News Westworld Westworld Remake in the Works From Jurassic Park Screenwriter David Koepp The original 1973 film was written and directed by Michael Crichton By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on May 11, 2026 Screenshot: MGM Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: MGM Back in 1973, novelist Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame wrote and directed the sci-fi film, Westworld, where chaos and death visit three themed amusement parks populated by realistic human robots after the robots rebel and turn on the guests. The focus of the film is on one android from the Western-themed world (hence the name of the movie) named the Gunslinger, who is intent on hunting down two human guests. The film, which got a mass market paperback novel to go with it, was also the inspiration for the 2016 HBO series of the same name, helmed by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. That show ran until 2022 and went well beyond Crichton’s original story, and Nolan and Joy have since turned their attention to adapting Fallout. The Westworld well, however, has not run dry. Today, we found out via Deadline that David Koepp, who wrote the script for Steven Spielberg’s 1993 adaptation of Crichton’s Jurassic Park as well as the two sequels that followed it, is currently working on a feature adaptation of Westworld for Warner Bros. We don’t have news on who will be directing the film, though Deadline reports that “a major filmmaker is circling” the project. The original 1973 feature, which earned Hugo and Nebula nominations, starred Yul Brynner as the android Gunslinger, and Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as the two human guests who wake up in a brothel to find out that the robots (well, one of them at least) are out to get them. Koepp’s Westworld adaptation appears to be in its early days, but it seems likely to hew closer to the original film than the HBO series. Time will tell, however, how the story plays out, including who will direct and star if/when the movie goes into production. [end-mark] The post <i>Westworld</i> Remake in the Works From <i>Jurassic Park</i> Screenwriter David Koepp appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews The Long Game Continues: James S.A. Corey’s The Faith of Beasts Two books in, The Captive’s War series is quietly radical and intensely hopeful. By Molly Templeton | Published on May 11, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share The first book in James S.A. Corey’s Captive’s War trilogy, The Mercy of Gods, began not with one of its ensemble cast of captive humans, but with an alien. In its final statement, Ekur-Tkalal, “keeper-librarian” of the humans enslaved by the Carryx, describes the beginning of the end of its species’ dominance. “We did not see the adversary for what he was, and we brought him into our home,” Ekur-Tkalal says. That adversary is Dafyd Alkhor, who begins the first book as the low-level research assistant to a lab full of genius scientists and rises to become the accidental leader of all the humans brought, unwillingly, into the empire of the Carryx. These humans are from the planet Anjiin, where humanity arrived at some unknown time in the past. The history is lost, but they came from somewhere else. That detail always seemed relevant, in the first book. If you have read Corey’s Expanse series, you know to watch for those seemingly small moments and choices that become transformational pivot points. Here, Corey straight-up tells you to look for them: “Small moments, unnoticed at the time, change the fate of empires.”  The Mercy of Gods is the setup: Select humans from Anjiin are transported to the Carryx homeworld, locked in a tower, and set to a scientific task. Success means survival. Failure leads to destruction. But Corey lets on from the start they’re going to succeed—not just at the science, but at bringing down their oppressors. The question has always been how. The Faith of Beasts won’t give you the whole answer. It unfolds at a pace both stately and propulsive: Corey builds to every revelation with masterful restraint, and yet this is the kind of book you want to clear your calendar for. I saved it for a weekend and read compulsively, stopping only when I had to. If you liked the first book, the second book is exactly what the first promised: a further, deeper, broader exploration of how people might survive in the most drastically oppressive of situations, and how they might resist without being seen to do so. How to fight back without fighting.  