News The Wheel of Time The Wheel of Time IP Owners Are Creating an AI-Enabled Platform for the Franchise Yes, you read that right, and I’m sorry By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on February 11, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Iwot Studios, the company that owns the intellectual property rights to The Wheel of Time is entering into the AI realm and I’m sure folks will be thrilled about it. The company is reportedly working on three projects: an AAA RPG video game, an animated film, and a live-action movie. Doing all three at the same time is hard, you guys. And so iwot Studios turned to the VFX company Framestore to create an AI-enabled venture that they call “a groundbreaking platform for premium entertainment franchises that will enable studios to unify their production environments across film, television, video games, animation, advertising, immersive experiences, social platforms, and user-generated content.” Mmmkay. “It used to be you could do a TV show and then you’d have a year off and do it again,” iwot COO Larry Mondragón told Variety. “Now the standards of a premium quality TV show are so high, the cost of a motion picture, the costs of a triple-A video game, or of a very high-quality animation work, are amazingly expensive, and they create real friction with what a company is trying to do: save costs while trying to get product out there in the market. But in doing so, it creates fragmentation. It sometimes loses its customer while it takes a couple of seasons to get a new series out and a new turn of the show. And we recognize this as an IP owner, that the problem that the market has is the very same problems we’re having ourselves.” Iwot CEO Rick Savage had this to add: “Fans shouldn’t have to wait to experience the worlds they love in the formats they want. The Wheel of Time will be the first IP to benefit from the platform being developed by the JV, so The Wheel of Time can be everywhere our fans are—film, television, video games, immersive, social platforms, and beyond. We will be able to maintain canon control, creative consistency, and security, while meeting our fans wherever they are.” [end-mark] The post The Wheel of Time IP Owners Are Creating an AI-Enabled Platform for the Franchise appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts fantasy Read an Excerpt From The Fox and the Devil by Kiersten White An obsession with an immortal serial killer entangles a vampire hunter’s daughter… By Kiersten White | Published on February 11, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Fox and the Devil, a sapphic gothic fantasy by Kiersten White, out from Del Rey on March 10. Anneke has a complicated relationship with her father, Abraham Van Helsing—doctor, scientist, and madman devoted to the study of vampires—until the night she comes home to find him murdered, with a surreally beautiful woman looming over his body. A woman who leaves no trace behind, other than the dreams and nightmares that now plague Anneke every night.Spurred by her desire for vengeance and armed with the latest forensic and investigatory techniques, Anneke puts together a team of detectives to catch this mysterious serial killer. Because her father isn’t the only inexplicable dead body. There’s a trail of victims across Europe, and Anneke is certain they’re all connected.But during the years spent relentlessly hunting the killer, Anneke keeps crucial evidence to herself: infuriatingly coy letters, addressed only to her, occasionally soaked in blood, and always signed Diavola.The closer Anneke gets to her devil, though, the less sense the world makes. Maybe her father wasn’t a madman after all. Diavola might be something much worse than a serial killer… and much harder to destroy. Yet as Anneke unearths more of Diavola’s tragic past, she suspects there’s still a heart somewhere in that undead body.A heart that beats for Anneke alone. The Paris Exposition Universelle, April 29, 1900 As the crowd screams, all Henri thinks is that he’s going to be in so much trouble when his parents find out. He closes his eyes, trying his best to undo what happened. Unwind his day. End up anywhere but here. The Paris Exposition Universelle— the fair— open at last. Henri had skipped school and walked across the new bridge, with its flying golden horses and naked nymph ladies and delicate glass cattails he wants desperately to steal and secrete away to his own room. He’d gone right by the Grand and Petit Palaces, no interest in waiting just to see some fussy art. The international houses along the river intrigued him, though. They’d only been up for a month and looked so permanent. It makes him sad