Reading The Dresden Files Book 1 after 22 Years

Two years ago, it was the 20th anniversary of Storm Front, The Dresden Files book 1 by Jim Butcher. There was a special release of the book and all this stuff, and I was mildly interested.

I picked up a mass market paperback of Storm Front while I was traveling and started reading it on the plane. I got about 100 pages in and couldn’t handle it anymore.

Harry Dresden was kind of a snob, and the portrayal of women in the novel seemed to lean totally toward their physical appearances. I seem to recall I’d just come off a long stretch of reading pretty dense high-fantasy (The Grace of Kings, perhaps?) and The Dresden Files was a bit too watered down for me.

But, recently, I was stranded at my new apartment after my car broke down and only had a few books at my disposal. My paperback copy of Storm Front still had the bookmark in it from where I’d stopped before. So, I decided to give it another shot, and here’s what I thought about The Dresden Files book 1, twenty-two years after it was published.

Is Harry Dresden a Chauvinist Pig?

Like I mentioned, one of my biggest complaints with Storm Front was the portrayal of women, or at least, how Harry portrays women. His views usually revolve around their looks or their sultry voice, or something of that nature.

When I started my re-read, I paid close attention to these details because I knew they were what bothered me the first go around. But, what I came to notice was that I had pegged Jim Butcher as the one making the portrayals before, when in reality it’s Harry Dresden. The book feels like it could very easily be in third person narration–about Harry–and it’s because things happen so quickly that you might not necessarily be paying attention to the narration.

I remember distinctly at one point about halfway through the book, I read a part where “I” is used a few times in quick succession. I paused, flipped back through the few chapters I’d read, and thought, “wow, I can’t believe I didn’t realize it was first person.”

So that all leads up to the point that Harry Dresden is the one who is painting the outdated portrayals of women in the story, not Jim Butcher.

What I think really helped me accept Harry as this kind of character was his self-awareness. Near the end of the novel, he makes an observation about Karin Murphy’s soft, dainty hands, which he follows up with a thought about how she’d call him a chauvinist pig. So it’s clear that Harry knows he’s kind of a prick, and that makes the narration more palatable.

In my first read through, I hadn’t gotten far enough to see Harry’s self-awareness, and that’s why I only got 100 pages in.

No Sense of Time

One of the things I like to do when reading an older book is look for tells of the time period it was written in. Now, for Storm Front, that was only twenty years ago, so not much has really changed. Sure, technology is far better today than it was back then, but is it enough to make a difference?

After thinking about the tech of now versus the tech of the 2000, I realized there were no cellphones in Storm Front. Harry almost exclusively uses payphones, or the phone in his office. And I didn’t notice that detail until I was already finished with the book. I thought, “huh, he really likes his pay phones,” and it clicked that, duh, he had to use pay phones.

But there’s something about pay phones that added to the vibe of the story. It’s meant to be a noir-ish paranormal detective story, and pay phones have long been a part of noir or crime fiction.

Plus, one of Harry’s traits as a wizard is that all the technology he’s around starts to go haywire. Radios don’t work, cars stall out, elevators lose power–he’s a walking menace. That little detail was genius on Jim Butcher’s part. Not only does it create a reasonable explanation for Harry’s distrust or disuse of technology, it also helps to extend the life of the series. (Full disclaimer here, I’ve only read Storm Front, so I could be proven wrong by other books in the series).

There’s no need for Harry to get a smartphone or Bluetooth headphones or any of that stuff, because he can’t use it anyways. So whether you read Storm Front on day-one release or 50 years later, you’ll still be able to relate.

It’s Urgent – Always

A final point I want to make about Storm Front is the acute attention to urgency that Butcher has. The most important part of a mystery novel is the increasing sense of urgency. It drives the plot, it motivates the characters, it paves the way for the climax and the conclusion.

Harry’s whole journey in Storm Front happens within the span of three or four days, but it feels like it speeds by much quicker. For most of the novel, Harry’s running from place to place, uncovering clues about the case, and with each clue or realization, the stakes get higher. The mission becomes more impossible, but even more urgent.

All of it leads right up to the massive storm at the end of the novel, which I believe was intentional. The building storm motif was apparent throughout the book, and its a nice touch.

But the urgency in Storm Front really makes that climax hit home hard, and that’s the mark of a good detective novel, be it paranormal or not.

So, after reading The Dresden Files book 1 all the way through, what did I think? I thought it was pretty good all things considered. I had to curb my expectations and just let the story develop, and that was honestly the best thing I could have done. The characters are fun and interesting, the plot was action-packed, and the writing wasn’t watered down like I previously thought, instead it was fast, funny, and softly-detailed.

I’m excited to continue reading The Dresden Files, and I’ll certainly be at it for a while. With the 17th and 18th books slated for release very soon, I have a lot of catching up to do.

The Tale of Two Sci Fi Cities

The Planets of Our Solar System

The Top Facts You Probably Didn’t Know

We live in a vast and wonderful solar system with planets and moons that orbit our star, the sun. But, how much do you know about each of our planets? Many of us may have learned the order of planets from Mercury to Pluto (now a dwarf planet), but each one has a unique composition and is full of facts that differ strongly from the earth. Let’s take a look at each one. At the end, let us know how much you already knew!

Mercury

This planet is small with a diameter of 3,032 miles. It is gradually shrinking at a nearly imperceptible rate of 9 miles per 4 billion years. As the planet appears to be gradually cooling, its volume is reducing. Mercury does not have a strong atmosphere and it is susceptible to violent impacts from passing meteors, causing its surface to be riddled with craters. Temperatures on the planet can range from a staggering 800 degrees Fahrenheit down to -269 degrees Fahrenheit. Its lack of a strong atmosphere does not allow it to capture heat from the sun, so its nightly temperature drops drastically. Mercury does not have any moons because of its size and low gravitational pull.