And how long that might take. (There will be spoilers for The Mercy of Gods below.) Buy the Book The Faith of Beasts James S.A. Corey Buy Book The Faith of Beasts James S.A. Corey Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The Captive’s War is, in a way, a story about humanity running headfirst into a brick wall. The Carryx refer to all of their enslaved species as “animals.” The Carryx do not care about humans’ individual success or individual feelings. The Carryx serve their Sovran, the center of the empire. They have one word for life and war and serving the empire. They become what is needed, physically, transforming their bodies and their uses as the Sovran directs. The Faith of Beasts includes intriguing details about how the Carryx function, how its members are both individuals with their own tasks and directives, and pieces of the massive organism that is the empire. The scale is immense, and humans—with our individuality and our needs—are so small within it. But humans aren’t helpless. One of the key incidents in The Mercy of Gods is a failed rebellion. Despite the Carryx’s clear instruction—be useful or die—some people want to fight back, immediately, and see only one way to do so: violence. Dafyd, whose focus is on understanding the Carryx, figuring out the most effective way to resist them, wants to play a longer game. The violent rebellion, as it was always going to be, is crushed, and Dafyd is instrumental in that crushing. This means a lot of things, including that a lot of people hate him and blame him for the deaths of their friends. It also means that the humans that survive are not, for the most part, the ones whose first impulse is to violence. The survivors are the people who watch and learn; the ones who explore and invent; the ones who take care of others, or tell stories, or solve problems using brilliant science. These humans are curious, and clever, and wise, and loving, and sometimes dangerous in less obvious ways. And they will find their own ways to resist.  Sometimes, these paths are spelled out clearly. A new character, Uuya Tomos, was a writer back on Anjiin, and Dafyd enlists her to write stories and songs for the next generation. (The Carryx insist the human population be self-sustaining. This is horrifying, conceptually, but Corey steers clear of the obvious consent issues by solving the problem with science.) Kids born on the Carryx planet will never have known anything else, he says, and they will need to hear stories that tell them it can be otherwise. One of those stories—maybe—serves as interstitial text here. It’s the story of the founding of Anjiin, as written by Uuya Tomos, but it is not clear when it was written. Collected myth from the beforetimes, or created myth for the new generation? Other paths are less overt. Jessyn, who discovered a capacity for violence in the first book, is sent out to explore a new planet, where she makes a most unexpected discovery. (Those who read the novella Livesuit may connect some dots faster than others, but it isn’t necessary to have read that book.) On a different expedition, Campar befriends a very funny giant slug-like creature (it refers to humans as “meat-on-sticks,” which seems fair), meets a new lover, and also makes a shocking discovery. Tonner, the genius, does genius science. All of them deal with their trauma in different ways: humor, denial, small acts of rebellion. The primary personality trait of almost everyone is exhaustion, yet Corey details with care their individual responses to trauma, their focus and the things that keep them going. And then there’s the swarm, the alien sentience that landed on Anjiin before the Carryx invaded and has been gathering intel for its own masters ever since. The swarm, at the end of the last book, decided it was in love with Dafyd. The swarm has some very handy skills. It exists by taking over the bodies of humans, who then seem to exist within its shared consciousness, which raises a lot more questions about individuality and survival. It is making itself up as it goes along, which kind of makes me want to snort, lovingly, and ask: Aren’t we all? The story of The Captive’s War is one of a long game: survival under impossible conditions; resistance when you can’t just resort to fighting in the traditional sense; the careful, precarious, hideous balance of acceptance and horror. More than one character in this novel observes that a person can get used to almost anything. Walking to work through a massive alien cathedral filled with truly alien species; reporting to a giant cockroach with too many legs; learning to make babies in sacs; considering that freedom may be the fight of generations; exploring an alien ship full of dead aliens—there’s a lot, here, for the humans of Anjiin to wrap their heads around. And yet, to borrow a bit of that now-tired phrase, they persist.  Even in a world where individuals have little power, they have choices. They can choose who to blame for their situation, and who to listen to, and how to react; they can choose to deny the situation or accept it and try to work through it. Sometimes they can and do choose to do things that might get them killed, for better or worse. (Sometimes people are the least likely heroes.) Sometimes the little choices mean everything, and sometimes they mean very little. Sometimes the choice is all about who to become, and how to leave yourself behind.  