Here are 10 trending worship songs centered on God's faithfulness, surrender, hope after hardship, and God's presence amid anxiety.

'Have the money to buy everybody'

What do you think?

'What we need to see is humanity'

'Part of the United States'

The “Nairobi Birdman” is filling gaps in Kenyan bird conservation on the streets of the country’s biggest city. Seen around town with an injured kite perched on his head, it’s just one of dozens that Rodgers Oloo Magutha has nursed back to health. These have included pigeons, storks, owls, and other wild birds that fall […] The post ‘Nairobi Birdman’ Rescues Helpless Birds in Kenya, Giving Them a Home He Never Had appeared first on Good News Network.

News Wildwood Laika’s Stop-Motion Wildwood Adaptation Finally Has a Release Date Colin Meloy’s novel comes to the screen in October! By Molly Templeton | Published on January 20, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share In just a few more months, we can finally visit Wildwood. The next feature from the animation studio Laika (Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings) is based on the middle-grade novel by Colin Meloy (of The Decemberists fame), which follows young Prue McKeel as she chases after her baby brother when he’s stolen by crows. Wildwood is a very Portland story, which means I could not be more excited about it. (Do you know about our crows? They’re amazing.) The book takes its name from the Wildwood Trail, a 30-mile trail that you can hike in more reasonably sized sections. It takes hikers through the lush greenery of Forest Park, one of the largest urban forests in the country. Go for a walk in it, and you’ll absolutely believe it could be home to all kinds of magic. Which is essentially what Prue discovers when she goes after her brother. As an early synopsis for the movie said: Beyond Portland’s city limits lies Wildwood. You’re not supposed to go there. You’re not even supposed to know it exists. But Prue McKeel is about to enter this enchanted wonderland. Her baby brother Mac has been taken by a murder of crows into the forest’s depths, and she—along with her hapless classmate Curtis—is going to get him back. Prue might think she’s too old for fairy tales, but she’s just found herself at the center of one … filled with strange talking animals, roguish bandits, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. Wildwood has been in the works for over a decade. Laika has released a couple of little featurettes about the film, but no full trailer yet; the most recent video focuses on Pittock Mansion, another real Portland place, which animators have re-imagined and recreated in incredible detail. The video feels a bit like a pitch for tourists to visit Pittock (which has incredible views, and which you can hike to on the Wildwood Trail), but it’s still a nifty behind-the-scenes look at a long-awaited film with an outstanding voice cast: Carey Mulligan, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Mahershala Ali, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, Jake Johnson, Charlie Day, Amandla Stenberg, Jemaine Clement, Maya Erskine, Tantoo Cardinal, Tom Waits, and Richard E. Grant. It’s directed by Travis Knight (Bumblebee) from a screenplay by Chris Butler (Kubo and the Two Strings). That wait is finally almost over. Variety has the news that Laika has partnered with Fathom Entertainment to release the movie, which will be in theaters October 23rd. That is still so far away—but the spooky season release date is just right. Trailer? Soon? How about now?[end-mark] The post Laika’s Stop-Motion <i>Wildwood</i> Adaptation Finally Has a Release Date appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms A Delightful Buddy Comedy Unfolds in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Welcome to a kindler, gentler version of Westeros, where chivalry is not entirely dead! By Tyler Dean | Published on January 20, 2026 Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO Finally, the third HBO series inspired by George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books is upon us! Each week, I’ll be discussing the most recent episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. There will be spoilers for episode below. While there may be spoilers for any and all of Martin’s Westeros books as we work our way through the series, they’ll be clearly marked in individual sections. A Kinder, Gentler Westeros Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO Early on in A Game of Thrones (and in the first season of the eponymous show), Martin gives us a tournament celebrating the elevation of Ned Stark to the office of Hand of the King. Like most of what Martin writes about the Medieval-adjacent politics of Westeros, the tourney is a rotten thing—an obscene expenditure where pageantry plasters over a failing empire: still healing from a brutal civil war, riddled with debt, ruled by a drunken buffoon, and filled with ambitious nobles seeking to climb the political ladder by any means necessary. Among other things, it serves as a moment for Ned’s daughter, Sansa Stark, to experience the first cracks in her naive worldview—up to this point, she’s believed that knights are noble and chivalry exists. By contrast, Martin’s 1998 novella, The Hedge Knight, adapted here as the first season of HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, uses a tourney to restore some of the chivalric magic to the typically grim world of Westeros.  