Mailshine - TV & Books

TV & Books #12

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #12

r/fantasy

If authors "covered" other novels like artists cover songs, what would be the most fun fantasy cover?

721 comments • reddit.com

I saw this elsewhere, so not my idea, but I thought it would be fun to do here!

I think Fourth Wing by Naomi Novik would be fun. Or for something more wacky, The Hunger Games by Douglas Adams.
What fantasy city actually feels like it existed before the main character arrived?

413 comments • reddit.com

Something I’ve started noticing in fantasy is how many cities technically have thousands of years of history, but still feel like they spawned five minutes before the protagonist walked through the gate. You get an ancient palace, a thieves’ district, three taverns and maybe a statue of some dead king. People are supposedly born there, work there, complain about taxes, raise kids, get old, have local grudges and weird traditions, but none of that really exists unless the plot needs it. I love the opposite. Cities where you get the feeling everyone already had plans that morning before the hero showed up. Maybe there’s a festival nobody bothers explaining because every local obviously knows it. A neighborhood has an insulting nickname from some event 80 years ago. Shopkeepers argue about a bridge renovation. People care about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the coming apocalypse. Discworld does this really well for me, especially Ankh Morpork. I could …
Farseer Trilogy: Everyone is stupid, an asshole, or both.

503 comments • reddit.com

Starting book 2, Royal Assassin, and everyone is terrible and getting worse. Everyone talks over, past, and around each other to the point where I don’t understand how the kingdom has functioned as long as it has. This series so far contains some of my least favorite tropes, but done so well I can’t stop reading. Highly recommend if you enjoy banging your head against a brick wall until you’re as dumb as Fitz.

Update: Chade is the biggest, stupidest idiot out of all of them, it’s no wonder his apprentice is a big, stupid idiot.
Elisabeth Wheatley, author of 'Tears of the Wolf' and 'Daindreth's Assassin' is removing all the sex from her books

424 comments • reddit.com

Elisabeth Wheatley, a pretty well-known YouTuber and self-published fantasy author has had a change of heart regarding the steamy aspects of her books. She explains in her video that now that she’s a mother, she doesn’t feel that smut suits her anymore, though you should hear her own reasoning yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYD-EYEATEI&t=8s

I don’t have a real dog in this race. I was looking forward to reading her viking books because they sounded cool, and I don’t even really care whether sex in a book is explicit or fade-to-black. But I think the fact that she’s making the original versions of her book unavailable after the 1st of September to be pretty shady. People who already own the digital versions of the book can keep theirs, which is good. But if you have a strong preference for sexy books, or if you disapprove of censorship and want the authentic version, you’ve gotta buy it now. Right now!

You’ve got 80-hours to buy …
People are confused about what plagiarism is

180 comments • reddit.com

In a different post here which I’m not going to link, as I really would prefer not to make this another circle-jerk about that particular alleged plagiarism, it became clear to me that a lot of commenters do not understand what plagiarism is.

The thing is, ideas are not protected by copyright, and plot points are ideas. That means copying plot points is not plagiarism. I could write a novel about sparkling vampires that fall in love with a plain girl, and I would not be guilty of plagiarism. In that hypothetical novel, there could be a bunch of plot elements reminiscent of Twilight and it would still not be plagiarism.

What’s protected is the expression, not the ideas. So I could have the same premise, the same tropes, the same character archetypes, the same story beats, the same type of setting, and it still wouldn’t be plagiarism.

What is protected is the actual wording, and the unique creative execution. So if I take paragraphs and descriptions from Twilight, …
Books/Series where either magic is dangerous or takes a toll on its user.

353 comments • reddit.com

I’m looking specifically for fantasy, not necessarily gritty or dark, in which magic is regularly used by its PoV characters but is either dangerous to its user and/or takes a toll on the physical/mental health of its user. Therefore, magic isn’t seen a skeleton key for every obstacle the character faces but a costly tool requiring consideration before its use.

I’ve included some examples from previous reading and some non-examples which come close in some respects to what I desire, but fail to meet some crucial descriptor.

Examples: Farseer Trilogy >!(Skill is addictive and can lead to other addictions in order to fuel its prolonged use. Antagonistic skilled agents can attempt to drain a user if they overexpose themselves.)!<

A Wizard of Earthsea >!(Sparrowhawk’s hubris in overusing his power leads him for most of the book to live in fear of its consequences.)!<

The First Law Trilogy >!(until a certain point Bayaz appears to be physically …

r/books

Donations to Imagination Library requested in lieu of flowers for Dolly Parton

92 comments • wjhl.com
Dolly Parton, country star and philanthropist who founded the book gifting program Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, dies aged 80

175 comments • theguardian.com
AI-Generated Children's Stories Contain Bizarre Patterns

364 comments • futurism.com
'Shocking' book about Putin's private life wins French literary prize

160 comments • rfi.fr
Full list: Here are the books an advocacy group wants pulled from Texas school libraries

360 comments • khou.com

It is remarkable to me that conservative groups not only want to censor books in public schools in Texas but also in public libraries.
John Grisham warns that publishers could get AI to write novels instead of paying authors as they were "worried" about a 30-year decline in the number of books Americans were reading

372 comments • telegraph.co.uk

r/printsf

Just a big thank you.

13 comments • reddit.com

I’m an old bloke who’s been reading SciFi for over 50 years now.

The ‘big thank you’ is to all you lovely redditors who put me on to Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series. I’m now on Ancillary Mercy and loving everything about the series so far. Cheers m’dears.
'If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light' is so refreshing

56 comments • reddit.com

I recently read this short story collection by the Korean author Kim Choyeop. I didn’t have any high hopes going into it, but I found it to be such a nice and refreshing read.

I’ve been a long-time science fiction reader, but I can’t say that I have read any female sci-fi authors other than Ursula Le Guin. Many sci-fi stories I’ve read have really good female characters, but this is the first time that I truly felt like I recognize the female side of myself in a sci-fi story. Kim Choyeop’s female characters think about their relationships with their mothers and grandmothers (which is so important for Asian women), about how they connect to themselves and others, about their roles in the society - and all presented in a very soft and nuanced way.

These stories don’t have spectacular, flashy sci-fi concepts or action scenes, don’t have deep mysteries or haunting horrors. Each story has maybe just a little bit of sci-fi concept behind it, but …
Books told from an alien PoV, in which humanity is depicted as mysterious and enigmatic forerunners

77 comments • reddit.com

or other forms of media, since this is a rare topic
Who Are the Deepest Characters in Science Fiction Literature?

200 comments • reddit.com

Every time I read a science fiction novel, I realize more and more how much I love works with deeply developed, psychologically complex characters. Who are your favorite characters in science fiction literature, the ones you consider the most deeply written and psychologically explored, and the ones you’ve empathized with or truly felt you understood?
What are your top 5 space operas of all time?

87 comments • reddit.com

I’m looking for some great space opera recommendations and I’d love to hear what your personal top 5 is.

Edit: Honestly, there seems to be a bit of confusion about what exactly counts as space opera, and what does and doesn’t fall under the genre. From my perspective, and based on what I enjoy, space opera is science fiction on a more galactic scale, featuring various civilizations, races, and species across the galaxy that interact with one another in some way. Whether it’s a standalone book or a series doesn’t matter to me.
The Bobiverse made me want more deeply explored Extended Mind concepts

53 comments • reddit.com

I’m currently reading the first Bobiverse book by Dennis E. Taylor, and I’m fascinated and disappointed at the same time. The concept is very interesting: the protagonist is a von Neumann probe (a self replicating spacecraft) controlled by the consciousness of a former human, and whenever a new probe is manufactured, that consciousness is copied into it as well. I also find it interesting how the body is no longer a human body, but instead the consciousness extends itself across the spaceship and all its machines, sensors and drones.

Unfortunately these concepts are only explored very superficially and underdeveloped. you rarely get the feeling of the mind actually being extended, instead, he mostly just describes one event after another. The clones only scratch the surface of interesting constellations and philosophical questions.

The book has other major shortcomings and is written rather amateurish. For example: extraterrestrial lifeforms are always very similar to Earth’s …

r/television

Dolly Parton, Queen of Country Music, Dies at 80

914 comments • variety.com
'Transformers' Voice Actor Peter Cullen Dead at 85

779 comments • tmz.com
F1 viewership has plunged since move from ESPN to Apple TV

1243 comments • usatoday.com
Actor Tim Curry has passed away at age 80

513 comments • the-independent.com
Taylor Sheridan Accused of Stealing ‘Yellowstone’ From 2016 Pitch in Copyright Lawsuit

750 comments • variety.com

In the court documents, obtained by Variety, Salkin alleges that she pitched her own sprawling Western drama, “Sovereign Nation,” to Sheridan’s management company, Elevate Entertainment, in 2016, only to be told: “Taylor thanks you very much for your interest. Unfortunately, he’s unavailable for TV projects.” The suit then claims that “Yellowstone” was greenlit at Paramount “within months” of her rejection.

“Sheridan, however, was not ‘unavailable for TV projects,’” the suit reads, “Instead, he and others used Salkin’s copyrighted works to develop Yellowstone. On June 20, 2018, Paramount Network aired its first episode.”

The lawsuit lists several “specific expressive choices” that “Yellowstone” allegedly lifted from Salkin’s “Sovereign Nation.” Those elements, the suit states, include “a tribal casino functioning as the institutional center of political and development power; a signature confrontation staged in the tribal chairman’s casino office over expansion beyond reservation …
Kit Harington Joins ‘Harry Potter’ Season 2 As Gilderoy Lockhart In Recasting, Reprising Voice Role

1868 comments • deadline.com

r/movies

Dolly Parton, Queen of Country Music, Dies at 80

1812 comments • variety.com
Actor Tim Curry Dead at 80: TMZ

4324 comments • tmz.com
Chris Hansen Buys Ads Before Every Screening of A24’s ‘Primetime’

2428 comments • hollywoodreporter.com
'Transformers' Voice Actor Peter Cullen Dead at 85

1409 comments • tmz.com
First Image of Sam Richardson in ‘Into the Sky’ - A man desperately tries to reconnect with his estranged wife, but keeps getting abducted by aliens

587 comments • i.redd.it
James Gunn’s ‘Man of Tomorrow’ Wraps Filming

946 comments • movieweb.com

TV & Books #11

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #11

r/fantasy

Dungeon Crawler Carl – set your expectations right before reading

1202 comments • reddit.com
This should probably be general advice for any book, but the problem with hype is that it breeds more hype and overenthusiastic fans tend to exaggerate how good a book is and push it on everyone.

I see so many people either promoting the series as the best thing ever or loudly complaining it must be bad because THEY didn’t personally enjoy it. Along with posts from people who clearly believe than fantasy can only be good if it has fancy, elaborate prose and anyone who reads a book series like DCC must be an idiot who never reads.

There’s also the claim that only gamer dudes will enjoy it, or teen boys (seriously, don’t gift this series to kids, it’s a dark series meant for adults). You don’t need to be a gamer, or even a guy to like this. But I’d say there’s a few other things you might need to enjoy to figure out if Dungeon Crawler Carl is for you:
- Liking absurdist, dark and often crude humor
- Having a fondness for cats
- Being okay with a game-style setting that includes lots …
Janny Wurts Shares 30 Forgotten Fantasy Books

102 comments • youtube.com

Here’s part two, where she shares 40 more books.

I’ve listened to the whole video, and my TBR has expanded again. I really liked her pitch for all the books and have already added them to my TBR.

Edit: Thank you, Mournelithe, for adding the books in the comment.
I, too, have added the books mentioned in the two videos, but it would be good to hear her pitch for each book. She said she has many more books she would like to recommend and will be making one more video about them in the near future.

Part - 1

VOYAGER IN NIGHT by C. J. Cherryh
THE FACE IN THE FROST by John Bellairs
THE COLDFIRE TRILOGY by C. S. Friedman
RIDER AT THE GATE by C. J. Cherryh
DISCOVERY by J.A.J. Minton
THE ARMAGEDDON RAG by George R. R. Martin
SON OF AVONAR by Carol Berg
SONG OF THE BEAST by Carol Berg
THE QUEEN’S THIEF SERIES by Megan Whalen Turner
THE SHARING KNIFE by Lois McMaster Bujold
HEART’S BLOOD by Juliet Marilliet
THE SCORPIO RACES by Maggie Stiefvater
ARS MAGICA by Judith …
Which fantasy book has a law that actually binds the powerful?

178 comments • reddit.com

Most fantasy politics I read comes down to who has the bigger army or the older bloodline. Law tends to show up as decoration, a charter someone waves around, or a court scene that exists so somebody can get sentenced.

The thing I keep hunting for is a rule a king does not want to follow and follows anyway, because breaking it would cost him more than obeying it. His conscience has nothing to do with it. Something in the world makes the rule expensive to ignore.

Closest I have found: KJ Parker, where the paperwork is the weapon and everybody in the room knows it. Guy Gavriel Kay, where custom carries a lot of load without ever being called law. Pratchett gets there with the Watch eventually, though it takes a while before Vetinari is bound by anything except his own preference.

Where does law actually have teeth in something you have read, and what gives it the teeth?
Robin Hobb’s farseer trilogy is changing the way I view fantasy

106 comments • reddit.com

I’m in the middle of royal assassin and no series has made me cry… no book has made me cry… until now! I’ve felt goosebumps and cried 3 times so far. I feel so attached to every character for different reasons. Hobb is changing my perception of reading fantasy and books in general. I’ve never been so sure I’m committing to an expansive series before.
Series you're kind of surprised haven't been adapted to the screen yet

409 comments • reddit.com

For me it has to be The Empire series with Mara of the Acoma by Raymond E. Feist and Janny Wurts

Female protagonist. Lots of action and political intrigue. Some fairly spicy romance. It’s almost Game of Thrones-ish but in a different setting.

If Wheel of Time could get adapted, it’s a bit surprising Mara hasn’t been brought life yet.

Or even been optioned AFAIK
Lesser known, rare, unpopular books

378 comments • reddit.com

I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of the same book suggestions and I’m searching for books, new and old, that aren’t on any of the thousands of book lists that list the same titles constantly. What’s some rare gems of books that you love and can recommend?

r/books

LGBTQ Flag Ban Backfires at Missouri Library, Which Now Faces Vote to Ban the Bible

737 comments • yahoo.com
We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

620 comments • 404media.co
Utah has banned the 1996 novel, “Push” by Sapphire, that inspired the hit film ‘Precious’ from all public schools districts after claiming that the book “has no serious value for minors"

472 comments • sltrib.com
Secondhand booksellers in UK and Ireland suspect AI firms behind ‘strange’ bulk orders

583 comments • theguardian.com
The Federal Trade Commission is being urged to investigate AI companies for buying, scanning and destroying books to train AI by more than a dozen civil society groups, as per a report by Axios.

170 comments • axios.com
I’m so sick of receiving print-on-demand editions when I buy new books

168 comments • reddit.com

I recently ordered all three volumes of Peter Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance from Thriftbooks. All three of them arrived as cheap, pulpy, print-on-demand editions from Lightning Source LLC, the bane of my book-collecting existence. Even worse, Volumes I and II are printed on acid-free paper, so they‘re pure white, while Volume III is not, so its pages are bronze.

