Column Science Fiction Film Club Man Facing Southeast: An Alien Perspective on Humanity’s Madness A lovely Argentinian arthouse film from the ’80s that deserves to be better known. By Kali Wallace | Published on February 4, 2026 Credit: Cinequanon Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Cinequanon Pictures Man Facing Southeast (Spanish: Hombre mirando al sudeste) (1986) Written and directed by Eliseo Subiela. Starring Lorenzo Quinteros, Hugo Soto, and Inés Vernengo. Two men sit across from each other in an office. One of them, a younger man with a healing wound on his head, explains in great earnestness how a suicide pact with his girlfriend went wrong. They planned to die together, he insists. But it went wrong. They only had four bullets. He couldn’t die with her. A psychiatrist listens to the man’s rambling confession, but his mind is wandering. He thinks about playing the saxophone. He thinks about Rene Magritte’s painting The Lovers II and imagines blood seeping from beneath the white cloths. He thinks about how the man before him needs a priest, not a doctor, and he won’t be able to help. He’ll give the man medication, drug him into a stupor, and watch him fade like all the other patients. As the man keeps talking, telling his story over and over again, the doctor thinks, “Welcome to hell.” That’s the opening scene of Eliseo Subiela’s Man Facing Southeast (Hombre mirando al sudeste), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 1986. The film was released in theaters in Argentina in 1987 and became a modest but respectable success, and it went international with a VHS release later that year. Man Facing Southeast was Subiela’s second feature film and far from his last; he would go on making odd, slightly fantastical, very artsy films until his death in 2016. Here we run into a problem. I know I sometimes make mistakes in researching for these articles, but I do genuinely try to find decent sources for all the information I include within the time I have available (i.e., less than a week). Sometimes there is so much information it’s hard to take in everything. And sometimes there is so little that I feel silly claiming to know anything at all. This is definitely one of the latter times. It’s not that I was expecting to find an abundance of easily accessible information about Subiela and his film. We’re talking about an arthouse film from Argentina in the ’80s, and I don’t know Spanish, which greatly limits my research. And it’s not that there’s nothing out there. It’s just that most English-language articles that mention Man Facing Southeast aren’t about the movie at all; they are about the American movies accused of plagiarizing it. We’ll get to that in a bit. Many sources report that Man Facing Southeast won an award at TIFF in 1986, but different articles say it was the People’s Choice Award (it wasn’t), or the Audience Award (which doesn’t exist), or the Critic’s Award (which is closer but not quite right), and others don’t bother to specify. The film is not listed on the TIFF website, which made me wonder if everybody was just repeating incorrect information. That’s not the case—it turns out that’s because the listing of the award Man Facing Southeast actually did win is incomplete. The Los Angeles Times write-up of TIFF from September 21, 1986, says, “Every festival has a ‘buzz’ film, one you can hear about in the movie lines and in the press rooms. This one was ‘Hombre Mirando al Sudeste,’ a haunting evocative 1986 work by Eliseo Subiela, little known outside Argentina, which came out of the Latin American program to win the International Critics’ Award.” At this point in my research I was very proud of myself for verifying one (1) fact. Let’s go back to the beginning, by which I mean the beginning of Eliseo Subiela’s film career. I’ve only been able to find one in-depth interview with Subiela that has been translated into English, and that’s in a 2007 article in the academic journal Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche. That’s where I got a lot of information about his life, even though, like most film directors, he has a tendency to self-mythologize in how he describes his experiences. Here is another scene to imagine: It’s the early 1960s in Buenos Aires. A seventeen-year-old boy is walking through the city carrying a brand new Bell and Howell 8mm film camera, which his father gave to him when he developed an interest in movies. He has a particular destination in mind, but he isn’t quite sure where it’s located, so he loiters around Plaza Constitución, watching the people pass through the square. He’s looking for a particular kind of person, and he finally finds them in the form of a “little old lady carrying a bag.” She leads him to where he wants to go, which is up to the gates of El Borda, or Hospital Interdisciplinario Psicoasistencial José Tiburcio Borda, a large psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires. That’s where the boy wants to make his first movie. I looked it up: the square and the hospital are about a 15-minute walk apart, so Subiela’s story about how he embarked upon his first project is at least plausible. That first film is a 17-minute documentary called The Long Silence (Un largo silencio) (1963) about life in El Borda. Subiela spent several months visiting the hospital, writing the script, filming and editing. In 1965 The Long Silence won the top prize at the Viña Del Mar Film Festival in Chile. Subiela, then twenty years old, was pleased with his short film’s success: “After expenses, I cleared $200, which in Argentina was quite a bit. The cost of the movie had been $100.” Subiela grew up in a tremendously tumultuous time in Argentina (the rise and fall of Juan Perón as president, the multiple coups d’état that followed), and his