Set in the year 209, approximately ninety years before the events of HBO’s Game of Thrones (and exactly 79 years after the most recent season of their prequel series, House of the Dragon), A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a window into a better time in Westeros. The kingdom is not at war, the Targaryen king is generally beloved, and the dragons—the equivalent of weapons of mass destruction in this fictional world—are extinct. For showrunner Ira Parker (who also serves as co-executive producer of House of the Dragon), this all allows for a generally lighter tone; we see smash cuts for the first time in a GoT series, and of course the swelling waltz of Ramin Djawadi’s iconic theme is immediately undercut by its protagonist wrestling with a bout of explosive diarrhea.  From a production design standpoint, it’s an interesting mix of the ground-level grittiness and filth of an ASoIaF series, as told from the perspective of the smallfolk, and the splendor of one of Westeros’ golden ages. There is exquisite detailing on Ser Arlan of Pennytree’s winged chalice shield which would feel out of place for a hedge knight in either the GoT or HotD eras, but here feels suited to a time of relative peace and prosperity.  Even Dan Romer’s score scales back a bit, bringing folk guitar strains forward and making the whole thing sound a bit like a Western. That’s fitting, given the picaresque nature of Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas which feel like they owe a lot to classic Westerns as well as the equally picaresque, Sergio Leone-inspired Lone Wolf and Cub manga from the ’70s.  Panem et Circenses Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO There’s a telling exchange halfway through the episode when sex worker Red (Rowan Robinson) gives our protagonist, Dunk (Peter Claffey), some advice about dealings with nobles, offered from “one whore to another.” In a world where both sex workers and knights put their bodies on the line for the pleasures and whims of the ruling class, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms starts to home in on Martin’s class-conscious depictions of labor and obligation. Because the events of the Dunk and Egg novellas largely take place in times of peace, there is a special emphasis placed on knights not as weapons of war but as professional entertainers. It’s a lovely bit of understanding from a TV universe that has not always been particularly thoughtful about the ways in which sex work is legitimate work or the class solidarity that the peasants and other exploited people might feel under feudalism.  Martin is famously a fan of American football, writing sly references to the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants into his books. In the more than quarter century since “The Hedge Knight” was published, there has been endless controversy over CTE and the ways in which professional athletes (especially football players and wrestlers) sacrifice their bodies for public entertainment at the behest of billionaire team owners. It feels like a bit of a full-circle moment that Martin’s empathy for people with disabilities gets folded back into his books in a way that he hadn’t explicitly written about.  It also dovetails nicely with some of Martin’s concerns over the ways in which knighthood is a capitalist sport. Dunk agonizes endlessly in both novella and show about how, if he loses a bout in the tourney, he will have to forfeit his armor, weapons, and horses to his opponent and ransom them back. Any knight can make another knight, but one without access to these expensive accouterments can’t really fulfill his duties. It’s a rigged game that favors the nobility and punishes and impoverishes all but the most talented of lowborn aspirants.  When Dunk chides the sex workers for mocking him, Red tells him “be good to your body, knight. Last one you’re like to have.” That’s an exchange added for the show and it feels like another sign that the ASoIaF shows have come a long way in their politics and are, only now, catching up to where Martin was back in the late ’90s.  