Venus

Venus rotates on its axis slower than any of the other planets in the solar system. It takes 243 earth days to rotate one time. It is also full of carbon dioxide within its atmosphere, making it an expert at trapping heat, making it hotter than its neighbor Mercury. Temperatures on Venus are 863.6 degrees Fahrenheit! It spins in the opposite direction of the other planets. Each planet except for Venus spins counterclockwise on its axis. Venus also orbits the sun in the opposite direction of the planets. This is likely due to a collision that occurred an unknown number of millennia ago that essentially flipped the planet upside down. Venus is abnormally bright, being the second brightest planet or moon in the sky, after earth’s moon. This is due to the reflective nature of its sulphuric acid clouds. Because it is easier to see in the sky compared to the other planets, it makes sense that it is the first planet to be tracked across the sky. Many say this began in the second millennium BCE.

Earth

We live on its surface all of our lives and may think we know quite a bit about our planet. But, did you know scientists believe at one point in history that the earth may have looked purple instead of blue? This is because it is theorized that microbes relied on retinal instead of chlorophyll for survival. Retinal reflects back violet and red light. There is an estimated 60 tons of cosmic dust that falls into the earth from meteorites, comets, and other celestial bodies. This contributes to the sodium and iron in our atmosphere. There is a theory that Earth once had two moons that collided and left us with the current moon we see in the sky. Other planets aren’t the only places where temperatures can be extreme. On the East Antarctic Plateau, it can drop to -133.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Earth is not perfectly round. It is a bit more narrow at the poles and bulged at the equator. The largest living organism on earth is a fungus. You can find the honey fungus spanning almost two and a half miles in the state of Oregon.

Mars

A year on Mars is 687 Earth days because its orbit is further from the sun. It has two moons that are likely asteroids that were captured by Mars’ gravitational pull. They are named Deimos and Phobos. Mars’ axis tilts similarly to Earth’s axis tilt, giving it seasons. Its atmosphere is not dense and cannot trap heat from the sun. It averages -212 degrees Fahrenheit during its cold season and a pleasant 68 degrees Fahrenheit during its warmest season. Mars has its own volcano, Olympus Mons, which is dormant but is the largest volcano and the highest peak of any other in the solar system. It is approximately three times taller than Mount Everest. Mars has another distinguishing feature on its surface. It has a crater that covers 40% of it. It also has the largest canyon of any of the planets in the solar system that is 4 miles deep and extends for thousands of miles.

Jupiter

This planet has more moons than any other in the solar system. It is the largest planet in the solar system and is also the one that spins the fastest. It takes approximately 10 hours for Jupiter to complete a full spin on its axis. The planet has a strong magnetic field (about 14x stronger than Earth’s) and a vast amount of radiation around it. Jupiter has rings that can be divided into three layers. Winds near Jupiter’s center are estimated to be 400 miles an hour. Jupiter is sometimes credited with shielding Earth from passing objects by pulling them into itself with its strong magnetic field. Its mass is 318 times greater than Earth.

Saturn

It is sometimes called “The Jewel of the Solar System” with its visible rings and large size, second only to Jupiter. The planet is made up of gases, mostly, and its rings are made up of rocks, ice, and dust. Wind speeds at Saturn’s equator can reach 1,118 miles per hour. A year on Saturn is about the same as 29 years on Earth but a day on Saturn is 10 hours and 14 minutes. At its widest, Saturn could fit Earth across itself 9 times. Saturn is the least dense planet in the solar system. It is said that when Galileo looked up to Saturn with an early version of the telescope in 1610, he thought its rings were two moons stuck to the sides of the planet.

Uranus

This is the third largest planet and is made of gas and ice. As such, it is the coldest planet in the solar system with temperatures reaching -360 degrees Fahrenheit. Uranus is spinning on its side, like a bowling ball rolling toward the pins. Because of its unusual orientation to the sun, a summer on Uranus lasts 42 Earth years, as does a winter season, putting a year on Uranus to be the equivalent of 84 Earth years. Uranus has 13 rings, all made of dark particles that are extremely small. Winds on the planet can reach 560 miles per hour. The human eye can see Uranus in the night sky on Earth because the planet just meets the brightness scale needed for the human eye to see it.

Neptune

It is made of water, methane, and ammonia around a core of rock. It has 5 primary rings and 4 arcs of rings that are clusters of dust and space debris. It has 14 moons. Because of Pluto’s strongly elliptical orbit, Neptune is occasionally the furthest planet from the Sun. Of the other gaseous planets in the solar system (Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter), Neptune is the smallest. It is said to have a similar gravitational pull as that on Earth at only 17% stronger, the closest gravitational pull to Earth of any other planet in the solar system. Its winds reach 1,304 miles per hours.

Pluto

This dwarf planet (as of 2006) has been beloved by generations as part of the planets of the solar system. Pluto was discovered in 1930 and was named at the suggestion of a girl who was 11 years old. Pluto has a diameter of 1,473 miles, making it smaller than Earth’s moon which has a diameter of 2,160 miles. Pluto is part of the Kuiper Belt that orbits the Sun just outside of Neptune’s orbit. Pluto has five moons. It is one-third water and two-thirds rock. It has mountain ranges and craters on its surface.

The Future of Space Exploration

As we dive deeper into space through advancements like the James Webb telescope, we will continue to uncover details of other planets that will enhance our understanding of our solar system’s place in the vast expanses of space.

Top 5 Sci Fi Books With Creepy Crawlies

It’s very easy to combine science fiction with horror. Whether you’re working with sentient artificial intelligence that’s hell-bent on control, or if you’ve got some weird, terrifying landscape that messes with the character’s minds, there’s always some kind of sci-fi fright to be had.

But, perhaps one of the most terrifying things that authors can do with science fiction is include bugs. Spiders, wasps, slugs–you name it! Creepy crawlies scare the bejeezus out of millions of people, so it’s always been a perfect topic for sci-fi horror stories.