that they’ll be gone at the end of the year. He had skipped along them, picking which one he would live in so they couldn’t take it away. The Swedish pavilion, with its towers and wooden bridges and bold yellow paint, seemed the best choice. Everyone says there’s nothing this year quite so impressive as the Eiffel Tower from the last fair, but Henri was only a baby then. He’s grown up with that jumble of metal bars and doesn’t think it’s anywhere as fancy as the moving sidewalk encircling the grounds. He’d ridden it around and around, proud of himself for being clever enough to sneak on. It was almost as good as the Ferris wheel. If Henri had enough money, that’s where he’d be now. Not here. He can’t be here, he doesn’t want to be here. He wants the fair to be glorious and fun and exciting. Paris, bursting at the seams with visitors, the world flocking to see his city strutting like a peacock. Maybe he’s still on the sidewalk. Maybe none of this is really happening. Henri squeezes his eyes shut even tighter, feeling the swaying movement, hearing the clatter of the wood slats as they pass over the track. But the screams keep cutting in. He should have stayed on the moving sidewalk. He should have gone to school this morning instead of skipping it. He should never have been so desperate to see the giant painted globe. It’s all the globe’s fault. A spherical building looming near the Eiffel Tower, so bafflingly large, so beautifully painted. His mother had declared none of them would go near it because of the zodiac symbols decorating the exterior. Fortune telling is the devil’s work, she always says. It’s how he lures you in. Maybe she’s right. Because Henri had been lured. He’d walked all around the globe, neck craned up to stare at the paintings. As he walked beneath the floating concrete entrance ramp, there was a rumbling and a cracking and then— Henri tries to move. He opens his eyes. They’re gritty and blurred, but above him he can make out the bars of the Eiffel Tower, painted orange at the base fading to yellow at the top. That’s where he’ll go next. Climb up and spit on the people milling about beneath. Then sneak into the House of Optics to watch the dancers parading in the dark with their glowing costumes. Boast to all his friends that he’d seen them. Lie about what he’d seen, too. He’s always been good at taking a story and making it seem more thrilling or dangerous or interesting. He’s halfway into dreaming about what he’ll do next when a dragging, rattling sound distracts him. It’s coming from his chest. He needs to cough but he can’t. It smells like dirt and dust and blood and he can’t feel his legs anymore. Henri can’t imagine his way out of this. He’s on the ground, the floating concrete ramp is in pieces on top of him, and he can’t feel his body. Buy the Book The Fox and the Devil Kiersten White Buy Book The Fox and the Devil Kiersten White Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget There’s a dust-covered hand next to his shoulder, more gray than pink, like a statue had wandered free of a building and dropped a piece of itself here to keep him company. He wants someone to move the hand, because that’s the only way he can be sure that it isn’t actually his own. He keeps staring at it, willing it to twitch, but nothing happens. Does that mean it is his, or it isn’t? “Whose hand is that?” he tries to shout, but he can’t draw enough breath to form the words. All that comes out is a low, creaking groan, like a door in the darkness swinging slowly open. He doesn’t want to know what’s behind the door. As he tips his head back and searches the crowd, trying to find someone to help him, one face stands out. One face in the dozens, looking on not with horror or fear or panic, but a simple, pleased smile. That face leans closer until it’s all Henri can see. A new smell cuts through the dust and the blood. A sweet scent, almost like his mother and her rosewater perfume. Henri wants his mother. He wants to say he’s sorry, he should have listened, he’ll listen from now on. But he knows he won’t be able to. Henri’s certain now what’s behind that creaking door opening in his body. At last, he feels fear. His mother was right. The devil is here. And Henri is trapped by the icy claws of death, that cloying rose scent, and those bottomless eyes staring down at him. Two nostrils flare as a deep breath is drawn. “Yes,” a voice says, caressing Henri’s clammy skin with pleased tones. “Yes, I’m going to like it here.” Excerpted from The Fox and the Devil, copyright © 2026 by Kiersten White. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Fox and the Devil</i> by Kiersten White appeared first on Reactor.