The Horned Lord Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO The first episode deviates the most significantly from “The Hedge Knight” by having Dunk and Raymun Fossoway (Shaun Thomas) visit the pavilion of Ser Lyonel Baratheon, “the Laughing Storm” (Sex Education and The Crown’s Daniel Ings). While Ser Lyonel is an important character in the novella, the show is clearly expanding his role and giving him a lot more to do. It’s a welcome relief as Ings is delightful. Clearly channeling Peter Dinklage’s performance of Tyrion Lannister, he imbues Ser Lyonel with an uneasy, off-kilter mirth, as well as a queer energy that perfectly fits the scarce descriptions we have of him from Martin’s novella (just look at all the highly bisexual ways he sits in his pavilion chair).  Game of Thrones always struggled to portray the Baratheon house spirit. Part of this lies with the source material; the jovial and dangerous King Robert (Mark Addy) is already too far gone as a hapless drunk to show his previous fighting spirit by the time we meet him in the books, and Stannis (Stephen Dillane) is meant to be a grim reactionary figure, consciously molding himself into the opposite of his family’s reputation. The show also made Renly (Gethin Anthony) into a much more timid, nervous, and retiring figure in the show than he is in the books. But, with Ser Lyonel, we finally have a representation that fits in with the tales of young Robert and book-Renly. I personally can’t wait to see what they do with him.  Odds & Ends Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO The episode is titled “The Hedge Knight” which, obviously, refers both to Dunk himself and the title of the first novella in the series. I’m sure there is some market-tested reason for this, but I do find it a little odd that the entire series is not called “The Hedge Knight.” Yes, it is specific to the first novella but Game of Thrones took its name from the first book in the Song of Ice and Fire series and, man, is “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” a cumbersome title. I expect that there will be episodes named for the second and third novellas—The Sworn Sword and The Mystery Knight—in seasons two and three. To explain a bit more fully, a “hedge knight” is Martin’s term for the Westerosi equivalent of a ronin: an itinerant knight with no sworn fealty to any particular lord, so named because they sleep not under a castle roof but among the hedges. Martin probably takes the term from the historical concept of a “hedge witch” who practices without a coven, and he uses the terms “hedge witch” and “hedge wizard” in his books to refer to equally itinerant (and often disreputable) spellcasters and herbalists who operate outside of any official feudal capacity. The first twenty minutes take all dialogue almost word for word from The Hedge Knight. Even some of Dunk’s added lines are taken verbatim from his internal monologue. It’s a testament to how well GoT has accustomed folks to Martin’s particular brand of faux-Medieval speech patterns and worldbuilding that casual viewers hardly notice how stylized the dialogue can be.  In this lighter and more lyrical age of Westeros, we get some of Martin’s playful punnery about heraldic devices back. In lines cribbed directly from The Hedge Knight, the Fossoway cousins refer to one another in terms of the apples on their banners (Raymun is unripe, Steffon is rotten, etc). Martin seeds these sorts of fun, slightly cringe-y exchanges constantly throughout his books and while they were largely cut from both previous shows, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms feels like it has the right tone to bring them back.  The Dunk and Egg novellas are fairly cagey about whether or not Ser Arlan actually knighted Dunk. There are certainly clues in the original text—when Plummer (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), Lord Ashford’s steward asks him if he was knighted, Dunk wonders if his ears are turning red. The show leans all the way in, making it all but text that Arlan never performed the ceremony. On the one hand, this clearly adds fuel to Dunk’s anxiety about being discovered as a fraud. On the other hand, because it’s well established, both in the books and shows, that any knight can bestow knighthood, the process is already murky and hard to prove. I’m not sure that the focus on Dunk’s definitive dishonesty about his status necessarily adds a lot to his character. Ser Arlan’s sword doesn’t have a penny embedded in the hilt in the books. In fact, the only understanding of “Pennytree” we get is a largely abandoned village that Jaime Lannister passes through in A Dance with Dragons, where he sees a dead tree with pennies nailed into the trunk. In general, both the mainline ASoIaF books and the original HBO series pay winking homage to Ser Duncan the Tall (with references to him going all the way back to the second episode of Game of Thrones). If you’re planning a GoT rewatch or reread at any point, there will be an extra layer of delight after this series is done.  