We’ve collected some of the zanier sci fi books with insects in them, so it’s up to you if you want to pick them up to read before bed, or put them on the DON’T EVER READ list.

The Bees by Laline Paull

This is one of the more interesting, conceptual books on this list. Laline Paull crafts a sci-fi microcosm of a bee hive, where the main character is a worker bee. That’s right, Flora 717 is a sanitation worker, a drone responsible for cleaning up the walkways of the hive.

But, as her role starts to change, Flora 717 finds herself getting closer and closer to the Queen, and closer to uncovering dangerous hive secrets.

Paull’s book reads kind of like a story from Aliya Whiteley, but the unique take on the phrase “hive mind” makes this a fresh, interesting book. Not the conventional creepy crawlies you might have been expecting, but still worthy of a spot on this list.

Petal Storm by Paul Kidd

It’s quite possible that Laline Paull’s The Bees was a tip of the hat to Paul Kidd’s Petal Storm. While the hive metaphor isn’t as fleshed out, there’s still a distinct similarity in Petal Storm.

In this novel, the ancient civilization of The Hive is stumbling. They’re a warrior-class of bee-like humanoids, but their aging Queen will soon pass. Most of the novel revolves around this conflict, with court intrigue, skyborne battles, and assassinations. It’s a very inventive story, but it might not be everyone’s cup of tea.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

We can’t have a list of books with creepy crawlies without including this classic. This book was one of the first jaunts into the insect-humanoid genre (is that a genre?). It’s been a staple of English literature classes across the world for years, and it’s profoundly an early work of science fiction.

If you haven’t read The Metamorphosis, you should! It’s a fast read, with an engaging plot. The main character, Gregor Samsa, awakens one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect, unable to communicate with his family. All sorts of madness ensues, and it’s a lesson in compassion if I’ve ever seen one.

Texas Chainsaw Mantis by Kevin Strange

This one had to be on the list simply because it’s so weird. Kevin Strange is known for writing, well, strange fiction.

Texas Chainsaw Mantis is a parody of the popular horror film, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But, instead of people, the characters are all praying mantises. And if you know anything about the praying mantis, it’s that the females rip off the males’ heads after they are done mating with them.

The main character of this story is a mantis named Matthew, whose wife almost bites his head off and leaves him for dead. But Matthew brings himself out of the garden shed with his trusty chainsaw, intent on destruction.

It’s a bizarre premise, but a fun, quick read.

Slugs by Shaun Hutson

If you’ve ever seen the 1990 movie Arachnaphobia, then Slugs will be familiar. Published in 1982, Slugs follows a classic horror plot, with dozens of characters in a small town having different harrowing experiences with carnivorous slugs.

It takes the main character, Mike Brady, a good long time to figure out that these dangerous slugs are not only eating people, but poisoning them too. Slugs is a classic 80s horror novel, and definitely a throwback.

5 SFF Books About Pyromancy

Interview with Author Mica Scotti Kole

An award-winning author, and a regular to the pages of Galaxy’s Edge Magazine, writer and editor Mica Scotti Kole gave us the chance to peal back the pages and get a glimpse inside the life of a dreamer, artist, and someone who has followed her dreams straight into a reality …

Continue reading →

Earth’s Next Mass Extinction Might Be 400 Years Away

With all the stuff in the news about solar flares, rising sea levels, and asteroids zipping by Earth, a lot of people are probably getting pretty nervous about the end of times.

And there are certainly a lot of ways it could go down. A powerful geomagnetic storm could render our communications and electronics useless, leading to mass hysteria. Or, an asteroid could put us right next to the dinosaurs.

But the future doesn’t have to be all fire and brimstone. New studies have shown that the timeline for Earth’s next mass extinction is quite a long ways away, and contradicts some of the other climate crisis predictions.

This isn’t to say that we can slack off right now and continue on our path–we certainly can not–but it gives a bit more time to course correct.

Rising Temperatures Write Our Future

Climate scientists in Japan have come up with new data that suggests that Earth’s next mass extinction might not take place for another few centuries.

Kunio Kaiho, a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Tohoku University, has been studying the events that led to the previous mass extinction events in Earth’s history in hopes of better understanding what the future holds.

His findings have suggested that for intense climate change events, temperatures had to drop by 7 degrees Celsius or rise by at least 9 degrees Celsius to spark an extinction-level event.

For context, the previously accepted average temperature rise to trigger a mass extinction was 5.2 degrees Celsius. Kaiho’s estimates certainly give us a much broader timeline than we previously thought.

But even though we might have a breath of fresh air for a few more years, that doesn’t mean we’re not quickly approaching the next big, worldwide natural disaster. Let’s take a look at the past extinction events so we can see what’s potentially in store:

Sixth One Is The Charm

In all of Earth’s history (or what we are able to assume about Earth’s history), there have been five major extinction events.

According to the American Museum of Natural History, the five mass extinctions can be identified as follows:

Ordovician-silurian extinction – 440 million years ago
Denovian extinction – 365 million years ago
Permian-triassic extinction – 250 million years ago
Triassic-jurassic extinction – 210 million years ago
Cretaceous-tertiary extinction – 65 million years ago

The last extinction, which occurred more than 65 million years ago, is thought to have eradicated 50% of all plant and animal species that were alive at the time. And in total, all extinction events have destroyed upwards of 99% of all life, from plants and animals, to insects and single cell organisms.

Most of these extinctions were the result of a few things. Drastic changes in temperature caused sudden ice ages or sweltering heat waves. Other phenomena also played a part in a few mass extinctions, stuff like meteorite strikes or super-volcano eruptions.

Kaiho and his colleagues believe that the upcoming sixth extinction will be quite hot, with subsequent sea level changes due to melting ice caps. But, their estimation puts the 6th event sometime in 2500, which is far enough away that we’ll never live to see it.