I really don’t want to spoil anything for you with this one. The Faith of Beasts is a novel full of huge revelations delivered quietly, world-changing moments that creep up on people. It is, like the first book, character-driven, because that’s the kind of story Corey is interested in telling: one where people cannot make the romanticized, epic, straightforward, heroic choices, but have to find other ways to manifest epic change. One of those ways is to pass the fight on to the next generation. Is that fair? Is anything? As Uuya Tomos says, “It’s never your responsibility to do something that can’t be done. You do your part, and you help the next generation carry it a little farther, and then the one after that.” Two books in, The Captive’s War series is quietly radical and intensely hopeful. Corey doesn’t dodge the tale’s inherent bleakness—another species has been enslaved by the Carryx for generations—and every life is believably, terribly fragile. But over and over, The Faith of Beasts is a reminder that there is no one way to fight, to retain one’s self, to care for others, to make connections. To exist against the odds.[end-mark] The Faith of Beasts is published by Orbit. The post The Long Game Continues: James S.A. Corey’s <i>The Faith of Beasts</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News The X-Files Steve Buscemi Is Going to Be a Totally Normal Guest Star on Ryan Coogler’s X-Files And he’s not the only one: this guest-star cast list is packed By Molly Templeton | Published on May 11, 2026 Screenshot: HBO Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: HBO There are reboots (negative), and then there are reboots (positive), and then there’s Ryan Coogler’s X-Files reboot (incandescent with excitement). The Hulu series is set to star Danielle Deadwyler and Himesh Patel (making it a Station Eleven reunion of sorts) as FBI agents who “form an unlikely bond when they are assigned to a long-shuttered division devoted to cases involving unexplained phenomena” (according to Deadline). Recent reports have said that Hulu has only greenlit a pilot episode so far—without yet committing to a full season—but now, a whole handful of guest stars have been added to the show’s cast. Deadline reports that Amy Madigan, Steve Buscemi, Ben Foster, Devery Jacobs, Lochlyn Munro, Tantoo Cardinal, Joel D. Montgrad, and Sofia Grace Clifton have all signed on to encounter (or perhaps appear as) some of those unexplained phenomena. Buscemi has made oddball-ness his stock in trade for decades (and was in Boardwalk Empire, pictured above). Amy Madigan just won an Oscar for her role in Weapons. Ben Foster has never been less than intense in anything he’s been in (see: A Streetcar Named Desire). Devery Jacobs was one of the excellent stars of Reservation Dogs. With all due respect to the rest of his career, Lochlyn Munro is Betty Cooper’s dad on Riverdale forever. Tantoo Cardinal was in Killers of the Flower Moon. Joel D. Montgrad was in True Detective: Night Country. Sofia Grace Clifton is the young’un of the bunch, and was on Station 19. This is a very interesting lineup, with actors of all ages and, notably, three Native American actors in the mix. Either the pilot episode is incredibly stacked, or this series is already casting for a whole season. One certainly hopes for the latter. Coogler is writing and directing the X-Files pilot, and is—along with original X-Files creator Chris Carter—an executive producer on the show. Jennifer Yale (Legion, Outlander) is the actual showrunner. No premiere date has been announced; whatever that date is, it cannot get here fast enough.[end-mark] The post Steve Buscemi Is Going to Be a Totally Normal Guest Star on Ryan Coogler’s <i>X-Files</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Book Recommendations Jo Walton Reads Jo Walton’s Reading List: April 2026 Le Guin, fairy tale retellings, Florentine romance, and a mystery in space! By Jo Walton | Published on May 11, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share April was spent entirely in Chicago hanging out with Ada and having fun playing Papal Election of 1492. I read just four books. This is what happens when I don’t spend any time reading. I’ll have more for you in May, I’m sure! Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears — Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (1995)Another collection of re-told fairytales, by a large range of people. The last story in the book, Delia Sherman’s “The Printer’s Daughter,” is so wonderful that it almost wiped out the rest of the book in my memory. But there were also great stories by Nancy Kress and Susan Palwick and Lisa Goldstein and a really creepy one by Anne Bishop and that’s just the highlights This is a terrific anthology—if you like re-told fairytales at all, I recommend it. Gelato Forever — Lynn Joseph (2023) Yes, a romance novel set in Italy! And in Florence, specifically, and it does a fairly good job of the geography. Ava, the oldest sister of an African American family that lost their mom, became the substitute mom when she was still a teenager, and now for the first time she’s getting to do something for herself. She’s fulfilling her dream of going to gelato school in Florence. On the plane she meets her high school crush, who mistakes her for her younger, more popular sister Bridget. She rolls with this, not expecting to have to keep it up for more than the plane ride, but then of course she does, and they fall in love, and he’s a guy who starts out with trust issues. More realistic than most such plots, even though the ending is one of the most canonical wish-fulfillment ends I’ve ever seen. I sort of want to spoil the end because it’s such a perfect example of a thing, but there might be people out there who read this to get recs for romance novels set in Italy, and this is a good one: good characters, good Italy, solid family and friends, good pacing. And this is the first US romance novel set in Italy I’ve read that hasn’t leaned into the high-end luxury stuff, Ava goes there to work and learn like a normal person, and experiences Italy the way someone who does that would actually experience it. Concord: Sabotage — Allen M. Trager (2024) Emma is the only human living on a huge space ship full of aliens, and there’s an attempt on her life which turns out to be part of a plot to get humans banned from Concord, the association of different “tribes” of aliens who have been in space for millions of years. The background is well thought out, the characters (mostly aliens) are pretty good, but the investigation of the mystery that is the plot drags out a little too long. This is a very fun universe, and the layers of density of the aliens who have been around for millions of years feel very real and well thought through. It would have been a very good book if it had been tightened up, and even as it is I mostly enjoyed it. The Complete Orsinia— Ursula K. Le Guin (2016) (Listed as 2016 only because I was reading the Library of America edition that includes the two extra stories; the original Orsinian Tales was published in the Seventies.) Gosh these are good. They’re all set in the imaginary central European country of Orsinia, in times between 1640 and 1989, but mostly nineteenth and twentieth century, and they’re just great. I like Malafrena a lot, but I love these. Some of the characters are in more than one story, and the places and the geography are often in more than one story. They are all mimetic fiction stories, not fantastical, just stories about people living. So, when I was whining about Michael Chabon and Andrew Sean Greer last month, I was already reading this, and it makes me think you can have stories about people packing up the house at the end of summer, or about an industrial accident, or living under tyranny—mimetic fiction doesn’t have to be zero sum, look, here is Le Guin doing it! I could draw a map of Orsinia; I would recognise the different cities; it feels like a place I could take the train to. Indeed, it feels like a place I might have taken the train through, that a train I was on might have stopped at Aisnar or Krasnoy and I looked out of the window and saw the eighteenth-century streets with trees and thought, oh yes, Aisnar, one day I will have time and come back. There are trains in these stories. I’ve written before about reading books that are too old for me, and recognising this as something about me and not something about the book. I could understand and love The Dispossessed when I was a teenager, and The Lathe of Heaven, but I wasn’t old enough for Orsinia when I first read it. I’ve grown into them. And this read-through I really loved them, and now I’m sad I’ve finished them and I almost want to turn back to the beginning of Malafrena and read them all again.[end-mark] The post Jo Walton’s Reading List: April 2026 appeared first on Reactor.

Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “Phoenix Rising” The conflict with the violent faction of Byron’s followers intensifies… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on May 11, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “Phoenix Rising”Written by J. Michael StraczynskiDirected by David J. EagleSeason 5, Episode 11Production episode 512Original air date: April 1, 1998 It was the dawn of the third age… Another batch of bloodhounds arrive on the station and are briefed by Bester, which also brings the viewers up to speed. Bester wants as few casualties as possible, and also wants the bloodhounds to focus on the armed ones roaming the station. The ones locked in downbelow on a hunger strike aren’t going anywhere, and