This is a minor gripe, but Tanselle (Tanzyn Crawford), the Dornishwoman that Dunk goes misty-eyed for at the puppet show, is portrayed in the show as the emcee of the affair, narrating the story of Ser Serwyn of the Mirror Shield (an ancient Westerosi legend that might have a parallel in an upcoming season of House of the Dragon) while a gigantic and impressive dragon puppet breathes fire on stage. In the novella, her show is a much smaller affair, and she is a puppeteer rather than an actor. It feels like a change made exclusively to show off a much larger and more impressive dragon puppet. Obviously, with six hours to adapt 30,000 or so words, there is plenty of time to flesh out Tanselle as a character beyond the version we meet in the original story, but I do worry that the show is missing out on giving her a very specific and interesting technical skill. I always liked that part of Dunk’s infatuation with Tanselle is that they are both skilled, physical performers who rely on expert coordination in their respective trades.  Ser Manfred Dondarrion (Daniel Monks), the rakish lord who can’t be bothered to vouch for Dunk, is an ancestor of Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer), the Lightning Lord who leads the Brotherhood Without Banners in the original Game of Thrones series (and who gives up his life in the books to bring Catelyn Stark back from the dead). Additionally, there is a bit of fun worldbuilding in the exchange where Daisy says that Manfred claims he’s “hung like a Dornishman,” to which he responds that what he said was that he’s “hung Dornishmen.” The Dondarrions are what Martin deems “Marcher Lords”—that is, noble families from the border between the Reach and Dorne who are ever-bellicose when it comes to their neighbors to the South. Given that Daeron II, the current King of Westeros (who we almost assuredly won’t see in this series) only brought Dorne into the rest of the Westerosi Empire twenty-two years before the start of the show, people like Ser Manfred still remember Dorne as an enemy nation with whom Westeros was perpetually at war. The “Vulture King” that Dunk mentions to Ser Manfred is at least the fourth person to use that title. It is typically used by a self-styled king who rebels against the Targaryen crown from a stronghold in the mountains along the Dornish marches. Not only are vultures prevalent in the Red Mountains of Dorne but House Blackmont, one of the Dornish vassal houses, takes the scavenger bird as their sigil. The raids that killed the Vulture King referenced in AKot7K took place about three years before the start of the show.  One of the friends at my watch party (who has not read the novellas) noted that the show has real A Knight’s Tale vibes. And, yes. It really does. Given that A Knight’s Tale came out in 2001—a scant three years after The Hedge Knight was published—it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that writer/director Brian Helgeland had been at least partially inspired by Martin’s original text, along with its more obvious connection to the work of Geoffrey Chaucer. In Conclusion Credit: Steffan Hill/HBO I loved it. It’s a strong start to adapting what is probably the most fiercely adored entry in Martin’s Westeros books. Both Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell, who plays Egg (and was only nine at the time of filming) are fantastic, with an easy chemistry that perfectly replicates the sweet, buddy comedy vibes of the books. It also bodes well that the show is doing such a good job of striking a tone that balances humor and sincerity (two elements often missing from the original HBO show and House of the Dragon). The preview for the rest of the season looks like it will delve a bit deeper into Dunk’s backstory than the novellas do, and I have high hopes that the writers will take Martin’s text and run with it. Game of Thrones could never quite keep up with the amount of detail in Martin’s famously long and intricate novels, and House of the Dragon is always at its best when it is finding new angles to explore and more to say than Martin did in his bird’s-eye, historian’s view of the story in Fire and Blood. Speaking of Martin’s involvement, it’s good to see that he approves of this adaptation (if only because it’s of one of his best novellas), even if it is somewhat dismaying that he seems to be on the outs with Ryan Condal, the HotD showrunner (who I personally think is doing a fantastic job). But, whatever behind-the-scenes drama exists (and, of course, where Martin is involved, there will always be some amount of drama, given that it’s been fifteen years since the last ASoIaF novel), it’s wonderful to see another tale of Westeros being adapted with deep love for the original text and the enthusiasm to expand and deepen the on-screen world. There might come a day when I start to suffer from Game of Thrones fatigue (after all, there are so, so many spinoffs in the works), but it hasn’t arrived yet. House of the Dragon has been a resounding success and, if this first episode is to be taken as a sign of the rest of the season, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is going to be equally great.  