Timelines Can Change

But, just because our children and grandchildren might not live to see the world end, doesn’t mean there won’t be a build up to the main event.

Loss of biodiversity is the first big indicator of upcoming extinctions. Data gathered from thousands of different sources suggests that there are more than 40,000 different species threatened with extinction right now, and another 900 that we’ve already lost since the 1500s.

Things that we grew up knowing and caring for, like Monarch butterflies, might be a thing of the past by the time our grandchildren are old enough to care.

Kaiho’s prediction of 2500 gives us less than 500 years to right our path, and far less than that if we stay on our current trajectory. In his study, he claimed that the Earth’s temperature is already set to increase more than 4 degrees Celsius by the end of 2100.

And isn’t that what climate scientists have been saying for years? That our Earth is at a saturation point with pollution, greenhouse gasses, and other human-made problems.

So even if Kaiho is right, and we have much more time than we thought we did, we can’t slack off now. The next few years are critical for the future. Humanity might survive until 2500, but what will those 470-some years look like? Hot, dry, and filled with plague?

We see so many science fiction stories that portray stark white, technologically god-like societies, or the opposite side, with bleak, dystopian politics and barren wastelands.

What we really need is a goal, concrete and attainable. Personally, I think Solarpunk presents that goal for now–and while it might not be the end-all-be-all, it’s certainly a start.

Defining Solarpunk, A Movement and a Genre

Science Fiction: The Evolution of a Genre

Science fiction as a genre has evolved and expanded over the decades, inviting innovative ideas from forward-thinking minds. Avid fans of the genre and its subgenres (some say there are over 30 subgenres!) probably can’t recall a time before there was an entire section in bookstores or online shopping platforms dedicated to science fiction. The genre is not the oldest (poetry claims that distinction) and its evolution is a stunning example of what human ingenuity can accomplish through a combination of imagination and a foundation of science.

Earliest Records of Science Fiction

Unsurprisingly, fiction aficionados do not quite agree on when Sci-Fi as a genre began. Many posit that it was during the 2^nd century when Lucian of Samosata penned A True Story, the book that astounded readers with its descriptions of aliens, travel beyond earth, and war among the planets. Several genres in addition to science fiction have attempted to lay claim to this work and its accolades as belonging within their genre. This book, and many others up through the 13^th century, do seem to contain themes and elements of Sci-Fi but do they have enough to qualify them fully? The debate continues…

Let’s look at the opinion of astronomer and scientist Carl Sagan. His belief was Somnium by Johannes Kepler is the first true Sci-Fi book. He may be right. After all, within those ancient pages the author describes what it could be like to view Earth from a vantage point on the Moon long before Neil Armstrong set foot upon its regolith-covered surface. Other early contenders include a personal favorite, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as well as Jules Verne’s epic Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. With a genre whose stories are so rich with possibility and so embracing of the unknown it stands to reason that each of these and many more have directly impacted, shaped, and built the incredible genre that we know and love today.

How Sci-Fi Has Changed

The 1900s saw a huge push toward defining the genre and introducing stellar, new concepts to readers of literature. When Hugo Gernsback published the first American Sci-Fi magazine in 1926 called Amazing Stories, he unwittingly started a further boom for the genre as he put incredible works of fiction and art in the hands of thousands of people each month. One author in particular, E. E. Doc Smith with Lee Hawkins, is credited for writing the first notable space opera, The Skylark of Space, which was put in the magazine. A comic strip celebrating Sci-Fi was also born from the magazine as Philip Francis Nowlan introduced the nation to Buck Rogers with Armageddon 2419. Just over a decade later in 1937 a new editor took over a competing science fiction magazine called Astounding Science Fiction and ushered in what fans call the “Golden Age of Science Fiction.” Editor John Campbell focused on content that centered on real, scientific progress and advancements in technology. As a result, the genre blossomed as readers were both in awe of the advancements of the day as well as excited by the fictional elements of each story.

In the 1940s a Hugo Award was given to author Isaac Asimov for his book series entitled Foundation. The story presented the idea of galactic empires, a novel concept in the day. Throughout the 1950s Americans stayed riveted to new ideas including interstellar communities, human evolution of the future, military science fiction, and much more. The 1960s and 1970s saw further advancements in technology, prompting authors to write about themes that stretched the limits of our understanding at that time. Things like human psychology, physical and mental abilities of the human body and mind, and questions about concepts such as gender, feminism, and social constructs played into stories heavily during this time.

Films’ Influence

The onset of film opened an entirely new way for humans to see and interpret the world around them. One of the earliest known recordings that could be labeled as science fiction is the iconic silent film A Trip to the Moon directed by Georges Méliès in 1902. It was shot with a meager budget of 10,000 francs and was only 9 minutes long. A recent film entitled Hugo tells the true-to-life tale of the director and offers a glimpse into his creative mind. By 1927 a full-length science fiction film called Metropolis failed at the box office but has succeeded in the eyes of modern filmmakers for its innovative science fiction concepts. Fast forward to 1968 when 2001: A Space Odyssey and the original Planet of the Apes both came out and it’s easy to see how Sci-Fi enjoyed a burst of popularity as it garnered new fans while enchanting fans of old. The door was wide open for another quality, successful film when in 1977 George Lucas released what we know today as Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. This, of course, sparked a global obsession with the series and expanded the reach of science fiction.

Science Fiction Today

From its humble beginnings, the genre has risen to include some of the bigger blockbuster hits in Hollywood and some of the more heavily read books in the nation. As writers and authors continue to push the limits and expand human awareness of what could exist beyond what we can see and experience today, readers are spoiled with a plethora of media options that range from classic to modern and encompass a variety of subgenres. Let us not forget, however, that once upon a time, not too long ago, a few brave writers put pen to paper and dreamed up worlds that no one had dared to capture in ink.

Spec Fic Comic Book Review: Cold Iron Issues 1-3

It’s been a while since our last comic book review, so this time we’re tackling something a bit newer.

