Title: Ride Recipient: catlock_holmes Vidder: REDACTED Verse: Sherlock BBC Characters/Pairings: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Mycroft Holmes, Jim Moriarty, Bill Wiggins Rating: Mature Warnings: Drug use/abuse with needles and unreality, guns and bullets, people being shot and killed by protagonists, fake suicide (Sherlock), actual suicide (Moriarty) Summary: Sherlock keeps falling Special notes: Catlock_holmes requested this band - hope this suits! Also, Sherlock's relationship with Moriarty is purely as an adversary and a symbol of Sherlock's struggle with his own mental health.
I keep (especially post-surgery, cotemporal with relearning how to walk) finding more small ways that how I've been doing my various physio exercises isn't quite right. This is a good thing! Isn't it fascinating to be learning more about embodiment and how my body works and how I can best deploy my various muscles!
Up until the hypermobility clinic, all the physio I was ever prescribed made me worse, not better.
It abruptly dawned on me, all at once, that the subtlety of the changes I'm making with adjusting how I'm shifting my weight around and so on and so forth? Are almost certainly not actually externally visible. Like, yes, people not understanding hypermobility and problems with it was also Definitely A Problem, but -- the part where I'm still, mm, not necessarily fixing things but certainly developing them, finding places where even with What The Hypermobility Clinic Told Me To Do I wasn't getting quite right... well, the hypermobility specialists clearly went "eh, good enough", and in terms of the effects on my ability to Things I think they were clearly demonstrably provable correct, but -- yeah, okay, sudden understanding of some of just how difficult it would have been to correct some of this stuff.
(I'm very sure that all my various epiphanies will turn out to be about things that still aren't quite right, that I can still refine further -- I'm having an extended phase of that with Pilates right now -- but this is a good thing, actually. It's really nice to have such clear evidence that I'm getting to know and understand myself better.)
With James Gunn’s Superman inching ever closer to its theatrical premiere, we’re getting more tidbits on what we’ll see on the big screen. One of those tidbits is Nathan Fillion playing Green Lantern/Guy Gardner, who we saw in the trailer sports an… let’s say impressive hairdo.
As you can see in the image above, that hairstyle is a classic bowl cut, something that Fillion said he pushed for.
“There was talk about a different hairstyle, equally as goofy, but not a bowl cut,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I was Team Bowl Cut the whole time. We did a screen test earlier on with some other actors, and they gave me a test bowl cut wig, like a little mockup wig. I thought it was great. There’s just something about Guy Gardner where the bowl cut says it all for him. The question was, Will people buy the bowl cut? Will people believe it? I said, ‘They already do! It’s already established. It’s canon. I think if we don’t do the bowl cut, then you’re going to hear about it.’ But the argument here is that’s the character. If you want to know something about Guy Gardner, know this: He has a bowl cut and he’s into it. What does that tell you about this guy?”
The hair makes the man, I guess? The article also confirms that when we first meet Guy in Superman, he’s a member of the Justice Gang, a trio that also includes Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders (Isabela Merced) and Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi). We’ll also see Fillion as Guy once again in season two of Peacemaker this fall.
Superman premieres in theaters on July 11, 2025.[end-mark]
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Exploring Our Nearest Neighbor: <i>City on the Moon</i> by Murray Leinster and <i>Men on the Moon</i> edited by Donald A. Wollheim</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Classic SF stories about lunar exploration…</div>
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<p>In this <a href="http://www.reactormag.com/tag/front-lines-and-frontiers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">bi-weekly series</a> reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.</p>
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<p>I was recently excited to find out that two early speculations on space exploration, <em>Space Platform</em> and<em> Space Tug</em>, written by one of my long-time favorite authors, Murray Leinster, had a sequel. This additional book set on the moon brings back characters from the first two books, and picks up the same theme of explorers moving into the new frontier while battling saboteurs who want to foil their efforts.When I found a copy of <em>City on the Moon</em>, there was an added bonus, as it was part of an Ace Double that paired it with the anthology <em>Men on the Moon</em>. The two books, from 1957 and 1958 respectively, speculated about what lunar exploration might be like, from the perspective of a decade before humanity’s first landings actually took place.</p>
<p>I purchased the book through a small dealer, Pulpsguy, who sells old science fiction and fantasy books and magazines via Amazon. They obviously take a lot of pride in their work, because the book came wrapped in plastic, surrounded by packaging material, in a cardboard box, and was shipped the day after I ordered it. The book, while preserved as well as it could have been, was very brittle, with the binding glue giving way as the pages turned, and fragments of the pages cracked off on my fingers as I read it. I’m glad I saved that plastic sleeve the dealer put it in, because it will go back inside it when I put it on my shelf.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>About the Author — <em>City on the Moon</em></strong></h3>
<p>Murray Leinster was the pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins (1896-1975), a leading American science fiction writer from right after World War I into the 1960s, who wrote groundbreaking stories in a wide range of sub-genres, including first contact, time travel, alternate history, and medical issues. Leinster had no higher education, but was self-taught in a variety of fields, and was an inventor as well as a writer. I previously reviewed the NESFA Press book entitled <em>First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster </em>(you can find that review <a href="https://www.tor.com/2018/08/30/trailblazing-through-time-and-space-the-essential-murray-leinster/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>), the collection <em>Med Ship</em> (find the review <a href="https://www.tor.com/2020/05/21/physician-as-paladin-facing-plague-and-pandemic-med-ship-by-murray-leinster/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>), and the two prequels to <em>City on the Moon</em>; <em>Space Platform</em> and <em>Space Tug</em> (find the review <a href="https://reactormag.com/how-the-space-race-might-have-happened-space-platform-and-space-tug-by-murray-leinster/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>). You can find a number of Leinster’s stories and novels on <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=murray+leinster" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Project Gutenberg</a>, including <em>Space Platform</em> and <em>Space Tug</em>.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>About the Editor and Authors — <em>Men on the Moon</em></strong></h3>
<p><strong>Donald A. Wollheim</strong> (1914-1990) was an American science fiction editor, author, and fan. His fan publications led him to editing science fiction magazines, then to publishing anthologies (of which there were many), and eventually to founding DAW Books.</p>