But what do you think? If you haven’t read the Dunk and Egg novellas, are you excited for future episodes based on what you’ve seen so far? If you are a fan of The Hedge Knight and the other stories, do you think Parker and his team are doing justice to the source material? Can you believe that we haven’t even met the full roster of Targaryen princes yet? Let me know in the comments![end-mark] The post A Delightful Buddy Comedy Unfolds in <i>A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books Front Lines and Frontiers Episodic Adventures Through Time and Space: Time Tunnel and Timeslip! by Murray Leinster The timey-wimey tale of a classic ’60s sci-fi series and three different novels… By Alan Brown | Published on January 20, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share In this bi-weekly series 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. Last year, I discovered that there were two tie-in novels written for one of the favorite TV science fiction shows from my youth, The Time Tunnel, written by one of my favorite science fiction authors from that era, the venerable Murray Leinster. Because The Time Tunnel is also a favorite of my wife’s, we rewatch it every few years on discs (or more recently by recording it from MeTV). I found the two books listed online, and ordered the first. When it arrived, however, I discovered that while the title is Time Tunnel, and the author was indeed Murray Leinster, it was written when the TV series was still in development, and not related to the show at all. So, there are three Time Tunnel books written by Leinster: the one I had received, and the two later novels tied to the TV show—The Time Tunnel, and Time Tunnel Adventure #2: Timeslip! All three were published by Pyramid Books, and they had confused things further by using the same cover for the first tie-in book that appeared on the earlier novel. I attempted some research to find out if there was a connection between the show and the earlier book, but accounts on different websites disagreed. I was intrigued enough to order a reference book on the show, The Time Tunnel: A History of the Television Program, by Martin Grams, Jr. (which was great, and offered a fun trip down memory lane). It made it clear the original book was created simultaneously and separately from development of the TV show. Grams’ book suggests that Leinster might have then been hired to write tie-in books to prevent any claims he might have brought against the show for using the title of his original book. Since receiving that first book, I was able to track down the second tie-in novel but not the first. So, for this column, I will be contrasting the earlier, separate novel by Leinster with his second book written for the TV show. I guess this goes to show that, even behind the scenes, time travel can be tricky business! About the Author 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 covering a wide range of subgenres and themes, including first contact, time travel, alternate history, and futuristic medicine. I previously reviewed the collection First Contacts: The Essential Murray Leinster (you can find that review here), the collection Med Ship (find the review here), and three books on humanity’s initial steps into space: Space Platform and Space Tug (find the review here), and City on the Moon (find the review here). And you can find some of Leinster’s works to read for free on Project Gutenberg. About the TV Producer Irwin Allen (1916-1991) was an American producer and director of films and television shows. He got his start on radio, and as an agent in Hollywood. His film career began in the 1950s, and his output included both fictional stories and documentaries. In the early 1960s, he produced three films of interest to science fiction fans: an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur adventure The Lost World, the original story Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and an adaptation of Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon. In the 1960s, he was perhaps the most prolific purveyor of science fiction on television, creating shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (a series that picked up the story from the feature film), Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants. In the 1970s, he produced two successful disaster films, the works he is probably best known for: The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. Allen’s output didn’t always have a reputation for being of the highest quality, but he was adept at producing shows with a limited budget, often by weaving stock footage into newer material, and by making the most of primitive practical effects. The Time Tunnel: The TV Show The Time Tunnel was an episodic show built on a simple premise, which is best summed up by the narration that began each episode: “Two American scientists are lost in