Cold Iron is a Comixology original from a great team of artists and writers. This “supernatural thriller” had its first issue hit shelves in May of this year, and it was followed up by issues two and three soon after.

While this genre is something that’s pretty over-saturated, from TV shows to novels, Cold Iron was a quick, fun read. Let’s dive a bit deeper.

Cold Iron Background

Like we mentioned, Cold Iron had a star-lineup working hard to get this comic book out on the market.

The writer Andy Diggle has gained some renown in the comic book scene with his work on The Green Arrow and Hellblazer. And the artist, Nick Brokenshire, has worked on all kinds of projects, including Star Wars and The Once and Future Queen. Diggle and Brokenshire have been friends for a long time and worked on projects in the past, but Cold Iron was a labor of love for both of them.

Diggle revealed the history of his interest in Celtic and faery stories in a press release from Comixology. “The Isle of Man is a magical place, and holds a very special place in my family’s heart. From neolithic burial sites to Celtic stone circles and Viking castles, the island carries a sense of the ancient in its very bones. I learned at an early age that it’s always considered advisable to acknowledge the Other Folk when crossing the Fairy Bridge on the Port Erin to Douglas road.”

So there’s obviously a personal connection to the lore and story of Cold Iron, and it shows. The story, which is only a 4-issue limited release, is full of rich history and ancient beings. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know it was only a 4-issue story arc until I started writing this blog. There seemed like so much more that could come after issue 3!

Hold Your Horseshoe Tight

Cold Iron takes place on the Isle of Man, as you might have guessed, and it follows Kay, a young woman who dreams of being a world-renowned musician. Her boyfriend wants her to work at a local restaurant, but Kay’s feisty and defiant, and wants to forge her own path.

All that changes when Kay encounters Mona, a young girl stranded in the countryside, who is seemingly from another time. Thus kicks off the wild, scary journey through the woods back to town, where Kay and Mona run into a goat-headed man, the stuff of legend.

Mona is apparently the bride of an ancient Celtic king who resides on the “Other Side”, and she’s managed to escape into our modern world. As such, the devious creatures of the Other Side inveigle and trick, trying to bring her back to the king. But that’ll only happen over Kay’s dead body.

Kay’s world goes sideways after that first encounter with the supernatural, and her dreams of being a famous songwriter seem all but distant as her grandmother helps her load cold iron into shotgun shells and keeps the horseshoe close.

Verdict

Andy Diggle and Nick Brokenshire had very little space to create their world, but they still succeeded in fleshing out the setting and conflict within a few short issues. While the Celtic lore and fae mythology is a pretty popular subject for supernatural or paranormal stories, Cold Iron doesn’t seem like a copycat or contrived in any way.

The story and the art work together to create both an idyllic, pastoral place, and a dark, creepy island of ancient myths. While reading the first few issues, there were times I felt chills, which is a hard thing to accomplish in the New Jersey summer heat.

Despite the interesting story and unique take on the ancient faery-world trope, I definitely felt like there wasn’t enough Cold Iron. I was expecting at least a 6-issue run, but the 4-issue release is just a taste of what could have been done.

I hope that in the future, Diggle and Brokenshire get to continue telling stories in this world, which feels like a combination of the Folklords and Monstress. I’d rate Cold Iron as a 8/10. It’s fun, easy to read, and unique. But, it’s too short, and I felt like some of the conflicts needed more time to develop.

But, I’m interested to read the last installment, which should be out within the next week or two. You can read Cold Iron on paper from Dark Horse comics, or you can read the digital version on Comixology.

Medieval to Modern Bestiaries

Weird Movies on Netflix: Bigbug

In general, science fiction movies tend to err on the weirder side of media, and that’s just a fact of their nature. But, there are some weird movies on Netflix that fit too nicely in the sci-fi genre, and Bigbug is at the forefront of those films.

Bigbug was released fairly recently, in February 2022, and it’s garnered meek media attention. This French movie imagines a Jetsons-like future with a sinister twist: AI bent on human humiliation and destruction.

Keep reading to get the full scoop on Bigbug, one of the weirdest movies on Netflix this year.

Some Background

Bigbug was written, directed, and produced by Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jeunet and released on Netflix in February 2022.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-sWlgFhUGo

Jean-Pierre Jeunet has developed a reputation as a science fiction writer and director. Over the course of his career, he’s imagined many futuristic worlds, some bleak, some optimistic. His first feature film, Delicatessen (1991) takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where famine has ravaged much of the population. His characters live above a delicatessen, and are picked off by the butcher who runs the shop, eventually turned into meaty treats.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet was even the director or Alien Resurrection, and his film Amélie was nominated for a few Academy Awards.

Suffice to say that he’s a pretty established guy, and Bigbug is his first feature film to come out in the past 10 years.

Bigbug stars Isabelle Nanty, Elsa Zylberstein, Claude Perron, Stéphane De Groodt, and Youssef Hajdi, among others. The film received lackluster reviews, including a 5.7/10 on Rotten Tomatoes and an even lower score on Metacritic.

Despite this, I found the film to be profoundly interesting, both visually and narratively, as well as quite odd. Here’s a brief summary of the plot:

Bigbug Summary

Alice, a suburban mother and artist, lives in a smart home that’s equipped with multiple different robots, some of which are designed for cleaning, others act as maids. When the film starts, we see Alice flirting with Max, a man who pretends to take interest in her artistic endeavors and her bookish nature.

As the story continues, many other characters come into the house, including the neighbor, Alice’s ex-husband and his girlfriend, and Alice’s daughter, Nina. Once all the characters are inside the house, the systems AI, Nestor, locks the doors, citing code C4 because the outside danger level surpassed acceptable limits.

On the news, the characters see a terrible traffic jam, due to automated car malfunctions. And frequently, the television will play the show Homo Ridiculous, which features humans in humiliating situations for the Yonyx clones. The Yonyx are a group of intelligent, violent, AI clones that despise humans.