father’s ill health meant life at home was also stressful. He spent his teen years escaping to the cinema as much as he could, and it was there he fell in love with the avant-garde films of the French New Wave, as well as the neorealist work of Polish director Andrzej Wajda. But it would be a couple of decades before Subiela would start making his own feature films. Through the rest of the ’60s and ’70s, he worked on a few other projects, made commercials, drank too much, suffered some mental health problems, and traveled the world. He contributed a chapter of the film Argentina, May 1969: The Roads to Liberation! (Argentina, mayo de 1969: Los caminos de la liberación) (1969), but eventually drifted away from the cadre of Argentinian filmmakers active in militant and revolutionary groups. His reason: “I grew apart from those militant groups when I found out a lot of it had to do with fighting and killing.” Subiela released his first feature film The Conquest of Paradise (La conquista del paraíso) in 1981, and only after that did he return to both the idea and the location of his very first film. He went back to Hospital Borda—which has been in operation since 1865 and still is today—specifically to revisit what had drawn him there when he was a teenager. He would later say that it took him twenty-two years to realize that A Long Silence was a rough cut of what would become Man Facing Southeast. That’s how we find ourselves in the opening scene described above. Dr. Julio Denis (Lorenzo Quinteros) is a psychiatrist at Hospital Borda, but he doesn’t believe in his work anymore. He’s burned out, depressed, and lonely; he spends his free time drinking and playing saxophone and listlessly entertaining his kids as a divorced weekend dad. He doesn’t worry too much when an extra, unidentified person appears in his hospital ward. He thinks the newcomer, Rantés (Hugo Soto), has come to the hospital to hide away from the world. His primary concern is that Rantés has no apparent identification or connections; he wants to find out who this patient is so he can treat him. Julio is amused but not overly worried when Rantés claims to be an alien from outer space, come to Earth to observe an advanced sort of hologram to study humans. Julio believes Rantés got the hologram idea from the novel The Invention of Morel by Argentinian author Adolfo Bioy Casares; from that and other details, the doctor concludes that Rantés is likely an intelligent, well-educated, but troubled and delusional man. That’s enough to get him curious, and he finds himself engaged in a patient’s care for the first time in a while. The two men become friends, in a way, or at least as much as they can when one is convinced the other has no grip on reality. Both actors are fantastic in their roles, and their fond chemistry, even when they are disagreeing, carries the movie all the way through. There’s a constant push and pull between them: Julio is trying to find cracks in Rantés’ delusions, and Rantés is trying to get Julio to help him understand the passionate, emotional nature of humanity. Rantés even gets some work studying human brains in a medical laboratory, which seems like maybe the sort of job that should not be given to unidentified psychiatric patients. He hasn’t come to Earth alone, he says, but other alien agents have succumbed to the lure of human emotions and gone astray from their mission. We’re later introduced to Beatriz (Inés Vernengo), who at first claims to be a friend Rantés made outside the hospital, but later claims to be one of those wayward alien visitors. (One film writer has suggested that Beatriz’s surname, Dick, is a reference to Philip K. Dick and particularly his 1982 novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which I have not read.) Even though the question of whether Rantés is an alien or a delusional human is the backbone of the entire film, the movie isn’t really interested in answering it. There are scenes where Rantés demonstrates telekinetic powers—using them to help feed a hungry family in a diner, for example—but these scenes are framed from his point of view, not from the perspective of Julio or another observer. The movie builds up, in its leisurely, meandering way, to an inevitable breaking point. Julio, Rantés, and Beatriz go to an orchestral performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. During “Ode to Joy,” Rantés and Beatriz get up to dance, motivating others in the audience to do the same. Then Rantés interrupts the performance to take over as conductor. At the same time, the patients at the hospital react as though they too are in the audience and feeling the same infectious joy. They run and dance through the hospital in a crowd far too exuberant to qualify as a riot. In the aftermath, the police are called, Rantés is arrested, and the head of the hospital demands that Julio finally start taking his patient’s treatment seriously. Rantés is given the antipsychotic haloperidol, and he becomes depressed, angry, agitated, and eventually catatonic before he finally dies. It’s a sad ending, but also an inevitable one, and it leaves Julio without any certain answers about his patient and friend. This is not a film that is much interested in explaining itself, and I like that about it. It does not try to explain the truth underlying the story, nor give us any wink-nudge hints as to what we’re supposed to think. When Julio contemplates a torn photo of Rantés and Beatriz, he thinks about how it could be proof they are human friends or siblings suffering from folie à deux, but the missing half of the photograph means there is always going to be part of the story that he can’t know. This is a movie that wants to pose questions, not provide answers, and that’s underlined in every conversation Rantés and Julio