the swirling maze of past and future ages, during the first experiments on America’s greatest and most secret project: The Time Tunnel. Tony Newman and Doug Phillips now tumble helplessly toward a new fantastic adventure, somewhere along the infinite corridors of time…” Each week, Tony and Doug would find themselves in a different time and place in either the past or future. Their home base was an improbably gigantic secret underground military installation where the titular time travel device was located. That device, a tunnel of black and white ovals surrounded by banks of blinking computers, was operated by a small and dedicated team led by General Kirk, chief scientist Doctor Swain, and electrobiologist Doctor Ann MacGregor. Despite efforts to bring them home, the best the team can do is pluck them from one dangerous situation only to drop them into another. And inexplicably (or rather, for the very practical reason of allowing viewers to watch episodes in no particular order), Tony and Doug always reverted to the same clothing they started with at the beginning of each episode. The central cast was led by teen heartthrob actor and singer James Darren as Tony, and included Robert Colbert as Doug, Lee Meriwether as Ann, John Zaremba as Doctor Swain, and Whit Bissell as General Kirk. Tony was headstrong, Doug stoic and practical, General Kirk and Doctor Swain were dedicated and creative, and Ann was (notably for a female character in that era) an intelligent and competent scientist. While it was never explicitly addressed, it appeared Doug and Ann were attracted to each other, if not a romantic couple. Earlier episodes generally feature famous events from the past, although later episodes include more lurid science fictional scenarios like alien invaders. The historical adventures relied heavily on stock footage from old movies, especially for large battle scenes. The show also made use of the various sets and costumes available to them from other productions underway on the 20th Century Fox backlot. Doug and Tony were fortunately adept at martial arts, although the fight scenes generally felt over-the-top. The show also followed a format much beloved by pulp adventure writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs, in which the characters are constantly being captured, only to escape (until the next time they’re captured). The theme song for the show, a jazzy number built around a clock-like rhythm, deserves special mention. It was one of the first compositions by a young musician new to Hollywood, Johnny Williams. He later went on to drop the “ny” from the end of his first name, becoming one of the most respected composers in the history of film, scoring movies like Jaws, Star Wars, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Unfortunately, Time Tunnel only lasted for one long season of thirty episodes. The ratings were good, but the show was expensive to produce, and the ABC network decided to fill its time slot with another show. Ten episodes were later spliced together to make five made-for-TV movies. There were attempts to reboot the show, but the two efforts that resulted in pilot episodes never went into production. Big Finish, the British audio company, later produced two boxed sets of radio dramas that continued the story of the show. Time Tunnel: Leinster’s Original Novel The book begins with a paragraph that neatly sets up all that follows: “The affair of the time-tunnel began, so far as Harrison was concerned, with a series of events so improbable as to seem lunacy, but which appear to have been inevitable. In a cosmos designed to have human beings live in it, though, there would have to be some sort of safeguards against the consequences of their idiocy. The time-tunnel may have been such a safeguard. To some people, that seems a reasonable guess.” Harrison is in Paris to do historical research when he runs into an old college classmate, Pepe Ybarra. Harrison’s PhD research is based on a concept propounded by one of their teachers, Professor Carroll, but he’s discovered something odd in the history books. In 1804, a man named de Bassompierre had shown up, befriended the politician Talleyrand, and began introducing scientists of the day to theories that were decades in advance of the time. Harrison and Ybarra discuss history, and both experience the odd feeling that their memories of the events have somehow changed recently. Then Ybarra mentions that he’d come across a shop that bore the name Carroll, and wondered if it might be related to their professor. The shop is quite strange, filled with items that look new, but are purported to come from 1804. The two joke that the shop, and the mysterious de Bassompierre’s knowledge, might be explained by time travel, not realizing they have stumbled on the truth. When they visit the mysterious shop, they find it staffed by a childhood friend of Harrison’s—the beautiful Valerie, who, in another in a