Since these were published by Duke University Press, I assumed they had legit printings. And since they were only available new, they were $25 each. I paid $75 for books that won’t hold together for one reading, let alone a lifetime of ownership. In my view, these POD editions are no different than bootleg rips of CDs or DVDs, and they should not be sold without some kind of disclaimer.

r/printsf

Most fascinating alien consciousness explored in SF

115 comments • reddit.com

The Arikei in Embassytown by China Mieville follow linguistic determinism. For them, words are physical states and not symbolic abstraction like it is for humans. Their words are directly linked to their reality. As human language is perceived to be disconnected from their immediate physical reality, they can’t comprehend humans directly.

The octopuses from Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky have mini-brains across their bodies. They communicate through a shifting array of pigments and textures on their skin.

The ocean from Solaris by Stanislaw Lem touches at the dangers of trying to understand “god-like” consciousness. The entire project of trying to decipher any pattern or meaning behind the actions of the ocean falls flat as it is simply too beyond our understanding.

Stevland from Semiosis by Sue Burke experiences reality through root networks, nutrients, and evolutionary strategies. All animals and humans to him are a passing phenomenon that he humours and tends to.
Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End is coming true

38 comments • reddit.com

I just ran across this news story about hi-tech companies digitizing and then destroying books. It reminded me of Vernor Vinge’s 2006 book Rainbow’s End which won the 2007 Hugo Award.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3rprx2wl4o

When court documents were unsealed last month it also emerged books were being destroyed in the process of training Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude.

They insisted sourcing books for training was a widely used approach across the AI industry.
Sphere by Michael Crichton is really good

48 comments • reddit.com

Read the book it’s really awesome. Very accessible to read and great story
The best SFF novel I've read this year - The Bridge by Iain Banks (review).

63 comments • reddit.com

So it turns out that I not only started with what is often cited as Iain Banks’s most difficult SF novel (Feersum Endjinn), I made my second read what is perhaps his most difficult novel full stop. Iain Banks’s imagination once again impresses. This is a complex, labyrinthine novel that I do think is better than Feersum Endjinn; more ambitious, which seems strange given that The Bridge occurs entirely in the mind of one man. This man is introduced to us as ‘John Orr’, who wakes up in a huge megastructure taking the form of a great iron bridge redolent of the Forth Bridge. He has no memory of how he got there or what happened to him, only aware that he was fished from the water and is a patient of a Dr. Joyce, to whom Orr explains his dreams in a hope of piecing together what happened to him.

Orr meets the alluring Abberlaine Arrol, daughter of one of the bridge’s engineers, and this ‘main’ plot is interwoven with chapters following a barbarian who speaks in Scots dialect and whose …
Favorite answers to Fermi paradox? Give me the unique, the interesting, and depressing answers to the question: Where is everyone?

317 comments • reddit.com

My favorite would probably have to be the Spin series where the answer to the paradox is actually kind of depressing but unique.

Looking for books with other interesting propositions to the answer of where everyone is?

Please mind the spoiler tags in the thread folks.
SF where an instruction outlives the reason for it

79 comments • reddit.com

I keep coming back to books where somebody follows a rule long after everyone who understood it is dead. Canticle for Leibowitz is the one everybody names, monks copying a circuit diagram as scripture. Asimov does a colder version in Foundation, where technicians run reactors as a priesthood and the ritual is the operating manual with the reasoning filed off.

Both of those are about knowledge being lost. The case I have trouble finding is the one where the procedure still works. Nobody on the page can say why, it reads as superstition from the outside, and it is the only thing keeping the lights on.

Anything come to mind? I would especially take books where you watch the reason come apart across the timeline instead of being told it already did.

r/television

r/movies

'Spider-Man' Windfall: Tom Holland to Make Over $100 Million for ‘Brand New Day’

2320 comments • thewrap.com
Chris Hansen Says He Refused to Sign His Life Away to Preview Robert Pattinson’s ‘Primetime,’ So A24 Wouldn’t Screen It for Him

1580 comments • variety.com
Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Dethrones 'Deadpool & Wolverine' To Become Highest Grossing R-Rated Movie In History, Crossing $1.33 Billion

996 comments • businessupturn.com
‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day' Crosses $2B Worldwide

1753 comments • sacnilk.com
Hayden Panettiere dies at 36

2236 comments • abcnews.com
Analysts Warn U.S. Economy Becoming Overly Dependent On Anne Hathaway

425 comments • theonion.com



> NEW YORK—Calling the current rate of theatrical releases starring the actress “unsustainable,” top analysts warned Wednesday that the U.S. economy was becoming overly dependent on Anne Hathaway. “Between Mother Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2, The Odyssey, The End Of Oak Street, and the upcoming Verity, not to mention the whole other slate of projects she has in preproduction, we estimate that Anne Hathaway films currently account for a staggering 63% of all U.S. exports,” said Jason Nadu, head of leading-lady analytics at Bloomberg, who urged industry leaders to begin diversifying into other mid-career actresses immediately to prevent the nation from collapsing into an economic depression.

> While it’s great we’re experiencing a boom, we need to prepare for the eventual bust. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend a Devil Wears Prada 3 or Interstellar 2 is coming. Like it or not, Anne Hathaway will not be around forever. And then what?” Nadu went on to …

TV & Books #10

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #10

r/fantasy

I'm pirateaba, author of The Wandering Inn. AMA!

1492 comments • reddit.com

Hey, I’m pirateaba, the author of the web serial and now traditionally published fantasy series, The Wandering Inn. It’s about an [Innkeeper], not a [Hero]. And while there are plenty of monsters and amazing people in the story, this is no tale of a protagonist chosen by fate or prophecy. They choose themselves and who they become is a story told over millions of words.

It’s been ten years since I began writing the story while I was working part-time at Costco and yesterday my books reached a new space and are now being sold in book stores as physical copies. I got to see them myself and it was a surreal experience.

It still feels a bit like a fun dream, but it’s because of my amazing readers and community that I got this far (as well as an incredible team, agent, publisher in HarperVoyager, and beta-readers whom I made sure to add in the dedication).

The challenge with bringing the series to print has always been that the online nature of The Wandering Inn hasn’t always meshed well …
Red Rising is the best bad series I’ve read in a while

421 comments • reddit.com

After seeing a lot of praise for Red Rising on various reading subs, I finally decided to give it a shot. The first book was fine, and I wasn’t overly impressed with it but it does get better as it goes, at least in terms of entertainment factor. The 2nd and 3rd books are a lot of fun.

I will say though - I don’t know if I actually think the series is still all that good. It feels like a really melodramatic, over the top soap opera, a feeling that just increases as the trilogy goes on. It’s full of ridiculous YA power fantasy tropes and just gets so incredibly cheesy sometimes with all the mottos, last-minute daring escapes, rug pull twists etc. The whole basis of the setting is a nonsense mishmash of “cool factor” stuff like the Roman Empire, warring clans/houses, badass video game style weapons and armor etc.

With that being said - it’s fast-paced, has some great action scenes and kept me reasonably engaged throughout. I can see why it’s so popular on Reddit and BookTok - it’s like …
What is your absolute favorite "micro-trope" that isn't a major plot point, but always makes you smile when an author includes it?

506 comments • reddit.com

We all talk about massive things like magic systems or dark lords, but I’m talking about the tiny, hyper-specific beats. For example: When an injured character finally wakes up in a safe bed surrounded by people who care about them, and they don’t have to fight for a minute. Or when a villain who is being really arrogant realizes too late that the quiet background character is actually the most dangerous to them? What are the small, specific beats you never get tired of reading?
Say what you want about GRRM, but the man has some of the most fantastical prose I've ever read.

353 comments • reddit.com

I’ve been reading ASOIAF for quite a while, and I love how GRRM keeps you hooked, whether it’s a random character POV or one of the major ones. We all know how well he handles his main characters, but I’ve started noticing how even the random POVs feel like you’re actually living in the world. They give you so much worldbuilding without making it feel like an info dump. And it feels ancient and magical, and I think a lot of that comes from the prose. Martin can make even ordinary things feel fantastical. Like- “The night came with the song of dragons.” “The snow whispered in the night, burying the path of travelers.”

It’s just so damn good. And despite the books being massive, I keep wanting to read not only because of the characters or plot, but because I genuinely want to spend more time in that world and experience the prose.

That’s something I struggled with while reading the third Stormlight Archive book recently. It took me a long time to …
Robert Jackson Bennett’s Trade Of Blood Hits New York Times Top 10 Bestseller List

85 comments • nytimes.com

Super happy and impressed that RBJ has a best seller on his hands. Very deserved and hopefully many of those readers will delve into his back catalogue of books.
Who are the best or most interesting wizards in fantasy?

637 comments • reddit.com

I’ve been wanting to read a book/series that features a prominent wizard/sorceress and would love to know some of the best options. It doesn’t have to be a wizard per se, but just someone who is more skilled in the “magic” of their world.

I just read The Blade Itself (book 1 of The First Law trilogy) and it seems like Baysz could potentially fit this title but I have no idea where it goes from here.

Obviously Gandalf is up there but let me know who else!

r/books

Barack Obama to Host Podcast Exploring Influential Books

351 comments • nytimes.com

The podcast will be a limited series examining “The Fire Next Time,” by James Baldwin; “Song of Solomon,” by Toni Morrison; “All the Pretty Horses,” by Cormac McCarthy; “Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson; “All the King’s Men,” by Robert Penn Warren; and “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” by John le Carré.
How come this sub hates on stuff like Fourth Wing and Colleen Hoover yet glaze Dungeon Crawler Carl and Brandon Sanderson?

2353 comments • reddit.com

I feel like anytime I see a post on here about popular romantasy books like Fourth Wing or really popular authors like Colleen Hoover and Frieda McFadden, it’s always with disdain if not utter hostility.

But then series like Dungeon Crawler Carl, Stormlight or books like Project Hail Mary get praised nonstop? It’s really weird because to me, all of these books are basically at the same tier.

I tried reading a bit of Fourth Wing and had to give up pretty fast…but having finished the first DCC book and a couple of Stormlight books, they’re kind of at the same level quality-wise. Same goes for the one Frieda McFadden book I’ve read - other than the genre it’s not any worse than what Matt Dinniman or Andy Weir writes.

The only difference I can see is the demographic they’re being targeted to. Is that the reason for discrepancy in how they’re received? Because otherwise they’re all pretty poorly written with stock characters and minimal substance.
Ai avoidance is making me read older books.

379 comments • reddit.com

I just wanted to see if anyone else wants to talk about this. I got a kindle unlimited subscription for the first time a couple months ago and have been astounded at the amount of Ai books on there and how many are being fed to me via the sponsored, suggested, and new feeds. More popular than major publications, my kindle would have me believe. I’m decent at spotting them but twice now in two weeks I was fooled and got a chapter into books I was excited about before realizing it was Ai written and putting it down.

I don’t want to read Ai on principle but I also think it’s not very good. The plots might be ok, but the repetitive sentences and algorithmic/formulaic feel puts me off. Once you know the tells, they’re all you see and the story is not compelling anymore. I don’t want to support authors who are using this and I don’t want to feed my mind and waste my time with artificially generated books.

So I thought, I’ll stick to major publishers! I hate that Ai is making me avoid indie …
Biden to release memoir on his presidency and reelection campaign — after the midterms. The book will cover the former president’s decision to run for reelection and eventually step aside.

420 comments • politico.com
Great Scott! A Close Read of MacKenzie Scott’s Ambitious Substack Novel. The philanthropist’s first published work in years—and since her divorce from Jeff Bezos—is a sprawling, Dickensian narrative that could have used more editing.

70 comments • vanityfair.com
Mass. libraries got flooded with book ban requests. A new law aims to stem the flow

76 comments • wbur.org

Another reason I’m happy to live here

Materials can only be removed from a library after a vote by the local school committee or charter school board of trustees following a notice, public hearing and finding by a school personnel review committee “that the material, taken as a whole, based on clear and convincing evidence, is devoid of any educational, literary, artistic, personal or social value or is not age appropriate. Only school employees, parents or guardians or students enrolled in the school can lodge challenges. Students, parents and guardians are able to appeal a decision to remove materials from the library to court.

r/printsf

Update: I Finally Read Kelmin’s Tower (1992): 199 Pages, 47 Chapters, and One Extremely Strange Forgotten Fantasy Novel.

72 comments • reddit.com

Update: I Finally Read Kelmin’s Tower (1992): 199 Pages, 47 Chapters, and One Extremely Strange Forgotten Fantasy Novel.

I finally finished Kelmin’s Tower by Thomas Alexander Anthony, the incredibly obscure 1992 fantasy novel I’ve been documenting.

199 pages. 47 chapters.

Now that I’ve reached the end, I can finally give a proper spoiler-free summary and review of what I found. So, what is Kelmin’s Tower about?

At its core, Kelmin’s Tower is a dark fantasy adventure following Emmanuel Slade, an assassin who becomes involved in a resistance movement against the mysterious ruler known as Kelmin.

Slade travels with a small group that includes the elf Arinock and the barbarian Wolvesbane, along with several other companions. Their journey takes them across the fantasy world of Arland and gradually brings them into direct conflict with the political, military, religious, and supernatural forces surrounding Kelmin and his Tower. It begins with the feel of a fairly traditional fantasy …
I sold stories to Analog, Nature and a few other places, and I could never tell if anyone read them. Do you read the magazines?

105 comments • reddit.com

A few years ago I sold a run of pro-rate science fiction stories. Analog, Nature, some others.

I was an aspiring author at the time. I wasn’t expecting to get rich. I was hoping to build some kind of audience, something I could turn into a novel deal, or an agent, or just a reason to keep going.

Honestly, I’d have settled for a few people saying “nice work, buddy.”

What struck me the whole time I was publishing was that nobody ever seemed to know a story of mine was out unless I told them myself. I’m a marketer by trade, and I deliberately stayed out of the business side of it, because if I’d wanted to be a content marketer, I could have made a lot more doing it for a fintech firm than scribbling short stories. I figured if a magazine is paying eight or twelve cents a word, the work has to be worth at least that much to them, and they’d do something with it.

The audience never materialized. What I concluded at the time was that my work just …
John Crowley has passed away

26 comments • programmablemutter.com

I loved a number of his books, including Little, Big; Engine Summer; and Beasts. Others I bounced off (maybe I will understand ægypt some day). A great and under-appreciated writer.
1992 fantasy paperback that seems to have almost completely disappeared. Anyone know anything about it?

71 comments • reddit.com

Grabbed this at Goodwill today for 50 cents because I liked the look of it. I figured I’d get home, search the title, and maybe find a little information about it.
Nope.

The book is Kelmins Tower by Thomas Alexander Anthony, published by Rising Sun Publications in 1992.
ISBN: 0-9630915-1-4
Edited by Suzanne Boire
Cover art by Matthew Pearson and Walt Richardson

I’ve spent way too much time trying to track this thing down now.

I’ve searched the exact title and author, the ISBN, the publisher, the editor, the cover artists, different combinations of all of them, and variations of the title. I’m getting basically nothing useful.

No real book listings. No reviews. No obvious history of the publisher. No discussions I can find about the book. Nothing that tells me how it was published, how widely it circulated, or who Thomas Alexander Anthony even was.