Most of the movie revolves around the characters trying to get out of the house, while the robots working to please their human counterparts by searching for what it means to be human.

Eventually, things come to a head when the Yonyx show up, but I won’t ruin the ending for you!

What’s So Weird About Bigbug?

Bigbug has a bit of a weird feeling to it for a few reasons. First, it was originally in French, but I watched the English dub on Netflix. The voices and the lips of the characters didn’t match up, which made the whole thing rather trippy, especially since there is supposed to be a big contrast between the robots and AI and the humans. But with the dub, it makes everyone feel a bit like a glitching robot.

Another element of the film that was confusing–and somewhat uncomfortable at times–was the sexual overtones. Pretty much all the of the characters, aside from one or two, were driven by sexual urges, and often ended up being sexually frustrated. Alice and Max spend most of the movie skirting around other characters trying to have sex, while Nina and Max’s son, Leo, have a similar relationship.

Even the robots get oddly sexual. Monique, the maid-AI, follows around Max trying to be seductive like Alice, and the whole thing just comes off as cringy.

I think that the sexual nature of the film helps to portray the humans as driven by instinct, which gives them an animalistic feeling. When contrasted with the Yonyx, who are hard, smart, and cold, the humans just feel kind of lame and useless without their technology.

And that hunts at one of the larger themes of the film, which is whether or not humans are important in a world where robots and AI are ten times smarter, faster, and more efficient than humans.

It’s a common theme in science fiction, dating all the way back to the 1920s and even something that we are seeing unfold before our very eyes, with things like Google’s AI and Blake Lemoine’s leaked interview.

The key takeaway from Bigbug is veiled behind flashy suburbanite futurisms and sexual desire. Its message is simply that humans are lucky. Despite their flaws and their antics, their technologies eventually get too smart for their own good. Some might even say that our saving grace is that we’re simple creatures! And being simple isn’t always a bad thing.

So despite being just a weird movie on Netflix, Bigbug shows us that the more complex we become, the more problems we encounter. What’s wrong with reading books, practicing calligraphy, and drinking vodka shots? Seems like a good way to pass the time to me.

If you liked this movie review, check out some of our other reviews:

Green Knight Movie Review

Prospect Movie Review

Interview with Astrophysicist & Author, Alan Smale – Part 2

We’re back with the second part of our interview with Alan Smale! His new book, Hot Moon, is rooted in an alternate 1979, where Soviet spacecraft meet NASA ships in space.

In this part, we continue our conversation about Hot Moon, as well as Smale’s future plans and writing process.

To read the first part of the interview, click here.

IP: What was it about the Apollo program specifically that sparked the idea for Hot Moon?

AS: One of the great things about the Apollo program was its ambitiousness. We went from zero-to-sixty in space very quickly, with the Mercury and Gemini programs leading up to it. All of which had the obvious aim of sending Americans to the Moon and back again.

And that goal caused a huge amount of technological innovation in a very short time. There were a lot of risks involved and a lot of hairy moments, especially with Apollo 13. There was a great deal of improvisation and ingenuity, on top of those aspects which were extremely well-planned. So I think it’s very fertile ground for fiction.

The Moon landings themselves were incredibly impactful, and it was just great fun to see people bouncing around on the Moon’s surface. In Hot Moon, I tried to bring out that excitement. I mean, the book is a thriller, but I think I managed to get quite a bit of the thrill over the space program in there as well.

Plus, there’s the conflict aspect of the story. In Hot Moon, we see the first space battle, between the Apollo spacecraft, the combined Command and Lunar Module, and the classic Soyuz Soviet craft. These spacecraft were frankly very clunky technologies, and I think those scenes are unlike anything people have seen in fiction before, or at least I haven’t read anything like it. Writing it was great fun, and it was exciting to extrapolate and think about how the technology could have been improved in the late 1970s and early 1980s, if the two superpower space programs had continued on with the same frenetic pace.

So I had a blast writing it and it’s getting good reactions from readers so far. I’m very happy with it.

IP: Had your timeline been a reality, and the US had continued at the same pace, what would your prediction for 2079 be, in terms of space exploration?

AS: When I was a kid, I was convinced that my future lay in space, that by the time I was the age I am now, I’d be living and working in space. In the 1960s, there was no particular reason for me to think that wouldn’t happen. People were talking about going to Mars by 2000, and if we’d kept up the investment in space and everything had gone well, we could possibly have done that.

Of course, there would have been factors that slowed down progress. There would have been a lot of the same societal pressures that happened in our existing timeline. Some people would have been concerned about the cost, and the value of going off-world.

But if we’d managed to keep up the momentum, I certainly think that we could have visited Mars, and had human flybys of Venus, among other things, in my lifetime.

2079? Whether we could have set up permanent colonies in space by that time, I’m not really sure. I guess if we’d pushed really hard, we might’ve gotten to it in one hundred years, but it’s very hard to extrapolate that far. There are so many factors that go into making space colonies or visiting Mars a reality. The politics, in particular, are challenging. Incoming administrations like to shape the space program in their own way and set new priorities. In our own history, the flow of money to NASA was a constant issue all the way through that period, and remains so today.

IP: Do you think privatized space operations like SpaceX or Blue Origin are improving our chances of getting to Mars and exploring farther?

AS: I think the energy that has come into the human space flight arena from the private sector is generally a good thing. There are obviously some personalities involved that can be a bit problematic, but I think in terms of increasing the pace of exploration, and pushing the envelope, the private space companies are a welcome addition to what NASA is doing.

And, to be honest, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the first human to land on Mars got there as a result of a private space flight rather than a NASA mission.

IP: Is there any level of collaboration between NASA and these other privatized space programs?

AS: Oh yes, there certainly is. A lot of the flights to the ISS, the International Space Station, are being conducted by the private sector. There’s actually quite close collaboration between many of the private companies and NASA.