series of improbable coincidences, turns out to be the ward of the wife of their old teacher, Professor Carroll. They discover that their teacher has discovered a way to create a tunnel through time by inducing an electrical current in a cast metal relic. He has bought a house on the site of an old foundry, and using an old cannon barrel in the basement, created a connection with the year it was cast: 1804. The contents of the mysterious shop are items purchased by Professor Carroll’s brother-in-law, M. Dubois, in the Paris of 1804. Harrison finds himself falling in love again with Valerie, an affection complicated by the fact that Carroll’s wife is a most unpleasant woman. When Carroll hears about the mysterious de Bassompierre, he fears that someone else has also developed a time-tunnel—someone who could possibly harm the world by meddling with time itself (as evidenced by the sharing of advanced knowledge). With the planet seemingly teetering on the brink of a world-destroying atomic war, the effect of changes to the established timeline of history could be catastrophic. Thus, they have period-appropriate costumes made up, and head into the past. Leinster has done his homework, and does an excellent job of evoking the world of Napoleonic France. The men have all sorts of adventures in the past, both helping M. Dubois in gathering products for sale in their shop, and in tracking down the mysterious de Bassompierre. Along the way, there are entertaining encounters with bandits and famous historical figures. At the same time, the political situation in the present is becoming dire. Communist China has developed nuclear weapons, and is threatening to invade Formosa (the former Western name for what we now call Taiwan). Harrison considers fleeing into the past with Valerie to escape what looks like an inevitable war, and the friends begin to debate whether, like de Bassompierre, they should use their future knowledge to deliberately change the future. There follow some twists and turns, some of which are a bit too obvious to the reader, but the story eventually comes to a satisfying and rather witty ending, which echoes the suggestion in the first paragraph that perhaps the cosmos is predisposed to be kind to humanity. The book is not Leinster’s best work, and tends to meander at times, but it is entertaining, and moves right along, so it was a pleasant read. Time Tunnel Adventure #2: Timeslip! It becomes immediately apparent when reading this book that Leinster had his own ideas about how the TV show’s Time Tunnel should work. Modern fans, who become enraged by the slightest deviation from established canon, would likely be appalled by liberties like this. In his telling, the time tunnel is an unauthorized effort, built in secret without oversight from the government. Contact with the travelers is maintained through radio-equipped harnesses, and views of the worlds they visit are provided by drones disguised as buzzards (which is an improvement over the unexplained way the TV show linked with travelers and were suddenly able to magically observe their environment through a variety of viewpoints). And this story apparently takes place after the TV show is over. Tony and Doug have returned from their uncontrolled trip through time, General Kirk is now retired, Doug and Ann are now explicitly a couple, and control of the time tunnel is being turned over to the military. Before that turnover, however, a new member of the time tunnel team, Sam Creighton, wants to see scenes from the Mexican-American War, where one of his ancestors died as a hero. A skeptical general arrives to oversee one more test of the time tunnel, the clandestine transport of a nuclear weapon to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. The military is not as interested in time travel as it is in transporting items through space. If this works, it would allow the US to dominate the world by seeding weapons in the cities of their adversaries (the story, like many from this era, is dripping with Cold War paranoia, and this sounds like a horrible idea to me). But the general meddles with the tunnel, disrupts the test, the weapon ends up in a pond in Mexico City during the Mexican-American War. The team then finds that in the present, the still undiscovered bomb is about to be uncovered by a construction project, which might detonate the warhead, and its time harness has been compromised. Tony goes back into the past with Sam to put a new time harness on the weapon so that it can be retrieved. They encounter Sam’s ancestor, who is killed before he can perform the heroic acts recorded in history, and throughout the rest of the story, Sam is obsessed with performing those acts himself. Tony is also caught up in the battles. Timeslip! is an entertaining tale, although the feel of the story is very pulpy, and I will not spoil the ending, here—if you are a fan of the TV show, and won’t be offended by the changes