<p><strong>Raymond Z. Gallun</strong> (1911-1994) was a prominent American science fiction author who published a number of works from the late 1920s to the mid-1980s. You can read a review of <em>The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun</em> <a href="https://reactormag.com/a-forgotten-favorite-the-best-of-raymond-z-gallun-edited-by-j-j-pierce/">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>A. Bertram Chandler</strong> (1912-1984) was a British/Australian merchant marine officer and a long-time author of science fiction. He is best known for his Rim World series, and stories that followed the career of the fictional spacefaring officer John Grimes.</p>
<p><strong>Frank M. Robinson</strong> (1926-2014) was an American journalist, speechwriter, and writer of science fiction and techno-thrillers. He is best known for works that became the basis for films, most notably <em>The Glass Inferno</em>, adapted as <em>The Towering Inferno</em>.</p>
<p><strong>H. B. Fyfe</strong> (1918-1997) was an American science fiction author who wrote from the 1940s to 1960s, and whose work primarily appeared in <em>Astounding/Analog</em> magazine.</p>
<p><strong>Murray Leinster</strong>’s biographical information is listed above.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Our Nearest Neighbor in Space</strong></h3>
<p>The Moon has long been a source of fascination for humanity. The Moon affects the pulse of our ocean tides, seismic activity, and even the biology and moods of Earth’s inhabitants. It is close enough to have been examined in detail for centuries, and once we had the ability to journey beyond our own planet, it was a natural first destination for explorers. But it is also a barren and airless wasteland, which somewhat lessens its attractiveness. After a handful of manned landings during the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s, the Moon has not been visited for five decades.</p>
<p>Science fiction writers have long speculated on activities that could generate travel between the Earth and Moon. They predicted the Moon could provide a location for hidden nuclear missile bases, a site for experiments or manufacture too dangerous or pollution-heavy to be attempted on Earth, a source for food grown in underground caverns and sent to Earth via catapults, a source of minerals, a destination for tourists, or a refueling station for interplanetary voyages. One of the most recent suggestions involves harvesting Helium-3 suspected to be in the Moon’s surface dust, an isotope scarce on Earth, which could be used in nuclear fusion reactors. But even with gravity lighter than Earth’s, the Moon still is at the bottom of a fairly steep gravity well, and any minerals or materials that could be gathered there would be much easier to collect from asteroids.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong><em>City on the Moon</em></strong></h3>
<p>The book opens with Joe Kenmore and his co-worker Moreau in their moon-jeep, traveling back to the lunar outpost, Civilian City, after collecting a supply rocket that landed nearby. Joe originally joined the space program as a technical representative, flying to the Space Platform to maintain gyroscopes. The Space Platform is a US outpost, and since Joe’s world doesn’t have the Outer Space Treaty we have in the real world, the platform is armed with nuclear weapons the US uses to enforce stability on the Earth. Naturally, a lot of nations resent this, and the space program is plagued by not only sabotage, but eventually by open military attacks. Joe has distinguished himself by foiling some of this sabotage, and by flying a prototype Space Tug—first to defend the Space Platform, and then to rescue a military mission to the moon that ran into problems. Now he works at Civilian City, an international outpost, which shares the moon with radar observing outposts as well as secret US military missile installations. There is also a space-based atomic energy research facility in the LaGrange point on the far side of the moon.</p>
<p>Once again, sabotage rears its ugly head, and Joe’s moon-jeep is caught in what appears to be a deliberately caused avalanche. One of the four giant tires of the moon-jeep is damaged, and they cannot reach Civilian City via radio. Then, to make matters worse, they receive an emergency call from an incoming ship that can’t find a landing beacon. In addition to famed broadcaster Cecile Ducros, the rocket carries her assistant (and Joe’s fiancée) Arlene Grey. [I thought Joe’s romantic interest in the previous books was named Sally, so either he’s a more fickle romantic partner than I thought, or Leinster forgot the name of his female lead between volumes, or else a meddling editor changed the name.]</p>
<p>Joe and Moreau reach Civilian City to find it mostly depressurized and abandoned, except for the eccentric and grouchy Pitkin, who was left behind during a confused evacuation. When the domes began to fail, the leaders panicked, opening sealed directions, and heading out in their moon-jeeps to take shelter in the secret military bases. The depressurization was caused by slashing the plastic domes, and proves relatively simple to repair. After stabilizing Civilian City, Joe and Moreau head out to rescue Cecile and Arlene from their crashed rocket. They succeed, and are then visited by the supply shuttle for the atomic research laboratory, piloted by Joe’s diminutive old friend, Mike Scandia. Something is wrong at the laboratory, and they are ordered by Earth to deliver orders directly to the lab, which can’t be radioed directly because the Earth does not have a line of sight to the facility. Arlene convinces Joe to take her along, and he agrees largely because the shuttle seems safer than the partially repaired base. But the same saboteurs who damaged the domes have mixed more powerful solid fuel elements with the standard ones for the shuttle, and they crash. [Liquid fuel rockets have their maintenance issues, but the system of using small solid fuel boosters Leinster describes seems rather dubious as a workable alternative.]</p>
<p>They are rescued by a moon-jeep driven by another of Joe’s old friends, a steel-working Native American called Chief, who has been working at one of the radar tracking sites. Cecile starts broadcasting news stories, and proves to be a rather despicable character who lies as easily as she breathes, and takes credit for the accomplishments of others. The authorities on Earth insist their message must be delivered to the laboratory, so Joe and company repair the shuttle, replace the mis-labelled solid fuel boosters, and head out.</p>
<p>The staff of the laboratory has gone mad, and have overpressurized their facility, making it impossible for Joe to remove them without giving them the bends. They think they have discovered atomic secrets that could cause a universe-destroying chain reaction, and have decided to die rather than share the secrets (these kinds of universe-threatening events always sound phony to me, because if it was so easy to destroy a universe, it probably would have already happened). Joe realizes they can’t be reasoned with, and heads out just in time to avoid being blown up as they explode their facility (in a way that doesn’t destroy the universe).</p>
<p>There are still lots of challenges facing Joe, as the occupants of Civilian City have not reached the military facilities to which they were evacuating. And then they have to find the saboteurs, who take Arlene hostage, allowing the story to culminate with a thrilling rescue. But Joe is despondent because the end of the atomic laboratory dashes hopes that better space propulsion methods can be developed, and he fears getting to the moon might be the end of humanity’s exploration of space. Conveniently, a lunar scientist then shows up who has found flaws in the orbital laboratory staff’s theories; he’s developed the new form of atomic propulsion humanity needs, and invites Joe and Arlene to accompany him on the first ship built with this new propulsion system.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong><em>Man on the Moon</em></strong></h3>