they can probably just wait them out. Lochley comes in at the end of the briefing and Bester assures her that everything will be fine. They enter a lift only to find a Psi Cop’s corpse nailed to the wall with “FREE BYRON” graffiti’d on the wall over the cop’s head. Lochley allows as how Bester may be optimistic. Sheridan and Lochley talk to Byron, trying to convince him to surrender. However, Byron will not surrender to the Psi Corps and won’t leave until Bester is gone. Bester then interrupts and says that Byron never keeps his promises and Byron cuts off the communication in a snit. Sheridan rebukes Bester for spoiling what had been a potentially productive negotiation, and Bester tells him not to worry, as this will all be resolved by morning. Bester then goes to his quarters to find Garibaldi pointing a PPG at him. Garibaldi demands that Bester make a full confession to what he did to Garibaldi. Bester refuses. When Garibaldi tries to pull the trigger on the PPG, he finds that he can’t. Bester smugly reveals that part of Garibaldi’s conditioning is that he cannot possibly bring harm to Bester. After Bester leaves, Garibaldi angrily shoots the computer, just to prove he can still use the PPG elsewise… Credit: Warner Bros. Television In downbelow, Alexander demands to know how Bester knows Byron, at which point he admits that he was a Psi Cop. During a mission, they captured some rogue telepaths. Once they were safe, Bester ordered Byron to shoot down the transport that taken on the rogues as passengers. Byron only did so reluctantly and because Bester ordered him to (“they’re just mundanes”). He filed a report, but nobody seemed to care. So he quit the Corps. The rogue telepaths who are out and about are struggling. “Southey” tells Thomas that they’re in trouble, so Thomas suggests they fall back to medlab. They take the occupants hostage—among them, Garibaldi, who was there trying to find out from Franklin if a telepathic neural block can be reversed. Thomas demands that Byron be freed and orders Peter to guard the entrance to medlab with his telekinesis, which he uses to batter Allan and his people with random bits of debris. Byron is devastated by what has happened and asks Alexander to find a way out of downbelow without cutting through the barricades. She uses her super-duper telepathy to find one, and they head to medlab. Sheridan and Lochley discuss the situation. Bester still has jurisdiction, though Lochley has put in a request to EarthGov to let Lochley take command of the situation, since her people have been hurt. They agree not to give in to Thomas’ demands, and Sheridan contacts medlab to inform them of this. In medlab, Garibaldi has been trying and failing to convince the telepaths to surrender. Once Sheridan rejects their terms, Thomas raises his PPG and points it at Garibaldi—but Byron arrives and shoots Thomas before he can kill Garibaldi. Byron then contacts Sheridan and Lochley and offers new terms. He and the telepaths who committed acts of violence will surrender—but only to the military, not to Psi Corps. The other telepaths must be allowed to go free. He also asks to speak to his people in downbelow before surrendering, again with no interference from Psi Corps. Sheridan and Lochley agree. Bester does not, but Lochley informs him that she just got word from Earth that she now has jurisdiction, so there, nyah nyah. Byron even goes so far as to turn in the identicards of all those who are surrendering, and also provide written confessions. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Bester goes to downbelow and tries to telepathically plead with Byron to surrender to him. Byron refuses. Byron, Southey, Peter, and the rest of the gang go to surrender, and Lochley and Allan are about to take them into custody when Bester and his Psi Cops show up. Someone fires a weapon and all hell breaks loose. And then there’s a chemical spill, at which point everyone stops firing for fear of going boom. After telling Alexander to walk away and exchanging some incredibly clichéd dialogue with her on the subject of love and loyalty and other nonsense, Byron shoots at the chemical spill, killing him and the other telepaths. Bester is gobsmacked, as telepaths should all be on the same side. Alexander gives each of the surviving telepaths information from Byron that will help them get to safety. Franklin expresses concern about Garibaldi to Sheridan, and they pass by “REMEMBER BYRON” graffiti on the bulkhead. In his cabin, Garibaldi, listening to a news story about the bombing of Psi Corps HQ on Earth, pours himself a drink. Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan gets to give his first-ever “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” speech as president. Never work with your ex. Lochley is able to talk EarthGov into giving her jurisdiction back from Bester. Because she’s just that awesome. The household god of frustration. As if Garibaldi didn’t have enough reason to hate Bester, now he finds out that the conditioning extends even further to the point that he can’t get vengeance. This, and being beaten up and taken hostage, leads him back to the bottle. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. We find out that Byron was a Psi Cop. Also Bester genuinely thought that the telepaths would understand that Bester is on their side and won’t harm them, all the way to the end, a level of self-delusion that is, frankly, sad. No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. Byron and Alexander have one final longing glance and awful dialogue before Byron blows himself and his friends up. Looking ahead. The end of this episode was obviously meant to be a tipping point for the start of the oft-predicted and oft-referred-to Telepath War that has yet to be chronicled in any form. Garibaldi falling off the wagon will continue to be a plot point this season. Welcome aboard. We have the final appearances of the following telepaths: Robin Atkin Downes as Byron and Leigh J. McCloskey as Thomas, both back from “A Tragedy of Telepaths”; Jack Hannibal as Peter, back from “Secrets of the Soul”; and Victor Love as “Southey,” back from “In the Kingdom of the Blind.” Walter Koenig, also back from “A Tragedy of Telepaths,” makes his penultimate appearance as Bester; he’ll be back in “The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father.” Trivial matters. Footage from “The Deconstruction of Falling Stars” of Garibaldi as the injured prisoner of renegade telepaths (and of Sheridan delivering his terms over the communication system) in a trashed medlab is used, and intercut with new footage expanding the events (including revealing who fired the weapon at the end of the footage in the older episode). The song Byron sings before he blows himself up is the same one he and the gang sang at the end of “Strange Relations.” The full story of what Bester did to Garibaldi was told in “The Face of the Enemy.” We get a few flashbacks to that episode. Bester refers to the neural block he put on Garibaldi as an “Asimov,” as it’s based on the first of the Three Laws of Robotics that science fiction writer Dr. Isaac Asimov created in his robot fiction. That first law (which Bester mistakenly refers to as the first two laws) is “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” The echoes of all of our conversations. “Every race to develop telepaths has had to find some way to control them, through laws, religion, drugs, or extermination. We may not be pretty, but we’re a hell of a lot better than the alternatives.” —Bester, engaging in human-centric propaganda. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “We are what we have become.” As I indicated last time, the rogue telepath story coming to a conclusion mostly just engenders relief that this tiresome plotline is coming to a merciful end. One scene does stand out, and it’s Garibaldi’s confrontation with Bester, which is something we’ve been waiting for since “The Face of the Enemy,” after being denied it by Lochley tossing Garibaldi in jail when Bester was here last in “Strange Relations.” Jerry Doyle perfectly plays Garibaldi’s frustration, and Walter Koenig is magnificently smug as Bester asks Garibaldi if he thinks he’s an idiot. It’s a beautiful scene that has the unfortunate side effect of showing up just how awful the rest of the episode is. The revelation that Byron was a Psi Cop is something that probably should’ve come up sooner—like when Bester was last on the station or when Byron and Alexander had hot telepathic monkey sex—and the plot points are dutifully checked off in a manner that is long on perfunctory and short on excitement. The absolute worst is the climax when we have a whole bunch of armed people facing off against each other, and the entire thing grinds to a halt so that Byron and Alexander can have their cliché-drenched final conversation. Which is then followed by the explosion in an enclosed space that somehow only kills Byron and his people and doesn’t hurt anyone else. Sure. I buy that. Once again, it’s left to Koenig to salvage the episode. Bester has spent most of his time on the station coming out ahead, and even when he loses, he doesn’t lose badly, or gets some manner of consolation. Here, though, he completely loses, and it’s obvious that a big part of why is that he was never able to get his arms around the notion of telepaths not being his people. He never saw Byron and his people as the enemy, but as prodigal children he was just waiting to welcome back. Overall, this episode mostly makes me glad I won’t be subjected to the character of Byron or to Robin Atkin Downes’ inability to vary his facial expression hardly ever. Next week: “The Ragged Edge.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “Phoenix Rising” appeared first on Reactor.