to the established canon of the TV adventures, the book is worth seeking out. Final Thoughts While I was frustrated by not being able to track down the first TV show tie-in book, the two books I could find were entertaining, and it is always fun to discover further adventures in a series you thought was over. Plus, even the lesser works of Murray Leinster are still enjoyable to read. I was also delighted with the reference book I discovered during my research, The Time Tunnel: A History of the Television Program, by Martin Grams, Jr., which is worth reading by any fan of the TV show. The floor is now yours: I would enjoy any thoughts you all might share on the Time Tunnel books or the show itself, or if you are so moved, your thoughts on similar time travel stories.[end-mark] The post Episodic Adventures Through Time and Space: Time Tunnel and Timeslip! by Murray Leinster appeared first on Reactor.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk appeared to support a targeted immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that made international news. “It is pure evil for people to stop the arrest of child predators,” Musk wrote on X, responding to reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested a U.S. citizen who wouldn’t cooperate with agents during an operation seeking two convicted sex offenders. The Department of Homeland Security said the U.S. citizen, later released, resided at the address of the two offenders and would not identify himself to the ICE agents. It is pure evil for people to stop the arrest of child predators https://t.co/WRLVMXIvop— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 19, 2026 Musk and President Donald Trump had a public falling out last summer after he headed the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative. Musk’s comments on the immigration operation come after a viral Reuters photo of the agents arresting a man wearing shorts and Crocs with a blanket thrown over his shoulders on a snowy day in St. Paul. “Marching half-naked elderly people out into the snow, your tax dollars at work,” author and columnist Jill Filipovic wrote on X above a post sharing the photo. Yesterday in St. Paul, ICE conducted a targeted operation of 2 convicted sex offenders. One of the criminal targets had convictions for sex with a minor and sexual assault. The other target had convictions for sex assault with penetration in the first degree, domestic violence,…— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) January 19, 2026 According to the DHS account of the incident, federal agents on Sunday went to the address of the two convicted sex offenders. Their convictions include sex with a minor, sexual assault, domestic violence, sex assault with penetration in the first degree, and violating a protective order. “Both also have convictions for failure to register as sex offenders. They both have final orders of removal from an immigration judge,” according to DHS. Upon arriving at the home, agents found ChongLy Thao, 56, inside, according to Reuters. But Thao refused to identify himself or be fingerprinted, according to DHS, so he was taken into custody to determine his identity. He was later released. “He matched the description of the targets,” DHS said in a statement on X. “As with any law enforcement agency, it is standard protocol to hold all individuals in a house of an operation for safety of the public and law enforcement.” The two convicted sex offenders remain “at large in St. Paul,” according to DHS. The department has pledged to provide “the public with photos and descriptors to help us locate and apprehend these public safety threats.” Thao is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Laos, according to Reuters. His family later published a statement calling the ordeal “unnecessary, degrading, and deeply traumatizing,” and a relative of the family told Reuters that one of the two convicts ICE had targeted had previously lived at the residence but had moved out. The incident comes less than two weeks after an ICE-involved shooting in Minneapolis left 37-year-old Renee Good dead, leading to widespread anti-ICE protests in the Twin Cities. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey have demanded federal immigration officials leave the community. Despite opposition in the Twin Cities, the Trump administration has deployed hundreds more immigration enforcement agents to the area. In the past six weeks, federal immigration officials have “arrested 3,000 criminal illegal aliens including vicious murderers, rapists, child pedophiles, and incredibly dangerous individuals,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday. A total of 10,000 criminal illegal aliens have been arrested in Minneapolis over the past 12 months, according to Noem, who calls the operation a “victory for public safety.” The post Elon Musk Weighs in on Minnesota ICE Operation appeared first on The Daily Signal.