have and the way they are constantly dancing around thoughts that are hard to pin down. How do we define sane and insane? Where does human emotion come from? Why are humans so consistently our own worst enemies? What’s the difference between perception and reality? It’s not that we, as viewers, can’t answer these questions; it’s just that the movie is not giving us gold stars for being convinced we have the right answers. Is Rantés crazy? Or an alien? Or even a Christ allegory? Yes. No. All of the above and none of the above. The film is asking us to think about it, the same way Rantés is asking Julio to think about it. That brings us to the necessary Hollywood footnote, which is the question of whether Iain Softley’s 2001 film K-PAX, based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Gene Brewer, is a shameless rip-off of Man Facing Southeast. First, a note: K-PAX was, in fact, the second time people looked at an American movie and saw Man Facing Southeast. The first time was the film Mr. Jones (1993), directed by Mike Figgis, which features a scene in which a psychiatric patient played by Richard Gere jumps on stage to conduct a Beethoven concert. Some articles claim that this scene is an acknowledged homage, but Subiela was pretty clear that nobody asked his permission or offered credit for the inspiration. The comparison to K-PAX goes beyond a single scene, however, and it’s one both viewers and film critics were making before K-PAX was even released. In 2001, Roger Ebert noted in his column that he was receiving numerous letters about the similarities. Subiela did pursue legal action but eventually stopped due to lack of funds; the matter was unresolved before his death in 2016. Brewer and Softley have always denied they were aware of Man Facing Southeast. But it doesn’t seem to have mattered, as a lot of film critics and cinephiles seem to take it as fact that K-PAX was based on Man Facing Southeast. I haven’t seen K-PAX, I’ve only watched the trailer, which is the sort of schmaltzy early ’00s movie trailer that could be tailormade to put me, personally, off ever wanting to see the movie. So I do not have an informed contribution to this debate. I only bring it up to acknowledge that, yes, the question is out there, and it’s unresolved, and it’s likely to remain that way. What I will say is that it’s unfortunate that Man Facing Southeast is often remembered only as the movie that may or may not have inspired another movie, because it’s a lovely movie in itself. It’s charming, perceptive, sad, and just weird enough. It wasn’t the first film to frame parallels between how we conceive of mental illness and a larger disillusionment with society, and it certainly wasn’t the last, but it’s touching and thoughtful, and I very much enjoyed its deceptive simplicity. Like the best sci fi and the best arthouse cinema, it is all about giving us space to contemplate what it means to be human. What do you think of Man Facing Southeast? Or its legacy, however disputed, in films that followed? I don’t recall who it was who suggested this movie in comments many months ago, but thank you for bringing it to my attention, whoever you are. Next week: A decade earlier and across the ocean, another alien came for a visit in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Find streaming sources.[end-mark] The post <i>Man Facing Southeast</i>: An Alien Perspective on Humanity’s Madness appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Ten(ish) of the Best African Speculative Short Fiction Stories of 2025 Here are some of the speculative fiction gems that may have flown under the radar in 2025… By Wole Talabi | Published on February 4, 2026 Art by Jacobi Myles Comment 0 Share New Share Art by Jacobi Myles Another year has come and gone and with it, lots of good stories, despite the increasingly strange madness of the world at large. I spent most of my literary year writing my forthcoming novel The Fist of Memory, and attending book conventions/festivals but I still managed to find time to read because it’s my way of filling up the well, of recharging my own mind. And honestly, I love stories. Especially short fiction—these little literary tapas of concept, character and style that nourish me when I’m not quite up for the full meal of a novel. And naturally, a significant chunk of my reading is by my fellow African authors. Which is why every year since 2015, I have published a list of the African speculative short fiction1 that I read and enjoyed most. I do this to spotlight the stories I found propulsive, fascinating, compelling, interesting and wanted to let others know about too since African speculative fiction gems can sometimes fly under the radar or appear in unexpected venues. Plus, it’s always fun making these lists (you can find all the lists for previous years here.)  So, without further ado, here are ten or so of the best2 African speculative short fiction stories from 2025, in no particular order. 