film.

Let’s start with the novel—and we’ll do it as best we can, because it’s difficult to separate verifiable facts from long-accepted myths.

It’s not a very long book, and the plot is rather straightforward. Set in a grim, dystopian near-future, and written in an idiosyncratic slang-filled first-person point of view, it tells the story of a sadistic fifteen-year-old rapist and murderer, Alex DeLarge, who is sent to prison and subjected to an experimental behavior modification procedure that conditions him to feel revulsion when his thoughts or actions turn toward violence. Upon his release, he becomes the victim of violent assaults himself, attempts suicide, and is recruited as a political pawn due to the public outrage about his experience. He agrees, knowing that the conditioning has been undone, and he’s free to resume his old ways.

In the version of the novel published in the United Kingdom, Alex reaches eighteen and begins to grow tired of his violent ways, suggesting that he will attempt to reform by choice. That final chapter was removed when the book was initially published in the United States, but it was added back in U.S. versions after 1986. The version I read as an edgy wannabe intellectual teenager definitely had the final chapter, and the origin story for the novel that I learned is the one that just about everybody has heard.

It goes like this:

Back in 1959, English writer and composer Anthony Burgess (born John Wilson) had just been discharged from the British Army’s medical corps after learning he was dying of an inoperable brain tumor. He decided to write a whole bunch of books very quickly to provide for his wife, Lynne. One of those books was A Clockwork Orange, which he wrote in a flurry over the course of three weeks. He drew on Lynne’s experience of being brutally attacked by American servicemen in the 1940s, when he was stationed in Gibraltar and she was back home in England. He was also inspired by what he had seen of unchecked delinquent youth culture both in England and during a visit to the Soviet Union, which led to the development of the Russian-suffused slang language “Nadsat” used in the book.

Burgess, a lapsed Catholic, ended the novel with a chapter suggesting that the main character was capable of changing for the better as he matured into adulthood, but when the book was published in the United States, he was told that they would only publish the book if he removed the last chapter, because American audiences were not wishy-washy softies who needed a redemption arc. Burgess needed the money so he complied against his wishes. It was the American version of the book that Stanley Kubrick read some years later, unaware that the ending was different.

That’s the story. As for how true it is, well, that’s complicated.

Part of the reason it’s complicated is that one of Burgess’ most prominent biographers, Roger Lewis (Anthony Burgess: A Biography, Faber & Faber, 2002), famously hated him and wrote a whole book detailing how he came to hate him, describing him as a pathological liar and going to great lengths to disprove just about everything Burgess ever claimed about himself. This has made and continues to make a lot of people very angry, including other writers and biographers who object to Lewis’ work. See, for example, this 2002 review of Lewis’ biography, which takes the view that we should find it charming when great men lie about themselves: “Burgess, you’d have thought, gave due warning about the fictionalising: the version of his life put forward in his memoirs was pretty obviously exaggerated and distorted for dramatic (and sometimes comic) effect.”

This is all very fascinating for those among us (like me) who love to learn about juicy decades-old drama in the literary world, but it is also far beyond the scope of what I have time to research in a single week. I’ve never read a biography of Burgess, so I am relying on other people’s writing (such as obituaries or essays) to get an idea what’s in them.

I am not going to pretend that counts as actual fact-checking, but it does look like Burgess seems to have invented or embellished a great deal of A Clockwork Orange’s origin story. Lynne Burgess died in 1968, so she was no longer alive by the time Burgess was sharing the tale about the violent attack she’d experienced. The story he shared changed significantly over time and there does not seem to have ever been verification from Lynne or from people she was close to, so it’s impossible to know the details of what actually happened. I’m not inclined to insist he invented it entirely, because there is nothing remotely implausible about a young woman being assaulted by soldiers during World War II, but I do think it’s likely that Burgess changed details (intentionally or not) when he began telling the story publicly some thirty years later.

As for the rest of the story: Burgess definitely did not have a brain tumor or any form of terminal cancer, although it’s possible that he was told he did or somehow convinced himself he did. He did travel to the Soviet Union, and he was an accomplished polyglot, linguist, and translator, so the novel’s unique slang likely developed pretty much exactly as he said. The man knew and loved his languages, and it shows in how the book is written.

But he definitely did not write A Clockwork Orange in three weeks, which is not really important except that I find it amusing how over fifty years later authors are still humble-bragging about how fast they are at producing finished works in minimal time, only now they do it on social media. There is also some fuss about how or when Burgess overheard the term “a clockwork orange,” but honestly that seems a bit silly to argue about. We can’t fact-check whether he overheard or misheard a random phrase in a pub.

Then we get to the question of the book’s final chapter. This is the only part of A Clockwork Orange’s origin story that I think actually matters when we get into discussing the movie. According to another version of events, Burgess himself was ambivalent about the final chapter prior to both the English and American publications, and when the American editor questioned its inclusion, it was Burgess’ idea to drop it. It was only much later that Burgess began reframing the story as the American publisher demanding he remove the final chapter as a condition of publication; Burgess framed this as a disdainful insult based on the presumptive political demands of the UK and US audiences. The publisher denied it and objected to Burgess’ version of events.

Of course we don’t know exactly how those conversations went, but I do think it’s an interesting aspect of the lore of A Clockwork Orange, because it all happened as part of the aftermath and cultural infamy of the movie, not the book. I don’t know if he ever commented on it before the movie’s release, but that’s probably because people weren’t asking him much about the book prior to the movie.

The book was released in 1962 to a mixed reception. According to the Penguin Classics introduction by biographer Andrew Biswell, the book had an initial print run of only 6,000 copies and sold just over half that through the 1960s. It had a few high-profile fans and admirers in the literary world, many who appreciated it as “a fine farrago of outrageousness,” to borrow from Kingsley Amis’ review. But it didn’t cause that much of a cultural stir, all things considered, especially compared to the storm that would come after the film. Burgess himself didn’t seem to like the novel very much, and didn’t seem to expect much of it. He sold the initial film rights for very little immediately after publication. (Some sources say $500, some say $1000. Both are insultingly low sums, even in 1962.)

Here we have to take a brief detour into the realm of Films That Were Never Made But I Will Watch If I Ever Acquire the Ability to Visit Alternate Universes. The initial vision for a film of A Clockwork Orange was as a project for the rock band The Rolling Stones, with Mick Jagger playing the lead. There was also apparently a time when it was envisioned with The Beatles instead. I am having a hard time imagining either of those films, although it is slightly easier knowing that at some point Nicholas Roeg, who would later direct The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), was reported to be involved. I would watch Roeg’s rockstar-showcasing version of A Clockwork Orange. It would be fascinating, if nothing else.

None of those versions of A Clockwork Orange ever went anywhere; the British Board of Film Censors would not approve the scripts. The rights to the book ended up in Stanley Kubrick’s hands in 1970. Burgess had written a screenplay during earlier attempts to get the film made, but Kubrick bypassed it and wrote the script himself. The lore that he was unaware of the final chapter does not seem to be true; according to that same introductory history by Biswell, Kubrick knew about both versions and chose to omit the events of the final chapter for thematic reasons.

The movie hews very closely to the novel, with just a few significant changes. Drug usage is a lot more prominent in the novel, whereas in the film the drug mentions are limited to a few comments about what’s in the milk the characters drink at the bar. Alex is only fifteen years old in the book, but Kubrick never intended to stick with that; he decided very early on to cast Malcolm McDowell and shaped the rest of the film around him. McDowell was twenty-seven when the movie was filmed, so he’s not at all believable as a teenager, although he does pass as closer to twenty. I also think this changes the tone of the film slightly, as making Alex and his friends (played by Warren Clarke, James Marcus, and Michael Tarn) apparent adults rather than obvious teenagers makes them both more menacing and more pathetic.

Another change is the decision to change the book’s scene in which Alex lures two preteen girls home to drug and rape them into the film’s scene in which he meets two girls his own age at a record store and invites them home for a seemingly fully consensual threesome, which is made comical when it is sped up and set to Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell Overture. I don’t have a source that states specifically why this was changed. Kubrick had already made Lolita (1962)—a film with its own host of controversies, but one that also does not explicitly portray child sexual abuse on screen. Kubrick said the “sexual obsession” aspect of the story was deemphasized because of film censorship, and I suspect the same would have been true of A Clockwork Orange’s ten-year-old victims.

Whatever the reason, I do think the omission of the child victims alters the story slightly. Or, perhaps more accurately, it alters audience reaction to the story slightly. It is an unfortunate but unavoidable fact that while most people in the world agree that sexual crimes against children are one of the worst things a person can ever do, quite a lot of those very same people simultaneously believe that sexual crimes against adult women are not that bad. It doesn’t help that the film doesn’t remotely care about the adult women victims as people; that they are depersonalized to the point of being portrayed mostly as naked bodies with obscured faces is one of the film’s more troubling flaws. (Kubrick described the Cat Lady [played by Miriam Karlin] as “unsympathetic and unwisely aggressive.” A man has just broken into her house with the intent of raping her, Mr. Kubrick. Should she have been more sympathetic and submissive in that situation?)

All films are manipulative. That’s part of the agreement we enter into when we watch them: they will use their many cinematic wiles to guide us to think and feel certain things, and we will get something out of the experience that will expand or enrich our lives. There’s something particularly audacious about the way A Clockwork Orange goes about this work of audience manipulation that I can’t help but admire, even though there are parts that don’t work.

It begins with the language, much of which is lifted directly from Burgess’ book. The movie opens with a voiceover that continues through the film. Alex is narrating his story to us, so we learn everything through his perspective, which cannot necessarily be trusted. He’s not an unreliable narrator because he’s lying to the audience—he is in fact quite honest—but because his view of the world is profoundly shallow and distorted. Everything we see of his internal thoughts, such as when he’s casting himself as a Roman soldier participating in Jesus’ crucifixion, is dramatized in the most clichéd Hollywood style. Alex knows he can be charming, but we always see how little there is beneath the charm.

This is emphasized by the fact that the film itself is visually distorted in a few clever ways. A Clockwork Orange was the first full film Kubrick made with director of photography John Alcott; Alcott had previously worked as assistant to cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Alcott and Kubrick would go on to make Barry Lyndon (1975) and The Shining (1980) together. Alcott and Kubrick devised a specific visual style for A Clockwork Orange. The scenes prior to Alex’s arrest are bright, fluid, and colorful, whereas those during his imprisonment and experimental conditioning are much flatter, desaturated, and subdued. The camerawork covers a whole spectrum of techniques from handheld (by Kubrick himself) during the murder of the Cat Lady to completely still during the painfully awkward post-prison parental reunion to actually dropping a sturdy camera off a rooftop repeatedly to capture Alex’s suicide attempt. (The camera, a Newman Sinclair, was enclosed in polystyrene and survived six takes; even after all that, it still worked after they replaced the lens.)

The cinematographic choices go beyond the changeable coloring and vitality of the scenes. Kubrick wanted to be able to achieve long, long zoom shots, such as the iconic opening scene, which opens with a close-up on McDowell’s face and slowly zooms out to show first Alex’s friends beside him, then the pornographic décor in the milk bar, then the other patrons drinking amidst that décor. It’s one of the greatest and most unsettling opening shots in all of film. That shot, and similar long takes in the film, uses a specific configuration of a 20:1 zoom lens, which creates that effect of drawing us outward from Alex’s face to the bizarre, uncanny, and slightly distorted space around him.

The set design by John Barry is also doing tremendous work through the film. Most of the film was shot on location—the housing estate is a real housing estate, for example—but the prevalence of pornographic artwork and garbage and weirdly mod design choices pushes it all right up to the line between familiar and bizarre. The same is true of the costuming. It’s a universal truth that society is always going to find the clothing of youth culture somewhat ridiculous, so we scarcely blink at the cricket-whites-and-jock-straps combo Alex’s gang wears; we accept it as deliberate costuming both in-universe and in the film.