It’s especially strange because it’s clearly a legitimate published book with an ISBN and credited editor and cover artists. It isn’t …
My thoughts on the Hugo Nominees

74 comments • reddit.com



I haven’t read the Death of the Author or A Drop of Corruption yet. But here are my honest thoughts on the other nominees.

Shroud: Adrian Tchaikovsky’s first “honest” Hugo?

Tchaikovsky publicly disowned his Best Series win in 2024, saying that the selection and voting process was dishonest. He’s been nominated again this year for the excellent Shroud, one of his most philosophically resonant books.

I was amazed by the concept of the Shrouded, and how different they feel from humans. By presenting their perspective of all the Shrouded as “I”, and the drifted beings as “otherlike” of “me”, the book allows us to introspect heavily about the concept of our “self”. This understanding of a universal “I” is not necessarily new. But I think Tchaikovsky really manages to get us to think of separate selves as completely absurd through the Shrouded’s interactions with Juna.

The Raven Scholar: I want to live inside it

The easiest way I can describe this book is: Goblet of Fire …
2026 Aurthur C. Clarke Award Winner

29 comments • clarkeaward.substack.com

When There are Wolves Again.

As usual I didn’t read the shortlist yet. Thoughts?

r/television

‘Black Mirror’ and ‘Loki’ Directors Say They Rejected HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’ Due to J.K. Rowling’s Transphobia: ‘Absolutely F—-ing Not’

4355 comments • variety.com
The Office actress Lucy Davis diagnosed with incurable breast cancer

296 comments • telegraph.co.uk
Roku Unleashes 24/7 AI Slop Channel

521 comments • futurism.com
‘The Witcher’ Season 5 No Longer Set For 2026 Premiere On Netflix

990 comments • winteriscoming.net
Nicholas Hoult Joins ‘Harry Potter’ Season 2 As Gilderoy Lockhart

2571 comments • deadline.com
'All That' Star Christy Knowings Dead at 46 After Suffering From an Asthma Attack

293 comments • justjared.com

r/movies

8 films have now made over $1B since Netflix's CEO said going to the theaters for many people is an 'outdated concept'

1730 comments • popculturenews.com
What is a movie with a "happy ending" that is actually incredibly depressing when you think about it for more than five minutes?

5606 comments • reddit.com

Hollywood loves to wrap things up with a nice bow, uplifting music, and smiling characters to make the audience feel good on their way out of the theater. But sometimes, if you look past the cinematic triumph of the final scene, the actual reality of what the characters are left with is an absolute nightmare.

The Truman Show is a perfect example. The movie ends on this massive, soaring high note as Truman takes a bow and steps through the door into the real world. But when you actually think about his future, it is terrifying. He is stepping into a world he knows absolutely nothing about, with zero real-life survival skills, where millions of strangers are unhealthily obsessed with him. It is a psychological tragedy disguised as a victory.

Shaun of the Dead does this too. The ending plays out like a fun, return-to-normal sitcom wrap-up where he gets his girlfriend back and plays video games. But in reality, the zombie apocalypse actually happened, most of their loved ones were …
Hey reddit! It's Will Poulter. AMA!

2279 comments • i.redd.it

Hey reddit! I’m Will Poulter.

You may know me from films/series like WARFARE, WE’RE THE MILLERS, THE BEAR, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3, THE MAZE RUNNER, MIDSOMMAR, THE REVENANT, I LOVE BOOSTERS, DETROIT, THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, and other things.

My new movie, UNION COUNTY, is out in theaters starting this weekend (!!!) via Oscilloscope Laboratories. It also stars Noah Centineo, Annette Deao, Elise Kibler, and Emily Meade.

Here’s the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA6Fnr2VXkw

Synopsis:

Assigned to a county-mandated drug court program, Cody Parsons embarks on the tenuous journey toward recovery amidst the opioid epidemic in rural Ohio.

AMA!

Back at 2 PM ET this afternoon (Thursday ⁸⁄₁₃) to answer your questions!
Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Has Become the Biggest IMAX Release of All Time ($289.3M), Surpassing 'Avatar'

704 comments • variety.com
Cineplex CEO Says Gen Z Is Ready to Go to the Movies; Says They’re Tired of Looking at Small Screens

1707 comments • hollywoodreporter.com
New Poster for Zach Cregger's 'Resident Evil'

773 comments • i.redd.it

TV & Books #9

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #9

r/fantasy

George R.R. Martin, in first blog post since Feb: "I have lost friends. Battled sadness and depression. The worst may be yet to come. I turned seventy-seven last September, and I tell you, getting old is no fun"

689 comments • georgerrmartin.com
I’m ANA AND DIN MYSTERIES author Robert Jackson Bennett - AMA!

316 comments • reddit.com

Hello all - I’m the ANA AND DIN MYSTERIES author Robert Jackson Bennett. The third installment of the series, A TRADE OF BLOOD, comes out today.

I’m in Scotland right now, and have been spending the last week or so rambling about the Highlands and finishing up the fourth installment, about which I’ll likely have some news soon. This might make the time difference a bit odd for my US readers, but will keep an eye on this post and be answering questions later in the day!

EDIT, 6:34 UK time - Sorry, will have to pop off to do a live Waterstones zoom event. Thank you all for the lovely questions!
Looking for a book with a genuinely unintelligent protagonist

511 comments • reddit.com

I’m looking for a protagonist who genuinely unintelligent. Not uneducated but clever, not an otherworldly entity whose thoughts are simply alien to human minds, not an “outsider” who doesn’t understand the local culture, not someone who is book smart but lacking in common sense, not someone who is street smart rather than book smart.

I mean someone who is just, on the whole, not very bright.

I’d especially love a restricted POV from the protagonist, either first person or very restricted third person, so the reader is stuck only taking in information the protagonist perceives and understands and has to piece together what’s missing. A non-fantasy example is the book Forrest Gump. When Forrest gets involved in world events, he doesn’t understand their importance, so he gives the details that are interesting to him, like the kind of soda he drank, and not the ones that reflect global significance, like the treaty being signed in the background. …
Robin Hobbs review of Dungeon Crawler Carl

310 comments • imgur.com
What fantasy trilogy actually stays great for all three books?

744 comments • reddit.com

I’ve been on a bit of a trilogy streak lately and I keep running into the same problem. Book one is great, book two feels like 500 pages of moving pieces around, and then book three has to sprint through every payoff at once. Or the opposite happens and the first book is clearly just setup for a story that only really gets going later.

I know that structure works for some people, but I’m looking for a trilogy where each book genuinely feels worth reading on its own.

By “stays great” I don’t necessarily mean every book has to feel identical. I’m fine with a slower middle book, different POV focus, bigger scope, whatever. I just don’t want that feeling of having to push through one installment because everyone promises the next one gets good again.

Ideally each book has its own satisfying arc while still building toward a finale that feels earned. Bonus points if the third book is actually the strongest one, because that seems weirdly rare in the series I’ve read.

So …
What is the best three book run?

675 comments • reddit.com

It could be a regular trilogy, but what about 3 consecutive books in the middle of a series?

r/books

George R.R. Martin Reflects on 'Sadness and Depression' Struggles in Personal Update

1307 comments • thewrap.com

“The “A Song of Ice and Fire” franchise author took to his blog for the first time in nearly six months on Monday, sharing that any posts after February were written by his “mighty minions.”

“Remember me? It’s been a while, I know. My last blog post went up here on February 19,” Martin wrote. “The posts that came after were made by my mighty minions. I am lucky enough to have a great staff of assistants… though even with their help, I kept falling further and further behind.”

As Martin went on, he admitted that “this year has been… stressful, to say the least.””
Nolan’s film could make The Odyssey the most sought-after book in the US

510 comments • theguardian.com
[The Atlantic] Someone Is Mysteriously Snapping Up Used Books Around the World

292 comments • theatlantic.com
Anne of green gables is a wonderful book. It practically felt like healing.

164 comments • reddit.com

Anne says towards the end of this “Dear old world, you are very lovely and I am glad to be alive in you”. To which I thought, I am so glad to be alive and have read this book. A little cheesy but that’s genuinely how i was feeling.

Through the book, right from the beginning, Anne shows so much joy, so much love to the world she is living in, to the things that are happening, to the people around her. She loves and cares with abandon and hates with a passion. She lives her life so fiercely and brightly that it made me realise how little I have lived in the past few years. Somewhere as part of being an adult, work had become all of my life. If I were to describe last few years as a color palette, it is mostly a dreary grey of monotone routine. So to read this book where this orphan child so unabashedly expresses her appreciation for life was like activating a part of my brain that I haven’t used in a long time.

Reading this book, I was appreciating the world …
Jennette McCurdy’s Third Book ‘The Examined Year’ Is Coming This December

115 comments • yahoo.com
The Book That Predicted Pete Hegseth’s Failures

120 comments • foreignpolicy.com

r/printsf

2026 Hugo awards finalists: my reviews

21 comments • reddit.com
Note: I posted this already but it got automatically removed in error for a link missing context, and I was never able to contact the moderators of this subreddit to correct the error. Now that I’ve read pretty much all the things I have the time or desire to read, I am re-posting it because I put thought and effort into these reviews.

The Hugo Awards finalists have been released! I have seen some say that this seems like a very safe, “boring” list, with a lot of the nominees coming from the same publisher and from authors who have already been nominated or won Hugos in the past. I nominated the novel The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes and am a bit sad it didn’t make the cut. I’m not that into following awards in the genre, but I was at last year’s Worldcon and plan to vote for the Hugos and go to this year’s Worldcon, where the winners are announced.

#Novels
- A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape): Sequel to …
engineer's sci-fi that isn't called "The Martian" or "Project Hail Mary"?

429 comments • reddit.com



Looking for a science fiction book for my vacation. I am an engineer in the construction industry myself and a science fiction reader. In the past, I have only read epistemological SciFi or rather Literary SciFi (works like Deus Irae or Blindsigth).

Now I would like to dare to read some “engineeringporn” (😆). Since I detest the mainstream, I would like to leave the above books out for now. What can you suggest?
Today is August 4, 2026 and I want to take a moment to highlight one of my favourite small Bradbury shorts. There Will Come Soft Rains takes place in the far distant future of today!

29 comments • reddit.com

If you haven’t read it I would recommend it.

Text can be located here:

https://www.btboces.org/Downloads/7_There%20Will%20Come%20Soft%20Rains%20by%20Ray%20Bradbury.pdf
Top five print science fiction books of the 21st Century?

136 comments • reddit.com

Ok r/printSF, let’s have some fun. We are more than a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. Pick your top five SF books of the 21st Century thus far (i.e. published after 12/31/2000). Use whatever criteria you want (your favorites, five best representative of the styles of the decade, five greatest works, even though you didn’t enjoy them all, etc.). Just remember to tell us what criteria you’re using!
If Orson Scott Card had finished writing Ender books in 1987

174 comments • reddit.com

If Orson Scott Card had finished writing Ender books in 1987, his achievement would have been immortal. Had he stopped in 1999, he would have been a great writer, but flawed.

But he keeps writing sequels. Alas, what can one say?

[](https://www.facebook.com/tim.kirk.9822?comment_id=Y29tbWVudDoyNzcwNTAxODYzNTgyODg5MV8zMzIwMjIxMzI4MTg4ODcy&__cft__[0]=AZYSDtfKUiNHO3RkwJFQzzYYVeLT5-1YRVuku-DSpwDvLl1Tw376QFs76N3fiG5bo1NC74EgXLujE2iAIpoJN-NVznpEJFOfRgB-peiR059vpa3yLDbmRNPtY9gEiUAl1RNJqbV9fS_lcvDB5K15JyaUV13zxgpv_7IVcq0JE4ObPg&__tn__=R]-R)
Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror novels that are more modern?

126 comments • reddit.com

I finished John Langan’s The Fisherman recently and was wondering if there were any other well written cosmic horror or otherwise Lovecraftian novels that were written more recently?

r/television

‘God of War’: Dave Bautista in Talks For Kratos Role in Amazon Series After Ryan Hurst’s Exit

844 comments • variety.com
Masterchef is ‘not real’, says former judge Marco Pierre White

1140 comments • independent.co.uk
'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' Season 2 Wraps Filming

385 comments • collider.com
George R.R. Martin Reflects on 'Sadness and Depression' Struggles in Personal Update

1004 comments • thewrap.com
‘Heckler’: David Fincher’s ‘Squid Game’ Spinoff No Longer Moving Forward At Netflix

422 comments • theplaylist.net
Vincent Pastore Dies: 'The Sopranos' Star Was 80

246 comments • deadline.com

r/movies

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ and ‘The Odyssey’ Power Biggest Grossing Weekend in History With $430 Million

1579 comments • variety.com
First clip from "Coyote vs. ACME"

1090 comments • v.redd.it
Hi r/movies. Michael Mando here, aka Scorpion (Spider-Man Brand New Day), Nacho (Better Call Saul), Vaas (Far Cry 3), Bane (Batman: Knightfall). AMA!

2153 comments • i.redd.it

It was such a pleasure speaking with all of you! Thank you for your kind, thoughtful and heart warming questions. This was so much fun and I look forward to speaking to all of you again XO

-———————————————————————————————————–

Hi reddit, Michael Mando here to answer all your questions. You may know me as Scorpion in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Nacho Varga in Better Call Saul, and Vaas Montenegro in Far Cry 3. Upcoming projects include Bane in Batman: Knightfall, an undisclosed role in the limited series Criminal as well as the live-action Gundam movie. Check out the comedy 72 Hours, I also make a fun appearance in that.

Besides movies, I am currently working on a music album scheduled for release in fall/winter 2026. The idea is to make intimate live concerts to better …
Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey' Crosses $1B Worldwide

1761 comments • rawteur.com
'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' Crosses $1B Worldwide

1619 comments • variety.com
‘Spider-Man’ Beats ‘Avengers: Endgame’ as ‘Brand New Day’ Climbs to $360 Million, the Biggest Opening Weekend in Box Office History

1766 comments • variety.com

TV & Books #8

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #8

r/fantasy

'Children of Blood and Bone' Author Says Film Adaptation Is 'Worst Thing' She's Lived Through

544 comments • complex.com

Wow, she seems determined to burn all her bridges in Hollywood, if there are any left to burn, that is.
I'm not a big fan of Brandon Sanderson's writing - but I can't help but admire his work ethic and love of the game

398 comments • reddit.com

I think it’s pretty safe to say that despite his popularity, Sanderson can often be polarizing on book-related subs. You either love what he does or don’t really vibe with it. Personally, I fall more in the latter camp - I don’t think he’s particularly bad or anything but I’ve also never been all that impressed with his works. He does have a talent for some pretty cool worldbuilding concepts and the magic systems can be inventive but I find that he falls short in characters, prose and dialogue, which I tend to hold in higher regard. But that’s well-trod ground - none of those critiques are anything new.

What I do appreciate about Sanderson is that how much he seems to just enjoy the craft of writing. I’m a hobby writer myself, and have been writing for many years. I’ve never really seriously thought about publishing - maybe one day - but I have a lot of ideas and concepts and characters floating around in my head and I just like to …
Is there a fantasy author that you liked once, but has fallen so low that you never again want to read anything from him?

1879 comments • reddit.com

For me, it is Brent Weeks for what he did with The Blood Mirror + The Burning White.

A hat trick of bad decisions:

!1. Making a God actual presence in the story, that can fix everything, and actually does it;!<

!2. Building up a villain for 5 books, only to delete him in one page, without any fanfare;!<

!And, worst of all:!<

!3. Making people read chapters from POV of a character that objectively does not exist. !<

Man, its been years, but every time I randomly remember this series, I get mad about it again.
Why isn't pirate fantasy more popular?

407 comments • reddit.com

When I was a kid, someone gave me a copy of Captain Blood, and that started my obsession with pirates and sea adventures. For a while, I read a lot of pirate novels, and I absolutely loved that kind of story.

Recently I found myself thinking about those books again. These days I mostly read fantasy, and it made me realize that maybe I’ve just been looking in the wrong places, but I don’t really see many fantasy books that capture the same feeling as those classic pirate adventures.

I don’t just mean books with pirates in them. I mean stories with that old adventure vibe: life at sea, dangerous voyages, mysterious islands, naval battles, hidden treasure, and the sense that the world is still waiting to be explored.

Is pirate fantasy just a niche, or are there more books like this than I realize? And if it is a niche, why do you think it never became as popular as so many other fantasy subgenres?
What is the most slept on fantasy series?

881 comments • reddit.com

We all know Tolkien, Hobb, Sanderson, Erickson, Jordan, Abercrombie, Loach, Donaldson, Pratchett, but who are the lesser celebrated authors who wrote a great series.

One writer i never see mentioned is Markus Heitz of the Dwarves series. Tightly written, interesting plots, well paced action throughout.

Can anyone else recommend a lesser celebrated fantasy author?
Why do noble houses in fantasy feel like college dorms with teenage drama?

132 comments • reddit.com

I recently started the Essalieyan series. I saw it recommended here for its noble house politics.

I liked the first book, Hunter’s Oath. It was fun. I liked Stephen quite a bit. The atmospheric writing and central mystery were very enjoyable. The noble house in Breodanir was fine, and its custom rituals were unique. But in the second book, the story went to a different country, and we were introduced to a new character who seemed to be the main protagonist now. She was a street orphan like Stephen. Stephen was somewhat sidelined, which wasn’t a big deal because I liked the central plot.

Everything was more or less okay, but the noble houses in the new country were just like a college dorm. They are literally structured like a dorm. We already get a not-so-subtle hint that the new protagonist will become the leader of the main noble house.

Every character in a house lacked proper motivation. Imagine killing people and giving up your life for a dorm. And the politics, my god, are …

r/books

She was fired for teaching English literature in an English class. Now she’s suing.

586 comments • fire.org
Boomers Can’t Stop Gifting Their Grandkids AI-Generated Slop Books

524 comments • wired.com
The value of men’s book clubs amid the male loneliness epidemic

492 comments • channelnewsasia.com
Claude, ChatGPT: AI labs buy, scan, shred millions of rare books

326 comments • news.com.au

“Artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.”
An Australian public library has had a book returned an estimated 150 years late after being found behind a wall during a home renovation

64 comments • theguardian.com
$2m crime novel deal collapses amid questions over AI use

510 comments • theguardian.com

r/printsf

The convos on the Gene Wolfe subreddit are hilarious to me

136 comments • reddit.com

NEWBIE: Hi guys. Loved “Shadow and Claw”. Just wondering what I may have missed, though?

WOLFEEXPERT55: Depends on how much you caught. Did you catch basic stuff like (SPOILERS) the fact that Severian was raised in a defunct rocket ship, that Vodalus gives Severian a fake coin, that Severian brought Triskele back to life, that there are multiple iterations of Severian, that Severian hangs out in his own tomb as a kid, that the narrator of the book is a composite being of torturer Severian/Thecla/all the previous Autarchs, that Jonas is a Korean robot from close to our time, that whenever Severian gets confused about direction he’s time traveling, that the water entities routinely reappear, that Severian is the Concilliator, that Severian actually dies in his duel versus Agilus, that the narrator deliberately glosses over the sexual relationship between Severian and Thecla, that Severian might have killed his own mother in his ascension ceremony, that you meet …
Got a big haul with a lot of vintages!

22 comments • reddit.com
M. John Harrison's novel The End of Everything has been named to the Booker Prize longlist

22 comments • thebookerprizes.com
There is No Antimemetics Division: A Novel

47 comments • reddit.com

Thanks r/printSF for turning me on to There is No Antimemetics Division. It really was a compelling read for me. It’s a puzzle story where the puzzle keeps changing as you put the pieces together. It’s really clever and creative. I’m not going to spoil it by going into details on the plot, as I think going in blind elevated the reading experience for me. Well worth reading if you haven’t picked it up yet.
Newly minted Hugo Completionist

79 comments • reddit.com

The Hugo Award is a people’s choice award for Science Fiction and Fantasy books and other media…one can pay a membership and vote. On 7/16/2023 I announced my goal to read all the Hugo award winners in the full length novel category. At that time I already had 17 out of 73 bagged, and each year there is a new one (usually), so the longer I took, the more I’d have to read. I have now completed the project, the count growing to 75 books, and here is my retrospective.

Overall impressions: - Lots of good great books, but my big take away is this; a book does not need to be very good to win a Hugo. There are some real dogs, but of course it is all subjective. - Many of the older books have not aged well but some of them are still some of my favs. - I did not re-read the 17 already under my belt, though two of those I had re-read previously (Dune and Ender’s Game). So re-reading them now might affect what I think of them. Some of those 17 I read when I was 17, and now I am 50. - One of my …
20 years ago we lost David Gemmell

16 comments • reddit.com

One of the great ‘legends’ of fantasy died twenty years ago today, aged 57.

He wrote so many great series, sagas, and characters. Which were your favourites?

For me, it is easily The First Chronicles of Druss, The Legend.

(Excerpt I found, read by Sean Barrett - https://youtu.be/0mBHAOIWfXw ).

Legend is far more famous but he matured a lot as a writer for this prequel, and fleshed out a quintessential fantasy origin story. And Sieben is just brilliant.

Next for me, and a timely recommendation, is his (and wife Stella’s) Troy series. Perhaps the best modern ‘grimdark’ Homeric adaptation. Kalliades and Banokles! Andromache!

r/television

Four women accuse Jared Leto of criminal sexual conduct when they were teenagers

993 comments • bbc.com
Lena Headey looks back: ‘I told Harvey Weinstein where to go. A decade of possibilities disappeared’

574 comments • theguardian.com
'Severance' Season 3 Has Begun Production

1010 comments • ftw.usatoday.com
Tom Selleck On Frustrating Cancellation Of Blue Bloods After Cast Took 25% Pay Cut: 'Nobody Wanted To Leave'

612 comments • deadline.com
Jared Leto denies new sexual misconduct allegations made against him

807 comments • thetab.com
Neuromancer — Official Teaser | Apple TV

775 comments • youtu.be

r/movies

Warner Bros. Deal Collapse Would Cost the Ellisons $9.8 Billion

1328 comments • bloomberg.com
Rick Moranis Ended Acting Retirement After Nearly 30 Years and Says It Was Very Strange on ‘Spaceballs 2’ Set

817 comments • variety.com
‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves' Co-Director Jonathan Goldstein Reveals a Sequel Has Been Written / Goldstein says their team was hired to write the sequel but is unsure it’ll be made due to financial reasons

904 comments • fandomwire.com
Ryan Gosling to Star in 'Ghost Rider' Movie at Marvel Studios

1250 comments • variety.com
Netflix Sued For $105 Million After Hard Drive of Unreleased Nicolas Cage Movie Was Stolen From Its Office

659 comments • hollywoodreporter.com
New poster for WERWULF

732 comments • i.redd.it

TV & Books #7

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #7

r/fantasy

What's the best "slow reveal" you've read in adult fantasy? Not the biggest twist, but the moment you realised the story was much larger than you first thought. What made it work?

894 comments • reddit.com

I’m not looking for the biggest plot twist or surprise ending.

I’m thinking about those moments where you suddenly realise the world, history, or conflict is much bigger than you first believed, but in hindsight all the clues were there if you knew where to look and what you were looking at.

Which book did this best for you?

More importantly, what made it satisfying rather than feeling like it came out of nowhere?
I read all 10 books of Malazan. It didn't work for me.

152 comments • reddit.com

Oh my… I never thought I’d get to this point, but I actually did it, I’m officially done with the Book of the Fallen. I started in June 2025, and thirteen months and 3.3 million words later, I can finally relax and not feel like I have to prepare for a symposium after work hours.

This post is here mostly for me, because it really feels like an achievement, given how much time I put into it. I didn’t skim a single chapter, I took notes through the early books, and I checked the Malazan Reread of the Fallen after every chapter that left me confused. I stopped taking notes around book 4, but kept reading the chapter summaries until the end, because I really wanted to understand what everyone else was seeing in this series. When I say “everyone” I mean the people on the positive side of the spectrum, because this series is probably the most polarizing thing I’ve come across in the ten or so years I’ve been reading fantasy.

Before I get …
Just finished reading The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. This series is beyond a masterpiece and some of the finest writing ever.

148 comments • reddit.com

I’m not going to hold back in my praise for Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun. What an elaborate, complex and masterfully written series. Gene Wolfe’s prose is so beautiful and articulately woven it genuinely challenged me and made me consider if my own reading ability is up to this. I found myself rereading pages and sequences multiple times to really understand the beauty of his writing. The earlier chapter were the hardest, a lot is thrown at you, visions and symbolism with deeper meanings is presented and you’re left there confused and unsure of the story you’re reading. But that’s part of the experience of this book.

I’ve never read a book with such a strong atmosphere. That real dystopian, world with a huge history/past, but futuristic at the same time feeling was always prevalent throughout the book. The world building was just phenomenal, I’d almost go as far to say it’s up there with Tolkien, Martin, Herbert etc. As a huge fan of the Dark Souls/Elden Ring/Bloodborne video …
People often talk about favorite opening lines in books, but what’s your favorite closing line or sentence in a fantasy novel?

323 comments • reddit.com

Mine is from piranesi “Beauty of the house is immeasurable; it’s kindness infinite”
What long fantasy series would you say absolutely justify their length?

530 comments • reddit.com

Are there any that don’t seem to go through a middle book slog like Wheel of Time or don’t decline in quality like Stormlight Archive (from what I’ve heard)
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (9.5/10)

80 comments • reddit.com

(note: this is a reread done in anticipation for the forthcoming third book in the series)

So instead of committing robbery, I made tea.

Sometimes, all you need in life is a good murder mystery and tea. The fact that this story is set in a fantasy world that does not gatekeep, is the cherry on top. The setup for this is deceptively simple (at least on the surface): Ana & Din (a fantasy Sherlock and Watson-esque combination), get tasked with solving a murder in the fictional city of Talagray. A high ranking official was found murdered in the most peculiar of ways – namely having a tree grow out of their torso. As a leviathan creature begins its slow move to attack the sea walls that surround this continent, Ana & Din race to solve a crime that spreads throughout normal civility and encompasses some of the largest noble houses of the land.

All of which to say, it was a fun little adventure, that, even on a reread, I finished in two sittings.

How queer it suddenly felt: I’d …

r/books

College professors face an emerging challenge: We know students are no longer reading entire books

821 comments • theconversation.com
The 2026 winners of the Lyttle Lytton contest, where people compete to write the worst first sentence (in 200 characters or less) of the worst imaginary novel, like "Madison was a shy, awkward, inwardly beautiful teenaged girl just like you."

268 comments • adamcadre.ac

I missed these when they came out this year
AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop

376 comments • 404media.co
Harry Potter publisher to receive millions in copyright settlement between the AI startup Anthropic and thousands of authors over the use of their protected work to power chatbots

141 comments • theguardian.com
Finally deleted my Goodreads account and it feels liberating

477 comments • reddit.com

Disclaimer: the following post is merely a reflection of my own experiences using Goodreads. If you enjoy tracking your reading habits and working on reading challenges, more power to you. Just because it inhibited my enjoyment of reading doesn’t mean it’s that way for everyone. I just wanted to offer my perspective on things. Agree or disagree how you like, it’s no big deal.

-–

I hope this is a fitting post for the sub, if not, feel free to remove.

For the past year, I’ve been using Goodreads religiously, constantly adding dozens over dozens of books to my ever growing tbr and rating and reviewing nearly every book I’ve read. I don’t think I’ve ever read as many books as I did since I started using Goodreads.

Today, I finally deleted my Goodreads account.

Why? Because to me, adding books to my shelves and participating in reading challenges made reading slowly but surely feel performative and like an obligation. I started …
Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ Movie Is Making Gen Z Listen to the Book

431 comments • variety.com

r/printsf

Pushing Ice - Scored a signed first edition of one of my favorites

19 comments • reddit.com

I was just thinking the other day about another re-read of Pushing Ice and then happened on this beautiful signed first edition. Not affiliated at all, but shout out to Second Story Books in Dupont Circle DC! Definitely going to be back there soon to see what other Easton Press editions they have (fingers crossed for House of Suns)
The word for world is forest - Ursula K LeGuin

26 comments • reddit.com

My first LeGuin book, finished in a day, what an incredible story. The fact that it is in less than 180 pages is incredible.

Never felt sadder like this after reading a book since the end of Lonesome Dove.

!Captain Davidson is a bastard, though. Never have I despised a character more !<

Excited to read more of her work
The original date of a classic Ray Bradbury short story is coming up in a couple of weeks...

23 comments • reddit.com

The story is part of “The Martian Chronicles.” In 1997 Bradbury moved the dates in the book forward about 30 years, but if you own or can access an earlier edition, set your alarm a little early on Wednesday August 5th and take five minutes to read “There Will Come Soft Rains.” (most of the story takes place on the 4th but I recommend the morning of the 5th for full effect)
Flowers for Algernon holds up

25 comments • reddit.com

https://preview.redd.it/dqk7u7on8oeh1.png?width=543&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f667354d197bd036f04bb25cc3d84b182bc2307

It holds up
Who are your must-read authors right now?

94 comments • reddit.com

I’m looking for authors who are consistently putting out great books every year or so. Besides Tchaikovsky, who honestly might actually be a robot
Books with original ideas or thought experiments

125 comments • reddit.com

I’m looking to read books where it’s not just about space opera, politics or fights.
I would like to read books where the author present us with strange and original ideas, or interesting What Ifs scenarios and thought experiments.

Things like Foundation, I have mouth and I must scream, Blindsight, Children of Time, 3 body problem, etc.

For me this is what science fiction books do best, and where we get the most original and thought provoking ideas.

r/television

Yellowstone is so bad, I feel like I'm being collectively gaslit by reviewers

1926 comments • reddit.com
2 years since it’s over, still one of the most popular shows out there and I just don’t get the appeal at all. I’ve watched episode 1,2,3,6,7 and I don’t understand what should I even think about the show?

I kept watching because I couldn’t accept that it really is this bad. It feels like a ²⁄₁₀ show that you watch with your friends to laugh at how bad the show is. Not even nitpicking, just majorly bad.
- Pretty much everyone is a douchebag through and through - not even fun douches - just bloated ego and a small brain
- No life lessons, no consistent morals, no cautionary tales, no jokes, no positive or even rational character development
- No consistent beliefs - John talks about how he wouldn’t sell even the smallest piece of land for a fortune and then 10 minute later moans how his son is a failure for being a cowboy and not money oriented
- All quotes by John are nonsense gibberish
- Jimmy is constantly being degraded and seriously tortured …
Judge Pauses Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger, Arguing It Would Violate Federal Antitrust Law

194 comments • variety.com
HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’ Cinematographer Says It’s ‘Brutal’ Working Around the Young Stars’ Strict Shooting Schedules: ‘Have to Pre-Shoot All the Scenes While They’re in Class’

938 comments • variety.com
Prime Video Is Officially Moving Away From Its Old Ad-Free Formula

1200 comments • collider.com
Head of Marvel Television Wants 10 Seasons of "X-Men '97" - Fourth Season Already Approved

560 comments • ixbt.games
'King of the Hill' Season 15 Review: Somehow, the second season of the reboot feels even more like the original series.

368 comments • polygon.com

r/movies

‘The Odyssey’ Proves It: Audiences Want Movies Made the Hard Way | This year's breakouts like 'Project Hail Mary' and 'Obsession' were made by filmmakers who sweated. While CG-stuffed franchise disappointments such as 'Supergirl,' 'Moana,' and 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' looked lazy.

3569 comments • hollywoodreporter.com
Avengers: Doomsday | Official Trailer

7498 comments • youtube.com
New Image of Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen in 'Primetime'

1173 comments • i.redd.it
Emily Wilson (writer of acclaimed Odyssey translation) offers criticisms of Nolan’s film

2243 comments • apnews.com

“For Greek translator Emily Wilson, the release of director Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has been gratifying in various ways. Her acclaimed 2017 edition of Homer’s epic has reached the top 5 on Amazon.com, leading a wave of similar books boosted by the movie. Nolan has even cited her translation, notably the opening line “Tell me about a complicated man,” as inspiration.

But the film itself, which brought in more than $260 million worldwide during its opening weekend and has received raves from many critics, left her unsatisfied.

“I want to celebrate the fact that so many more people are aware of ‘The Odyssey’ and were brought back to the poem,” she told The Associated Press. “But at the same time, I had the sense that Christopher Nolan was trying to pack everything in while missing themes that were essential to the poem.”

….

Wilson, a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said she didn’t want to come across as a “snobby,” nitpicking expert at odds …
Official Poster for 'Avengers: Doomsday'

1257 comments • i.redd.it
World's Largest IMAX in Perspective

492 comments • v.redd.it

Thought this was a really neat way to show the size of the screen at the IMAX in Leonberg, Germany. This rolled before The Odyssey. The IMAX is tucked away in a little town and was not easy to get to, but it was well worth it.

While it’s not a true 1.43:1 IMAX ratio it still holds the world record for largest theater by surface area.

TV & Books #6

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #6

r/fantasy

Why I can't finish Malazan after 9 books

1087 comments • reddit.com

Sadly, I’m putting this series down for good after 9 books. It has been a rocky ride with ups and downs and I felt the need to share my experience.

It’s difficult to talk about this series because any form of critique is inevitably met with ‘it’s written that way on purpose!’ Erikson has been open on how Malazan is a meta-commentary on the fantasy genre. All writing is meta to some extent - taking the tropes of the past and innovating on them to produce something new and exciting. Other series like Dune and Game of Thrones subvert many of the same tropes as Malazan, but I’ve never seen them described as post-modernist philosophy. Discussions around this series feel like they turn all of its faults into an philosophical test that you fail if you don’t ‘get it.’ Just because something is opaque and confusing on purpose doesn’t make it good (and I’m still not sure if its on purpose, or a post justification).

Malazan …
I need a fast paced (addictive) fantasy series to get me out of my reading slump

680 comments • reddit.com

I used to be an avid reader but this year I barely read 5 books. Since reading has been a part of my identity for a really long time, now I feel like I don’t even know myself anymore. Partly I can blame my low attention span, being spent on doomscrolling for at least 11 hours a day but I really want to get out of this and start reading again. Which series would you highly recommend?

P.S. I might be moving out of my home soon so I won’t be able to buy or take much books with me until I settle down. So if you have any recommendations that would be easier to read as an ebook (as I’m the kind of person who reads certain books only in paperbacks because I know it’s so good and I’m going to love it and I don’t want to waste that experience on the e format. I don’t know if this makes sense or just a weird habit of mine)
I think “plot armor” has become one of the most overused criticisms in fantasy.

422 comments • reddit.com

I feel like “plot armor” has become one of those terms that gets thrown around so often that it’s started to lose its meaning. It seems like any time a protagonist survives something dangerous, people immediately call it plot armor, but I don’t think that’s what plot armor actually is. To me, plot armor is when a character survives solely because the plot demands it, and the story has to bend or outright ignore its own rules to keep them alive. A character surviving impossible odds by itself isn’t plot armor. People survive situations in real life that seem completely unbelievable, and history is full of stories that sound like they were made up. Fiction can absolutely have moments like that too as long as the story earns them. If a character survives because they’re skilled, because they prepared, because another character saves them in a believable way, or even because they get lucky, I don’t automatically see that as plot armor. Luck exists, and sometimes people beat the odds. I …
Anyone else have problems with how authors imagine distances?

334 comments • reddit.com

This has happened in many books, but currently I’m just starting book three of The Queens of Renthia. Fun books, no high stakes, interesting concepts, won’t read again.

And the first sentence of the third book says the Queen is on the highest tower of her castle and can see so far distant that she can see the “untamed lands” beyond her border.

And in the series the surrounding environment is surrounded by really tall trees, like taller than normal, that people build entire towns in.

Yet this lady can see beyond these massive forests hundreds/thousands of km to some mysterious beyond.

And like…I’ve been to the top of Taipei 101. It’s not the tallest building anymore, but it’s really fucking tall. Like insanely high up. And even so you can’t see the fucking Taiwan Straight from it, even though it’s on the western plain where it’s flat.

So either this country is the size of a postage stamp, that castle tree is higher than the Burj Khalifa, or the author doesn’t know how to imagine …
My Spite filled Review of "Empire of the Vampire" (Spoilers for whole series)

83 comments • reddit.com

SPOILERS FOR WHOLE SERIES OF “EMPIRE OF THE VAMPIRE”

“There we were, freezing our pantaloons off in the mountains of buttfuck nowhere. The darkness was so fucking dark it was like a sinner’s prayer. The kind of fucking sinner who knows there’s no fucking heaven waiting for him at the end of this fucking dark road. A sinner like me. I grimaced at the thought, thinking about how much I hate fucking potatoes.

‘Fuck!’ I shouted. I was all out of my fucking vampire meth, and the withdrawals were about to fucking come down on me like an evil bitchy she bitch on her moonblood, who is also a bitch. To top off this fucking fuck festival, vampires were chasing us. Mean ones. And they were probably going to suck us dry like when a prostitute whore bitch on her period moonblood does a fucking fellatio.

”‘Oy, Silversaint,’ said one of the other characters of this book. ‘Vampire tracks.’

“Indeed there were. There in …
Blacktongue Thief "The Pull" Will not forget that chapter anytime soon.

52 comments • reddit.com

Removed so rewriting for ya’ fatherless karks!

I’ve read my fair share of grimdark (Abercrombie, Lawrence, Bakker, etc.), so I don’t get unsettled very often, but “The Pull” in The Blacktongue Thief hit me hard.

Until this chapter, I saw the goblins as the typical fantasy horde monsters. Horrible? Yes, but not breaking any dark fantasy rules, you expect monsters to do monstrous things. Then “The Pull” happens, and my take on the goblins shifts from horde monster to existential dread. In a blink, tough guy postering escalates into senseless violence. Malk’s arrogance and hatred were apparent, and the goblins saw a mark immediately.

The kicker was how the townsfolk reacted to the aftermath. This was just another day for them, and everyone went back to what they were doing. Even the human kid that barely survived just got his hair tousled and was off to the pub.

This wasn’t the goriest or bleakest scene I’ve ever read, but …

r/books

A group of major publishers have filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of illegally using millions of copyrighted books to help build its Gemini artificial intelligence models

209 comments • theguardian.com
'Kiki's Delivery Service' Illustrator Akiko Hayashi Dies at 81

61 comments • animenewsnetwork.com
Nine out of ten bestselling novels in UK have one thing in common: a woman is murdered

601 comments • theguardian.com
Utah just banned another Stephen King book from all public schools — The collection of Stephen King novellas inspired classic films like "Stand by Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption"

384 comments • sltrib.com
Reading a 3,000-Year-Old Poem to a 3-Year-Old Boy • The Odyssey is not, strictly speaking, a children’s book. I thought my son might enjoy it anyway.

215 comments • theatlantic.com

In Book 12 of Homer’s Odyssey, a band of war-weary sailors is navigating home when a narrow strait appears on the horizon. The ship, captained by their king, Odysseus, is blocked on one side by a high cliff where a six-headed monster named Scylla is waiting to devour those who pass beneath. On the other side lies a whirlpool called Charybdis that could swallow the ship whole. Odysseus orders his men to row on. Scylla pounces, snatching members of the crew between her jaws. As she consumes them, Homer writes, they shriek, stretching out their arms in “horrifying death-throes.”

It’s a gruesome scene, one of many in this confusing, archaic poem composed some 3,000 years ago. One night this winter, hearing Scylla’s tale read aloud to him for the first time, my 3-year-old son, bundled in his pajamas before bedtime, had a request.

“Read it again!” he said.

The Odyssey is not, strictly speaking, a children’s book. The poem’s structure can confound even an adult reader. It does not open …
I really hate when books update their references to make them modern

642 comments • reddit.com

This is something that really bothers me.

If I wrote a book today and it was set in the present-day, then it won’t always be set in the present day. It will always be set in 2026, and the further into the future someone reads it the more historical it will become.

I think this is important no matter what the story is about. The era you live in and what’s happening in wider society always impacts your personal life and your relationships. There isn’t any combination of events that would happen exactly the same in a different time period. If my embryo had been frozen so that I could be born later, I might be genetically the same person but I wouldn’t be me. Too much of my identity is shaped by the time period I grew up in, the friends I had when I was a child and what was going on in the wider world. (I think in particular in my case, the fact that ⁹⁄₁₁ happened when I was seven and the Iraq War when I was nine shaped the way I saw the world quite …

r/printsf

Is “Rendezvous With Rama” okay to read as a standalone?

156 comments • reddit.com

Just picked up a copy at a used bookstore and have been wanting to start it, but don’t want to get bogged down by the entire series. Does the first stand well on its own?
The Looting of Science Fiction (Article)

119 comments • aeon.co

Hey everyone, I’ve seen various forms of this argument around the internet over the past few months, but none as eloquently stated as this article does.

Namely, that Tech Titans have been ideologically weaponizing certain works of science fiction - divorced from the actual meanings of these works - in order to recreate those works’ more dystopian aspects. In other words, using works like Neuromancer as a blueprint for the type of society (or ‘utopia’) they want to see.

It’s something that has really irked me personally, both as someone who loves and appreciates these works, but also as someone who once was once an enthusiastic supporter of the Tech Industry back when it at least ‘felt’ like it was in support of egalitarian and humanitarian progress.

And I’m really glad that people like the author are starting to call out this hypocrisy.

What are everyone else’s thoughts on the conversation? Is it enough to call out this nonsense …
Children of Strife - Adrian Tchaikovsky

66 comments • reddit.com

If you haven’t read the Children of Time series yet, consider this your sign.

I’m partway through the fourth book - Children of Strife, and it’s everything I love about scifi books: wildly imaginative, funny, genuinely thought-provoking, and still a page-turner.

Few authors can put you inside the mind of something so alien and make it feel this effortless.

Adrian, if you’re accidentally reading this - thank you!.

- Mobile sushi artillery platform. 🙃
Would you recommend Revelation Space?

120 comments • reddit.com

As title says. I love sci-fi, more grounded one, not Star Wars-esque, and I really, really enjoyed The Expanse and I am looking for some other space opera. Would you recommend Revelation Space? Or something else from Reynolds? Or even different series from different author?

I would love to hear your thoughts! Thanks!
Immensely disappointed by Seveneves, and confused by it's reputation

245 comments • reddit.com

Tldr: I don’t understand how people can claim this is hard science fiction. Not even getting to the third act, the fundamental premise is absurd.

The first red flag is largely just Mary Sue style engineering - one or two engineers think “uhhh, biomimicry!” And somehow just reprogram a bunch of complex robots without support from the ground with absurdly complex behaviours. How this is possible isn’t even addressed, the reader is just meant to assume it’s easy.

Things get worse from there - somehow it’s now possible to fabricate and deliver new ISS modules within a month with hand-wavey “ah well everyone on earth is working on it”. The author seemingly feels no need to reconcile that with his crater lake ramblings of how the vast majority of earth can’t help with space construction as they lack the relevant competencies.

And that’s just the stuff the author shows - he then just expects us to not question how a complex …
Something like Mass Effect, specifically the found-family, elite military unit and life-in-a-spaceship vibe and NOT the Reapers

89 comments • reddit.com

Mass Effect is one of my favourite stories in any medium, and part of the reason is that even outside the main storyline dealing with the Reaper threat, I just loved the hangout vibe of large portions of the game. You know, the sections when you’re just chilling in the Normandy, talking to the crew and building your relationships, doing some side missions as an elite badass military unit etc. I also loved the Normandy itself, and how homey and cozy it felt. There’s something so moody and atmospheric about chilling in your comfy captain’s quarters with the endless void of space outside.

Any books that capture that vibe and feel? I honestly prefer something that’s not as grand-scale as a galactic threat like the Reapers…but with a little more oomph than a Becky Chambers book (not that I don’t like those either).

r/television

A Coalition of 12 States Have Sued To Block The Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery Merger

230 comments • deadline.com
Lena Headey Rips Hollywood for Protecting ‘Predatory Men,’ Says ‘Game of Thrones’ Toxic Fans Got Mad She Didn’t Go Nude: ‘I Was Shocked by the Anger’

886 comments • variety.com
Sam Neill, star of Jurassic Park films, Peaky Blinders and The Piano, dies aged 78

237 comments • theguardian.com
'Ted Lasso's Cristó Fernández Makes U.S. Pro Soccer Debut

109 comments • deadline.com
'God Of War' To Recast Lead Kratos After Ryan Hurst Was Injured On Set

801 comments • deadline.com
‘The Daily Show’: Jon Stewart Leads Comedy Central’s Late-Night Staple To Best Ratings In Years

145 comments • deadline.com

r/movies

Jurassic Park Actor Sam Neill has died

2593 comments • stuff.co.nz
Man Binge-Watches Entire Movie In One Sitting

943 comments • theonion.com
Official Poster for 'Spaceballs: The New One'

1264 comments • i.redd.it
‘Moana’ Could Lose at Least $100 Million in Theaters. Does Disney Need to Rethink Its Live-Action Remakes?