1. “The Inheritance” by C.T. Muchemwa (Zimbabwe) — FIYAH Magazine Muchemwa had an interesting year with two stories in major venues that I found and enjoyed. “The Wanderer” about a man whose spirit goes seeking his son, and this one, “The Inheritance”—about a son named Taona, who inherits a money-making spiritual entity (a chikwambo) from his estranged father—which is my pick for this list. Stories about sinister magic-for-wealth schemes are common in many African (and global) cultures but what makes Muchemwa’s tale stand out are a) the vivid writing and b) precise control of tone. It manages to be a comedy, dark fantasy and as more is revealed, outright horror. The ending is also pitch perfect. An excellent story. [While you’re reading this issue of FIYAH check out “Slipcraft” by Jarune Ujuwaren (Nigeria/USA), which is also a great story in its own right and could have easily made this list.]  2. “Liberation” by Tade Thompson (Nigeria/UK) — Reactor Tade Thompson’s sharp, propulsive, compelling style works brilliantly in this science fictional novelette about the first African team and spacecraft sent to orbit the planet and the very Nigerian way (another military coup anyone?) the mission goes wrong. Through shifting PoVs and flashbacks we follow Udo Johnson, selected to be part crew, and Romeo “Bash” Bashorun who heads the mission, filling us in on how and why it was built, what exactly goes wrong and the mad scramble to survive when it does. It’s a brilliant story and I struggled between picking this and Tade’s other wonderful 2025 story in Uncanny magazine, “The Flaming Embusen” (check it out too, it’s great) but in the end, this is the one I personally enjoyed more (perhaps because some of its plot elements echo my novel The Fist of Memory). Highly recommended.  3. “If Memory Serves” by Kevin Rigathi (Kenya) — Will This Be A Problem? The Anthology: Issue V Having read and reviewed previous issues of Will This Be A Problem? The Anthology, it’s amazing to see just how much the anthology series continues to improve in quality and scope. There are many excellent stories in Issue V (there is another one on this list), but one of my favorites was Kevin Rigathi’s “If Memory Serves”. It’s set in a future where a corporation has perfected a mass-produced memory-wiping process, profiting by extracting memories from the poor and selling them to the rich and the privileged who want to experience the joys and hardships of others. Those who wipe are avoiding difficult memories but the more they wipe their memories, the more damage they do to themselves and the less human they become. We follow the man who invented the procedure as he slowly comes to realize that he too has become a victim of the system he helped create. It’s a chilling, twisty story with effective prose that challenges readers’ assumptions, something that fans of movies like Memento and Shutter Island will probably appreciate.  4. “We Begin Where Infinity Ends” by Somto Ihezue (Nigeria) — Clarkesworld Magazine In this slow-building novelette, Naeto, a young inventor and Gozi, his friend, are secretly changing their town’s streetlights, making them softer in an effort to bring back the fireflies that have migrated away because of the light pollution. They are found out by a girl named River who is also quite capable, and she joins their friend group, triggering a series of emotional and environmental reckonings which are both tragic and heartwarming. I loved a lot of the Clarkesworld stories I read this year (I also published a novella “Descent” with them!) and this story was one of my highlights. This novelette shines not so much for its speculative element but for its complicated, sweet, and engaging characters, the nuanced focus on their relationships and Somto’s characteristically exquisite prose.  5. “Sarah Ogoke And The Urban Legends” by Amanda Ilozumba (Nigeria) — Omenana And “When Two Sorcerers Collide” by T.L. Huchu (Zimbabwe) — Zamashort I usually enjoy urban/contemporary fantasy stories with an African twist (I mean, I even wrote a novel about one!), and 2025 gave us many excellent ones in all lengths from novels like Nkereuwem Albert’s The Bone River and TL Huchus’s Secrets Of The First School to short fiction like these the two I have decided to include as a tie in one entry here, because it was hard to choose just one out of all the options. Also, I always have at least one tie in every year’s list and consistency is important. “Sarah Ogoke And The Urban Legends” is a wild, fun ride with heart. Our protagonist is an “expurgist” who tries to steal a mythical artifact and ends up roped into a scheme to save a host of supernatural entities and characters from local urban legends from a greater evil. It’s witty, quippy, and briskly moves and features unexpected and cool mythical characters like Madam Koi Koi and a talking bush baby. It was the most memorable of all the Omenana magazine stories I read in 2025. “When Two Sorcerers Collide” is part of the Zamashort series brought to us by AfroSF legend Ivor Hartmann and it serves as a prequel to Huchu’s just concluded Edinburgh Nights series. It takes place on Halloween night in Harare and narrates the first meeting of two characters from the series. Safe to say if you enjoyed Edinburgh Nights, you’ll love this story of two very different sorcerers from different parts of the world and unique backgrounds facing down an ancient evil in a place with roots deep as magic itself.  6. “Shadow Jack” by CL Hellisen (South Africa) — Giganotosaurus How do I describe this story? Weird, dark, intense, beautiful, strange, surreal, unsettling, and vivid all come to mind. It’s a story about a group of boys called “Jacks” who serve in a strange religious order that may or may not be drifting in space. Their role is to clean up after priests who make regular animal and human sacrifices to their strange dark gods in an attempt to ascend (merge with the gods and become divine entities). Eventually the boys are sacrificed too. Our protagonist Shadow Jack is one of the oldest living boys and has resigned himself to this bleak life until: (a) a hole appeared in the wall through which one of gods beyond his (and our) understanding seems to communicate with him, and (b) he finds an unexpected love in that hopeless place. Where the story goes from there is bonkers and brilliant and you have to read it to get the full experience. It’s funny, gory, and beautiful. I loved Hellisen’s “Godskin” last year, and this story has quickly become another favorite. Highly recommended.  7. “Full, Empty Houses” by Plangdi Neple (Nigeria) — Kaleidotrope.  “Full, Empty Houses” opens with our protagonist Joseph visiting an old, dangerous and hungry entity to acquire power for revenge. Because Joseph, a gay man, has been targeted by violence since he was young and that trauma lingers. When he finally finds a lover, Nonso, who he thinks he can be with even though Nonso is married to a woman, Joseph’s happiness is cut short by politics, heartbreak and violence again. Which is what sends him on this mission of vengeance. Like all great revenge stories, it’s tragic, bloody and heartbreaking. An excellent story of queer vengeance that doesn’t shy away from examining anti-gay violence and attitudes in Nigeria and the patriarchal structures that uphold them.  8. “Black Friday” by Cheryl Ntumy (Ghana) — Black Friday: Speculative Stories From AfricaAnd “Kolumbo 1619: Choose Your Own Adventure” by KÁNYIN Olorunnisola (Nigeria/USA) — Khōréō Okay. Yes. Another tie. This time for two stories that take inspiration from specific US phenomena that have taken on global awareness thanks to the media. “Kolumbo 1619: Choose Your Own Adventure” is presented as a choose-your-own-adventure type virtual reality experience, where the reader is put in the shoes of Malik, a person playing a “techno-empathy simulation” designed to “eliminate racism, inequality, and injustice through highly immersive, story-driven roleplay experiences” where he is thrust into various Being-black-in-America scenarios and must try to navigate an encounter with the police where every choice leads to unfavorable outcomes. He takes on different personas—immigrant, jobseeker, clubber—and we follow as each scenario’s choices play out and the story resets. Structurally, it’s clever. Emotionally, it’s harrowing and painful, its humor dark in the shadow of reality. The second author to return to my list from last year, Cheryl Ntumy’s “Black Friday” takes inspiration from the shopping phenomenon and finds us with a group of rioters who reside in a dystopian Protectorate “fighting for Justice and Equitable Distribution and the Rights of the People and the Sanctity of the Land” on a day where, “the Wretched Righteous celebrate the rape of the land”.  It’s a sharp critique of hypercapitalism, religious mania and performative revolutionary politics that isn’t afraid to go to dark places. It ends with a banger of a revelation, setting the tone for the rest of the collection and is absolutely worth your time. As is Cheryl’s entire collection.  9. “Dust and Echoes” by Amani Mosi (Zambia) — Omenana  This story, like many other African speculative fiction pieces I read this year, plays with the deep anxiety of what it means when your stories themselves are stolen as well as your resources, when the mind itself is colonized. Journalist Simweko travels to a village where he encounters an ancient griot, an encounter that sets him on a mission to restore stolen African dreams and songs. It reads in part like a poem and in others like a declaration. Strange and dreamy and hard to grasp—it’s best to let it flow and to flow with it, to get swept up in the theme and beauty of the prose as the story asymptotically tends towards its central theme. 10. “The Language We Have Learned to Carry in Our Skin” by Shingai Njeri Kagunda (Kenya) — Will This Be A Problem? The Anthology: Issue V Shingai Njeri Kagunda is the third and final author that appeared on last year’s list to make a return appearance this year. “The Language We Have Learned To Carry In Our Skin” has a similar theme and approach to “Dust And Echoes”, literalizing its political critique into an afrosurreal horror tale, an African answer to They Live but perhaps more intellectually grounded. It’s a story about colonization and its aftereffects in Africa as African leaders are lured into backroom deals by corrupt foreign leaders and co-corrupted with vita—a parasite craving war and oppression and violence—that bends them to its will and that lives under their skin, driving them to revisit the colonizer’s violence upon their own people in a cycle of exploitation. It’s a hefty story that doesn’t let its parasite metaphor slip into didacticism or satire and is delivered in Kagunda’s evocative trademark style. I highly recommend it.  So… that’s the list. The wonderful stories that moved me, touched me, made me think. But there were many other stories I enjoyed which I just couldn’t add to the list because it would break the format (the internet just loves a good “top ten” eh?) and I’m committed to it now.  What were yours? Any other great African speculative fiction stories from 2025 you’d recommend?  As always, enjoy the stories! Till next year.[end-mark]  For the purpose of this list, defined as novelettes or shorter, i.e. works under 17500 words ︎This list, as always, represents my personal favorites, bias and all. Also, for those interested in sample size, I looked at 121 African speculative fiction stories in magazines, anthologies and collections from which I selected this list. ︎The post Ten(ish) of the Best African Speculative Short Fiction Stories of 2025 appeared first on Reactor.

News Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Trailer Releases a Kaiju Kraken Sometimes you need monsters to fight monsters. (It’s Kong. I’m talking about Kong… and also Godzilla.) By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 3, 2026 Credit: Apple TV Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Apple TV The second season of Apple TV’s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is premiering later this month, and today we’ve got a trailer that sets the stakes. In it, we see a monster named Titan X that puts a blue whale to shame comes through the rift thanks, it seems, to a decision by Cate Randa (Ann Sawai). Kong doesn’t like it, and I’m guessing Godzilla isn’t a fan either. Humans are very certainly not enthused about it, as it eats a ship with ease in the trailer and heads to Japan to cause damage and threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. We also see in the 1950s timeline that this beast might have been here before? The mystery gets more mysterious! Here’s an official description for season two of Monarch: Season two will pick up with the fate of Monarch—and the world—hanging in the balance. The dramatic saga reveals buried secrets that reunite our heroes (and villains) on Kong’s Skull Island, and a new, mysterious village where a mythical Titan rises from the sea. The ripple effects of the past make waves in the present day, blurring the bonds between family, friend and foe—all with the threat of a Titan event on the horizon. Monarch will see the return of Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell, Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, Mari Yamamoto, Joe Tippett, and Anders Holm. Takehiro Hira, Amber Midthunder, Curtiss Cook, Cliff Curtis, Dominique Tipper, and Camilo Jiménez Varón will also guest star. The show is just the beginning of Apple TV’s proposed Monsterverse; a prequel spin-off starring Wyatt Russell as a young Lee Shaw is already in the works, and there are reportedly “multiple series” also in development.   The first episode of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters season two will premiere on Apple TV on Friday, February 27, 2026. New episodes will be released every Friday until May 1, 2026. Check out today’s trailer below. [end-mark] The post <i>Monarch: Legacy of Monsters</i> Trailer Releases a Kaiju Kraken appeared first on Reactor.

News Brandon Sanderson Brandon Sanderson to Write Mistborn Movie Script and Co-Showrun Stormlight Archive Series In a recently released video, the author shares details on his new deal with Apple TV By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 3, 2026 Screenshot: Brandon Sanderson YT channel Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Brandon Sanderson YT channel Last week, we found out that Brandon Sanderson made a deal with Apple TV to adapt his Mistborn and Stormlight Archive novels, with Sanderson keeping significant control over the projects. Today, we got more news from Sanderson himself. In a new video, the author explained why he went with Apple—he liked the vibes, he liked that he would have more control over the projects, and that the “partnership felt right”—and gave some additional details on the adaptation of Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive series. Sanderson confirmed that the current plan is for Mistborn to be a feature film on Apple TV, and that Stormlight will be developed as a “premium cable streaming show.” Sanderson will be writing the screenplay for Mistborn and is currently focused on that full-time, with a summer deadline to turn in a script to Apple. (That means a new percentage bar on his website, where he’s currently at two percent for the script.) Sanderson will also be a co-showrunner on the Stormlight show with someone yet-to-be-determined. It seems that Mistborn, however, is first on the docket. “This feels really different this time,” he said. “I think this one is really going to happen.” There’s still a long way to go—Sanderson confirmed that we won’t see anything on the screen next year—but it’s a step in the right direction for Sanderson fans. And as for his other projects? Sanderson did say that it would impact his writing schedule, but that Mistborn: Ghostbloods is still on track for a 2028 release and that he had already built in this time for the next Stormlight book, so that timeline is currently the same as well. Overall, however, it sounds like Sanderson is optimistic about his new partnership with Apple, and that the odds are better than they’ve been before that we might get to see a screen adaptation of Mistborn and Stormlight at some point in the future. Watch Sanderson’s full video below. [end-mark] The post Brandon Sanderson to Write <i>Mistborn</i> Movie Script and Co-Showrun <i>Stormlight Archive</i> Series appeared first on Reactor.

Books Front Lines and Frontiers Making Cargo Hauling Exciting: The Big Lifters by Dean Ing Cutting-edge trains, trucks, and dirigibles — plus conspiracies, lasers, and explosions! By Alan Brown | Published on February 3, 2026 Comment 1 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. Today, I’m taking a look at a good old-fashioned science fiction book, The Big Lifters by Dean Ing, which is about an inventor pushing innovation in the world of cargo hauling to the edge of what’s possible. Just in case cargo isn’t your thing, Ing also throws in plenty of pushback from threatened transportation organizations and terrorist attacks to keep the pot boiling and make sure your attention doesn’t wander, I found this Tor paperback from 1988 on a shelf in my basement, with the unbroken spine signaling that it had never been read. As I plumb deeper and deeper into my collection of books, I am finding a lot that got put on my to-be-read pile and then forgotten. The Big Lifters has a nice, impressionistic cover painting and interior drawings by Alan McKnight, an artist I had not encountered before or since. The book feels old-fashioned in two ways: first, because it hearkens back to the old tales of inventors who succeed in a wide variety of fields, a type of story once known as “Edisonades,” after the famous inventor. Examples include the adventures of Frank Reade from the era of dime novels, and the Stratemeyer Syndicate’s novels about boy inventor Tom Swift. And this focus on science is something I miss in modern science fiction. Too few stories have the sense of excitement that comes from pushing the state of the art, and doing things that have never been done before. The book also feels old-fashioned in the sense that its prose and plotting were a bit lurid and over-the-top at times, in a way that reminded me of the old 20th-century men’s adventure magazines, periodicals like Argosy and True. When I was a Boy Scout, we used to have an annual paper drive, and as we collected bundles of newspapers, we were always on the lookout for discarded magazines of the type our parents wouldn’t approve. The men’s magazines, dripping with testosterone, and full of muscle-bound guys toting tommy guns, scantily clad damsels in distress, and menacing Nazis and Commies, were among the prized finds. While I was fascinated by these tales when I was young, I am glad we have left some of these old adventure magazine clichés behind. About the Author Dean Ing (1931-2020) was an American science fiction author, whose work drew on his experience in the US Air Force and on his careers as an aerospace engineer and as a college professor. His first story was published in 1955, although his most prolific period did not start until the 1970s. Ing ended up writing more than thirty novels during his career. His most successful work was in the techno-thriller genre, with his book The Ransom of Black Stealth One reaching The New York Times Best Seller list in 1989. His other work focused on high technology, survivalism, the military, and post-apocalyptic themes. He did a lot of work in the 1980s completing outlines and other works left unfinished by the late Mack Reynolds. Ing was a member of the self-appointed Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy, a space advocacy group that met in the 1980s and 1990s, focused on issues like single-stage-to-orbit launch systems and space-based missile defense systems, and which included many science fiction authors, including Jerry Pournelle, Greg Benford, and Larry Niven. The Exciting World of Cargo Hauling I’ll admit, the ins and outs of transportation have always fascinated me, ever since I first read Scuffy the Tugboat as a child and the bustling seaport that terrified the toy tugboat caught my imagination. While it may not seem particularly thrilling or glamorous to the casual reader, the latter half of the 20th century saw the world of trade and commerce go through a transformation. The change was driven by new procedures and technologies used in intermodal cargo handling—something I saw firsthand as a young Coast Guard reserve officer assigned to the Captain of the Port in Baltimore, Maryland during the 1980s. The development of standardized cargo containers increased the efficiency of cargo handling, preventing the need for cargo to be unloaded at ports of entry. New customs procedures facilitated these methods, with containers being sealed at their point of origin, and not opened and inspected until reaching their final destination. This significantly decreased the labor required to load and unload ships at seaports, and as a side benefit, cut down on pilferage. Ships got larger and more efficient, although this could be a mixed blessing as minimal crews and a lack of redundant systems made them more vulnerable to accidents. At the same time, other modes of transportation were going through similar evolutions. Railroads shifted from boxcars to flatbeds carrying standardized cargo containers, and even figured out ways to stack the containers on top of each other. FedEx, with their innovative “spoke and hub” system, was revolutionizing air shipping, and cutting delivery times dramatically. On the highways, truckers were also hauling standardized containers, and even pulling multiple trailers. The computer revolution facilitated this transformation, making it possible to order products efficiently, to track and manage cargos in ways not previously possible, and manage commerce right down to the delivery of single packages to the consumer at their home. Additionally, intermodal companies that managed cargo throughout its movement made the process even more efficient. While it has taken longer than some thought it would, space transportation is also seeing the beginning of a revolution, with private company launch systems outperforming governments and more traditional institutions, with reusable launch systems cutting costs, and with more countries, and even private companies, entering what used to be the exclusive club of space-faring organizations. One area where innovation has not made as much progress is in the field of lighter-than-air transport. I had the opportunity to fly on a Goodyear Blimp when the Coast Guard was evaluating the craft for surveillance duties, and even sit at the helm of one for a few minutes, and saw that these craft, while amazing to ride, were at the mercy of the wind, and difficult to handle in all but the most benign conditions. And having been hoisted in and out of a few helicopters over the years, I know that using any airborne platform to lift people and cargo is a difficult enterprise that requires the highest level of skill from the pilots and crews. The Big Lifters The book opens from the viewpoint of a long-haul trucker who is speeding to make up time with a load of heavy pipes. His tractor-trailer and load are described in extensive detail, a tactic Ing uses throughout the book in order to ground his tale in the real world. Then the viewpoint shifts to young John Wesley Peel, riding in a VW minivan with his grandmother, who took him in after his parents died in a trucking accident. Those viewpoints converge when the trucker swerves to avoid an antelope, his load comes free, the minivan is crushed, and the grievously injured John finds himself trapped, his face pushed up against the crushed face of his dead grandmother. With that gruesome image in their minds, readers are then introduced to Joseph Weatherby and the board of the National Transport Coalition, or NTC, discussing the disruptions the now-adult Peel is bringing to their industry. Weatherby is against making any attacks on Peel himself, but is willing to turn a blind eye if subordinates attempt to sabotage Peel’s factory or products. The perspective then shifts to Hassan Winthorp, a college professor who works for a Shiite terrorist group, helping them pick targets for murder by suicide bomber. He picks people who are in positions to increase the strength and power of the United States, whether through industry, politics, or public opinion. And one of those people is Peel. With these various threats being introduced and established, the narrative finally moves on to Peel himself (or Wes, as he now is known). And in true men’s adventure fashion, he is described as being dressed for comfort and action, having wide shoulders that strain his shirt and a flat belly, in spite of drinking too much Scotch; a true manly man of action. Wes is involved in just about every mode and method of handling cargo, driven by his traumatic accident to make the processes safer and more efficient. The only thing he is not interested in is space transportation, wanting to focus his efforts here on Earth. He is discussing one of the projects his company is working on—a magnetic levitation (maglev) train that uses powerful superconducting magnets. There are issues with a canard wing that helps keep the train stay in position as it floats above its track. We then meet Evangeline, or Vangie, Broussard, Wes’ executive assistant. She is described as having beautiful dark skin and hair, and dressing in a conservative manner. But just as you think the character might escape being objectified, the reader is assured that everyone speculates how good she looks underneath those conservative clothes. Wes meets Glenn Rogan, a test pilot who will assist with one of their other projects, a giant delta-shaped cargo-lifting dirigible. You can tell Glenn is going to be a main character, because he is described as having a solid muscular belly and sinewy forearms. Wes shows Glenn one of his other projects, a small tractor rig designed to haul trailers on secondary roads where the power of a full-sized highway tractor is not required. Suddenly a tractor-trailer rig gets loose without a driver (unknown to everyone, it’s because of NTC sabotage), and careens toward a building filled with people. Wes uses one of the small tractors to divert the rig, saving everyone. Wes then shows Glenn Delta One, their high-tech dirigible, and Glenn falls in love. Speaking of love, later on Wes and Vangie begin to flirt, because why would there be a female character in a men’s adventure if she wasn’t going to be someone’s love interest? They test Delta One by lifting cargo containers on and off a train. And then they test it by lifting containers on and off a moving train, proving they can transfer cargo without needing to stop to unload. I thought this was pretty preposterous, but then realized that when it came to technology, Ing wasn’t interested in what was feasible and practical; he was interested in what was possible. And these passages, where the engineers are testing new vehicles and technology, are the parts of the book I enjoyed the best. We move on to an interlude where the Shiite terrorists take out a target, and are reminded that Wes is getting closer to the top of their list. Then it’s back to science experiments: There is a launch system in Arizona that uses high-powered lasers to heat reaction mass like hydrogen in rocket nozzles, eliminating the need for chemical reactions. They use this laser system to heat engines on the belly of Delta One, and push her high enough to fly over the Rocky Mountains. The test is a success, although they have used magnesium struts near their engines, and one is ignited by the laser. Magnesium gets very, very hot when it burns, which almost creates a catastrophe. Behind the scenes, unknown to Wes, his team has a hidden project going on behind the scenes, which is concealed behind their efforts to build a canard on the maglev train. Unlike him, they are interested in space travel, and have come up with a rather wild plan to use a combination of the maglev and that laser launch system to launch a small commercial spaceplane into orbit. Ing is juggling a lot of balls in the air as the story jumps from viewpoint to viewpoint, but all of the threads eventually come together. Before the end of the book, Wes and his companions will work to develop all sorts of revolutionary technologies (doing their best not to kill themselves along the way), try to come to terms with the hostile NTC, and foil the fundamentalist terror attacks. In the meantime, Wes and Vangie will find that the road to love is not always a straight one. Because of the episodic nature of the plot, the sometimes-purple prose, and the men’s adventure clichés, I found the book a bit difficult in the beginning. But by the end, I found myself being swept up by all the action, and actually enjoyed the ride. Final Thoughts The Big Lifters is not a perfect book. It is a bit formulaic, and many of the characters tend toward being clichés. But Ing knows his technology, has done his homework, and in the sections where the team is testing new vehicles and systems, the author’s enthusiasm is contagious. The old-fashioned men’s adventure plots may not be the literary equivalent of a nutritious meal, but they can be a satisfying kind of snack food. Now I turn the floor over to you, especially if you have read The Big Lifters, or other works by Dean Ing—and if there are other entertaining science fiction books about hauling cargo, I’d love to hear about them.[end-mark] The post Making Cargo Hauling Exciting: <i>The Big Lifters</i> by Dean Ing appeared first on Reactor.