Then there is the music. Alex’s love of Beethoven comes from the book, but the film reaches beyond Beethoven to make use of Baroque and Classical pieces in some interesting ways. Composer Wendy Carlos put together the score by arranging and adapting various classical pieces as electronic music. The main theme, which we hear right at the beginning, is an electronic arrangement of Henry Purcell’s Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary from 1695. Synthesizers and subtle electronic distortion in a Baroque funeral procession are a brilliant choice for setting the tone of the film. It’s familiar and solemn but also off in a way that puts us on edge from the first notes. (Carlos would go on to also score Kubrick’s The Shining as well as a very different film we’ve watched for this film club: Tron [1982]).

The most modern music in the film is that infamous rendition of Alex singing “Singin’ in the Rain” while he and his gang break into the house of writer Frank Alexander (Patrick Magee) and his wife, Mary (Adrienne Corri). The impact that juxtaposing “Singin’ in the Rain” with a brutal rape has had on the use of incongruous music in cinema is incalculable. We can probably blame it for every subsequent instance of using a bright, familiar song for a scene of extreme violence. But who, exactly, are we blaming? Kubrick said he didn’t remember how he came up with the idea, but McDowell remembers that it was his idea, one that the director never asked for but was delighted to keep for its shocking effect.

Which brings us to the subject of the film’s characters and acting. McDowell’s performance is exactly as brilliant as everybody has claimed over the last fifty-plus years. He’s charismatic but unsettling, captivating but repulsive, funny but horrifying. He credits his time spent with the Royal Shakespeare Company for his ability to make Alex’s oddball slang roll naturally from the tongue. McDowell was also, alas, a lead actor in a Kubrick film, so he had a miserable time during filming; he acquired several cracked ribs and temporary blindness from a scratched cornea. McDowell also says that he wasn’t always happy to be so intrinsically linked to the character, especially as a young actor wanting different sorts of roles, but as time went on his perspective changed: “I came to the realisation that it was a masterwork, and I was very, very much part of it. You may as well just accept it and enjoy it.”

The fact that none of the other characters feel quite as vibrant is an interesting aspect of the film. Alex’s friends are indistinguishable, his parents are meekly ineffectual, the scientists painfully bland, the prison guards and government officials might as well be stock characters from central casting, and so on. The balance of the cast is filled with good actors acting in deliberately strange ways, so it isn’t a matter of talent. It seems to be a combination of both writing and direction, and I think there are (at least) two ways to interpret it.

The first is the one that the harshest of critics jumped to in the immediate aftermath of the film’s release, particularly when a spate of real-world criminals cited the movie during their arrests of trials. That is the interpretation that only Alex feels like a real person because the movie wants us to identify with him, to like, to enjoy his actions. Pauline Kael’s scathing review in The New Yorker proposes that the contrast between Alex and his victims is meant to be deliberately titillating. Kael wrote, “Far from being a little parable about the dangers of soullessness and the horrors of force, whether employed by individuals against each other or by society in ‘conditioning,’ the movie becomes a vindication of Alex, saying that the punk was a free human being and only the good Alex was a robot.”

I don’t agree with that (as always, Kael is my favorite critic whom I love to read but rarely completely agree with), because I don’t think the film wants us to take Alex’s side. It’s far too dedicated to making us squirm to be an open invitation for identification. The movie is asking us to see obvious parallels between Alex and the society he lives in, and challenging us to see elements of that society in ourselves, but that is not the same thing as vindicating Alex’s choices.

That’s where the second interpretation comes in: I think the other characters feel like shallow, stylized caricatures because the movie is grounded in Alex’s point of view, and Alex does not think of other people as people. He has a sociopathic disregard for the notion that other people might have any sort of interiority or value.

For the most part, I think that works within the film, and there are places where the flat characterization of the side characters is effective. The fact that Alex’s fellow gang members have exactly the same leering, self-satisfied mannerisms when they are criminals as when they are cops is perhaps a bit on the nose, but it gets the point across about the blurred lines between individual and state brutality. But it works considerably less well with other characters, such as the writer Frank Alexander, who is played by Patrick Magee as such an over-the-top caricature in his second encounter with Alex that it’s jarring right when the film should be most absorbing.

All throughout watching, researching, and writing, I’m very much aware that this is 2026, not 1971. What is framed as “ultra-violence” in the film remains disturbing because of how the main character behaves and how the actions are framed, not because the violence itself is particularly graphic compared to what’s commonplace in movies today. The way we react to and talk about violence, including sexual violence, in media has changed in the past fifty-five years, and A Clockwork Orange was part of that change.

Following the decline of the Hollywood studio system and the cessation of Hays Code enforcement through the ’50s and ’60s, more and more graphic violence appeared in movies. It wasn’t just because films could now get away with it; there was also a lot going on in the world (rising crime rates, ongoing and increasingly televised wars, state suppression of protests, several high-profile crimes, and much more) that had people turning toward darker, more cynical films. It was a trend well underway before A Clockwork Orange, but A Clockwork Orange still managed to become a lightning rod for so much of what was going on.

The introduction to a 1972 interview with Kubrick in Sight & Sound states, “When A Clockwork Orange opened in London… Kubrick found himself in the front line of somebody else’s war.” People were already rattled by a proliferation of rape and violence in films, most recently in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971), which features a lengthy rape scene that was then, and still remains, the subject of intense controversy and discussion about the portrayal of sexual violence in film. Coming out on the heels of several other boundary-pushing films—Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Wild Bunch (1969), Dirty Harry (1971), etc.—it seems like Straw Dogs was (pardon me) the straw that broke the camel’s back and released a societal frenzy about violence in film and crime in the real world.

A Clockwork Orange came along right when everybody was already upset. It showcases a character who is charismatic, clever, and even charming, when he wants to be. The energetic portrayals of violence and rape, the black humor, and the cynical politics all combine to confuse our extreme revulsion with something like sympathy. Alex is a despicable criminal. Alex is also a victim of horrific state-sponsored torture. Those two things are true at the same time and, man, did that piss a lot of people off.

The film was censored and banned in several countries, but it was never actually banned in the United Kingdom, even though a lot of articles frame it that way. What happened was that Kubrick asked Warner Bros. to withdrawn the film from theaters, but only after it had played for a normal release period. This came after there were crimes throughout the UK linked to the film—sometimes because the perpetrators talked about having seen it, and sometimes because the prosecutors made the connection. This led to outcry, which led to Kubrick and his family being harassed. Kubrick never specifically explained his decision to withdraw the film from circulation in the UK. He did say, several times, that neither his film nor any other art causes people to do violent things.

Burgess was more interested in defending the story’s morality, but I can hardly blame him for that. He wrote a book that asks, “What violence will you condone society doing to the very worst criminals among us?” That is an important and complex question to ask, but the hysterical response in the aftermath of the movie was for people to claim that it actually said, “Actually murder and rape is all good, have fun!” The book doesn’t say that and the movie doesn’t say that, but textual analysis rarely matters when people work themselves into a fury over what they perceive to be problematic art.

This broad theme captivated Kubrick as well. In an interview with author Michel Ciment, Kubrick said:

The reason for the extreme nature of Alex’s crimes within the narrative is obvious. He has to be so bad that we legitimately do not want him in our society, which requires us to think about what should be done with people who cause such harm. Violence is violence, but crime is always political. Why is brutally beating a man a crime in one instance but an act of policing in another, just because the very same characters have put on uniforms and badges? Why are the most dangerous criminals under one government useful pawns under another government?

A Clockwork Orange is an uncomfortable movie because these are uncomfortable questions to ask of ourselves. Of course, there are quite a lot of people with a fondness for authoritarianism who think the answers are as simple as locking up everybody who disrupts law and order (so long as they themselves get to write the laws and define the order). And, at the other end of the spectrum, there are quite a lot of legitimate progressive critiques of the story for how it neglects to engage with the sociopolitical aspects of violent crime beyond personal choice. It’s a flawed but fascinating movie, and it remains influential and thought-provoking because it’s such a unique—and, yes, stylish—way of exploring problems we still don’t know how to solve.

We don’t need another essay on A Clockwork Orange, yet I just wrote a very long one. Phew. What do you think of the film? Or the book? What parts work for you and what parts don’t?

Next week: Don’t worry, we no longer have to worry about juvenile delinquents, because there are no juveniles anymore in Children of Men. Find it online.[end-mark]

The post <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>: Crime and Punishment and Cinematic Controversy appeared first on Reactor.

Lists Spooky Season

The 15 Best Horror Movies Set in Seaside Towns

Movies that beg the question, “Why would you ever want to live near the ocean?”

By Matthew Byrd, Leah Schnelbach

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Published on October 23, 2026

Credit: Columbia Pictures

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Credit: Columbia Pictures

The waves crash against the rocks on a foggy night. The beam from an ancient lighthouse sweeps the sea as a ship’s horn cries out from somewhere in the dark. An unnatural chill beckons you to the light of a nearby tavern even as the water cries for you to return to your primordial home.

For those who prize atmosphere above all, there is nothing quite like seaside town horror. A cousin to pure ocean horror, these stories (mostly) eschew the terror of being stuck in open water for the horror of living in a very specific part of the world that often seems to exist on its own terms. There is a charm to such places, though it is corrupted by the lingering sensation that an unidentifiable something is very wrong. These stories that take place on the edges of the world have become a genre unto themselves.

And it’s time that genre got a lot more love. Here are some of our favorite movies that explore the nightmare of that dream home by the water. Non-official bonus points were awarded to the movies that best utilize that setting to offer a horror experience that just wouldn’t have been possible (or as powerful) anywhere else.

15. Offseason

If your coastal horror preferences lean more towards vibes than plot, then may I recommend Offseason? Though hardly a masterpiece (hence its placement), few movies capture that warm blanket feel of grey skies and cold nights over a hard-luck seaside town quite so well as this one.

You’ll find a certain classic horror sensibility throughout this story of a woman who travels to a small town after receiving a strange letter that says her mother’s grave has been vandalized. Some of that feeling can be attributed to the distinctly Lovecraftian nature of the setup and some of the payoffs. Yet, there is also an almost Universal-like quality to this story that uses its small scope and unassuming nature to take an effective snapshot of a very specific time, place, and mood.

14. The Lost Boys

The Lost Boys is the kind of seaside town horror movie that makes you go “Oh yeah, that does take place in a seaside town!” And while the seaside nature of The Lost Boys’ setting isn’t necessarily the most significant aspect of the film (that would be the vampires), it is at least a quiet part of nearly everything that follows.

Santa Carla, California, is hardly the end of the world, but it is presented as a kind of expanded amusement park full of conventional delights. That is, unless you are a moody teenager, a bit of a loner, or, you know, a vampire who can’t exactly bask in the sun. The decision to set The Lost Boys in just about the last place you would expect to find a vampire story is a big part of the reason why it helped trigger a seismic shift in the culture of such stories. By the time we got to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, eclectic teens battling the undead while navigating the doldrums of youth in sunny California felt practically accepted.

13. The Bay

A mysterious plague sweeps through a small Maryland town. Animals and people begin dying en masse as survivors scramble for answers and relief. All records and footage of what happened to that town are confiscated and buried by government officials. That is, until a reporter is able to uncover some of the lost footage and gradually piece together a narrative about what may have happened during that horrifying time.

One of the few hits of director Barry Levinson’s later works, The Bay is a found-footage masterpiece that is doomed to never get enough love. It is, among other things, the story of how ecological disaster and corporate malfeasance can have the greatest impact on the residents of a community who are still very dependent on what the Earth provides to help navigate an often harsh existence.

12. Dead & Buried

Just when you think you’ve seen every notable bit of ‘80s horror what-the-fuckery, someone comes along and rightfully argues that a historically overlooked movie like 1981’s Dead & Buried deserves to join the pantheon of that decade’s genre hits. Bless those who spread the good word about this bizarre slice of coastal town horror. It is, if nothing else, one of the finest examples of this very specific concept.

Anchored by some of the legendary Stan Winston’s greatest horror effects, Dead & Buried effectively tells the story of a New England town that is suddenly beset by a string of murders and apparent reincarnations. Tonally, it’s best to think of Dead & Buried as a gore-filled ‘80s slasher. At the very least, that approach will help prepare you for its most jarring sequences. But the movie’s best scares come from this lingering feeling of existential dread that is laced throughout Dan O’Bannon’s screenplay. It’s a fantastic example of a horror film that captures that particular feeling that something just isn’t right.

11. Gorgo

I’ll stop finding ways to add Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes to these lists when I’m DEAD.

This time, we’re in a fishing village on Nara Island off the Irish coast. The harbormaster is gruff and does his best to intimidate strangers, but a pair of young salvage men ignore his veiled threats just long enough to be entangled in a hunt for the Irish kaiju who keeps killing divers. Obviously, a young Irish lad befriends it, as kids worldwide do when presented with a kaiju. Also obviously, the British see that the Irish have discovered a new natural resource and will not rest until they claim it as their own. So the captured kaiju, Gorgo, is shipped off to England to be a circus attraction—but what the circus owners realize only too late is that Gorgo is a baby, Mom is considerably larger than him, and she’s super pissed off that they took her kid.

This movie’s fun enough as a hapless attempt at a monster movie, but through the magic of MST3K, you get to hear Mike and the Bots go off on Irish stereotypes, and, best of all, latch onto the fact that one of the actors bears a striking resemblance to Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. Depressed, drunken existentialist hilarity ensues. (But I say Beckett deserves whatever he gets for being such a jerk to James and Nora Joyce’s daughter.)

10. I Know What You Did Last Summer

Quite possibly the best of the post-Scream era of teenage-focused proto-slashers (there’s a debate for another day…), I Know What You Did Last Summer certainly embraces coastal town vibes like few other horror films quite do. Let’s not forget that the killer is a fisherman who wears a rain slicker and primarily relies on a hook to teach kids a lesson about (checks notes) not murdering someone and dumping their body into the ocean to avoid trouble. Wow, they really had it coming, no?

That’s the real beauty of this movie’s environment. It presents the ocean as this thing that can somehow cleanse all sins. Some move to the water to escape a past, while these kids use it to preserve their future. The idea that they matter and this guy they ran over doesn’t is an incredibly dark but genuinely effective bit of commentary on the idea of looking down upon the fate seemingly assigned by your surroundings to the point you can justify anything in the name of escaping it. The movie unfortunately comes up with a hackneyed explanation to help justify the initial hit-and-run, but the foundation of the film is surprisingly strong.

9. The Woman in Black

I have seen The Woman in Black many times. I still get creeped out by this trailer.

The Woman in Black is set in a seaside town that is haunted by one very particular ghost. Crythin Gifford is a classic tight-cable-knit seafaring village: the locals know each others’ business, there’s a lot of intermarrying, and there’s a lot of glaring and too many significant glances when a stranger blunders in. Arthur Kipps is sent to settle the accounts of the recently deceased Alice Drablow. And this is where the isolated seaside vibes get turned up higher than perhaps any other film on this list: Alice lived out in a crumbling old mansion called Eel Marsh House, on a tiny plot of land, only connected to the mainland by a tiny spit of sand that’s covered by the sea, and only reachable twice a day, at the lowest point of low tide. And you’d better hurry if you plan to make it to her house before the waves seep back in.

(If this reminds you of anything recent, it’s 28 Years Later—the tiny Holy Island has been able to maintain a fairly functional community for almost three decades thanks to the tides keeping the Infected at bay.)

The sea takes the life of a child, and the child’s mother transforms herself into a curse, haunting the town and making other parents suffer as she has. Naturally, Arthur gets caught up in the town’s horror, trying to help and making things worse as he goes. And if you’re wondering if Arthur is, perhaps, a grieving widower, and if he might have a tiny vulnerable child? The answers to those questions are yes and YES.

8. The Orphanage

The Orphanage is one of the best examples of a particular type of coastal town horror movie. It’s not focused on the terrors of the sea nor the blue-collar struggles of the locals quite so much as some other examples of this genre. However, it does utilize the eerie nature of that setting in ways that make it hard to imagine it being set anywhere else.

A young woman returns to the now-abandoned orphanage she was raised in with the hopes of reopening it for a new generation. As those with a vague knowledge of how things usually go in such films will undoubtedly know, she finds that the building is haunted by the spirits of the past. Beyond that seemingly simple setup lies a powerful story about legacies, sacrifices, and humanity on the margins. Though the water plays a role in the many twists and turns on display, the power of this film’s seaside setting comes from the feeling of following people who have been pushed to the edge of the world.

7. Night Tide

Night Tide wouldn’t necessarily be considered a horror film in the modern sense. Some sites may be quick to label it with the dreaded “A24 before A24” tag, though it’s certainly more representative of the more experimental works of the 1960s. What horror is found in this mermaid tale comes from its subtle themes and how they convey the terror of being an other.

In Santa Monica, a woman named Mora ekes out a living by appearing as a mermaid in a sideshow. However, she confesses to a visiting sailor that she believes she may be something else entirely. Stylistically inspired by the horror works of producer Val Lewton, the story that follows is a twisted bit of fantasy about two people whose desire to believe in something more is often shattered by the cruelty of those around them.

6. Breaking the Waves

Now here’s an insular seaside town where the haunting is (spooky ghost noises) organiiiiiiizeddddd reliiiiiigionnnn… oOOooh.

Bess, a very sweet, naive young woman in rural Scotland, falls madly in love with Jan, who works on the oil rig offshore. They marry, and Bess learns, as all women in this conservative, religious, very dour town learn, that your man is off at sea pretty much all the time, and you have to hold down the fort, deal with boredom, and any kids you have, by yourself. The problem is that Bess is very young and very lonely. The solution is that Bess is unusually tight with God: when she talks, God replies to her, in her own voice, just a bit deeper. She asks God to bring Jan home.

God, arguably, does this. And then Bess falls into an all-too-real nightmare, where she’s caring for an injured husband, increasingly scorned by her community, and forced, by Jan, to seek sexual pleasure elsewhere. Maybe he’s tormenting her? Maybe he’s trying to get her to move on with her life? Maybe it’s actually God pulling strings? The film doesn’t actually come down on any particular interpretation until the very last minute, but this is a harrowing, disturbing work of horror. And the thing that really makes it work is that this tiny seaside town is extremely isolated, devoted to doing things the way things have always been done, and when one of their own acts in a way they don’t understand, they do nothing to help.

5. Storm of the Century

No, Storm of the Century is not technically a movie. It’s a four-hour miniseries that is often ignored in discussions about films and TV shows due to its still somewhat obscure nature and increasingly archaic format. But it is also a nearly perfect piece of seaside horror from an author who doesn’t dabble in that arena nearly as much as you’d think: Stephen King.

Written for TV by King, this story benefits from the need to fit the constraints of that format and thus force King to confront his tendency to stretch the premise of his stories well past their limits. This is a remarkably taut and frightening tale of a fishing town that receives a mysterious visitor right before a massive storm is set to make landfall. You won’t be surprised to learn that each presents somewhat separate (though equal) dangers, but much of what happens along the way most certainly manages to make the most out of what proves to be the ultimate nightmare scenario. King’s ability to convey at least the stylistic ideal of a small town is on full display in this absolute gem.

4. Dagon

Director Stuart Gordon’s final masterpiece may be named after one H.P. Lovecraft story, but it’s actually one of the best adaptations of The Shadow over Innsmouth that we’ve gotten so far. Both are fundamentally about travelers entering a seaside town where the locals worship something that they will soon come to fear. The influence of the Dagon story comes from the name/design of its creatures and the fact that said travelers accidentally stumble upon this situation rather than wander into it.

Name of the rose aside, this is one of the most heartfelt and effective film versions of the best parts of the Lovecraft mythos you’ll ever have the pleasure of watching on a stormy night. Despite its low budget and… eclectic acting choices, remarkably few movies have captured that specific yet effective atmosphere quite so well. You can feel the constant, haunting presence of the water as it waits to awake from its tranquil state and erase all sanity with the power of a wave.

3. The Fog

The movie opens on a grizzled old man, sitting on a fossilized piece of driftwood, telling kids ghost stories at a beach bonfire.

I mean.

One of the kids finds a plank of wood with the word “Dane” carved into it, and naturally brings it home to his mom, who just as naturally brings it with her to the… lighthouse… where she works… as a DJ. And then it starts seeping evil water and a really fun, weird horror movie kicks in. The Fog’s trailer has multiple taglines, all battling for a spot on the poster. The one that gets the most play is “There’s something in the Fog!” but my personal favorite is “What you can’t see won’t hurt you—IT WILL KILL YOU!”

And this is a John Carpenter movie, so the “something” in the fog is blistering social commentary. One hundred years ago, the founders of the lovely seaside village called Antonio Bay made a truly despicable decision that got innocents killed. Now the ghosts are back to balance the scales, and, well, I’ll let Hal Holbrook’s depressed, drunken priest Father Malone explain: “Antonio Bay has a curse on it. We’re all cursed.”

The Fog was one of my favorite movies when I was small, and it really has everything you could want in a spooky seaside ghost tale: a malicious, uncanny fog surrounds the town and people start dying in wonderfully gruesome ways; Father Malone discovers his personal connection to the horrifying truth and is wracked with guilt; the townsfolk seek refuge in the church only to find it can’t protect them; Jamie Lee Curtis gets to be a sexually independent young woman with no consequences whatsoever because we used to be a society; Adrienne Barbeau gets to defy gravity in more than her usual way as she scrambles around her lighthouse-radio-station’s roof in high-heeled boots and somehow stays up there, like a Manhattan window AC unit, through sheer force of will; the fog is shot in such a way that it really does seem sentient; meathooks get a surprising amount of play.

Perhaps a perfect film.

2. Amity Island — Jaws

There’s not much I can say about Jaws. It’s an all-time classic film, the film that turned Steven Spielberg into a household name, the film that created the modern blockbuster even more than The Exorcist. (I only wish more of our modern blockbusters reminded me of Jaws and The Exorcist.)

It’s a wonderful case of the bucolic seaside village meeting a Man vs. Nature story, with the added hilarity that the man in question is a New York cop who’s come to Amity Island for a quiet life watching over a small village, shooing drunk teens off the beach, only occasionally having his patience tested by tourists who have come to swim and sunbathe. Instead, he finds himself battling a shark.

But a thing that’s easy to take for granted is the seaside town aspect. Before Brody, Hooper, and Quint take to the sea in their entirely-too-small boat, the film spends a lot of time on the community of Amity Island. In the opening scene, the kids feel completely safe and comfortable drinking on the beach around a bonfire, and even skinny-dipping—until the evil intrudes. The town comes together to talk about the threat of the shark. The mayor, for all that he’s shitty in a lot of ways, does really care about the financial safety of the town, and he’s also raising a family there. Obviously, the shark hunt is ecologically terrible, but it does also show people coming together in almost Dunkirkian fashion to try to protect each other. I would argue that the most important moment in the whole film has nothing to do with the action, or even Quint’s Legendary Speech—it’s the moment when Mrs. Kintner slaps Chief Brody in the face for letting her son die.

A real community full of real people who suffer real pain because of the horror that’s invaded their home.

1. Messiah of Evil

Much of the terror of seaside horror stories comes not just from the power of the ocean but from the idea that you have stumbled upon something that perhaps should not be. Anyone who has ever spent time in such a place during the offseason when the grey air seems to hide some creeping dread can attest to the power of such places. No movie has ever captured seaside towns as slumbering nightmares as effectively as Messiah of Evil.

The film’s setup and plot are… well, not insignificant, but they certainly pale in comparison to the atmosphere and quiet dread of the thing. Watching our hero wander through the town of Point Dume in search of her father and signs of life is one of the most entrancing experiences for those compelled by the terror of navigating liminal spaces once teeming with life. The surreal and dreamlike quality of the film has led many to compare it to Twin Peaks, which is a comparison I fully endorse. But for those who know, it’s enough to say that this is actually the greatest unofficial adaptation of the Silent Hill games we’re ever going to get.[end-mark]

The post The 15 Best Horror Movies Set in Seaside Towns appeared first on Reactor.

Books The Wheel of Time

Reading The Wheel of Time: Faile and Perrin Reconnect in Towers of Midnight (Part 12)

Faile and Perrin find a new understanding.

By Sylas K Barrett

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Published on October 20, 2026

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This week in Reading The Wheel of Time, we are once again covering only one chapter because I once again had a lot to say about a chapter in which there was not a lot of action, but which touched on some character development and themes that I am really invested in. More specifically, Perrin and Faile’s relationship, Perrin’s fears and concept of self, and the fact that the return of the Dragon Reborn has caused all the different cultures of the world to mix, and often clash, as he breaks all ties and the approach of Tarmon Gai’don shakes the world like a snow globe held by a sugar-high child. I’m excited to get into it. But first, we recap.

Faile walks through the camp, thinking about Perrin’s conflict with the Whitecloaks and how to help her husband deal with his guilt and inner conflicts. She does have a plan.

Considering the camp and its organization, Faile is surprised to realize that she is using all the lessons about managing and governing a lord’s estate, and that she has become the very thing she ran away from.

She finds it amusing that she is now using all the things she learned, and that her life doesn’t feel like a trap the way she expected it to. Perrin makes the difference.

Faile pays a quick visit to the quartermaster to deal with the fact that he is taking bribes to give certain nobles preferential treatment when it comes to receiving supplies, thanking her mother for lessons that she and Perrin would be lost without. Then, with evening falling, it is time to find Perrin.

Perrin is standing on a hilltop where Faile has asked to meet him at dusk, though he doesn’t know why. She arrives alone, having left her entourage at the base of the hill, out of sight. She notes concern in his face, and Perrin confesses to worrying over Gil and the others, and to feeling guilty. When she presses him on the subject, Perrin admits that he knows that he is a bad leader because he would not give himself up for them the way he was once willing to for the people of the Two Rivers. Faile points out that it would be ridiculous for a leader to give himself up for his people, because then you could unseat every lord and every ruler simply by kidnapping a random subject. 

They discuss his desire to return to the Two Rivers and stop being a lord, and Faile points out that his people are not easily going to give up the idea of having a lord, and that if Perrin abdicates they will probably choose someone else, perhaps someone unfit. Perrin sees her point: There are some people he thinks would be a better fit, like Master al’Vere, but they could also choose someone like Lord Luc. Someone might even seize power without the people’s permission.

He’s surprised when Faile calls servants up to set out a picnic dinner. She explains that in Saldaea, married couples celebrate having survived a year together, spending a month giving gifts and being together. It is called shanna’har, and when Faile learned that there is no such custom in the Two Rivers, she decided to plan something herself. They are eating outdoors because of a story Tam told her about how he and his wife would take food out into a different spot in the woods every year on the anniversary of their marriage.

Perrin is initially reluctant, but Faile points out that all the dire events that are happening and the coming of Tarmon Gai’don means taking a moment to be grateful for what you have even more necessary. He accepts, and finds himself relaxing and enjoying being alone with her. As they eat, Faile tells Perrin that “there is much of the wolf” in him, prompting Perrin to decide to confess what happened while she was away. He is surprised when she says that he did what he needed to do, and when he confesses that she is his weakness, one a leader cannot have, Faile disagrees with that assessment. She tells him that every ruler has their weaknesses and failings, even the best, and names a few examples.

She tells Perrin that his sword is polished, and points out how well the camp has been kept together. Perrin credits Berelain for some of that, guiltily, and Faile tells him to leave her to deal with Berelain.

As Faile presses him further, Perrin admits the main reason he can’t let himself be a leader: his fear of the wolf inside him. She already knows about his meeting with Elyas, and Perrin’s fear of the wolf, but now he tells her about his first encounter with the Whitecloaks, and why Perrin killed two of them during his first encounter with the Children. He talks of the frenzy of fighting and killing, the feeling of blood in his mouth, about Noam losing all sense of his humanity and how Perrin fears that the way he feels in battle is part of losing himself.

Faile thanks him for telling her all of that, and decides to tell him about her time in Malden. Perrin knows she is leaving some things out, and is happy to let her keep her secrets; keeping secrets is part of who Faile is. He is very angered by what Sevanna did to his wife, but mostly he finds it relaxing to hear her story. He also recognizes that some of the experience has been very good for her.

Perrin apologizes for not realizing she would be planning her own escape, and for barreling in like a wild bull. Faile forgives him, and agrees that just this once, they can have a discussion without a fight, and the reconciliation. As Perrin kisses his wife, he feels that everything has been fixed between them, and that he truly has Faile back now.

Back when I started Reading The Wheel of Time, I was aware that Perrin and Faile’s relationship wasn’t a favorite for a lot of fans. I personally wasn’t a big fan of their courtship, of things like Perrin finally earning Faile’s respect by spanking her and the weird drama of their different cultural opinions about expected gender roles. But once they were together, I really liked their relationship. Some of the drama around Faile expecting Perrin to fight with her and Perrin not understanding her Saldaean ways, and the whole Berelain thing, did get kind of annoying, but that was mostly a pacing issue; the thing about all that I disliked had more to do with how long it went on (in reader time, anyway) rather than the substance of the conflict.

While cultural clashes might not be the foremost theme in The Wheel of Time, they are a consistent one, brought occasionally to the forefront by the fact that the approach of the Last Battle has caused a lot more international movement than the world is accustomed to seeing in ordinary times. Between Rand’s ta’veren pull breaking all ties between men, his connection to the Aiel, the movement of refugees seeking food or fleeing turmoil in their native lands, and the arrival of the Seanchan, the people of this world are constantly coming into contact with cultures and beliefs that differ widely from their own at a much higher rate than they were before the Dragon was reborn, and during a time where everything is a bit more emotionally heightened than usual. We’ve seen Nynaeve judge other people’s behavior by Two Rivers rules and norms, we’ve seen Mat adopt the life of a traveling nobleman with relative ease, Elayne fantasizes about the ways female Atha’an Miere live and dress, and wetlanders and Aiel constantly struggle to understand each other.

And we’ve seen Perrin and Faile struggle to understand each other’s customs and ways of thinking, even as they love and trust each other deeply in every other respect.

Again, I found myself frustrated for a good long while during the read (and forgive me for no longer being able to remember exactly what happened in which book) with the way Faile continued to be frustrated that Perrin wouldn’t just behave the way a Saldaean man would, but only because it felt like that conflict went on forever. As a conflict, however, it made a lot of sense.

I actually relate a lot to Perrin and Faile’s struggle, in this regard. I come from a family where everyone maintains an air of peace and disagreements are either buried or handled passive-aggressively, while my partner was raised to argue. A lot. We had to learn to understand each other’s upbringing and ways of communicating through conflict. They learned that there are other ways to communicate during an argument than shouting and trying to hurt the other participant’s feelings, and I learned that it’s much healthier to address conflict instead of burying it and pretending everything is fine while secretly harboring resentment. Fortunately for me, my partner and I are both naturally very calm, relaxed people, and we quickly realized that we both really enjoyed talking things out rather than following the patterns we were raised in. Stubborn Perrin and fiery Faile took a little longer to find their compromise, but their experience is still one I relate to. Especially when I subtract the pacing problems from my opinion of their relationship.

When it comes to Perrin and Faile’s culture clashes, I tend to be more on Perrin’s side, but mostly because I’m still not the best at handling conflict, even when it’s small. It’s something I’m working on, in my own life, but I don’t have to do it with my partner much, the way Perrin does. That’s a rough way to go, in my opinion. Even if it’s probably good for him, as it is for me, to learn that not all conflicts are a big deal, and that working through things, even if in a heated way, is much better than being someone who feels like it is their job to give way and smooth things over just because conflict can be highly uncomfortable.

I relate to the way Perrin fears his emotions. As a child, I absorbed the idea that my emotions were too big and too loud, and that it was my job to make them smaller, less obtrusive. To make myself more stoic and calm, at least outwardly. It took me a long time to learn that when you try to suppress your emotions, they don’t get smaller and more manageable. Instead, you lose your ability to understand and handle your own feelings; they become less manageable, they feel bigger, and they fester inside of you until you have no idea why you feel the way you do or what to do about it.

The first step to fixing this problem is talking to someone (a human someone, since emotional suppression is a thing of humans) which is why I was so happy when Faile found just the right way to get Perrin to open up. He so desperately needed to speak his fears out loud to someone who could help him hold them, someone he trusted. This is the first step to those fears releasing their stranglehold on Perrin and him moving beyond them. Even before he does any more work on himself, they will have less power on him simply from being shared with someone else. I do think he was ready to talk to her—we’ve already seen him decide that it’s time to face the wolf, so he’s ready to stop running from his fears and his feelings—but I also noticed that Faile handled the way she pushed him differently than she normally would. Than a Saldaean wife would.

At the end of the chapter, she tells Perrin that he always seems uncomfortable when their arguments include yelling, and while she still believes that it is proper for him to do so (she calls it standing up for himself), she also recognizes how much she has asked from him by making him adapt to her cultural ways. This is why she thought, for this night, she would try to adapt to his.

Perrin is surprised by this concession, one he never expected from her, and I think it shows how it hasn’t just been Faile supporting and changing Perrin. He has changed her too, and over the course of their relationship she has evolved quite a bit from the young heir who ran away from her responsibilities in Saldaea because she feared being trapped in a life she did not want. Faile even reflects on this in the beginning of the chapter, considering how she is now using all of the lessons her mother taught her, and that she has ended up in exactly the life she feared to be trapped in.

I can see her point. She has grown up a lot since she joined the Hunt for the Horn, especially when it comes to taking responsibility for her own decisions and looking after other people. But I think that she hasn’t got it quite right either. The lessons she learned from her mother about the duties of nobles are all standing her in good stead, yes, and she has become the wife of a lord and a leader of people. But not in the way she would have if she had stayed in Saldaea and continued on with her inherited responsibilities as the eldest daughter of Davram and Deira. Consider the following passage:

Sure, she is not far away from either armies or the duties of lords, but she is also living a very different life. Rather than inheriting a stable title and ruling over an established set of estates in Saldaea, Faile has been helping build and care for a brand new lordship of the Two Rivers, something neither the new lord nor the people of the Two Rivers know much about. The army she is helping to run is a rag-tag group of Two Rivers men, loose mercenaries, refugees, and some assorted Aiel, Aes Sedai, and Asha’man. She is training Perrin from the ground up, she is facing identities (male channelers, wolfbrothers) from a by-gone age, the coming of Tarmon Gai’don, and doing it all while married to a man who was born a simple peasant in a sleepy village that couldn’t be much more different from where she grew up unless it was in Shara or the Aiel Waste.

In the quote I just referenced, Faile thinks of the duties of lords as “boring.” However, a few pages earlier in the same chapter, she reflects upon the fact that she was very adept at every lesson and that she neither hated the work nor the idea of what she would become. Instead, she hated the fact that it was considered inevitable that she would do exactly as she was expected to do. She ran from expectations, from the idea that she had no choice. And now, as she silently thanks her mother and puts all that she was taught to use, she is living a life she chose, not one that was chosen for her.

The Prophecies of the Dragon say that the Dragon Reborn will break all binding ties and that he will remake the world order. His coming sparked a new Hunt for the Horn, giving Faile an opportunity to seek out the adventure and freedom she craved, an act which led her to Perrin and to her current involvement in preparing for the Last Battle. She is now a key player in the fate of the world, much more so than she would have been if she was still at home, running the estates while Deira followed her husband to join Rand’s army. Perrin certainly wouldn’t be a successful lord without her, and probably would have run away from the whole thing entirely (we see him still considering this in chapter 16, although he is starting to understand that the whole thing really isn’t up to him) if she hadn’t been there to both bully him and support him.

Faile also acknowledges to herself that her time as a prisoner in Malden made her a better leader. There were probably other, less traumatic ways she could have learned the lessons she learned there, but I do think she needed something more than the established safety and stability she had at home. She was meant for the role she is playing now, and I think the Pattern knew exactly what it was doing when she ran away to become a Hunter for the Horn.

I am desperately curious to know how much of Faile’s characterization in The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight is taken straight from Jordan’s notes and how much is Sanderson, as a writer and a fan, deducing the trajectory of her arc based on what has been written before.

But to get back to her relationship with Perrin for a second, I am impressed with the growth she has shown in choosing to engage with him in the way he feels the most comfortable, instead of pushing him in the way she, and her culture, deems best. Perrin is not weak and does not need to be babied by any means, but he is so thoughtful and considerate that it makes perfect sense that what he needs when he is struggling is someone to be thoughtful and considerate back. Someone who can help him process his thoughts and emotions at the speed he does best at, who can push him without rushing him.

That’s something about arguments, I’ve noticed, the ones that are heated and involve raised voices and raised tempers. They go so fast. You are expected to have your points and opinions ready quickly, express them clearly, and be ready to receive someone else’s response, all while emotions are high and tempers are flaring. Personally, when I’m angry I find it really hard to think clearly and calmly, and being put on the spot makes me flustered. It makes sense that Perrin would feel the same way, no matter how normal it is for Saldaeans or Two River’s folk to fight with their spouses. He has been aware from a young age that he could hurt people accidentally, and even though that fear was mostly about physically hurting someone, it’s going to translate into emotion and thought as well. Making him have discussions through fighting is asking him to think at a speed that does not feel natural to him anyway, and also connects back to a deep-seated fear of causing harm.

When it comes to helping him face his fears, of course he needs to be approached with care and gentleness. And Faile knows him well enough to know exactly how to do that.

This chapter also touches on how Perrin’s assessment of himself is not entirely accurate. I was glad that Faile pointed out that he actually did a good job leading during her absence, because I agree with this assessment. He didn’t do everything right, of course; I do think he dropped the ball with Aram, and he didn’t do a great job handling his upset about being treated by a lord, but as Faile points out, no leader is perfect.

As Star Trek III taught us, sometimes the needs of the one do need to be prioritized over the needs of the few. Otherwise, the concept of the individual becomes irrelevant, and then we lose our humanity entirely.

Okay, maybe I’m extrapolating a little from parameters of The Search For Spock, but you all get my point. The belief that leaders can’t have any flaws or weaknesses or personal investments is absurd, after all. Leaders are still people, and we have seen what happens to people when they try to make themselves into perfect emotional leadership robots. They turn into nihilist monsters and nearly destroy the Pattern.

Rand’s journey is of course much greater in scope, since it is a rise from shepherd to messiah, rather than Perrin’s journey from blacksmith to lord of the Two Rivers, but the general arc is very similar. Perrin’s dark night of the soul is Faile’s captivity, his Natrin’s Barrow is cutting off the Aiel captive’s hand (or maybe it’s letting the Seanchan collar all the Shaido Wise Ones) and his brooding on Dragonmount is his counting of the days since she was captive and his mental dismissal of all of his duties besides rescuing her. Smaller events, and less dire consequences for failure, but a very similar journey. And like Rand, Perrin is saved by love. Not only does he get Faile back and not descend into whatever her loss would make him, but now he has leaned on that love to address other struggles he’s been having, allowing her to help carry his fears and to show him where his perspective is flawed. He will be stronger for the experience, just as Rand is stronger after remembering laughter and tears, and embracing the idea of reincarnation’s gift of second chances for love.

I was so moved by the end of the chapter. As someone who has been in a deep and secure relationship for many years, I really felt the same emotions right alongside Perrin, the warmth and love and romance of their partnership.

Next week we’ll be back to Mat with chapter 17. It is a fairly short, transitional chapter so I will probably also get to chapter 18, which is more Perrin stuff and then the long-awaited confrontation between Faile and Berelain. Which I haven’t actually finished reading yet, but I’m excited about after her declaration in chapter 16 about how she is going to deal with Berelain.

Cautiously excited, anyway. Berelain’s characterization isn’t exactly my favorite in the series. But we’ll see.

Have a lovely week, everyone, and I’ll see you all again in the next installment of Reading The Wheel of Time![end-mark]

The post Reading The Wheel of Time: Faile and Perrin Reconnect in <i>Towers of Midnight</i> (Part 12) appeared first on Reactor.

News Slayground

Green Room Director Jeremy Saulnier Returns to Horror With Slayground

How this movie doesn’t have a Halloween release date, I really don’t know

By Molly Templeton

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Published on October 20, 2026

Photo Credit: A24

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Photo Credit: A24

I think it’s fair to say that writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s last movie, Rebel Ridge, helped make a star out of Aaron Pierre, who in that film went toe-to-toe with a slimy Don Johnson and came out on top. Way, way on top. A few years before that, Saulnier sent Patrick Stewart into the woods of Oregon to play the villain of Green Room, a tense and kind of perfect film about a band who opt to play a show in a deeply poorly chosen venue in a small town.

For his next movie, Saulnier has returned to the action-horror vein. Slayground introduced itself last month with a short teaser that made incredible use of Drowning Pool’s “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor.” It looked like a slasher set in a haunted house—the kind you go to at Halloween, not a literally haunted house.

A new, longer teaser suggests Saulnier’s latest is a bit more complicated than that. The murders at the “Slayground haunted attraction” seem to only be the beginning; one character is clearly trying to dig into his memories to see what happened. “Oh, fuck. I was there,” he says, near the end of the trailer, which grows increasingly chaotic. And sometimes bleakly funny: Yes, I absolutely laughed at the frowny face “0 days since the last homicide” whiteboard.

The synopsis, from perpetually buzzy studio A24, says only:

Is Saulnier playing with Satanic Panic themes? Exploring the way metalheads were so often assumed to be dubious and unworthy members of society? It would certainly be an apt musical counterpoint to his work in Green Room.

Slayground has an intriguing cast that includes recent Emmy winner Stephen Root; The Studio‘s Chase Sui Wonders; The Last of Us‘s Young Mazino; and Cory Michael Smith (Gotham‘s Riddler) as Metal Mike. It also stars Sophie Wilde, Stanley Simons, James Badge Dale, Chris Sullivan, Imogen Poots, Matty Matheson, and Macon Blair. It’s in theaters January 29th.[end-mark]

The post <i>Green Room</i> Director Jeremy Saulnier Returns to Horror With <i>Slayground</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays animation

The Skeleton Dance: How Disney’s 1929 Short Became a Masterpiece of the Macabre

A fascinating deep dive into the history and legacy of Disney’s dancing skeletons

By Kelly Robinson

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Published on October 20, 2026

Credit: Disney

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Credit: Disney

Wind ruffles the feathers of a leering owl, illuminated by a fat harvest moon. The branches of a tree become a spindly hand that clutches ominously at the night air. As a clock strikes midnight in a church graveyard, an explosion of bats disperses, a hairy spider drops and wriggles, a scrawny dog howls and moans, and two black cats bristle and yowl. It’s a classic spooky set-up. The creepy vibes intensify when a skeleton pops up from behind a tombstone and is soon joined in a dance by three of his bony friends.

These skeletons don’t merely dance. They do the Charleston. They do the grapevine. They join hands and caper around in a circle, like something out of a children’s game (or folk horror ritual). A pair take turns using each other as pogo sticks. One saucy skeleton wiggles his hip bones and slaps them vigorously. They pop apart their limbs and reassemble. They undulate like they have no bones, even though they are bones. The music riles them to the point that they can’t help but participate in it, with one playing a cat’s tail like a violin while another grabs a couple of his friend’s femurs and proceeds to play his ribs like a xylophone. It’s a frenzied melding of merriment and the macabre until a cock crows, signaling dawn, and they all fall to pieces. The pile of bones converges into a single multi-headed Lovecraftian beast and hastily galumphs its way back into the grave.

This is Disney’s The Skeleton Dance, the first of the studio’s Silly Symphonies series, and arguably its best. The medium in which you first saw the animated short film may be dependent on your age. You might have seen a scratchy 16mm film, rented it on a VHS tape from your local Blockbuster, or watched the edited viral version online with the music replaced by Andrew Gold’s “Spooky, Scary Skeletons” (which, hopefully, made you seek out the original). However you first encountered The Skeleton Dance, the memory is not easily shaken. There’s a creep factor that comes from its age alone, with the gloomy black-and-white palette, and the knowledge that everyone associated with the production is now dead. It feels far removed from us, made for an audience that still wore knickerbockers and called everything “swell.”

When The Skeleton Dance was new, though, it was a marvel of technological innovation. Producer Walt Disney and legendary animator Ub Iwerks were both men still in their twenties, anxious to bring their skills into the future using every means available. Disney’s animation studio had only just released its first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, the previous year, and a mere one month prior, audiences had heard Mickey Mouse speak for the first time in The Karnival Kid (“Hot dogs! Hot dogs!”) Using Pat Powers’ sound-on-film Cinephone process, Disney shorts were already miles ahead of the Vitaphone system that had only recently had people so jazzed about The Jazz Singer in 1927. Because Vitaphone relied on phonograph records for the sound, a single skip of the disc or a splice in the film could throw the whole thing out of sync for a movie’s entirety. Sound-on-film allowed Iwerks and musician Carl Stalling to impeccably match the action to the music. Variety’s brief review of its premiere included the words “perfectly timed.”

Today, the innovation factor is lost on most of us, even as we still enjoy the flawless alignment of every choreographed dance move with its accompanying rattle or tok-tok-tok. The Skeleton Dance endures not because it was forward-thinking (even though it was) but because it reaches back into the past—many centuries further than 1929—to the Medieval tradition of the danse macabre. In English, it’s the dance of death; in German, Totentanz. By whatever name, it emerged in the 14th century as an allegorical genre of art depicting skeletons leading living people in a dance to the grave. The dancers are always an eclectic bunch, often holding hands: children, kings, peasants, popes. The danse macabre is an equalizer, reminding us that everyone from the stinkiest cesspit digger to the richest gold-hoarder will, inevitably, die.

This artistic form of memento mori (Latin for “remember you will die”) served to keep death constantly in mind, which probably wasn’t hard to do in a century that included the Hundred Years’ War, the Great Famine, and the plague known as the Black Death. By the 15th century, the motif was everywhere—the “Live, Laugh, Love” of its day—painted large on interior church walls and outdoor frescoes, and as engraved illustrations in the books and pamphlets made possible by that hot, new invention, the printing press. While the Church’s intent was to encourage people to repent, the dancing skeletons arguably served as a visual cue to do the opposite… “Have fun while you can,” the skeletons seem to say.

Dancing skeletons appear as an artistic motif across the continents and across history. 19^th-century Mexican lithographer José Guadalupe Posada satirized politics and current events in a series of hundreds of broadsheets that depicted people as calaveras (skeletons). In A Jig Beyond the Grave, skeletal patrons perform a folk dance in a cantina. Japanese artist Kawanabe Kyōsai’s Idle Drawings, an 1881 book of woodblock prints, includes an illustration of 27 skeletons dancing, playing music, and generally carousing. Some of the dancers hold the spiny ribs of fans that are missing the paper, as if the fans, too, are skeletons. In a precursor to Disney’s The Skeleton Dance, one of the revelers has collapsed into a heap of bones.

A silk fan-leaf painting by Chinese imperial court painter Li Song tells us that dancing skeletons have long been a part of entertainment beyond the fine arts. The 13^th-century piece shows a street puppeteer entertaining children with a skeleton marionette. These string puppets would become a staple of theatrical entertainment well into the vaudeville era. Newspaper articles in 1893 described the mechanics of a papier-mâché skeleton in the stage play The Black Crook. The skeleton danced, performed “high kicks,” then popped off his limbs and head and reassembled himself, all under the control of one Mr. Newman. (Newman stated that he was inspired by seeing a man perform a dance in skeleton tights when he was a young boy.)

In the pre-film era, dancing skeletons were popular in magic lantern shows. In fact, the oldest known record of a magic lantern show is a series of sketches from 1659 depicting a skeleton removing its skull. The most popular subject for the Choreutoscope, an early moving picture device, was a dancing skeleton. In 1887, inventor and film pioneer William Friese-Greene stopped traffic, drawing a crowd that had to be dispersed by the police, when he projected a dancing skeleton in a Piccadilly shop window.

After the birth of film in 1895, it’s no surprise that filmmakers turned to the trusty skeleton for inspiration. George Méliès’ Le Manoir du Diable of 1896, the first film with supernatural elements, features a skeleton turning into a bat (though the only dancing is courtesy of a circle of witches). The first known dancing skeleton in cinema comes from American Mutoscope in 1897, and it capitalizes on the dancing marionette routine that was so popular on stage. The wired puppet in The Dancing Skeleton dances gleefully, whereupon its legs become detached and continue dancing on their own. It’s easy to see why audiences were so enchanted. The wires appear invisible, and to modern eyes, it looks like stop-motion. The footage was superimposed onto another film to create Davey Jones’ Locker in 1900, making the skeleton dance across the deck of a shipwreck. Imitators followed, like the Lumière brothers’ Le Squelette Joyeux in 1898. It’s often incorrectly cited as the first, due to its availability online, but it’s worth noting that even the Mutoscope version was hardly original, as all the early dancing skeleton films were recreating the act popularized on stage.

Skeleton dances remained popular on stage into the 1920s, though with human performers rather than marionettes. Variety and Billboard notices of the era are packed with reviews of skeleton dances performed by minstrel acts, contortionists, and showgirls in burlesque shows (one was said to have been so bawdy that it “upset New York”). At a YMCA jamboree, young boys danced in “black under-garments” painted with phosphorescent paint. You couldn’t throw a femur without hitting some type of skeleton routine.

Composer Carl Stalling had those stage acts in mind when he first proposed the Silly Symphonies idea to Walt Disney. He said in an interview that he had enjoyed skeletons in vaudeville shows, and that “ever since I was a kid I had wanted to see real skeletons dancing.” (He recalled paying a quarter for a dancing skeleton he saw in American Boy magazine that turned out to be made of jointed cardboard that “danced” at the pull of a string.) Stalling pitched the idea of skeletons dancing in a graveyard as a musical novelty where the animation would be set to the music, rather than the other way around. Disney wrote to his brother Roy in 1928 that the idea had “dandy possibilities.”

It’s no wonder Disney ultimately approved the idea, as he himself had an abiding interest in the macabre that often goes unnoticed or unremarked upon. He was fascinated by the silent Snow White he saw as a boy in 1916, later borrowing elements to create the creepy witch’s lair in his own 1937 film version. The Queen’s lair in Disney’s film is littered with human bones and features an underground river that she traverses in an obvious homage to The Phantom of the Opera. He encouraged his animators to watch German Expressionist films like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari for inspiration.

When work began on The Skeleton Dance, Ub Iwerks also looked to the past—and the local library—to find visual inspiration. He found it in Thomas Rowlandson’s illustrations for The English Dance of Death, a 19^th-century volume featuring skeletons intruding on humans in various everyday scenes. The frontispiece features a merry band of—what else?—dancing skeletons. Iwerks would enjoy animating skeletons so much that he would incorporate them into his post-Disney productions. Flip the Frog encounters dancing skeletons in 1931’s Spooks, and 1937’s Skeleton Frolic is essentially a color remake of The Skeleton Dance. (Oddly enough, both Spooks and 1935’s Old Mother Hubbard include the strutting, animated skeletal remains of roast turkeys.)

The music in the first Silly Symphony is often mistakenly thought (and sometimes reported) to be Danse Macabre, an 1874 piece by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. Based on a text by Henri Cazalis, the symphonic poem describes skeletons that rise from the grave at midnight, dance and play violins, then return below when the cock crows. The Skeleton Dance follows the same scenario, because the original concept was to use the music of Saint-Saëns, but according to Stalling, Disney couldn’t get copyright clearance. Instead, Stalling incorporated parts of Edvard Grieg’s March of the Dwarfs. The rest, he always maintained, was his own original composition. This isn’t entirely the case.

The Skeleton Dance also uses a bit of music called “Mysterioso Pizzicato,” popularly known as “The Villain’s Theme.” It’s a you’ll-know-it-when-you hear-it musical theme that was a stock signal for a villain’s appearance in silent films. The centerpiece for The Skeleton Dance, the music you hear when the skeletons actually begin to dance, is from a piece called Phantom Visions: Skeleton Dance by Ellsworth Stevenson. Published in 1920, it was also written to accompany silent films, particularly those of a spooky nature. (I happened on this sheet music while researching skeleton-themed music and was surprised to discover that it is the same music as Stalling’s score, nine years before he wrote it.) Stalling either forgot that he didn’t compose it, or he considered his arrangement unique enough to call the tune his own. As a former silent film accompanist, he no doubt played these pieces often and they became part of his staple repertoire. His years matching music to action in silent cinemas clearly informed his skill at composing for animation.

Pre-release screenings of The Skeleton Dance met with approval, most notably at the Roxy in New York. The short film was paired with the feature Pleasure Crazed, a now-lost pre-code talkie, and a performance by the Roxyettes (later rebranded as the Rockettes). The response was tremendous. Columbia was enticed by the reception to distribute the cartoon nationally, and The Skeleton Dance became the first film in history of any kind, short or feature, to be re-booked at the Roxy for a second engagement. Exhibitors World Herald congratulated the filmmakers on the re-booking and urged patrons to see it: “Those who want to see perfection in the gentle art of timing are advised to visit the Roxy during the week of August 3, the time of its next engagement. There is no plot to The Skeleton Dance. It is just a marvelous nightmare come to life and presented for your appreciation on the screen.”

The ripple effect from The Skeleton Dance’s influence began almost immediately. A young Joseph Barbera (of Hanna-Barbera) was in the audience at the Roxy. “I saw it about seventy miles from the screen, he said, “but the impact on me was tremendous, nevertheless. I saw these skeletons dancing in a row and in unison, and I asked myself: How do you do that? How do you make that happen?” Sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury wrote about it in Bradbury Speaks: “It was a five-minute lightning bolt that knocked the soul out of my eight-year-old body and vacuumed it back in, bright, clean, refurbished, hyperventilated, new.” He sat through a tepid feature twice just to see “those skeleton acrobats, catapulting their bones about a graveyard and bounding out of tombs and shoving their skulls at a special boy in the front row center.” Ray Harryhausen’s inspiration for his Jason and the Argonauts skeletons began in his childhood, when he made string marionettes in an attempt to figure out how to make skeletons fly apart like in The Skeleton Dance.

If skeleton dances were big before the debut ofthe first Silly Symphony, after 1929 they became an outright phenomenon. By 1931, the Roxyettes were doing their own skeleton dance, with precision movements, while wearing glow-in-the-dark body stockings. In Our Gang Follies of 1936, the kids perform a skeleton dance at Club Spanky, while Porky provides bone-rattle sound effects. Louis Armstrong sings “Skeleton in the Closet” in the 1936 film Pennies From Heaven accompanied by a boogying skeleton. The list continues, and it still continues today. From Bonejangles & His Bone Boys in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride to David S. Pumpkins’ backup dancers on Saturday Night Live, it seems that if you see skeletons on the screen, they’ve got to have moves.

The original review of The Skeleton Dance in Variety concluded with the terse note, “Don’t bring your children.” The irony is, of course, that children love it, perhaps more than anyone else. For all of the history it contains, it’s decidedly simple and straightforward. There are no words, no didacticism, nothing to make kids suspicious of a lesson. Parents appreciate the lack of gore, yet the film looks at death head on, and it does it with glee. It’s the glee, perhaps, that makes these skeletons so macabre. They seem to say, “We love being dead!”—and we believe them.

Ultimately, The Skeleton Dance is a convergence of all the qualities that make great art. It was created by talented people armed with impressive skill and imagination, but more than that, it connects us to the past. Yet, because its themes are eternal, it will forever be relevant in the present. It may seem at odds with the Disney ethos, but the film’s embrace of the spirit of the memento mori—the message of enjoying yourself while you can, because you and everyone you know will one day die—might be the ultimate example of Disneyfication in action. In its kneebone-slapping celebration of death, it turns the grim and inescapable into the ultimate happily ever after.[end-mark]

The post <i>The Skeleton Dance</i>: How Disney’s 1929 Short Became a Masterpiece of the Macabre appeared first on Reactor.

Books Seeds of Story

Electric Mountains, Collective Care, and Why We Didn’t Dam the Grand Canyon: Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works

A fascinating work that envisions infrastructure as a mode of communal caretaking

By Ruthanna Emrys

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Published on October 20, 2026

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Welcome to Seeds of Story, where I explore the non-fiction that inspires—or should inspire—speculative fiction. Every couple weeks, we’ll dive into a book, article, or other source of ideas that are sparking current stories, or that have untapped potential to do so. Each article will include an overview of the source(s), a review of its readability and plausibility, and highlights of the best two or three “seeds” found there.

This week, I cover Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World. It takes a topic that’s usually invisible, and turns it into a story of mutual care, collective responsibility, and the 21^st-century version of what it means to build big smart objects.

What It’s About

Infrastructure can be hard to think about. It has “charismatic megafauna”—the Hoover Dam, Grand Central Station, or a classic steam engine—but most of the time, it attracts attention only when it fails. It’s easy to procrastinate on maintenance when budgets are tight, which leads to more failures and more disappointment with the whole concept. And despite all that, our entire modern way of life depends on it.

The core of infrastructure, and the most perfectly invisible part, is social. A well is technology; shared water provision and drainage and treatment are infrastructure. A generator is technology; the electrical grid is infrastructure. It’s a choice we make when shared resources become more valuable as more people join the system, and where that value is something we decide is worth supporting as a public good. It requires standards and regulation and cooperation so that everything can hook up together. It may also support private goods, but those are only possible on the public foundation. The internet is a lot more useful now than when there were only a couple of labs on it—and a huge portion of the economy now hangs on the core public-supported creation.

Chachra considers infrastructure to be a mode of caretaking. It reflects our beliefs about what everyone in a community, or a country, should be able to access. There are towns built on libertarian principles where only those who subscribe to a firefighting service receive its protection. To instead support such a service with tax dollars (the ultimate subscription) expresses both that we care whether our neighbors’ houses burn down, and that we recognize that our own housing situation isn’t hermetically sealed-off from their fates.