<p>The flip side of the Ace Double turned out to be a collection of five short stories. And while not all the books paired in Ace Doubles had common themes, this one does, and the collection complements Leinster’s novel quite nicely.</p>
<p>The first story, “Operation Pumice,” by Raymond Z. Gallun, is a straightforward telling of the first mission to circle the moon and observe its far side. It describes how a single astronaut in a chemical rocket, launched from somewhere in the Western United States, carries out the mission, and is a pretty scientifically plausible account. What gives the story life is the presence of a young runaway at the launch site, whose determination in traveling across the country to see the launch has given the astronaut hope for further future exploration. It is a surprising sentimental tale.</p>
<p>The next story, “Jetsam,” by A. Bertram Chandler, relies on a twist at the end. You don’t see as many stories like this these days, probably because almost all the possible twists became clichés long ago. Human explorers land on the moon, only to find debris left behind by another incredibly ancient human expedition. Chandler’s seagoing experience shines through with a lot of small details that make the story feel real. The twist deals with who those ancient humans were, and while clever, hasn’t aged well.</p>
<p>The third story, “The Reluctant Heroes,” by Frank M. Robinson, is a tale of the first permanent outpost on the moon. The story is gritty and realistic, and deals with the hardships and boredom of living in a harsh environment. The protagonist wants nothing more than to return home, but after some cruel treatment and reversals of fortune, in the end, home comes to him.</p>
<p>The story “Moonwalk” comes from H.B. Fyfe, and is an intense tale of survival. An explorer has leaves his vehicle to examine something, only to watch as the vehicle and all his companions tumble over a cliff. All he can salvage from the wreckage is a large oxygen tank, and his only chance for survival is to begin a long trek across the lunar surface. Fyfe did his homework, and the result is a realistic and evocative tale of survival in a strange environment.</p>
<p>The final story in the collection, “Keyhole,” by Murray Leinster, is another one with a twist at the end, and it telegraphs that twist from the start with an anecdote about a psychologist who puts a chimpanzee into a room to observe his behavior, and looks through the keyhole of the door, only to see the eye of the chimpanzee looking back at him. So, when we join a researcher on the moon tasked with examining a lunar simian that has evolved to survive in the barren, airless environment, we are expecting to find that things are not what they seem. The simians have been attacking and killing humans, and humanity needs the moon as a stepping stone to other planets, so the researcher is expected to find a way for the simians to be destroyed. Instead, he finds the simians are much smarter than anyone anticipated, and while human arrogance almost spoils things, it turns out the simians are the ones with a solution to everyone’s dilemma.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Final Thoughts</strong></h3>
<p>I was delighted to find another installment in the series Leinster started with <em>Space Platform</em> and <em>Space Tug</em>, and <em>City on the Moon</em> lived up to my hopes. It was an entertaining tale, and while some of the technological speculation hasn’t aged well, it was a fun adventure that kept me turning pages. Joe, its everyman protagonist, keeps things grounded, and it’s a joy to see him solving one problem after another to save the day.</p>
<p>The companion short story collection, <em>Men on the Moon</em>, was also a good one, with tales well selected by Wollheim. I especially enjoyed the survival tale “Moonwalk,” and Leinster’s “Keyhole” story that brought the volume to a close.</p>
<p>And now I look forward to hearing your thoughts on these stories in particular, or on lunar adventures in general…[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/exploring-our-nearest-neighbor-in-space/">Exploring Our Nearest Neighbor: <i>City on the Moon</i> by Murray Leinster and <i>Men on the Moon</i> edited by Donald A. Wollheim</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/exploring-our-nearest-neighbor-in-space/">https://reactormag.com/exploring-our-nearest-neighbor-in-space/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=815703">https://reactormag.com/?p=815703</a></p>
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Leah Schnelbach</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/all-you-need-is-death-and-the-art-of-cutting-through-corporate-storytelling/">https://reactormag.com/all-you-need-is-death-and-the-art-of-cutting-through-corporate-storytelling/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=815605">https://reactormag.com/?p=815605</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><em>All You Need Is Death</em> and the Art of Cutting Through Corporate Storytelling</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Paul Duane’s recent film puts the “folk” in folk horror</div>
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Published on June 10, 2025
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<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="407" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-1-740x407.jpg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Anna (Simone Collins) convinces Rita Concannon (Olwen Fouere) to sing her a song in Paul Duane's horror All You Need Is Death." srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-1-740x407.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-1-1100x605.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-1-768x422.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-1-1536x844.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-1-2048x1126.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure>
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<p><em>All You Need Is Death</em> opens on a scene we’ve seen a thousand times before: a man is being interviewed about a dead girl. We watch his testimony through the lens of a video camera, we see the grainy footage of people in a bar—the kind of footage that often becomes a de facto Last Known Photograph. Then we cut back to the night in question, months earlier, and fall into an entirely different story, one of ancient songs, unbreakable curses, and tortured loves. By the time we’ve almost caught up with this opening scene, the girl’s death has become an uncanny, impossible act in an unknowable world.</p>
<p>Along the way, each time it reaches a point where it might follow a well-worn path, the film veers in a wild new direction. </p>
<p>I’m fortunate enough to watch a lot of movies and television shows for work—and I’m certainly not going to complain about that—but there is a point where you wonder if you’ve seen everything. If a movie will ever make you really <em>excited</em> again, rather than just ticking off how well the story playing out in front of you is adhering to or subverting the exact plot points and emotional beats you’ve seen a dozen times this year. But if you’re really lucky, you’ll have a year like this one, where you’ve been genuinely surprised by not one, not two, but four separate films. <a href="https://reactormag.com/movie-review-sinners-ryan-coogler/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">One of them is <em>Sinners</em></a>, and the other three are recent independent Irish horrors—and of those, the one I’m imploring you to see as soon as possible (even if it means coming back later to this <strong>somewhat spoilery</strong> essay) is Paul Duane’s <em>All You Need Is Death</em>.</p>
<p>Paul Duane is an Irish filmmaker, the director of a bunch of shorts and documentaries on a variety of topics, and his debut feature has come out at a time when there seems to be a wave of excellent Irish horror. I’ve been meaning to watch <em>All You Need Is Death </em>since it came to streaming last year (it’s on Shudder in the U.S.) but I finally made time last week, and I am so, so happy I did. I’m also glad I saw <em>Sinners</em> first. </p>
<p>Ryan Coogler’s film has meant so much to Black nerds and horror fans in particular, and the Black community in general—but it was also cool that he included a bit of Irishness in the form of the vampire Remmick, a character bound up in the history of colonization and the importance of holding on to your culture. Coogler manages to simultaneously acknowledge that many Irish immigrants became colonizers and appropriators themselves once they got to America, and also remind the audience that there even <em>was</em> such a thing as “pre-Christian Ireland”. (And on a less serious note, I can’t tell you how much it’s brightened my social media feeds in this Mindflayer of an era to see people remixing “Rocky Road to Dublin”.)</p>
<p>I kept thinking about <em>Sinners</em> while I watched <em>All You Need is Death</em>, which is also about the power of song to cross time—though it comes to a startlingly different endpoint.</p>
<p>In a world where corporations are people and people are brands, where the movie I thought would be a toy commercial only surprised me <a href="https://www.jalopnik.com/the-barbie-movie-is-a-masterfully-disguised-general-mot-1850670611/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">by being a car commercial instead</a> where comic book movies require you to do homework to understand them, where directors I used to like bludgeon their past masterpieces with meaningless sequels—this movie, <em>this movie, </em>that was made independently and often seems to have been shot on the sly during off-hours at a construction site, gave me the absolute joy of not knowing what would happen next. Of telling an original story and making me care about it. Of getting a song stuck in my head for days. </p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="608" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-3-1100x608.jpg" alt="Folk song collectors Agnes (Catherine Siggins) waits for a doctor's appointment in Paul Duane's horror All You Need Is Death." class="wp-image-815617" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-3-1100x608.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-3-740x409.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-3-768x424.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-3-1536x849.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-3.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Smoking! At your OBGYN appointment! Credit: XYZ FILMS</figcaption></figure>
<p>I was also put in mind of David Cronenberg—not in a way that chips at <em>All You Need Is Death</em>’s originality, but simply because its writer-director, Paul Duane, does a similar thing to Mr. Cronenberg. There is a line drawn around this film, and when you cross it you’re in his world, not ours. People use analog recording equipment but have cellphones, sometimes. They smoke everywhere—even in their OBGYN’s waiting room. A young man can be in Ireland as a refugee from Communism, but crossing the border from the Republic to the Northern bit of Ireland doesn’t seem to be a big deal… but also people are wary of being drawn into any form of political conversation.</p>
<p>So it’s not exactly the 1980s, but it’s not exactly here and now, either.</p>
<p>What makes it even more Cronenberg-y is the fact that there’s a secret, dangerous-feeling underworld, but what’s very much Duane’s is that the underworld is a network of <em>incredibly intense folk song collectors</em>. Song collectors are, of course, real, but in this film they seem desperate, and meet in little groups in otherwise-empty schools, hesitantly singing songs they’ve heard for a haughty woman named Agnes (Catherine Siggins) who seems to promise fame, or riches, or <em>something</em> if they can find a song no one’s recorded yet. As she says to the group: “The future is picked clean. Treasure lies in the past. We find beauty where others have overlooked it. then it’s up to you to find the places where a rose springs up from the corpse of times past.”</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="607" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-4-1100x607.jpg" alt="Folk song collectors Aleks (Charlie Maher) and Anna (Simone Collins) eye up another singer in Paul Duane's horror All You Need Is Death." class="wp-image-815618" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-4-1100x607.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-4-740x408.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-4-768x424.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-4-1536x848.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-4.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">They heard you singing folk tunes across the bar and the LOVE your vibe. Credit: XYZ FILMS</figcaption></figure>
<p>Which sounds noble—if also kind of nihilistic—but then there’s one point where a character sells a song to a shadowy, clearly extremely wealthy collector in a dark parking lot. This is already hilariously weird, but also kind of implies that some of the people are in this not for nobility, but for that sweet, sweet forbidden folk music paper.</p>
<p>The couple at the center of the film, Anna (Simone Collins) and Aleks (Charlie Maher) seem to have a concrete reason to look for songs—they’re in a decent but lackluster band, performing in echoey community centers. I get the sense that they have many weddings in their past and their future, and that they’d like to expand beyond “Whiskey in the Jar” if at all possible. The two of them want bigger things—whether that’s fame, or a connection to better, more authentic music is at first kind of vague. But aside from that: are they appropriating this music, two circling vultures picking the bones clean? Where is the line between preservation and exploitation? What is music’s inherent value?</p>
<p>But they follow a chain of traditional singers (including Barry Gleeson, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMP_hUp1Sb8" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a highly regarded folk singer who’s also the brother of Brendan</a>!) until they find Rita Concannon, a woman who supposedly had a song no one else knows.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="612" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-5-1100x612.jpg" alt="Singer Barry Gleeson in Paul Duane's horror All You Need Is Death." class="wp-image-815619" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-5-1100x612.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-5-740x412.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-5-768x427.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-5-1536x854.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-5.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: XYZ FILMS</figcaption></figure>
<p>Did she learn it from her mother, who was known to have old songs? Is it really as ancient as the rumors claim? If it’s so precious, why has no one recorded it yet?</p>
<p>Rita is played by Olwen Fouere, <a href="https://reactormag.com/movie-review-the-watchers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">who was wasted in <em>The Watchers</em></a>, but here gets to do some great, terrifying work in a story that is, kind of, a successful version of what I think <em>The Watchers </em>was trying to be.</p>
<p>Only after kicking Aleks out of the room (the song is not meant to be heard by men) and only after forbidding the two women to record it in any way (Anna makes a slow show of removing her jacket to show she isn’t wired, then taking the batteries out of her tape recorder; Agnes does neither) will Rita sing them the song. And it’s uncanny and fucking <em>upsetting</em>, even before you know what it’s about. Rita tells them that if it had a title, that tile would be “Love is a knife with a blade for a handle” which should give you an idea. It’s a story of a lovelorn Queen, a betrayed King, an unfortunate Lover, and a whole lot of torture, and it’s been passed from mother to daughter since a time before standardized Irish. Even Anna, who speaks Irish, has trouble deciphering it.</p>
<p>Naturally, having heard the secret chord, their lives are dragged into a maelstrom of doom and supernatural powers.</p>
<p>But what’s great about the film is that it doesn’t try to <em>show</em> us most of that, or explain it away, or invent a cosmology or a magic system. Rather than sucking all the mystery out of the film, it digs into its characters, and trusts the actors to show us their obsession and the havoc it’s wreaking on their lives. It’s this choice that takes what might have been a fun midnight movie and turns it into something much deeper.</p>
<p>As with <em>Sinners</em>, a film about songs that make time irrelevant has to put it’s soundtrack where its mouth is. The <a href="https://klofmag.com/2024/04/ian-lynch-folk-horror-film-soundtrack-all-you-need-is-death/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">score and songs for <em>All You Need Is Death</em> are by Ian Lynch of Lankum</a>, who specialize in what I can only describe as gut-churning doom folk—honestly, the murder ballads are the more upbeat moments in the band’s catalogue—in collaboration with frequent Lankum collaborator John ‘Spud’ Murphy.</p>
<p>Here’s Lankum’s take on “The Wild Rover”—close your eyes and listen to this sucker and tell me you haven’t just fallen through a wormhole and are now dying of liver failure on a blasted windswept heath somewhere in the 19<sup>th</sup> Century.</p>
<p><site-embed id="8448"/></p>
<p>Wait come back! You’re not really dying! (I mean, no more than usual.) I need you to read the rest of the essay, I worked hard on this one.</p>
<p>The idea of intense folk song collectors is of course rooted in a reality: if you live in a rural area, and it gets dark early in the winter, and the woods and fields and seas are alive with the sounds of CREATURES, you need a way to create light and warmth. You need to remind yourself that you’re human, and that you’re not alone in the dark. Getting together in a group to sing becomes not just a pastime but a necessity. (We were reminded of this during the pandemic, yes? Or has everyone memory-holed that?) Having a new song, a new story, something no one’s ever heard before, becomes the most important thing in the world for a night… <em>except</em>. The only thing the might be even more important is if you have an old song, an ancient song, one that links you back to your community, to the time before the colonizers, the war, the famine, the flood, the fire, the plague, the drought—whatever catastrophe it is that marks a Before and an After for your community. Whatever it is that all of us are really looking for, underneath everything else.</p>
<p>That thing, I think, is underneath everything else, a longing for a Before Time that can curdle into a desire for an impossible, uncomplicated past, that can lead people to embrace remakes and sequels and chase the lightning captured in a long-shattered childhood bottle, that sends people into echoes of the music that soundtracked their first loves. The reason I paid a man to embed a dead language into my skin with needles and ink.</p>
<p>To be fair, that’s probably the only part of my life my ancestors would understand.</p>
<p>This is the desire that gives folk horror its power. It’s the reason some of us like Ari Aster and Robert Eggers a whole lot, the reason I was entranced by <em>The Devil’s Bath </em>even though I hated actually watching it. If you really engage with it you have to acknowledge that the society we have now is a flimsy illusion. (And really it’s only an illusion for a vanishingly small number us, fewer every day.) Folk horror is a way to try to confront that illusion head on.</p>
<p>What <em>All You Need Is Death </em>does masterfully is taking the connection to a remote past and collapsing any sense of distance. Love was a blade with a knife for a handle a thousand years ago, and it’s still cutting people to ribbons today. The central story of the song is re-enacted by the main characters. They ignore the warnings around the song without even the slightest protest, and the movie doesn’t point at their terrible choices and yell at us to pay attention. There are no ominous music cues, cheesy close-ups, or overhead shots of cars driving through impossibly vast forests. The rules are violated—almost causally—and <em>then the story has them</em>. Everything after that is as inevitable as the notes in a song.</p>
<p>What the film does beautifully is how it plays with that inevitability. I tried to think through this a bit in <a href="https://reactormag.com/film-review-bring-her-back/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">my review of <em>Bring Her Back</em></a>—there’s a feeling of inevitability that works for me, and one that’s so overwhelming it deadens my feeling of connection. Which, some people <em>like</em> that precise tone, but for me, I want a sense of play and surprise to exist in conversation with the fates.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="602" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-2-1100x602.jpg" alt="Rita Concannon (Olwen Fouere) sings a song of love and death in Paul Duane's horror All You Need Is Death." class="wp-image-815616" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-2-1100x602.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-2-740x405.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-2-768x420.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-2-1536x840.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AYNID-2.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: XYZ FILMS</figcaption></figure>
<p>By way of example: a tense scene between Rita’s son (who is named <em>Breezeblock</em>—a thing I have not stopped thinking about since I watched the movie—and is played by Nigel O’Neill) and Ron (Barry McKiernan), the man who led Anna and Aleks to Rita. Ron wakes tied to a bed. (Bad!) He’s right next to Rita’s corpse. (So much worse!) But what takes the scene to a new level is Breezeblock standing at the foot of the bed, talking in circles to Ron about the forbidden song, and the spirits that used to torment him for not being born a girl in order to carry it on as his mother had carried it on from hers. There’s a moment where this scene seems about to veer into sexual violence, but it goes in a completely different direction that’s kind of even worse—but still made me <em>whoop with delight</em>.</p>
<p>In a sense the man was ensnared by the song the moment Anna approached him for directions, just as Breezeblock was ensnared by the accident of his birth. But along the way Ron gets a monologue on morality and power:</p>
<p>“There’s nothin’ that’s not political, I’m telling you. Do you know what moral hazard is?” When she demurs that she does not, he explains: “A person doing something—you—decides how risky that particular something might be, but say you’re not the one who’s taking the risk? Say it’s the other fella—<em>me</em>—who’s taking the risk? And the other fella might not even know he’s taking a risk—but you decide that it’s worthwhile, without asking me? <em>That’s</em> moral hazard.”</p>
<p>Breezeblock, who initially seems like a one-note sad sack, is the one who ends up with the best, most stirring line in the whole film. The story at the root of the song is as grim as it gets: the young queen and her lover were tortured for their affair, and finally starved until the lover resorted to eating their baby. But when Anna tries to use it as proof that love isn’t real, Breezeblock refuses her fatalism: “That’s just nature. That’s got nothing to do with love. The old king was trying to tell her that her love was made up, to punish her, I think. But to <em>starve</em> a body ‘til it goes mad—it proves <em>nothing</em>.”</p>
<p>But even that isn’t the point of the film. This isn’t exactly a story of love conquering all, because in the end it goes in an even stranger direction, that opens up a whole other range of possibilities, and lets us know that the story we’ve been watching is only one tiny facet of something much larger and more fucked up—or more beautiful, depending on your point of view. </p>
<p>Paul Duane wrote, directed, and produced this film, telling us a story around a fire, with a team of other artists. The writing and shot compositions and makeup effects and music were all made by human minds and hands doing what humans minds and hands have always done to keep the dark at bay. We’re living in a time made of razors; one wrong move and your humanity’ll be sliced clean off. And the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, the only thing that, I hope, keeps me human, is finding work like this that reminds me that art has gotten us this far, and that people still have stories to tell.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/all-you-need-is-death-and-the-art-of-cutting-through-corporate-storytelling/"><em>All You Need Is Death</em> and the Art of Cutting Through Corporate Storytelling</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/all-you-need-is-death-and-the-art-of-cutting-through-corporate-storytelling/">https://reactormag.com/all-you-need-is-death-and-the-art-of-cutting-through-corporate-storytelling/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=815605">https://reactormag.com/?p=815605</a></p>
In September of 2022, during my read of Lord of Chaos, I wrote an essay called “Rand al’Thor, the Invisible Battle, and Me,” in which I talked about Rand’s struggle with the ever-growing presence of Lews Therin in his mind, as well as with his own trauma and Lews Therin’s wartime PTSD. Since then, Rand’s suffering and secret battles—with Lews Therin, with their collective claustrophobia, with the new sickness caused by Rand’s balefire colliding into Moridin’s—have all increased significantly. And although he is still hiding these struggles from his friends and allies, the strain is becoming more visible to those around him, as well as to the reader.
This is something I have observed and analyzed throughout my read, but last week a specific moment in chapter 21 of Knife of Dreams caught my attention in much the same way it did back in the chapter of Lord of Chaos that inspired the aforementioned essay. As Rand and his party are riding through the city of Tear on their way to the Stone, Rand observes the effects of his ta’veren nature on the passersby. An armful of bread is dropped on the ground and somehow every loaf ends up standing on end. A man falls from a second story balcony and lands on his feet, unhurt. As he witnesses these moments, Rand reflects to himself that not every event will be as harmless as the loaves of bread or as lucky as the man landing on his feet.
Oh, some fellow might find a rotting sack full of gold buried in his own basement without really knowing why he had decided to dig in the first place, or a man might ask and gain the hand of a woman he had never before had the courage to approach, but as many would find ruination as found good fortune. Balance, Min had called it. A good to balance every ill. He saw an ill to balance every good. He needed to be done in Tear and gone as soon as possible.
I wasn’t shocked to see this perspective from Rand, but it is the most starkly clear example of his mindset that has yet been put down in the text, and it really rocked me as a reader. More than any other moment in the series, this paragraph made me feel just how far Rand is now from where he began in The Eye of the World.
In the early days, one of Rand’s drives was to help people, especially those he loved. That was a core value of his, one that even caused conflict between him and Moiraine whenever the choice to help someone seemed to be in conflict with preparing for his destiny. Now, however, we see how much of a pessimist Rand has become, not only in the sense of always expecting things to go wrong, but also in the sense that he weights every harm as heavier, more potent, and more significant than any benefit.
He keeps a mental list of dead women, but no list of people he’s helped. He sees anything other than perfect, unquestioning fealty as a threat to himself and to his ability to win the Last Battle, while the support and advice from friends and allies is treated as suspect and possibly traitorous. And now we also see how, when confronted with his ta’veren nature, he sees only the potential for danger to those around him, dismissing the good almost without thought.
In “Rand al’Thor, The Invisible Battle, And Me,” I described how I related to the exhaustion Rand felt from fighting Lews Therin for control all the time. Having struggled with depression for much of my adult life, I also knew the experience of having all my energy taken up in a struggle no one outside of me could see, and which I often didn’t know how to explain to anyone, if I even wanted to at all. It was a profound moment for me in my read, when I realized that I related so deeply to this aspect of Rand’s journey.
Today, and last week when I first read the chapter, I find myself with the same profound feeling, because this type of pessimism, the weighting of bad things more heavily than good, is something that I only recently realized that I struggle with, but which has been part of my life for a long time.
Of course, Rand has the literal fate of the whole world resting on his shoulders. His destiny and responsibility is fantastical in nature, part of the Chosen One narrative that Robert Jordan was so interested in exploring and interrogating. But we humans often use the word “world” metaphorically, and in some sense, each of us carries the weight of our own worlds—our own lives, connections, responsibilities, desires—which can feel very heavy indeed, especially because we live in a society where most of us are raised to think of this burden as one we are meant to carry alone. Those raised as men are taught that it is unmanly or weak to seek emotional support from others, that they are meant to be solely protectors and can never for a moment set down that burden or ask someone for help in carrying it. Those raised as women are taught to put everyone else’s feelings and needs before their own, that they exist primarily to be of service to the family, in their workplace, and to society. Many people manage to internalize some combination of both of those narratives at once. And in the U.S., we say “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” while decrying social safety nets and services like food stamps and social security.
But this isn’t what being a human is supposed to be. Relationships—be they familial, romantic, friendship-based, professional, and even social—are by definition about connection and sharing, and much of our current cultural conversation around mental health is focused on teaching and learning how to trust and rely on people around you, and how to be there for them in turn. After all, the original meaning of the “bootstrap” analogy was to point out how impossible it actually would be to pull yourself into a standing position by tugging on those little loops on the back of your Doc Martens.
Later in the same chapter as the above quote, Rand reminds Cadsuane that he is fighting a war.
“The fewer people who obey, the more chance I’ll lose, and if I lose, everybody loses. If I could make everyone obey, I would.” There were far too many who did not obey as it was, or obeyed in their own way.
Cadsuane appears to have some kind of suspicion confirmed by these words, as she replies “That’s what I thought.” Cadsuane seems to have realized what I think the reader has also realized by this point, that Rand’s distress and fear over his responsibility as the Dragon Reborn has led him to become, for lack of a better term, a control freak. In his desperate anxiety, he feels that the only way to have any chance of winning the Last Battle is to control everyone and every situation. The idea of someone going their own way, of an ally, even a liked and trusted one, disagreeing with his orders or choosing a different execution is terrifying to Rand. This is because such events remind him that even he cannot control everything. And if he cannot control everything, he cannot guarantee that the final outcome of all his efforts will be one that won’t doom the whole world.
Even for those of us leading more ordinary lives than Rand’s, it can be difficult to face the fact that we cannot control every, or even most, of the outcomes of our choices. That we can’t be certain to get hired even if our resumé and interviews are perfect. That we can’t guarantee, no matter how much we try, that someone we fell in love with us back. That we can’t ensure that tragedy will never befall us or the people we care about.
When my spouse had a very serious health crisis a few years ago, I found myself consumed by the need to control every aspect of our lives. I was even monitoring them constantly, to the point where I couldn’t rest for a moment, day or night, because I needed so desperately to pretend that I could guarantee their health and safety if I just worked hard enough. When I make a mistake at work or accidentally offend a friend in an argument, I spiral down a path of “if I had only” and “I should have known,” clinging to the illusion that I can control every outcome in my life, rather than accepting that mistakes and conflicts are an inevitable part of every person’s existence.
This mindset is an untenable one to live with, though I am far from the only person to attempt it. What I have discovered as I learn more about my own thought patterns is that this kind of focus on avoiding the negative only makes you see the negative everywhere. If that is what you are putting all your thoughts, energy, and attention into, over time it becomes, well, the only think your thoughts, every, and attention are on. The rest, all the good and even all the neutral, seems to disappear.
For me, because I have been engaging in this kind of thought process and behavior for many years, it sometimes feels like nothing good ever happens, even though I have a lot of wonderful things in my life, and many moments of pleasure and happiness. I am like Rand, putting a dismissive “Oh,” before the good. “Oh, I enjoyed my walk in the sunshine with my dog this morning, but then I remembered that stressful meeting I have later.” “Oh, I might have had a wonderful date with my spouse last night, but today they’re having a bad day at work.”
In both of these examples, I’ve let the bad take away from the good, even though the two have nothing to do with each other. The pleasant walk wasn’t secretly unpleasant just because I experienced stress later on. My spouse and I still have a lovely life together even when they’re having a bad day. However, at some point, I seem to have lost that balanced perspective.
When Rand thinks that there is “an ill to balance every good,” he doesn’t really mean balance. If he did, he would at least see the experience of being ta’veren as a neutral one. Instead, he is looking at the bad things that happen as though they erase the good ones. And I find myself wondering if he is bringing this same perspective to everything he does. If every death, every loss, every perceived failure is viewed as a mark or proof that he will not win the Last Battle, while every success and consolidation of power is merely what has to be done. There is no victory to offset defeat, there is only defeat and non-defeat.
I’d say I can’t imagine how Rand keeps going, if that’s how he sees his life and his existence. Except I can, because that is how I have come to see mine, too, without ever meaning to. Looking back on Rand’s journey, it’s easy to understand how he has ended up here. He has so much pressure on him, he has experienced loss, and torture, and stigma, and betrayal, and that’s not even getting into what the taint on saidin and his two wounds have done to his body and mind. I can empathize with his belief that he must become hard in order to survive the pain and dark deeds, because I, too, have stifled my own emotions like grief and fear in the belief they made me weak. I can empathize with the way he sees danger in every corner and a betrayer in every friendly face, because I, too, have experienced trauma that left me always on alert, always on guard against the next potential source of harm.
And like Rand, I live in a world full of those who would put their own advancement and pleasure above anyone else’s, a world where many people clothe themselves in glory or righteousness while secretly allying themselves with the Dark. In my world, they are Darkfriends only in a metaphorical sense, but in the end, it’s not really all that different of an experience.
I can empathize so deeply with Rand because I’ve been there. I think most of you, dear readers, have as well. And I think Jordan was also there, and that in writing The Wheel of Time he was exploring the experience just as I am exploring it by writing this essay.
Each of us carries the weight of our whole world on our own shoulders.
They say it can be easier to give someone else advice than to take it yourself. As I move forward with the rest of the series, I really hope to see Rand receive advice and care from those around him, from Min and Elayne and Aviendha, from Nynaeve and Alivia, and even from Cadsuane. Advice that allows him to start seeing that there is still beauty in life, that it is possible to be strong and still grieve, that love is just as powerful and poignant as Darkness, if not more so. In the meantime, I think I might ponder what advice I would give Rand al’Thor about community and connection, about how to let your perspective shape your view of the world, rather than the other way around, and about how to let the people who love you protect you just as much as you try to protect them.
Rand is only a fictional character, of course. He can’t hear me. But maybe I will hear myself. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll even listen.[end-mark]
Dementia affects more than 57 million people worldwide, yet media coverage often reduces these experiences to either tragic narratives or false promises of cures. Journalists instead should center the experiences of people with dementia, skeptically navigate the complexity of Alzheimer’s research, and avoid harmful stereotypes. Through compassion and nuance, reporters can portray the reality of dementia as a complex lived experience filled with challenges, adaptation, dignity, and hope.
La demencia afecta a más de 57 millones de personas en el mundo, sin embargo, la cobertura mediática suele reducir estas experiencias a narrativas trágicas o falsas promesas de cura. En su lugar, los periodistas deberían centrarse en las experiencias de las personas con demencia, navegar con escepticismo la complejidad de la investigación sobre el Alzheimer y evitar estereotipos dañinos. Mediante la compasión y los matices, los periodistas pueden retratar la realidad de la demencia como una experiencia compleja, llena de desafíos, adaptación, dignidad y esperanza.
However, this did lead me to look up certain rare faves of mine, and lo and behold, British Library Women Writers have actually just reprinted, all praise to them, GB Stern's The Woman in the Hall, 1939 and never republished. Yay. This to my mind is one of her top works.
Also remark here that Furrowed Middlebrow are bringing back works that have genuinely been hard to get hold of, like the non-Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons, and the early Margery Sharps, and so on. (Though Greyladies had already done Noel Streatfeild as Susan Scarlett.)
Confess I am waiting for the Big Publishing Rediscovery of EBC Jones. Would also not mind maybe some attention to Violet Hunt (unfortunately her life was perhaps so dramatic it has outshone her work? gosh the Wikipedia entry is a bit thin.)
The universe is a pretty big place—in fact, as far as scientists can tell, it seems to be endless—which means that there are countless possibilities for what distant planets in far-flung galaxies might be like. Plenty of sci-fi writers have turned their minds to crafting creative and unusual environments on alien planets. But I particularly love it when a small group of humans are stranded on one of those planets and are actively struggling to survive in a strange, new (to them, at least!) landscape. Here are five such examples.
“The Long Rain” opens with four military men having just crash-landed on a version of Venus where it’s constantly raining. The heavy precipitation has led to the entire planet being covered in a lush jungle, and humanity’s only respite are purpose-built Sun Domes—buildings that not only provide shelter from the rain, but that are lit by a small artificial sun and which are filled with supplies.
The four men are miserably trekking through the rainforest in search of a Sun Dome; despite efforts to keep their spirits up, each of them is slowly but surely losing their minds due to the never-ending rain. Although not as bizarre as some of the other environments on this list, Bradbury’s prose turns the relentless downpour into something truly terrifying.
Evan Orgell lives on a planet where everyone wears what are essentially spacesuits (but way more customizable and fashionable) to protect themselves from the elements. He works for a company called the Aurora Group, who have discovered a planet where life is mostly silicon-based, rather than carbon-based. As a result, the planet, which is named Prism, is covered in life that is formed of crystal, jewels, and glass. And of course, the Aurora Group want to exploit Prism’s rich resources.
The only snag in the plan is that they’ve lost contact with the survey team. With no idea of what’s gone wrong, they send Evan—an arrogant, but admittedly result-producing, generalist—to investigate, wearing a highly specialized state-of-the-art survival suit.
Sentenced to Prism is pure adventurous fun—for the reader, not so much for Evan. The worldbuilding of Prism takes center stage and the story that is woven through this weird world is tense, propulsive, and even rather poignant at times.
The crew aboard the spaceship Beagle—named after Charles Darwin’s research vessel—have one mission: to explore the universe and catalogue the life forms they find. After following the faint signal of another spaceship, the Albatross, they wind up on the most Earth-like planet yet, but, just like the previous ship, they end up crash-landing.
While the mechanics set about trying to fix the ship, the scientists venture out to explore the new planet. It isn’t long before they find some of the bodies of the Albatross’ crew in a ravaged state. They find a similarly ominous situation within the Albatross itself—the doors were barricaded and spent ammo litters the floor. The Beagle’s crew get a little insight into what must have happened when night falls and a nocturnal creature—which at first doesn’t seem to be that threatening—makes an appearance. “Evolution” is pretty bleak, but it’s also a fascinating take on an alien life form.
The surface of Shroud—which is a moon, rather than a planet—is an environment that inspires fear as well as wonder. Intense radio activity is being generated by whatever calls Shroud home, but the celestial body also has an atmosphere so thick that no light reaches the surface.
An interstellar research team is currently studying the moon from orbit, tasked with figuring out how to exploit Shroud’s resources. But then a catastrophic event aboard the spaceship sends Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne down to the dark and mysterious surface in a barely-ready exploratory pod. From there, tension rules the story. The pair do their best to not only survive the inhospitable environment (and hopefully find an escape from it!), but also to understand the strange creatures that thrive in the dense atmosphere.
If you like your aliens to feel truly alien—rather than a twist on life forms from Earth—and stories that explore all of the problems that arise from that, then Shroud is the book for you.
Scavengers Reign created by Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner (2023)
Moving away from the written word, Scavengers Reign is an animated TV show aimed at an adult audience. The story starts with a handful of survivors being scattered across Vesta—a planet rich with life—after using emergency pods to escape their damaged spaceship, the Demeter 227.
There are three storylines to follow, as the survivors are separated into two pairs and one lonely man on his own. All of the characters have different experiences of this planet’s complex ecosystem, partly because of the way their own personalities and reactions color their encounters with the native flora and fauna. Vesta’s design is breathtakingly creative, with the many life forms being by turns awe-inspiring and terrifying (and sometimes both!).
Sadly, Scavengers Reign was bafflingly cancelled after just one season, but although the story is unfinished, the 12 episodes that did make it to air are still absolutely worth the watch.
There are, of course, countless more tales of survival on an alien planet out there. Feel free to share your favorites in the comments below—books, movies, TV shows, games, and comics are all welcome![end-mark]
“A proper lady” (Zonja, in Albanian) is many things, but more than any other, she is expected to be obedient. For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you an incendiary prose-poem against the patriarchy, written by the queer Kosovar poet Arbër Selmani and translated by Suzana Vuljevic. In this mordant poem, a chorus of unnamed women turn society’s expectations upside down, […]
High-level stats for week of 2025-05-27 - 2025-06-02
Total works categorized F/F on AO3: 10089 (+260 from last week)
Works I classified F/F: 5761 (+68 from last week) (2655 new, 3106 continued)
0.64% of all 893274 AO3 works I've classified F/F were updated this week
A few callouts this week:
Cartoon Hey Duggee reaches a best-ever rank of 7 this week, on the strength of the Betty/Norrie ship.
Criminal Minds returns to the chart for the first time since last September, and Doctor Who is back for the first time since late March. They replace Game of Thrones, which falls off the chart after a 62-week run (out of 276 all-time weeks on the chart), and Honkai: Star Rail.
Grey's Anatomy reaches 140 weeks in its current chart run. Genshin Impact has been on the chart for 230 consecutive weeks.
The June monthly theme for the Fancake thematic recommendations community is female relationships, so go check that out and share your favorite F/F or Gen works with female relationships.
Today I started making liquid fertilizer from Russian comfrey. This plant fills a lot of guild roles in permaculture including fertilizer, miner, mulcher, protector, attractor. I have been using it primarily as a bee plant that I can also slash-and-drop several times a season. I grow it under many of my trees and there's some in the prairie garden too.
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