IP: Interesting! Jumping back to Hot Moon for a second, can you tell me a little more about the Apollo Rising series? Can we expect to see another 15 books or will it be a trilogy?

AS: I think it’s very unlikely that it will turn into 15 books. I don’t have the energy for that! I put quite a lot of effort into writing Hot Moon.

I originally conceived Hot Moon as a standalone, and that’s how I was marketing it and trying to sell it. My agent was considering it that way when she was sending it out to publishers, too.

But then, once CAEZIK bought Hot Moon, we got a lot of positive reactions and a number of nice blurbs from really high-powered authors. My publisher, Shahid Mahmud, had a lot of faith in the book, and so we started talking about a sequel. I admit, I didn’t immediately jump at the idea. I wanted to go back and think it through.

I took a couple of months to think about where the story would go. Surprisingly, I discovered in reading back through my notes that there were actually quite a few ideas that I hadn’t made the most of. Not loose ends, as such – Hot Moon is still complete in itself, and still reads well as a standalone. But there were characters that hadn’t really come to the foreground in the first book, people who could make a big mark in the second. The ideas started flowing, and I began to see all kinds of opportunities to continue the story, and came up with what I think is a very satisfying plot.

Just like Hot Moon, the second book – Radiant Sky – will stand up on its own, with its own story arc. We have the same lead character–my astronaut, Vivian Carter–and many of the other people from Hot Moon will be returning. There will also be a number of new characters, and the story will go in directions that I don’t think most readers will be expecting.

Whether there’ll be further books beyond Radiant Sky, I don’t know. I’m only contracted for the first two books, so we’ll have to wait and see. If they’re successful, if they find their audience, I’d hope there’s a good chance of a third book. I doubt that I’d want to go beyond three … but then again, in the beginning I thought Hot Moon would be a standalone. So I guess anything could happen. It’s kind of an evolving process, I’d say.

IP: Have you started writing the second book?

AS: Yes, I have. When I pitched it to CAEZIK I sent a very detailed outline – probably a lot more detailed than they were expecting. They’d asked for something relatively short, but what I sent was eighteen pages of fairly dense prose. In addition to describing the plot in detail, I really wanted to work through the politics in the background, and the new technology as well. I guess I was proving to myself as well as to my publisher and editor that I really had the goods to do this.

I think I must be one of the few authors who pitches books with a technical appendix!

As far as the writing goes, I have about 50,000 words of Radiant Sky written now, but they’re very, very rough draft words.

I still need to do quite a bit more editing on them before I can really show them to anybody, but I’m working through various scenes, fleshing out my ideas, and making sure everything hangs together. I’ve made decent progress, but I have a lot more work to do.

IP: In addition to the Hot Moon sequel, what other projects do you have in the works?

AS: I do have a number of new ideas rattling around, and I still have some activity going on with my first trilogy, Clash of Eagles, which came out from Del Rey. Those books are set in a completely different world, in which the Roman Empire survives into the 13th century in its classical form and is now moving into North America.

The Clash trilogy was published between 2015 and 2017, and even though the series is finished, there’s still quite a bit of interest in them. I still get interviews with people wanting to talk about those books. I might go back to that world in the future for some shorter fiction, and I still think about that a lot.

But I do like dotting around history and exploring various times and places. I have several pieces of short fiction fermenting in my mind, and when I get time I’ll start on those.

Also, Rick Wilber and I collaborated on a long novella, or maybe a short novel, called “The Wandering Warriors” which was originally published in Asimov’s, and then came out as a book from WordFire Press in 2020. Rick and I are very keen on this world that we made. It’s a time travel story that combines his passion for baseball and my interest in ancient Romans. So we’ve actually written a story about Roman baseball, and it was quite successful. And he and I are working together again, throwing ideas back and forth about how we might write a sequel to that. It’s a really open-ended concept that we could continue to have a lot of fun with.

So I have various projects going on in the background and a lot of ideas percolating, but promoting Hot Moon and writing Radiant Sky are really my main focuses right now.

IP: So this is kind of a different question. How do you manage keeping a balance between writing fiction and writing professionally for your job? Can you describe what that process looks like?

AS: Yes, certainly. If there are days when I’ve done a lot of technical writing for work, like writing a paper or a report, I would say it’s very difficult to write creatively after that.

But there are other days where I spend a lot of time in meetings, reading up on something, or talking to people. On those days I can really focus on writing in the evenings. For obvious reasons, I do most of my writing on evenings and weekends. I have a lot of very busy weekends where I’m trying to get down to as many words as possible and also do all the day-to-day life stuff that I have to do.

So, I’m not sure I have a process as such, but I do have to manage my time very carefully. And yes, it is sometimes hard to get my brain to do all the things I need it to do!

…

A big thanks goes out to Alan for having this chat! If you like the sounds of Hot Moon, it’s available for pre-order now from most major retailers.

The book is slated for release on July 26th, 2022.

To learn more about Alan’s writing, check out his website!

Interview with Astrophysicist & Author Alan Smale

It’s not often that you see a hard science fiction novel crafted with such care and meticulous research as Hot Moon by Alan Smale.

Astrophysicist by day, award-winning author by night, Alan Smale’s newest book is about an alternate 1979 where the Soviets are bent on wresting the Moon from NASA’s hands. This sci fi novel features accurate details of orbital mechanics, daring feats of ingenuity, and a thrilling battle in space.

We sat down with Alan to discuss how he started writing, the inspiration for Hot Moon, and his future plans.

Isaac Payne: So Alan, I know that not only are you an award-winning author, you’re also an astrophysicist for NASA. Tell me, how did you decide to get into astrophysics?

Alan Smale: Sure. It really started when I was a kid. I was always interested in astronomy, and fascinated by the Apollo program as well. I used to go out in the backyard with my dad when I was young and look at the Moon and planets, the stars and galaxies. I stayed interested in astronomy for all of my formative years.