3668 comments • variety.com
Backrooms Devs Reportedly Hit With Copyright Claims From A24

1261 comments • kotaku.com
The Onion: Bat-Wielding Christopher Nolan Confronts Man Using Bathroom During ‘The Odyssey’

337 comments • theonion.com

TV & Books #5

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #5

r/fantasy

Paramount's New Epic Fantasy Movie Children Of Blood And Bone Loses Support From Author

549 comments • screenrant.com

That’s disappointing. I wonder what happened.
Susanna Clarke: ‘I had been ill for 11 years. I felt like I was about to fall off the world’

106 comments • theguardian.com
Brandon Sanderson explains why Fourth Wing became such a huge hit

378 comments • polygon.com
TL;DR: "A Sorceress Comes to Call" by T. Kingfisher is an excellent Regency comedy of manners urban fantasy by way of Death Note. Highly recommend.

52 comments • reddit.com

TL;DR: “A Sorceress Comes to Call” by T. Kingfisher is an excellent Regency comedy of manners urban fantasy by way of Death Note. Highly recommend.

Cordelia is an unfortunate girl. She lives alone with her mother, in a sort of genteel poverty. Her mother permits no disobedience and allows no privacy, to the extent of mandating all doors inside their house remain open. And when Cordelia disobeys, she is made obedient, becoming a mere puppet of her mother’s will.

Because her mother is a Sorceress. Not one of the frauds who can barely glamour hair color or make a lame horse look healthy, but the kind out of old fairy tales, the kind no one believes in these modern days.

And she is cruel. The only character I can really compare her cruel, narcissistic vanity to is Regal from the Farseer trilogy. But unlike Regal, she’s also cunning. Cunning enough to decide that, when her current ‘ahem’ patron tires of her, to aim for marriage with some lightly landed …
What is the best fiction you’ve ever read?

593 comments • reddit.com

Out of all of the reading that you have done in your life what is hands down the best book and storytelling that you’ve ever come across? Now obviously I understand most answers are going to be fantasy but if there’s a book outside of fantasy that you think answers this question and was excellent please do mention it. I’m interested to see what you regard as the best of the best.
How does Empire of the Vampire has such good ratings?

370 comments • reddit.com

At the time im’ writing this, the book is sitting at a wooping 4.33 in goodreads, with a lot of comments hamming in how it is not a children’s book; the own author has a review stating multiple times it’s not a book for kids… Well, it is.

Despite being marketed as an adult and mature vampire story, if you took the book, ran a text filter to delete the profanity and cut the explicit sex, it would instantly become a standard book for 14-year-olds. I learned this in the hard way, which was reading it until the end.

To it’s credit, Kristoff’s fight scenes look good and well coreographed, but that’s the only good thing i’ve noticed reading the book.

There’s a terrible voice inconsistency between narration and dialogue in a first-person frame. In third-person omniscient stories, the split between the voice narrating and the protagonist’s voice is completely normal and often good — the narrator’s descriptive voice can be lush and …

r/books

The End of Reading Is Here: Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history [gift link].

1013 comments • theatlantic.com
Article: Reading for pleasure builds empathy in children, but fewer kids are picking up books just for the fun of it

190 comments • theconversation.com
Too Many Books? Mendel Uminer faced a crisis when his landlord objected to the 10,000 volumes in his New York studio apartment

476 comments • nytimes.com
"Smut" seems to be increasingly synonymous with "any sexual content" for a large number of readers these days. How do you define "smut?"

695 comments • reddit.com

It was fairly understood when I was a kid (I’m over 40 now) that “smut” was pornographic romance novels. But in the many books threads I follow, I’ve seen more and more readers decrying books as smut even if there’s a mention of nudity or a single sexual scene. I’m wondering if the meaning is being shifted, which words do now and then, or if I’m just running into people who didn’t know the older definition. I think there should be a big separation between “sexual content” and “smut.”

I define smut the old way. It’s porn. And I think it’s very odd to call something smut because there’s a genital mentioned in there. And there are a ton of fantastic books out there that newer readers might miss just because some character fucks and the book is thrown out for a half of a page worth of content.

Though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with how intimacy-averse young folks are becoming to sexual …
Brandon Sanderson explains why Fourth Wing became such a huge hit

445 comments • polygon.com

TL;DR: it’s due to a 20 year nostalgia cycle about dragon books, at least according to him.
Am I dumb or are the classics really that hard?

675 comments • reddit.com

I started with Rebecca and felt like it was pretty straightforward as it wasn’t really that difficult to read and I read this pretty quickly and loved it. I wanted to continue reading classics as I wanted to be more well read and find more books that scratched a similar itch Rebecca did. I figured a good second one to try was Jane Eyre and oh boy am I struggling. I thought her childhood and Lowood was pretty straightforward and easy to get through but now I’m at the part where her and Mr Rochester are having conversations and getting to know each other and I’m really starting to struggle.

The dialogue is so so dense, Mr. Rochester makes me feel like an idiot because I can barely understand what he’s saying, I have been able to pick apart the gist most of the time but it’s hard to keep up. I’m also at the point where it’s getting a bit hard to find myself wanting to keep reading as the dense Victorian dialogue is getting to me. I don’t want to give up reading this but if my brain keeps …

r/printsf

The Best Science Fiction: The 2026 Arthur C. Clarke Award Shortlist

172 comments • fivebooks.com
Tanith Lee on Humble Bundle!

34 comments • reddit.com

You can get 26 Tanith Lee titles for a very good price on Humble Bundle right now.

Lee is one of the classic dark fantasy writers, though not as well known as she ought to be.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/tanith-lee-collection-daw-books-books?mcID=102:6a4c2d791ec9bee40108862d:ot:58f97f44c0bdae8c14061094:1&linkID=6a4c2f2d5bc915e94b00f49c&utm_source=Humble+Bundle+Newsletter&utm_content=cta_button&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tanithleecollectiondawbooks_bookbundle
Books like Anathem

90 comments • reddit.com

I am looking for other books like Anathem by Neal Stephenson, which is probably my favorite book of all time. I have reread it a few times, and may reread it again depending on how the book search goes…

What I like about Anathem and what I am looking for (this contains spoilers for Anathem):

I like that Anathem is a fictional book but it contains real, in depth, philosophical and mathematical principles. I feel like I am learning something while reading fiction. In fact, I feel like I learn more because the narrative helps reinforce the concepts. When I read Origen or Philo it is harder immerse myself into what is being discussed.

Magic as science. I love how Anathem ends! It is a long book for the payoff, but I love that the quasi-arcane philosophies of that mundane world has resulted in something akin to magic.

Those are the two primary things I am looking for in a novel: real philosophy, math, and/or hermeticism; and magic/manipulation of the real world because of the concepts …
Looking for sci-fi where the protagonist is just... doing their job

185 comments • reddit.com

I’m in the mood for science fiction where the main character isn’t the chosen one, the captain, the genius who invents everything, or the person who accidentally becomes the most important human in history.

I’d love stories where the protagonist is an engineer, maintenance tech, mechanic, cargo handler, station operator, repair specialist, or someone in a similar role who’s just trying to do their actual job. The stakes can still be huge, but I’d like to see them from the perspective of someone who normally wouldn’t be the focus of the story.

Bonus points if the technical work actually matters and isn’t just background flavour. I really enjoy competent characters solving practical problems without suddenly turning into action heroes.

I’ve already read Project Hail Mary, The Martian, and most of Becky Chambers’ work.

Any recommendations?
Our Best Possible Future - Kim Stanley Robinson interview

15 comments • skepticspath.org
Sirens of Titan

25 comments • reddit.com

Just finished Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut the other day and wow what a story. Still felt very relevant in 2026. Random thoughts and spoilers ahead.

Salo describes a university on Tralfamadore without buildings where there’s a cloud that does the heavy thinking for everybody and it sounds like the internet and cloud computing. I’m amazed Vonnegut actually used the word “cloud”. Wikipedia says the concept of cloud computing dates to the 1960s and the term cloud was coined in 1994. The book was written in 1959. He was so prescient.

There were warnings about technology. On Tralfamadore the legend said beings made machines to serve higher purposes. That reminds me of people using to AI generate art now instead of making it themselves. Those machines end up controlling humanity on Earth to unwittingly do their bidding. With how much AI is susceptible to misinformation and hallucinating facts, I wonder how using it will influence what we know and what we do. The Martian army was …

r/television

Rob Reiner Receives Posthumous Emmy Nomination for The Bear

126 comments • consequence.net
Ricky Gervais fails to mention ‘The Office’ co-creator Stephen Merchant during his hour-long 25th anniversary special for the series

664 comments • metro.co.uk
Emmy Rossum Says Years-Long ‘Shameless’ Pay Battle Only Ended in Season 8 After Salary Dispute Leaked to the Public: ‘It Was Resolved Within a Day’

250 comments • variety.com
Widow’s Bay has received 19 Emmy nominations

498 comments • televisionacademy.com
Netflix keeps producing second-season bombs because it's a tech company

896 comments • avclub.com
A Message From Mike Ehrmantraut — “Right v. Wrong”

275 comments • youtube.com

r/movies

TV & Books #4

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #4

r/fantasy

Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Season 1 Episode Count Confirmed

645 comments • screenrant.com

Will 10 episodes be enough for Way of Kings do you think?
Lord of the Rings still feels very fresh in 2026, it's not as reliant on now common tropes as its thought to be

172 comments • reddit.com

I don’t frequent this sub so I’m sorry if this is a common topic of discussion, I was just thinking about this after having read it and I didn’t know where else to post my thoughts.

It seems to be common knowledge that LotR is the originator of all the tropes and cliches you see in fantasy media. Everything that followed cribbed everything from LotR, and if you read it now you’ll just find an outdated story that’s been done a million times since then. Except I’ve found that this is not actually true at all.

LotR doesn’t rely on common fantasy tropes, and I still found it a refreshing read even today. There’s an evil dark lord, but he doesn’t actually do anything during the story and the heroes never even meet him. The evil wizard villain doesn’t get a big scene where he uses his magic powers and is eventually heroically defeated, he gets shanked by a random hobbit in the epilogue after having become a pathic, vengeful gang …
Just finished the first Mistborn trilogy, and I can honestly say that I didn’t know novels could be this well crafted. [Hero of Ages Spoilers Hidden]

347 comments • reddit.com

So, as a young reader who stopped reading as many others have, only to pick it back in their late 20s, this trilogy has blown my mind and created an insatiable desire to consume more fiction.

When finishing the final page of HoA, all I could think about was how did we get here? >!This was a cool magic heist book with these cool magic powers and a fantastic characters that we get to watch take down the big bad guy to free their fellow enslaved people.!< >!Then, we culminate by merging with the cosmic entity of preservation to destroy the other cosmic entity of ruin, sacrificing our beloveds, and allowing the real hero of ages to rebuild the world through a balance of both aspects.!<

I have never felt emotional while reading, aside from the slight pang in the gut when a loved character dies…. But I was full on crying, tears and snot while finishing chapter 81 of HoA.

I know Sanderson isn’t for everyone, but this style of world building and pace, culminating in dozens of …
Review: Animal Farm (the 2025/2026 movie). TLDR: If you've never read the book, it's 5/10, so skip it. If you HAVE read the book, and liked it, it's -1000000/10 and you need to gather your friends to go hate watch it right now

96 comments • reddit.com

By certain measures, you might have thought Animal Farm stood a chance of being a good movie. After all, it’s an adaption of George Orwell’s classic work, Animal Farm; it has an all-star cast, including Seth Rogen, Gaten Matarazzo, Steve Buscemi, Glenn Close, Laverne Cox, Kieran Culkin, Jim Parsons, Woody Harrelson, Andy Serkis, Kathleen Turner, Iman Vellani and more. And it’s directed by Andy Serkis who, sure, is mostly known as a voice actor. But he was, after all, a main character in one of the most successful book-to-film adaptions of all time (LotR), and as an audiobook reader, he always seemed like someone who would respect the text.

But as rumors about the movie began to leak, I started to have my doubts. First, I heard (but have not bothered to verify) it got dropped by it’s initial distributor… It then got picked up by Angel Studios, which caters to right-wing conservatives… But then the right-wing conservatives started howling because …
What book/series made you go ‘Oh that’s where X got it from!’

338 comments • reddit.com

Hi everyone, I was reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell a few days ago and I didn’t know anything going into it except that it was widely beloved and respected in SFF spaces. I’m only 200 pages in since I’ve just started it, and yet even in that small page count, I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve thought to myself, “Wait a minute, this element(s) is also there in the Emily Wilde books!” or “Oh, did V. E. Schwab take this idea and turn it into a novel?” or “Oh so that’s where Babel got this idea from!”

To be clear, I’m not saying that this is a bad thing or accusing these authors of plagiarism or anything like that. It’s totally natural to be influenced by the books which you have read and all the authors I’ve mentioned have been upfront about how JSAMR inspired them. But from my perspective, I’ll admit it was kinda humbling to realize that a lot of the worldbuilding and magical elements that I found so interesting and surprising in my favorite books had already been done …
The Hero of Ages | Brandon Sanderson (9.5/10)

122 comments • reddit.com

‘I am, unfortunately, the Hero of Ages.’

You know, I had a review planned. I had a very well versed format I was going to adapt. Things I was going to write, like chapters in a book. Halfway through the book, that changed. 80% through the book, it took a shape of its own, one I was kind of hesitant to write about. But then came the final part.

Trust.

And I guess that pretty much sums up this book, and my experience with it. It was a thing of beauty, the way the story flowed. I had my doubts about where the plot would go. And for the most parts I was right. Though I will admit, those two deaths at the end …

For a long, long time I despaired about fantasy books being too lenient to their characters, being too forgiving. You know what they say, seek and ye shall find, one of little faith. In a way, this book taught me more about religion, about the very essence of there being so many, about the importance of having faith. Especially when things seem dire.

I had …

r/books

Retired 3 years ago and just finished my 500th book. Most of my recommendations came from this community. Here's are the 10 best in my opinion.

396 comments • reddit.com

I wrote a short essay after each book I read and finally hit 500 today as I finished a book on The Dreyfus Affair (interesting stuff!). I was reflecting back on my essays (which I can share if folks find it worth discussing any of the titles further)

I gathered most of my reading list from here (reddit r/books) but very often followed certain themes and threads that were related to whatever wavelength I was in at the time. I spent like 4 months on nothing but biblical apocrypha and then another detour into Opera for a good 6 weeks. I read all the Raymond Chandler books in between all of Virginia Wolf’s books to keep an oscillating variety because of ADD)….

Speaking of: ADD sufferer for 40 years+ w other fun cognitive comorbidities. Quite intense that manifests in impulsivity which causes my thoughts to dart ²⁴⁄₇ unless I’m completely regimented about overcoming it. I had to train my brain completely to become a good reader, to the point where I kept a sharp …
Japan’s Eiko Kadono, author of ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service,’ still believes in the magic of books at 91

42 comments • independent.co.uk
Texas makes Bible passages required reading for millions of public school students in a move that critics say gives preference to Christianity over other faiths

763 comments • theguardian.com
Russell Brand settles £220,000 lawsuit over "wasted expenditure"after failing to write two books

148 comments • the-independent.com
Short story widely accused on social media of being written using AI wins overall Commonwealth prize

552 comments • theguardian.com
Dungeon Crawler Carl. WOW.

1725 comments • reddit.com

I kept seeing all the hype about this book everyone on Reddit and other online spaces and wondered how good could it be. Could it live up to all the praise and positive reception?

Well after finally reading it, I can safely say that the answer is a resounding no. In fact I can’t remember being this disappointed and underwhelmed by a hyped genre book on Reddit since Project Hail Mary and everything written by Brandon Sanderson.

I suppose it’s somewhat better than your bog standard lit rpg but that’s honestly a very low bar and DCC just about barely clears it. The premise is interesting enough but nothing unique in the realm of this sub genre. It’s just written in such a grating, juvenile style. It feels like you’re reading a Reddit comment thread where each poster is trying and failing to be funnier than the last.

I wasn’t really expecting anything from a prose standpoint because this is a litrpg we’re talking about. in that sense, I can’t say I was disappointed because I expected …

r/printsf

The Ursula K. Le Guin prize for fiction 2026 shortlist, have you read any of these books?

59 comments • reddit.com

The short list for one of my favourite sff fiction prizes was just released, and for the first time ever I have not read any of the books. Would love to hear your thoughts on the ones that are sci-fi if you have read any of them. I think I’m looking forward to reading Slow Gods by Claire North the most.

This is all the shortlisted books:

** Audition* by Pip Adam.
** Sunward* by William Alexander.
** Call and Response* by Christopher Caldwell.
** Midnight Timetable* by Bora Chung.
** The Works of Vermin* by Hiron Ennes.
** Notes from a Regicide* by Isaac Feldman.
** Mad Sisters of Esi* by Tashan Mehta.
** One Message Remains* by Premee Mohamed.
** Slow Gods* by Claire North.
Looking for left-leaning MilSF

235 comments • reddit.com
I have been craving military scifi recently, but I find the typical authoritarian bent distasteful. Can anyone recommend something that won’t irritate my left-wing sensibilities quite so much?
- Interstellar society, not limited to our solar system.
- Things are okay and we’re working to make them better, not starting with a straight up dystopia.
- The protagonist is either part of a team, or is supported by a team.
- There is a chain of command that leads to the government - it doesn’t need to be military specifically.
- There is a problem solving focus that is more sociological and psychological and figuring things out, rather than just using force better than the other guy.
- Written after 1980 or so.
Things I’ve read and liked that had most of the things I’m looking for:
- The Ecolitan Matter by LE Modesitt
- The March North by Graydon Saunders
- The Fourth Fleet Irregulars by SJ MacDonald
- The Constabulary Casefiles by Eric Thompson
- Planetside by Michael Mammay …
The Ministry for the Future by KSR

104 comments • reddit.com

I finished this book 3 weeks ago, I really liked it and it was a good read, especially after finishing AP environmental lol. But a lot of the stuff mentioned in the book is happening now, most notable being the heatwave in Europe. Has anyone else who has read the book been thinking of it constantly now?
Reading Every Book in my Late Dad's Library #7: Startide Rising

11 comments • reddit.com

In his debut novel, Sundiver, David Brin gave us an imaginative story about first contact, large-scale species engineering, and the ethics of fitting into an imperfect galactic culture, but as I tried to show in my review, I think its reach exceeded its grasp and some of its ideas were distinctly undercooked.

Startide Rising, on the other hand, is a fully mature sequel, taking place over a century after the events of Sundiver and mostly disconnected from them. It was also a roaring success that bagged a Hugo and Nebula in 1984. Its story is self-contained, but the wider conflict and mystery it sets up was the basis for the rest of the books in the Uplift Saga. I don’t usually think it’s wise to skip entries in a series, even if they are disappointing, but Sundiver is far enough in the background from Startide Rising and enough of the basic ideas are recapitulated that I don’t think much would be lost if you just started here.

To restate briefly, civilization across …
Stories about hive mind where the hive mind isn’t the enemy or supposed to be viewed as bad

138 comments • reddit.com

EDIT: thank you all!! Took me a while to read everything so far and add books to my list. Did not realize that there would be this much to parse through. Really appreciate it all.

Basically the title. The concept of a hive mind or collective consciousness is used periodically but it’s usually portrayed as either bad/evil or at best undesirable.

Are there any stories that try and flip this concept that convince the reader that the hive mind is good? Or the hive mind is the protaganist? Maybe invert the survival story and instead of someone trying to avoid being assimilated it’s a hive mind trying to avoid being dismantled by someone who thinks they’re doing good.

Really just curious to see how an author might try and take this concept.
"A Logic Named Joe," by Will F. Jenkins, published in Astounding Science Fiction (March 1946), predicted personal computers, the Internet, search engines, FaceTime, AI assistants, and the need for content moderation.

11 comments • s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com

“A Logic Named Joe,” by Will F. Jenkins, now better known by his pen name Murray Leinster, predicts the modern personal computer stack: a screen, a keyboard, a network connection, a search engine, a video service, a phone system, a database, an advice engine, and the need for content moderation.

Joe is a “logic,” (a personal computer as mass household appliance) serviced by Ducky, the narrator. Ducky encounters what we would today call an alignment problem. I won’t spoil the story, but it’s worth reading.

r/television

Danny Glover reveals he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease

424 comments • usatoday.com

“I could live with it, in a sense,” Glover said, but added that as the disease progresses, “things are going to be different and changing.”

“I still have my daughter, I have friends,” he told the outlet. “I want to just say, your life continues.”

“I’m still not accepting in my mind all parts of it,” he also said. “There are the moments that you keep remembering that validate the fact that you can remember stuff. And there are moments I’ll never forget.”

Glover’s daughter, Mandisa, told People that her father is “aware sometimes and then sometimes not,” and she described the diagnosis as a “change in the core of who you think you are or don’t think you are.” But the actor said he doesn’t feel it’s “the end of my life,” telling People, “There’s work to do.” Glover shared the news of his diagnosis weeks before his 80th …
Josh Peck Says He Only Took Home Around $500,000 for ‘Drake and Josh’ After Four Years and 60 Episodes

883 comments • variety.com
Wonka Netflix show faces backlash for AI-generated Gene Wilder voice

511 comments • bbc.com
Eva Green Rushed to Hospital After Accident on 'Wednesday' Set

257 comments • tvinsider.com
‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2’ Premieres Fall 2026 on Netflix, New Characters Revealed

227 comments • animecorner.me
‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Season 2 Debuts With 8.7 Million Views in Four Days, Down 59% From Season 1

934 comments • variety.com

r/movies

22 Jump Street (2014) | Dir. by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller | Captain's daughter scene

603 comments • v.redd.it
Walton Goggins Saved Olivia Wilde From Being Stampeded to Death by Horses on ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ Set

626 comments • variety.com
‘Blazing Saddles’ Named Funniest Film of All Time by AFI in Honor of Mel Brooks Turning 100

734 comments • deadline.com
Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale Are in for ‘Heat 2,’ Filming Starts in November

774 comments • thewrap.com
Official Character Posters for 'The Social Reckoning'

797 comments • i.redd.it
WERWULF - Official Trailer [HD] - Only In Theaters Christmas Day

1179 comments • youtube.com

TV & Books #3

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #3

r/fantasy

Hot take: The obsession with "Hard magic system" and glazing it and explaining everything has ruined fantasy. For me at least.

537 comments • reddit.com

I know this is extremely controversial opinion. And yet for me it’s something fundamental.



But think about it. What is fantasy like? For me, it’s like being a kid again, when you know nothing about how the world works and you are curious to find it out, and the process of discovering the facts and the knowledge and the experience is what makes it beautiful. And then you grow up and become an adult and everything becomes known and boring.



It’s also like installing a new game, (and preferably when you’re a kid) where everything is beautiful and wonderful to you. You don’t see the codes and the graphics and the bugs and the development. You get lost in it.



Fantasy, for me, is that. It’s throwing you to a new world, and trusting you to find and discover the world, and be amazed and exited by every creature and plant and person and race.



Nowadays, many preferences has turned into info dumping and …
Prime Video reboots Conan the Barbarian with the creator of The Clone Wars

73 comments • polygon.com
Dragons in fantasy are either gods or pets and almost never an actual animal, and it kinda bugs me

407 comments • reddit.com

Ive been thinking about this for a while and i cant unsee it now. In most fantasy the dragon is either basically a god, some ancient cosmic force that speaks in riddles and hoards gold for no biological reason, or its a glorified pet that the chosen kid rides into battle. What i almost never see is a dragon treated like an actual apex predator that exists inside an ecosystem, and the more i think about the logistics the more questions i have.

Like the feeding alone. A creature that size, if we go by square cube law it would need an absurd amount of calories just to not starve. Were talking entire herds of livestock on a regular basis. One dragon settling near a village wouldnt be a cool mysterious threat, it would strip the entire region of sheep and cattle and deer in a season and then either move on or starve. And nobody ever shows the aftermath of that, the famine, the empty hills, the farmers who are genuinely ruined not because the dragon burned anything but because it ate …
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (10/10)

203 comments • reddit.com

‘I worry about what they will say of me. Historians can make what they wish of the past. In a thousand years’ time, will I be remembered as the man who protected mankind from a powerful evil? Or, will I be remembered as a tyrant who arrogantly tried to make himself a legend?’

Now, this is how you write fantasy.

Okay, so I confess: after the latest strings of fantasy books I’d read being more or less a hit or miss depending on the day (apparently), I did not go in with high hopes for this one. I mean, yes, I have heard great many things of this book, and also yes, before you come at me: blame my healthy apprehension for anything being too highly regarded and I immediately become of the mindset that it might not be the second coming as people keep saying it is. Also, coming over from Islington’s books, I really did not have much hope in the way of falling in love with the characters all that much.

And well, when the tears fell down my cheeks at the end of the …
Sad ASoIaF milestone

197 comments • reddit.com

I meant to post this the day before yesterday, on 21 June, but then forgot! 🙈

That day marked a sad milestone: we were then as far removed from the publication of A Dance with Dragons than Dance was removed from the publication of A Game of Thrones.

The first installment in George R. R. Martin‘s series A Song of Ice and Fire was published on August 1, 1996. 5458 days later, on July 12, 2011, the latest installment was released.

21 June, 2026 was the 5458th day after the release of Dance.
Bored of the Swords: The Rebirth of Sword & Sorcery and the Death of the Weird - Cynthia Ward, Reactor

67 comments • reactormag.com

r/books

r/printsf

Is Adrian Tchaikovsky consistently good?

204 comments • reddit.com

Something I was wondering today because there’s a big discussion about Brandon Sanderson going on over on X. Basically, Sanderson is known for very simple, kind of dumbed-down prose and he releases at stupidly fast speeds. He makes good worlds, and he’s the magic systems guy. But opinion overall is divided. Sanderson is, at my count, 75 books deep right now (split between novels, novellas, short story collections etc.). His debut was in 2005.

In the sci fi space, Tchaikovsky is known for being incredibly prolific too, but not quite to the same level. He’s a few years older, his debut was 2008, and (at my count) he’s at 43 novels and 14 novellas. But I’ve never seen the same criticisms of Tchaikovsky, that I see of Sanderson (very simple prose, kind of dumbed down, scared of adjectives etc.). In fact, he gets award noms & wins left, right & center, he gets critical attention, he gets strong reviews. Sanderson moves units, but every time he comes up …
Is there cozy sci-fi in the same way there is cozy fantasy?

271 comments • reddit.com

I interviewed Rebecca Thorne about her new book Moss’d in Space, and during the conversation, she said she wants cozy sci-fi to become a sub-genre like cozy fantasy is. I love the idea of more sci-fi books in general, but also especially with a cozy feel to them.

I have to assume that some are already published, and I either don’t think of them as “cozy” (which is subjective) or I just don’t know about them.

So I guess my question is, what are some “cozy sci-fi” books?

I’ve found a few self-published ones, but they can be pretty hit or miss for me.
Father's Day in The City and The City

8 comments • reddit.com

My favourite book is The City and The City by China Miéville and I’ve explained the plot to my 10-year-old. So for Father’s Day, he divided our house into Besźel and Ul Qoma and gave me a Breach badge. Then he and my partner dressed in opposite colour clothes and made a little mystery about a stolen dress I had to solve.

The moral of the story is that you should tell your kids the plots of your favourite scifi books.
Most "punk" cyberpunk?

74 comments • reddit.com

Hey all,

I was having a discussion with some friends about Ghost in the Shell, specifically the first season of the TV series Stand Alone Complex, with one friend complaining that it was “cyberpunk, hold the punk”. We haven’t finished the series yet, but so far I think this is a valid critique of what is basically a very roboty police procedural with not much substantive commentary. It got me thinking about what is at the other end of the spectrum, though: what is, in your opinion, cyberpunk that focuses more on the “punk”? Something more interested in the human resistance and struggle in the digital dystopia than the technology that pervades it.

For reference, I’ve read Neuromancer and the Kovacs trilogy, but I’m otherwise pretty inexperienced with the genre in print. Thanks in advance for any recommendations or insights!
What's on your DNF list and why?

399 comments • reddit.com

I dropped Android at Arms by Andre Norton. It not an epic story, but it started off mysterious and interesting. There’s a prison escape, android body doubles, blaster fights, and betrayl! It was all go go go until about half way through and then it’s just pages and pages of campfire talk. I couldn’t make it through to the other side.
The Strugatskys - Gritty & Realistic Settings

20 comments • reddit.com

I just finished reading Hard to Be a God yesterday, which is the second of the Strugastskys’s novels that I’ve read (the first being Roadside Picnic).



Outside of the social commentary and thought provoking aspects of their writing, the thing that stands out the most to me is their ability to write gritty settings that feel tactile and real.



There were passages in Hard to Be a God that made me feel like I needed to take a shower, to clean away the musk and grime that oozed out through the pages. Roadside Picnic was similar with the town of Harmont and The Zone with its rundown and dilapidated feel.



I don’t really know what I’m trying to say other than I think the Strugatskys are exceptional at writing realistic settings that feel lived-in and that pop off the page. It’s really incredible stuff.



I’m really looking forward to reading more of their work. I found a used copy of The Doomed City …

r/television

r/movies

Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ to Skip Social Media Influencer Screenings

1199 comments • hollywoodreporter.com
Jemaine Clement confirms a sequel to the original 'What We Do in the Shadows' movie is officially being written

414 comments • dreadcentral.com
First Image of Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Robert Eggers' 'Werwulf'

925 comments • i.redd.it
PlayStation is Deleting 551 Movies From Customers’ Accounts / Movies like 'First Blood', 'Terminator 2', 'Total Recall' and 'Evil Dead' are all being unceremoniously removed

1269 comments • kotaku.com
Jordan Peele has reportedly finished the script for his next movie with Universal

760 comments • gizmodo.com
Robert Eggers Reveals The Dialogue In 'WERWULF' is written with the help of 2 Oxford Professors and is in 1300s Middle English

717 comments • esquire.com

TV & Books #2

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #2

r/fantasy

Dungeon Crawler Carl series officially announced at Peacock

386 comments • variety.com
For anyone that still hasn't read Cradle or picked it up on Amazon, all 12 books are free right now

185 comments • reddit.com

Originally saw this on r/ebookdeals: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0753FP6SP
Jane Yolen has died (1939 - 2026)

52 comments • file770.com

Saw no posts on this yet here, but this news arrived a few days ago. She was one of the greats.
To celebrate the release of my newest books, I'm making all of my work free for today only. I'm Sarah Lin, author of various series including The Weirkey Chronicles and Throne of Time... AMA!

185 comments • reddit.com
Hello, r/fantasy! I’m Sarah Lin, author of a variety of books. I’ve written a lot because A) I enjoy writing and B) I enjoy having enough money for food.

To keep this post from getting too jumbled, here is the free content promised in the title:
- Anybody can read Throne of Time online for free.
- Almost all my past books are free on Amazon this week only! (Only .com and .uk, sorry; I’d do more, but Amazon doesn’t allow it.)
- Everyone commenting here will be placed into a drawing for free Audible codes for the Depthless Hunger audiobooks (unless you say you’re not interested in your comment).
If you know me, it’s probably from my longest ongoing series, The Weirkey Chronicles, or one of my finished series, like Street Cultivation. These are the books that are 100% free on Amazon right now, to celebrate the most recent book:

Deadgold

Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H51F4DJ8

Description: Betrayed. Murdered. Reborn. One last chance, to make it …
Underrated almost forgotten fantasy books from the 70s, 80s, 90s

641 comments • reddit.com

What older fantasy books you liked, but you don´t see them being recommended here?

It can be a hidden gem or just a obscure fantasy novel you remember for some reason.
This subreddit is outstanding

21 comments • reddit.com

I just want to say this community is fantastic! I started reading about a year ago due to playing magic and realizing I needed to read more and come across more unfamiliar words and get better at processing and decoding them. I’ve discovered many books and series I otherwise would have never read. I just wanted to thank the members of this community. Sorry if this breaks community rules. Cheers

r/books

The Massachusetts House has passed a bill that would shield schools from attempted book bans

98 comments • masslive.com

“Lawmakers in the state House overwhelmingly approved a bill aimed at shielding public and school libraries from the book-banning efforts that have swept the nation over the last few years.”
The Obama and Trump libraries are going digital. Historians aren’t sure that’s a good idea.

253 comments • news.northeastern.edu
Missouri cut funding for Dolly Parton’s free book program. What it means for kids in KC

91 comments • kansascity.com
Jon and Kate Gosselin’s Son Collin, 22, Announces Bombshell Memoir, Says He Will Reveal ‘Hardest Moments of My Life’

234 comments • people.com

“The 22-year-old son of former reality TV stars Jon and Kate Gosselin announced on Instagram that he is releasing a memoir titled In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood, which is scheduled to be published on Oct. 13, 2026.”
Little Queer Libraries offer banned books across the Pittsburgh region

147 comments • post-gazette.com

“Inspired by those colorful outdoor boxes that invite you to take books or small objects for free, the Pittsburgh Equality Center has launched a network of Little Queer Libraries in time for Pride Month.”
Kazuo Ishiguro announces 1930s spy caper to be published next year

133 comments • theguardian.com

r/printsf

Okay, Stanislaw Lem might be the GOAT. Finally got around to reading him.

83 comments • reddit.com

I read Solaris, then The Invincible, and now His Master’s Voice. This dude clearly influenced TONS of modern sci-fi. And his aliens are actual aliens… like so weird and different that it’s not even clear how you could communicate with them.
Just finished Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

56 comments • reddit.com

This is the first book I’ve read by him and it’s so incredible. Just finished it and have been thinking about it for 30 mins straight without doing anything else. Didn’t expect the conversation between devi and the ships computer to be so funny specifically in the beginning. Didn’t expect the end of chapter/section 6 to hit so hard. Just all around incredible. Kim Stanley Robinson has a new fan in me
Most thought-provoking printSF you have ever read?

130 comments • reddit.com

Love sci-fi since it introduces ethics and existentialist questions. Looking for books/novellas/short stories that really made you think long after reading it. NOT looking for books that end with no conclusion and you wonder what happens next or have to come to your own conclusion. Looking specifically for interesting thought concepts.
SF Masterworks need to reprint some Barry Malzberg novels.

26 comments • reddit.com

I’ve heard a couple of my favourite booktubers talk about Barry Malzberg very highly, so I figured I’d check him out. I purchased an old paperback copy of his novel, The Destruction Of The Temple on ebay for about £20. It was utterly fantastic and on another level. Told with immaculate prose, it was like if you combined the grittyness and decay of a 70s JG Ballard novel with a delirious and mindbending plotline that made Ubik seem straightforward. Anyway I checked on Goodreads and it only as about 100 ratings, and I was stunned.

But then again it’s no wonder that this book only got 100 ratings, because nobody in the right mind would ever pay that price for a 50 year old paperback. In fact nearly all of his books are overpriced as they are all out of print; some fetching as much as £45. In this modern world of ours where every everyone is tight for cash, it’s no wonder that nobody is talking about him anymore.

I just find it so tragic that an author who was so …
Authors with a large body of quality work?

145 comments • reddit.com

Within SF, who would you think has written the most novels that are more than just worth a read? Like, really good A tier stuff. I’m not talking about the Kevin J. Andersons with 100+ books that go straight to the TBDNF shelf.

I get that that it’s hard to consistently churn out gold, and burnout will almost always catch up to a good writer. I’d just like something that will keep my attention for a good while, and not just read their seven books or so and be done with them forever.
Elizabeth Bear Is A Master of Introspective First-Person Narration

14 comments • reddit.com

I recently stumbled across Elizabeth Bear’s White Space trilogy. By that I mean I plunged into it without any prior research. I was expecting a sprawling galactic scale and hard-ish futuristic world building, and the books delivered, but I was not prepared for the intensely introspective narrative voice.



For the first 50 pages or so of Ancestral Night, I was somewhat irked by how preoccupied the main character was with her own internal state. Plotwise, the book gets into action and mystery pretty quickly, but it doesn’t feel fast-paced because every event is accompanied by a minute account of how it is affecting the main character psychologically.



When I say psychologically, I don’t mean just subjectively or emotionally, but also biologically. We’re told about hormones and neurotransmitters as much as or maybe even more than emotions. A lot of the prominent technology in the series is tasked with moment-by-moment fine-tuning of …

r/television

r/movies

Daveigh Chase, 'The Ring' Star & Voice of Lilo in 'Lilo & Stitch', Dies at 35

1050 comments • justjared.com
Hi r/movies! I’m Robert Hays, star of Airplane! and Airplane II: The Sequel. AMA!

912 comments • i.redd.it

Hi reddit, I’m Robert Hays.

You may recognize me as Ted Striker in Airplane! and Airplane II: The Sequel. I’ve also starred in things like Starman, Angie, Homeward Bound, Take This Job and Shove It, Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye, and as the voice of Iron Man.

I’m out on tour now with Airplane! doing screenings and onstage Q&As with my co-star Julie Hagerty, you can find tickets/showings here, this week we’re in San Francisco - come see us! In the meantime, Ask Me Anything!

Airplane! trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07pPmCfKi3U

After the crew becomes sick with food poisoning, a neurotic ex-fighter pilot must safely land a commercial airplane full of passengers.

-———-

Bio:

Since his debut as Ted Striker in the comedy classic Airplane! where he immortalized movie lines including “Surely you can’t be serious”, Robert Hays has starred in more than 20 films, numerous television series, and continues to work across …
‘KPop: Demon Hunters’ Makes Netflix History - The film has officially become the first title to spend 52 consecutive weeks in Netflix’s global Top 10 charts

502 comments • whats-on-netflix.com
Clashing Over ‘Indiana Jones’: Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg Were Not 100% on Board With ‘Crystal Skull’ and Fought George Lucas Over Adding Aliens

1005 comments • variety.com
Sean Penn To Direct Bradley Cooper In Story Of January 6th Cop

932 comments • deadline.com
Nation Proud Of Self For Watching, Enjoying Original Movie | Patting themselves on the back, the U.S. populace announced Wednesday that they were proud of themselves for watching and enjoying an original movie — only to later be devastated to learn it was an adaptation of a novel by the same name

552 comments • theonion.com

TV & Books #1

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 05:16:06 +0000

Mailshine - TV & Books #1

r/fantasy

Jane Yolen has died (1939 - 2026)

47 comments • file770.com

Saw no posts on this yet here, but this news arrived a few days ago. She was one of the greats.
We need to talk about Adrian Tchaikovsky.

225 comments • reddit.com

How does he do it? He is just one man, right? He has at least 6 books published this year - as well as a collection and 3 stories in other collections. Its not like he just crapped them out either - his stuff is very good - he was nominated for a locus and a huge the last time they were up - and 2 of his works were finalists for locus awards.

Looking back, it seems he’s won Hugos and Arthur C Clarke awards and has had this machine like publication schedule for the past few years. How is he putting out quality books so fast?
China Miéville's latest book "The Rouse" is 1,264 pages long, coming out on Sept 17 2026

39 comments • panmacmillan.com
Subterranean Press will be closing at the end of 2027 possibly beginning of 2028. Bummer.

125 comments • reddit.com

I had heard that Bill was going to be retiring after reading the first announcement on the Readers/Resell facebook group site that Bill and other employees post to which was a leak. However, I had it in my head they’d be looking for a successor to continue things and I thought that’s what he said. Whether that would be an ownership, partnership, or they’d be purchased outright I didn’t know. However it looks like they’ll be closing.

While their prices have increased Subterranean Press and Grim Oak have been the small presses that have had excellent quality and decent taste at an affordable price point. Oh and they’re not one of those presses that sell out in 1 minute so if you gave a shit you had a minimum of 2 days to get your books and often a lot longer. I just don’t see any other small presses at this price point, publishing the type of authors I like, with this quality and availability other than Grim Oak and possibly Folio right now. Sucks. Looks like they’ll be finishing …
What Are Books That Are Written As A Response To The Lord Of The Rings, Or In Conversation With It?

374 comments • reddit.com

I’m following along a podcast and reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time. I’m reminded that I’ve read that Jacqueline Carey’s The Sundering series was based on LOTR and Victoria Goddard’s The Bone Harp was written to process the author’s thoughts on The Silmarillion. And recently The Door on the Sea by Caskey Russell was advertised as a Tlingit response to LOTR. Please, if you know of any books, or even other media like comics or poetry, by writers who were clearly inspired by LOTR and wrote their stories because they had something to say about the series or Tolkien’s writings at large, list them in the comments.
How did Sword of Truth become so popular?

391 comments • reddit.com

Sword of Truth is frequently criticised online as one of the worst fantasy series out there. And while i do have a soft spot for it, i agree with most of the complaints. However, that makes me wonder how did it become so popular in the first place. The books sold in millions, they get good ratings on Goodreads, Goodkind pumped out a lot of them and they got adapted into a tv show. What happened? Was the series well liked when it first released and just aged badly?

r/books

Uptick in children and teenagers enjoying reading for first time in 5 years

211 comments • bbc.co.uk

Children and young people’s enjoyment of reading has risen for the first time since 2021, according to new research.
Boys' reading remains in crisis as gender gap widens, report shows

1189 comments • itv.com
Massachusetts may soon join a dozen other US states in enacting a law aimed at standardizing the process for removing books from a public or school library known as an anti-book ban law

293 comments • wgbh.org
Dad Books Are a Dying Breed: Sales have been sliding for nonfiction titles about politics, biographies and other books often aimed at men (Archive link in oldest comment)

1170 comments • wsj.com
Sales of the whistleblowing memoir Careless People increased by more than 300% in the UK the week after its author was “silenced” during an appearance at Hay festival following legal action by Meta

79 comments • theguardian.com
Silent reading clubs are giving like-minded bookworms a brain boost

106 comments • cnn.com

r/printsf

Jane Yolen (1939-2026)

11 comments • file770.com
Clarkesworld 20th Anniversary Subscription Drive

20 comments • bsky.app

To celebrate the magazine’s upcoming 20th Anniversary, Neil Clarke and the team at Clarkesworld are running a subscription drive. All new subscriptions will be used to improve the pay of their staff and contributors.

It’s my (biased) opinion that Clarkesworld consistently publishes the best short science fiction in the industry. Their commitment to open submissions means that they usually get first pick of the best stories. And it shows–Clarkesworld produces more award-winning stories, novelettes and novellas than any other magazine.

If you have neglected short science fiction lately, there has never been a better time to subscribe to Clarkesworld. And if we want this amazing magazine to be around for another 20 years, they need our support!
Subterranean Press to Close - Locus

25 comments • locusmag.com
Books/stories where a civilization has forgotten its past

101 comments • reddit.com

Reading Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood and I’m really fascinated by Oankali being so ancient that they have no idea if their home solar system still exists.

So now I really want to add to my reading backlog some novels that feature a civilization/society which has lost touch with their origins or with a significant part of their past. Maybe, like Oankali, they are so ancient that records of their old history are simply lost to time. Or maybe a large-scale cataclysm which took place a long time ago has left a gaping hole in following generations’ understanding of their own past.

Would be even better if the story was focused on said civilization recovering relics of their ancestors and trying to make sense of them.

I’m aware about Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle so it’s already in the list, but maybe you guys know any other novels or even just short stories which fit the concept I described?
Is A Canticle for Leibowitz really underrated?

71 comments • reddit.com

I’ve been going through the popular posts on this sub and keep seeing people say that A Canticle for Leibowitz is underrated, almost every time it’s mentioned (in posts and comments). But it doesn’t feel very underrated to me.

I don’t see many/any people saying it’s bad. It won the Hugo is 1961 and I’ve seen it talked about as one of the greatest sci fi novels in other places. So where does this idea it’s underrated come from? Anyway, how highly rated is a book if all discussion about it is about how it’s underrated?

I love this book, it’s in my top three, I’m confused about how people talk about it here.
The City & The City by China Miéville: Did anyone else find the second half disappointing?

53 comments • reddit.com

[Spoilers ahead for the book] I really loved the world-building and unique premise in The City & The City. it led to a ton of cool plot points and situations. But I couldn’t help feeling let down by the second half, especially with Breach. They were built up as this super-powerful, ominous force in the first half, but once the main character gets captured, he basically just joins them and does their job for them, without much pushback. They lose that ominous shadow vibe, and it kind of took the wind out of the story for me. Curious if anyone else felt the same way.

I loved the premise of the story, but couldn’t help but feel by some of the execution

r/television

r/movies

’24 Jump Street’ in the Works With Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum and Ice Cube in Talks to Return

1085 comments • variety.com
Official Poster for Pixar’s new original film ‘Gatto’. The film follows a black cat in Venice with a love of music who is shunned by locals due to superstitions. In theaters on March 5, 2027.

659 comments • i.redd.it
‘Obsession’ Crosses $200M Globally to Become Focus’ Top Movie of All Time

704 comments • hollywoodreporter.com
Movie critic Gene Shalit dies at 100

389 comments • nbcnews.com
THE SOCIAL RECKONING – Official Teaser Trailer

1615 comments • youtube.com
The Rock, starring Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris is 30 years old as of today -- first released into theaters on June 7, 1996.

609 comments • uk.news.yahoo.com