In addition to embodying collective caring, infrastructure is also energy. As an engineer, Chachra thinks about both objects and activities in terms of the energy that goes into them—human or otherwise. Much of what infrastructure does is reduce the amount of human energy needed for basic survival tasks. It uses energy to make things possible, yet uses less energy than if the same goods had to be delivered in discrete units. Even a simple water infrastructure, one that shapes the downhill flow of mountain springs or meltwater, makes for communities where no one has to trudge to the nearest river every time they want to drink or wash—or where no one has to depend on high-energy, high-cost bottled water. The same gravitational energy can send dirtied water away (or better yet, treat it so that you release it clean again).

The energy to move things around can either alleviate or exacerbate inequalities. Systems that put loud generators in poor neighborhoods increase the difference in safety and comfort between socioeconomic classes. (Require that the generator go in the neighborhood that most wants the energy, and privileged neighbors will quickly come up with ways to mitigate the impact.) Early international transportation networks were created primarily to move wealth from places like India to imperial cores like England. Shipping containers were a key piece of standardization for global trade, but also let corporations shift manufacturing to places with fewer environmental and labor regulations. Infrastructure failures are “cushioned” by the most vulnerable humans, from those who walk to work during a transit strike to those who die in blackouts and heat waves.

This is, in all senses, not sustainable. The infrastructures that enable modern life were created on foundations of “acceptable” inequality, “out of sight out of mind” waste treatment, and assumptions about the relative availability of energy and matter. Chachra sees the transition to renewable energy—a necessity at this point for species survival—as an opportunity to rethink these foundations. Move from fossil fuels to solar power, supplemented by wind and hydro and geo and occasionally nuclear, and you are moving from limited, expensive energy to abundant, cheap energy. Counterweighting this expansion is the admission that the riches of the earth—anything we can dig out of the ground and process—are finite. As energy becomes cheaper, recycling becomes a more affordable approach to just about everything. “Reusing atoms,” as Chachra says, changes the whole calculus for how we design, use, and dispose of our things.

These necessary changes can also address the limitations of our existing infrastructure. Renewable energy can be more local, and more varied, and thus more available to areas where labor remains the center of subsistence-level survival. It can also more easily adapt to the vagaries of a climate-weirded world—we can build for robustness in the face of surging crises rather than straitened efficiency. “Most technologies are sold on the premise of being liberatory,” Chachra says, “but infrastructural systems have genuinely demonstrated that they are, and they have at least the potential to provide that freedom in an equitable way.”

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How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World

Deb Chachra

Buy Book

How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World

Deb Chachra

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I’m absolutely not an engineer, but I’m fascinated by infrastructure. One of the first things I did when I got to DC was to tour the local water treatment system—both the modern multi-stage installation, and the old Olmsted sand filtration towers. My clippings are full of articles on things like the machine shop that makes all the traffic signs for New York City. Chachra hits on why I get so excited by the unglamorous work of repairing pipes and coordinating trains: all the social connections and quiet care implicit in that overtly physical work. But it’s also the sense of invisibility, if not precisely secrecy. To appreciate this stuff is to explore the hidden depths of civilized life.

Out of all the readings I’ve done, Chachra’s book is the only one that truly appreciates the upside of legibility. Scott is right about its authoritarian risks, and Franklin is right about the costs to artisan creative pleasure. But standardization and measurement also allow us to care for each other at scale. You can’t have a working electric grid—and therefore the bandwidth that a washing machine offers for more welcome or rewarding activities—on purely artisan labor, or without a regular crew of inspectors checking that everything is safe. 

In general, Chachra is both open-eyed about the mixed blessings of her beloved systems, and practically hopeful about making them less mixed. I’ve read a lot about sustainability; she’s ready to talk about the literal nuts and bolts involved, and where the energy and matter for constructing those nuts and bolts should come from.

She’s also full of charismatic megafaunal stories. She takes us to her favorite power plant, a hydro installation in Wales known as “Electric Mountain.” It uses pumped water storage to generate energy by pouring an artificial waterfall through the turbines inside Europe’s biggest cavern, “big enough to comfortably house St. Paul’s Cathedral,” using the energy from baseload generators to return water to the upper reservoir at times of low demand.

Elsewhere in the book, she compares the support we get from infrastructure to Isaac Newton’s servants, who ensured that he had light and heat for his work. She tracks British domination of India through mapping and railroad construction and telegraph cables. She explains how the exact timing of London’s “Great Stink” versus the development of germ theory affected the design of mixed sanitary and stormwater runoff sewers.

Understanding infrastructure is one excellent way to punch through the fictions of individualist self-sufficiency. Their whole point is that there are things we can do together, that we can’t do separately—and that as individuals, we have limited control over the systems on which we depend. What infrastructure makes possible often becomes mandatory, capability translating into requirement. “Bike to Work Day” is a lot more effective when it involves pushing for better bike lanes—there are reasons why everyone in the Netherlands does it without being prodded, while Americans are usually stuck in traffic.

Chachra notes that the concept of an individual “carbon footprint” began as a BP ad campaign. It was meant to distract from the big companies and systems that limit the degree to which we can reduce that footprint. If your local energy comes from solar and hydro, your footprint will be low even if you use ten times the energy of someone whose grid depends on burning coal: “It’s a stellar example of the truism that what all advertising sells, regardless of the product on offer, is insecurity and discontent.”

My loudest cheer, however, was in response to Chachra’s discussion of efficiency versus robustness as a core infrastructural value. Like me, she side-eyes the whole idea of optimization, which often translates directly to fragility. These big, widely-used and widely-needed systems are ideally designed for the worst problems they will need to face. That means that on days free of disasters, they’ll have slack. Slack is not compatible with the maximum possible profit, and there will always be pressure to avoid it. Conversely, anything that isn’t being used to the point of burnout—say, an employee with occasional downtime—is unacceptably inefficient. Chachra’s students study a serious proposal to dam the Grand Canyon for hydropower, a plan that met with understandable but difficult-to-quantify pushback: “To capitalism, sustainability always looks like underutilization. But the plan to dam the Grand Canyon was on the syllabus so the students could see the limitations of only doing the cost-benefit analysis.”

The Best Seeds for Speculative Stories

Describing her desired futures of better infrastructure and increased equitable comfort, Chachra admits that “these stories don’t exactly lend themselves to exciting, big-budget, CGI-loaded movies.” But they do, absolutely, lend themselves to good writing.

Big Smart Objects. Thinking about how our infrastructure is shaped by social pressures, by inequities, and by common wisdom that may change tomorrow, is good practice for worldbuilding future—or alien—megafaunal infrastructure. As Chachra notes, “The infrastructural systems that are in use shape the technologies that are developed, and vice versa.” Mysterious monoliths might reflect the romantic long-term thinking of Hoover Dam’s 20,000-year axial precession calendar, the not-quite-right disease theories of London’s sewage system, or the budget constraints of the DC Metro. 

The Telegraphs Threw Off Sparks. In 1859, a massive solar flare lit up the sky with auroras and literally shocked telegraph operators. At the time, it was startling; with our modern dependence on electrical systems a similar event might be catastrophic. Planners take the possibility of major solar storms seriously, and have worked to harden systems, create backup options, and provide forecasts for preparation. Chachra quotes Will Durrant: “Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.” What natural events, invisible or interesting now, might be massively destructive to future infrastructures? Is there something buried in string theory that could break down your interstellar civilization’s wormhole network? And if so, who’s planning to mitigate the damage?

New Growth: What Else to Read

Talking about the importance of those little colored markers that keep workers from breaking into gas lines, Chachra mentions the International Utility Locate Rodeo, which frankly sounds kind of awesome. It’s hard to resist an unfamiliar kind of nerdery!

Chachra’s discussion of energy abundance feeds into Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s more recent Abundance, a call for sustainable futures that involve better rather than worse quality of life. William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things imagines reworking the “matter” side of Chachra’s “matter and energy” dichotomy; it’s the first thing my boss handed me at the Environmental Protection Agency. Chachra also frequency cites the frameworks of abolitionist Mariame Kaba.

For more infrastructural goodness, Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt’s The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design is great. Chachra similarly recommends the Places Journal. Plus she brings up Vaclav Smil’s Energy and Civilization: A History in the same breath as Seeing Like a State.

There are a lot of good examples of infrastructural SF in the solarpunk world. Anthologies like Sunvault and Bright Green Futures consider exactly the sort of possible futures imagined at the end of How Infrastructure Works. Ann Leckie’s recent Radiant Star is fundamentally about infrastructural failure, and the harms done when even the most exploitative imperial network collapses. John M. Ford’s Aspects is a celebration of trains, and Growing Up Weightless also takes its infrastructure seriously.

And now, please use the gloriously frustrating infrastructure of the internet to share your thoughts below![end-mark]

The post Electric Mountains, Collective Care, and Why We Didn’t Dam the Grand Canyon: Deb Chachra’s <i>How Infrastructure Works</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Short Fiction Spotlight

Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: September 2026

Ten of the best speculative stories from September — including some written in non-traditional formats.

By Alex Brown

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Published on October 20, 2026

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Last month I seemed to have veered toward stories written in non-traditional formats. Several of the pieces here are lists, instructions, or play with their narrative structure in other creative ways. I also found a few new-to-me authors and one new-to-me publication, which is always a welcome surprise. I hope you enjoy my ten favorite short science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories that I read in September.

“Bahiyyah And the Brass Lamp” by Rozalija Grace

(Luna Station Quarterly — September 2026; issue 67) Rozalija Grace’s story feels like a folk tale. Bahiyyah, the daughter of a wealthy doctor, travels the world learning everything she can. Over winter, she stays home to work on her “magnum opus,” a biography of the warrior queen Šamši. When her lamp breaks, she buys an antique one from a local shop. She doesn’t expect to find a scorpion inside, much less that the scorpion is really a jinniyya named Shaulah. Their romance isn’t an easy one, but it’s beautifully told.

“Boys of Teeth, Men of Slime” by Benjamin Larned

(Salon Sinister — June 2026; issue 2) I remember hearing about this magazine way back before it published its first issue, but somehow it slipped off my radar. I’m so glad I came across this summer issue. This publication focuses on “documenting the 2Slgbtqia+ experience through horror,” and Benjamin Larned’s piece is the perfect encapsulation of that ethos. High school student Tyrell is pulled into a group of boys who run wild across Los Angeles at night. One of their excursions takes them up to the Griffiths Observatory where they encounter predatory men. This story explores the tension that queer people often experience, of so desperately needing community that you seek it in the worst places. It also digs into the ferocity of toxic masculinity and the patriarchy but from the perspective of a queer boy.

“Children of Calliope” by Seanan McGuire

(Uncanny Magazine — September/October 2026; issue 72) When I first started reading this piece, I thought I’d made a mistake and was reading a piece of nonfiction instead of a short story. But no, this is definitely speculative, but sometimes it veers so close to reality that it can be hard to tell the difference. Written like an essay, this recounts the recent history of a near future where book bans gained too much traction and crumbled everything around them. Seanan McGuire gets at the heart of book bans, that they aren’t about the books themselves but about the ideas those books generate and the options they provide their readers. She also touches on how well-meaning liberals can often make a situation worse by playing the same game as bigots instead of resisting.

“Growing Life” by Annie ZH Sun

(PseudoPod — September 11, 2026; 1047) Lucy, a 9-year-old girl, starts seeing strange cracks in things—the ground, her dinner plate, her mother’s headstone. From those cracks emerge things that remind her of her late mother. As the story unfolds and the cracks appear in more and more places, we learn how her mother died and what her father had to do with it. Then something worse than memories begins to crawl out of those gaping cracks. Get ready for some body horror and vengeful women.

“A Guide on How to Repay Your Vow to the Deity of Many Faces” by Oyedotun Damilola Muees

(Lightspeed Magazine — September 2026; issue 196) This guide offers fourteen steps for appeasing the god that is protecting a child. The widower for whom this guide was written must take over the reverence tasks his late wife had been doing in exchange for the health of their daughter. In a way, it’s also a commentary on all of the unacknowledged labor that mothers and wives put into their families and homes. The mother of this story had given so much of herself, and the husband had no clue. Now he must take over, but the hardest parts have already been done by her.

“Memoirs of the Spontaneous Combustion Marching Band” by Jamie Lackey

(Flashpoint SF — August 2026; issue 4) “Sometimes you just want to be a part of something. Something bigger than yourself, something that matters. Even if everyone tells you that it’s an idiotic, dangerous idea. Even if they’re right.” The narrator recounts how they chose to join their school’s marching band despite the threats of spontaneous combustion and their parents’ disapproval. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I think this is also a metaphor for coming out as queer. I hear a lot from parents that they worry about their kids being queer because the world will be so much harder for them, but that is a risk we as queer people have to take in order to be out and free. Yes, there are threats, but the alternative of giving up who you are and bottling yourself up is just as painful. 

“One Floor, One Phoenix” by Crystal Koo

(OTHERSIDE — September 2026; issue 3) Wing, a lonely young woman uncomfortable not only in her own body but in how the girls she’s attracted to perceive her, discovers the Horsepaint Chemicals Building on the Kwun Tong waterfront in Hong Kong. Specifically, she discovers a device inside Unit 1805 that changes her life. The device provides her dream girl. Again and again, as Wing fails each relationship, she gets a new woman or more time with the one she has. This is a challenging story about a woman who refuses to learn her lesson, and the emotional carnage in her wake. 

“A Rényú-Hunter’s Guide to Playing Go Fish” by Adeline Wong

(Translunar Travelers Lounge — August 2026; issue 15) The second guide story on this list is instructions on how to capture a rényú, a fish-person from Chinese folklore. Jess Yifei takes her friend (and crush) Chloe out into the San Francisco Bay on a skiff launched from her family’s private berth in Marina Bay. Most of the guide is dedicated to an extended and convoluted game of Go Fish, but Adeline Wong does a masterful job in revealing enough tidbits about Jess and Chloe that by the end of it we understand why she wanted to capture a rényú and what she was willing to risk.

“Salt Water in Their Veins” by Sam Baxter

(The Future Fire — September 2026; issue 2026.77) “Sunset is a town on the southernmost coast of New Jersey, and it is sinking into the sea.” Anna Wright is an old woman who has spent most of her life in Sunset. She’s heard all the tales of the Deep Ones, and she knows first hand the difference between fact and fiction. Her daughter has fled Sunset and her ancestry, so now it’s up to Anna to teach her granddaughters about their heritage and the choice they both must make. It’s a story made bittersweet by the climate crisis. As I write this, houses and roads along the coast of Southern California are being washed away by El Niño and Tropical Storm Rachel. It’s hard when the speculative becomes reality.

“To Carry the Future” by Aishatu Ado

(Augur — September 2026; 9.1) “The synthetic surrogate carrying my child arrived in November 2053, her face an algorithm’s best guess at mine.” Whoa, what an opening sentence! Aishatu Ado wrote this story as a literature review of a near-future technology for robot surrogates. The human mother, known here as the Intended Mother, has a “surrogate unit” created that looks uncannily like her. The Intended Mother had had several miscarriages before turning to Model EVA-247, and the writer of this lit review connects her experiences to abíkú children of Yoruba cosmology. This phenomenon spreads to the surrogate units themselves, and they begin to behave in unexpected ways. It’s an emotionally heavy story that pulled me in from the first line.[end-mark]

The post Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: September 2026 appeared first on Reactor.

Column SFF Bestiary

One Hundred Years of Cattitude: Salem and Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Part house pet, part cursed warlock…

By Judith Tarr

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Published on October 19, 2026

Credit: ABC / Viacom Productions

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Credit: ABC / Viacom Productions

Sabrina the teen witch was born in comics, sharing a universe with Archie and the gang in Riverdale. She moved on to television and films, notably the series that began in 1996 and ran until 2003, starring Melissa Joan Hart and featuring her cat companion (because what’s a witch without her cat?). Salem in the comics is a ginger tabby and he doesn’t speak, but Salem in the TV series is a whole mood. In his way he is the series.

TV-Salem is the classic witch’s familiar. He’s a black cat, he’s a key player in every episode, and he never fails to express his opinion in eloquent human speech. He’s one of her mentors, a guide to the practice of witchcraft as spelled out in the great tome, The Discovery of Magic, and he’s a master of the snarky one-liner.

When we meet him in the pilot, he’s the family cat, keeping Sabrina and her two aunts company while she celebrates her sixteenth birthday plus her first day at a new school. When her aunts inform her that she’s a witch and her powers have been activated, she refuses to believe it. As she heads off to school, she says to herself, “My aunts try hard, but you have to admit they’re pretty weird.”

To which Salem replies, “You have no idea.”

Sabrina doesn’t hear that, but later in the day, he speaks to her directly. She has the classic reaction: “Did the cat just talk?”

He did indeed. But there’s a twist. Salem was not born a cat. He’s a witch like Sabrina, he’s hundreds of years old, and he’s been sentenced to a hundred years in cat form for acting out a childhood fantasy. He tried to take over the world.

He’s still trying. How can he not?

It would have been glorious. Me as the firm but just emperor of earth. Trust me—being a house pet wasn’t even plan B.

And yet here he is. In between attempts to rule everything, he’s one of Sabrina’s mainstays as she navigates the process of learning witchcraft. He’s her confidant as well as her guide, and above all, he’s her friend.

This is a constant in the black-cat-and-magic-user genre. A boy and his dog is a much-loved trope; so is a girl and her cat. Ordinary humans generally can’t handle the reality of witches and magic. Other witches have their own, sometimes inimical agendas. The cat-friend, the familiar, is the one person (or person-slash-cat) the witch can rely on to be there when she needs him.

Or mostly. She can depend on him to offer trenchant commentary, and if she makes mistakes, he’s usually the first to rub her nose in it.

Salem is an interesting combination of cat and warlock. He has a fascination with cat toys and loves fishy snacks, but he never forgets where he started. He frequently complains about being a house pet. He can’t dance, he laments; he can’t play squash. On the other hand, he’s highly portable and he gets to sleep twenty hours a day.

Part of his punishment for acting out his dreams of domination is that while he’s in cat form he has no powers. That doesn’t slow him down much. Sabrina and her aunts can be prevailed on to give him a zap here and there. He’s still a part of the Other Realm, and he knows The Discovery of Magic by heart, which is useful when Sabrina needs to find a spell in a hurry.

The TV series ran into the same issue other live-action shows have had with feline actors. Cats, as Next Generation proved before Sabrina, are not the easiest animals to train. Sabrina tackled the problem by using multiple cats for different moods, moves, and tricks—but then there was the fact that this cat had to talk.

The solution was technology. Talking Salem is an animatronic cat. He moves various parts of his body, especially the head and tail, and his mouth opens and closes as a voice actor (usually Nick Bakay) delivers his lines. He’s remarkably expressive, though there’s a visible difference between talking Salem and live-cat-running-around Salem.

It’s a little ironic that Star Trek, the show that’s all about technology, cast real cats in the ever-changing role of Spot. Sabrina, the fantasy about witches and magic, features a robot cat. Then again, the whole point of Spot is that he (she) is the android Data’s insight into friendship with organic beings. A robot Spot, however cleverly designed, would challenge viewers’ suspension of disbelief.

Spot’s job is to be a cat. Specifically non-sapient, doing cat things, interacting with sapients as a cat will. Salem plays a much larger role, starting with the fact that he’s fully sapient. Above all, he talks.

Speech for Salem, as with other witches’ familiars we’ve seen, is extremely important. Humans can only understand him if a witch casts a spell—that’s a staple of the talking-animal genre, and it features in various episodes with various complications and consequences.

The ability to speak makes up to a degree for the suppression of his magic. Maybe he can’t cast a spell, but he can tell someone else how to do it. And he can make his feelings known early, often, loudly, and at length.[end-mark]

The post One Hundred Years of Cattitude: Salem and <i>Sabrina the Teenage Witch</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books cover reveals

Revealing House of Salt by Shay Kauwe

A gothic horror novel arriving August 2027

By Reactor

|

Published on October 20, 2026

Photo credit: Kawena Lei

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Photo credit: Kawena Lei

We’re thrilled to share the cover of House of Salt by Shay Kauwe, a gothic novel set in Hawai’i—available August 3, 2027 from Saga Press/Simon & Schuster.

Buy the Book

House of Salt

Shay Kauwe

Buy Book

House of Salt

Shay Kauwe

Buy this book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble
• iBooks
• IndieBound
• Target

Shay Kauwe is a speculative fiction author from Hawaiʻi. She grew up in Waimānalo, O’ahu and taught for several years in Waiʻanae. Shay holds a master’s degree in education and has received the Empowering ʻŌiwi Leadership Award for her work in storytelling and the Author Under 35 Award by the Honolulu Book Awards. Her debut, The Killing Spell, is the first traditionally published adult fantasy novel by a Native Hawaiian author.

The post Revealing <i>House of Salt</i> by Shay Kauwe appeared first on Reactor.

Books Read Receipts

Reactor’s Doing a Podcast! Introducing Read Receipts

A unique perspective on contemporary genre fiction — launching Oct 28th!

By Reactor

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Published on October 21, 2026

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Hello, Reactor Readers!

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our first podcast, Read Receipts, a weekly show about speculative fiction, genre, and nerd culture. Hosted by Reactor’s Senior Books Editor Christina Orlando, Read Receipts will share episodes starting on Wednesday, October 28, covering the latest conversations about science fiction, fantasy, horror, and more.

The highlight of the show are our monthly author roundtable discussions—by gathering some of the best and brightest writers of contemporary SFF for a lively group discussion around a common theme, trope, or subgenre each month, Read Receipts will give listeners a unique perspective on contemporary genre fiction. We’ll also be doing themed book clubs, media recommendations with the Reactor staff, and more.

Upcoming episodes will cover such topics as: 

• Lady knights, sword lesbians, and gender in medieval-inspired fantasy 
• The resurgence of dystopian speculative fiction, and why it matters now
• Contemporary gothic horror, ghosts, and generational trauma from a non-Eurocentric perspective

“You, dear reader listener, are the lucky one here,” says Reactor Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Chris Lough. “Now you get to hear the funniest and most galaxy-brained takes on genre literature that were—until now!—locked away in Reactor’s Slack threads and editorial meetings. Christina Orlando is very good at this and I am running out of ways to say that I’m excited to see this podcast finally out in the world.” 

Read Receipts host Christina Orlando continues, “Talking about books with friends is one of life’s greatest joys, and that’s exactly what I wanted this podcast to feel like. And fortunately all my friends are nerds, writers, and critics, so we can really dig into it together. With the help of audio producer Gaby Iori, who has a background in book publishing, Read Receipts feels like a natural extension of what Reactor does best—being enthusiastic and deeply, wonderfully weird about SFF.” 

Look for Read Receipts on October 28

Spotify | YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Reactor

Note: The Apple Podcast link is running behind, apparently! We’ll update as soon as we get the link.

Follow the Podcast

Bluesky | TikTok | Instagram | Facebook | Threads

The post Reactor’s Doing a Podcast! Introducing Read Receipts appeared first on Reactor.