And then later on, I went to college to study physics at the University of Oxford, they had optional astrophysics courses in the first and third year, and so I took those and enjoyed them thoroughly.

After my bachelors degree, I was accepted for a doctoral program. It’s actually called DPhil in Oxford, Doctor of Philosophy, rather than a PhD, but it’s the same thing. I did optical and x-ray astronomy research there for three years or so while earning my doctorate. After that I did a post-doc at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, part of University College London.

When my first post-doc ended, I moved to the States to take up a job at NASA, at the Goddard Space Flight Center. I’ve been with NASA ever since.

IP: What kind of research do you do at NASA?

AS: I study low mass x-ray binaries, which are binary star systems that are quite tightly bound, and one of those stars is a compact object, either a black hole or a neutron star. These are extremely dense objects. Material from the more normal companion star spirals into that compact object, and that’s where the x-rays come from. If we study those sources by looking at both the x-rays and the optical emission, we can learn a lot about them.

IP: So obviously you’ve been pretty ingrained with science and astronomy since you were young. Were you an avid science fiction reader, too?

AS: Oh, yeah, I cut my teeth on all of the old classics. When I was growing up, I read a lot of Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Larry Niven. All of this stuff was really prevalent in the atmosphere around me at the time.

I’ve been interested in science fiction all my life, as well as science and astronomy. In fact, all the sci-fi I read probably played a big role in my interest in the sciences. The space program, astrophysics, and science fiction have always coupled together quite tightly, for me.

IP: And when did you start writing science fiction? Did you start pretty early on with that as well?

AS: I started writing science fiction in a very juvenile kind of way. When I was a kid I used to write what now would be called Star Trek fan fiction. But I really started writing seriously for publication when I turned 30. I was already living in the States and working at the Goddard Space Flight Center by then. I’d finished my academic studies, and I was no longer a student at that point, so I had a little more free time. Then, pretty soon after that, I started having stories accepted.

IP: What was the name of your first publication?

AS: It was a short story called “The Breath of Princes” and it appeared in the A Wizard’s Dozen anthology from Harcourt Brace, edited by Michael Stearns.

It was actually a fantasy story, which is kind of funny looking back on it now. In fact, my first two or three published stories were fantasy, but over the past fifteen years, most of my writing has been alternate history or hard science fiction.

IP: What about the genre of historical fiction do you find fascinating?

AS: I’ve always been a history buff. Growing up in England, there was a lot of history around. My family used to go to Hadrian’s Wall for vacations, and to Bath, so I got to explore a lot of Roman ruins and remains there.

I’m not actually sure what the precipitating event was that made me focus on historical writing, but one thing about it is that it’s very different from my day job. I feel as though I’m using very different mental muscles when I’m writing history-based speculative fiction than when I’m doing academic research.

My most recent book, Hot Moon, is very technical, hard science fiction, but until I got to that book, most of my fiction writing was in a different head-space from the day-job work I was doing. Doing scientific research is very different from writing about history, so it was a complete break for my brain, the two sides didn’t bleed into each other.

It feels very refreshing, somehow, when I’m working hard at both science and writing. A change is as good as a rest!

Anyway: I’d always been fascinated by history, and by some of the older alternate history tales. Books like Lest Darkness Fall by Sprague de Camp, and The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick.

The past is a very fertile playground for fiction. And one of the things I like about alternate history is that it kind of holds up a mirror to the real history; I get the resonances of what really happened, underlying the tale that I’m telling, and they both reinforce each other and play off each other.

If you know the real historical events, then you’ll know that the events in a given story are different because of a different result in a war, or an election, and perhaps different people are in the foreground. And by doing that, it kind of makes you think about how history is made. Who the important people are. How history really works.

I just found myself gravitating more and more to that kind of writing over the last 10 or 15 years. Over that period, a lot of my reading has been historical non-fiction, and most of my writing output has been historically based.

IP: You mentioned that Hot Moon is hard science fiction, as well as being an alternate history. Can readers expect for Hot Moon to stay within the bounds of 1979 astrophysics, or does the book move into science fiction with more advanced technologies?

AS: I definitely stay within those bounds. There’s nothing in Hot Moon that wouldn’t have been possible with the technology that they had back then. I spent a lot of time researching the Apollo program, which was a real labor of love because as I mentioned before, I was really into it when I was a kid.

I spent a lot of time getting into the nuts and bolts of the technology, really getting deep into figuring out what was possible and what wasn’t. I obey the laws of physics throughout the book, which is actually a pain because orbital mechanics are quite complicated and it really constrains what my characters can do! They need large amounts of fuel for relatively small orbit changes, for example, and things like that.

So in the first book, there is nothing that wasn’t possible with the technology of the time. The Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft, the Lunar Rovers, and other hardware in the book either existed in the 1970s, or could have been in existence in that timeframe if the US and Soviet space programs had continued. There would have been no technical showstoppers with implementing any of the vehicles, machinery, or bases in Hot Moon.

In the second book we’ll certainly see more of the speculative technology that was suggested at the time. These are ideas that people had done a bit of experimentation with, some prototyping and technical development, but which never came to fruition. There were a lot of bright ideas around then, but a lot of those programs ended up being canceled, or not coming to fruition for other reasons.

So, overall, I’ve tried really hard to keep the science very close to reality. There’s a key political difference in how we get to the world of Hot Moon in 1979. And one of those differences is that the US involvement in Vietnam is much more limited, and of a shorter duration.

As a result, the US has quite a lot more money. In reality, the US couldn’t possibly have pursued the war in Vietnam and the Space Race simultaneously without making huge concessions elsewhere. So, a different Vietnam War, and a rather different Cold War, are central to the Hot Moon universe.

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Make sure to check out the second part of our conversation with Alan Smale, right here on the Signals from the Edge blog on Thursday, July 14th!

In the meantime, check out another one of our interviews:

Interview with Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek