Review of The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey

2024's The Mercy of Gods introduced readers to a new space opera series from James S.A. Corey, the pen name of writer duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Where their prior series The Expanse focused on a human war in the solar system, the new series, The Captives War, looked to the universe beyond and the myriad of alien life possible there. Humans just one of hundreds of sentient species, in The Mercy of Gods they were taken as slaves by an alpha lobster race called the Carryx. The second book in the series, The Faith of Beasts (2026), looks to tell the next chapter in humanity's attempt to escape captivity.

The Faith of Beasts picks up where The Mercy of Gods leaves off. It follows the surviving members of the team who have been tasked with scientific research in support of the Carryx's galactic war. At the start of the novel, the team are split into groups, sent to separate locations or planets, and given new research goals. They are also tasked with growing the human population, a task the group sets about doing, not through regular Friday-night orgies, rather embryos developed in artificial womb sacs. Power dynamics within the human moiety, let alone the universe at large, are put to strong test by the new research tasks, complicating the scientists' secret plans to overthrow the Carryx.

Cardboard Corner: Review of Etherstone

The Dark Crystal is a 1982 film for families and children. Jim Henson, creator of Sesame Street, brought his muppet-style to a dark fantasy world, spent a good chunk of money on puppetry and set pieces, and told a harrowing tale that will have even the most hardened adult squirming with emotion. One of the reasons for this is the film's baddies, the skeksis, anthropomorphized vultures who cackle and gloat while competing among themselves to suck the souls from the film's elfen heroes. The 2025 board game Etherstone gives me skeksis vibes. <cue cackling glee>

Both strategic and tactical, Etherstone is an engine building game for 2-4 players that is not multi-player solitaire. There is a small but important degree of interaction that forces players to pay attention to game-state as a whole. How it plays is, after a one-time card draft, players take turns drafting dice, collecting etherstones, playing cards to their engine, triggering card effects, and attacking NPCs, all in an effort to build the best points engine. The player with the most points when there are no more points in the pool, wins.

Review of Nonesuch by Francis Spufford

The horrors of WWI, while brought home to Britain in body bags, nevertheless occurred on continental ground. The country remained almost entirely intact, the artillery blasts and machine gun fire happening in France, Belgium, and other places. It was WWII that brought war home. In an effort to subdue the Brits, Hitler launched unending waves of attacks—rockets, bombs, and fighter jets. Those who survived were inevitably faced with soul searching possible only when mortality is at stake. In dynamic, colorful, dramatic, and comedic fashion, Francis Spufford's Nonesuch (2026) digs into the life of one such mortal.

Nonesuch is the story of Iris Hawkins, her romantic adventures as Britain emerges from the Great Depression, and the arrival of Hitler's bombers over London rooftops. She's a free-spirited young woman who enjoys a night out (or seven) with handsome young men, typing her way through a menial clerk's job at a stockbroker's by day. But her routine takes a turn when she has an encounter with the uncanny after a one-night stand. And then everyone's lives in London take a turn when the luftwaffe start dropping bombs.

Culture Commentary: What You Wanted: The Mandalorian & Grogu

Let's do it. Let's fight the power. Let's break the modern media mold. Let's give a reasonable, balanced opinion. The Mandalorian & Grogu is a good Star Wars movie with caveats.

Depending which corners of the web you haunt, your algorithms will attempt to feed you media based on other media you've consumed prior (with a strong dose of sponsorship). If you're not careful, I mean really careful, this can quickly swing to one extreme or another. Love-love-love! Hate-hate-hate! Love-hate-love-hate.... And on and on spins the media monster we've built. Mandalorian is crap! It's great! Disney is doomed! Star Wars is back! The truth often lies in the middle, and the film is no exception.

Review of The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner

Cli-fi has slowly and unsteadily become a sub-genre of science fiction. Works have appeared here and there—Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife, Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140, Matt Bell's Appleseed, Lily Brooks-Dalton's The Light Pirate, and Ned Beauman's Venomous Lumpsucker among them, all with varying visions of nature's power in relation to human life. Whether they know it or not, most of these visions owe a debt of gratitude to the granddaddy of all the environmental novels, The Sheep Look Up (1972) by John Brunner.

If something could go wrong for humanity in The Sheep Look Up, it has. A Greta Thunberg wet dream, pollution chokes cities, forcing people to wear masks in public. Epidemics of food poisoning, accidental and intentional, occur with the randomness of clouds. Potable water doesn't exist anymore save through treatment. Viruses and infections sweep through society like granny's Saturday morning broom. Oily sludge covers coastal and inland waters. Agricultural practices have denuded prairies, forming dustlands. It's bad.

Review of The Ends of the Earth by Lucius Shepard

What a world the West has woven. Technology, with its mantra of making life easier, has in fact made our lives more busy and inundated us with information, so much so that our lives are ever more consumed by the present. It hurts my heart clicking on links to 'Best SF of All Time”, or “Top 100 Fantasy Ever” and seeing that 75% of the books were published after 2000. The efforts of so many brilliant writers are invisibly crumbling in the public eye. Not quite vanished but on the verge is Lucius Shepard. Once one of the absolute titans of fantastika in (semi) short form, few if any of the younguns have even heard his name. The Ends of the Earth (1991) may just well be the best collection he produced, and if not, at least has several horses in the race. Beyond himself, the collection likewise contains some of the tip-top best short stories to come out of the late 20th century.

The collection kicks off with the title story “The Ends of the Earth”. A down-on-his-luck NY writer tries to get away from it all in Guatemala. He meets an alluring young French woman in a lonely tourist town, but has his advances blocked by a weed dealer who is trying to translate a native board game he found into English. The writer's advances eventually go too far, and the small town is turned on its fantastical head. Out of all the stories to choose to title the collection after, I'm lost why this is the one. It's a loosely developed, forced concept with random “fantasy” coming alive in a form that is intended to be horrific but doesn't go beyond cheap 80s slasher. If the idea was to ease readers in, one toe at a time, then fair enough. Because...