News Helldivers Jason Momoa Will Fight Bugs in Justin Lin’s Helldivers Adaptation But will this character also have a great gold manicure? By Molly Templeton | Published on February 11, 2026 Photo: Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Universal Pictures In December, Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions found a director for their Helldivers movie: Justin Lin, the man widely credited with bringing the Fast and Furious franchise back to life. Lin is a bit divisive in some SFF circles; there are those who enjoyed his beats-and-shouting approach to Star Trek Beyond, and those who did not. (Whatever else there is to say about that film, the man knew how to drop “Sabotage.”) Lin’s resume certainly suggests that he knows how to handle an action story about soldiers vs. aliens (though some fans were a bit testy that he signed on to the film despite not being a gamer; that was reportedly part of his pitch). Now, said story has a star who also has plenty of action experience: The Hollywood Reporter brings the news that Jason Momoa has landed a lead role in the film, though it’s not been announced exactly what that lead role is. Momoa recently starred in The Wrecking Crew with Dave Bautista, and plays Momo in this summer’s Supergirl film. You may know him as Game of Thrones’ Khal Drogo, or as Aquaman, or from Baywatch, or from Stargate: Atlantis, or as the guy in the pink jacket in the Minecraft film. He also eventually joined the Fast and Furious franchise, though by that time Justin Lin had handed over directorial duties on the increasingly absurd films (Momoa was in Fast X, pictured above, which was directed by Louis Leterrier). Helldivers basically sounds like Starship Troopers but not. The PlayStation website describes the game as “a hardcore, cooperative, twin stick shooter from the creators of Magicka. As part of the elite unit called the HELLDIVERS, players must work together to protect SUPER EARTH and defeat the enemies of mankind in an intense intergalactic war.” (Those all-caps terms are straight from the horse’s PlayStation, so to speak.) The sequel game, Helldivers 2, has sold more than 12 million copies. Lin “aims to find the humanity in the characters and weave timely themes into the story, while building out a world and mythology,” according to THR. But he’s not the writer on the adaptation; that honor falls to Gary Dauberman, whose horror-heavy resume includes Annabelle, It, and The Nun. Helldivers is set to premiere on November 10, 2027. They all better get diving.[end-mark] The post Jason Momoa Will Fight Bugs in Justin Lin’s <i>Helldivers</i> Adaptation appeared first on Reactor.

News historical romance Harlequin Is Ending Its Historical Romance Line After Nearly 40 Years The publisher’s decision to end its historical romance line in 2027 comes on the heels of controversial changes to its international publishing tactics By Matthew Byrd | Published on February 11, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Reactor has learned that publisher Harlequin Enterprises plans to shut down its historical romance line. Founded in 1949, Harlequin quickly established itself as one of the biggest publishers of romance novels in the world. The company led a boom period for romance novel publications throughout the 1960s, and notably launched a major expansion into European markets throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Launched in 1988, the Harlequin Historical line has long been part of the company’s growth and cultural presence. Its titles helped establish the line as one of the premier sources for romance stories set in various historical periods. Such works have become closely associated with the rise of romance novels in global culture. Though Harlequin Historical has drastically limited the distribution of its physical works in the U.S. beginning in the late 2010s, it remained a significant part of the publisher’s international presence, especially after 2014 when Harlequin was acquired by HarperCollins and its parent company, News Corp. Now, though, the line is coming to an end. According to a recent email Harlequin sent to its authors (which was also published on the company’s Authors’ Network), Harlequin is shutting down its Historical line in September 2027 (though the spines of titles published at that time will list October 2027). The move includes ceasing U.S. and U.K. retail efforts as well as digital publishing related to the line in those markets. The company reportedly will not acquire any new works for the line moving forward. An author familiar with the line informed us that Harlequin’s Historical Romance program has suffered through steady reductions over the past several years, including reduced retail presence, narrowed genre focus, and fewer monthly releases. As recently as last year, their move to Regency/Victorian-only titles was presented as a stabilization strategy, and the line was still actively acquiring books under those guidelines. The author says the subsequent decision to end U.S./U.K. retail and digital publishing came as a surprise. While Harlequin will stop acquiring new historical romances, the author suggests the company plans to continue exploiting foreign language rights in markets where historical titles remain strong, and to publish the already contracted works through the planned shutdown period. We have reached out to Harlequin for further information regarding this decision, but have not received a response as of the time of this writing. Harlequin’s success in international markets (including the international success of its historical romance line) has certainly been a big part of the company’s recent history. In a 2014 press release from HarperCollins regarding their acquisition of Harlequin, it was noted that the publisher hoped their acquisition would “extend HarperCollins’ global platform, particularly in Europe and Asia Pacific, helping to fuel its international growth strategy.” In a New Yorker piece published that same year, author Adrienne Raphel noted that Harlequin’s industry presence had declined in more recent years, but that the publisher still had a “strong international presence” that offered a “foothold into digital and international markets that HarperCollins and News Corp. will be able to exploit.” Earlier this year, the company faced criticism over reported experimentation with AI-assisted translation tools after cutting ties with some contracted translators in France. While Harlequin has not publicly linked these moves, taken together they suggest a broader shift toward lowering production costs while maintaining revenue streams from established catalog titles abroad. The company’s recent decision to shutter its previously successful Historical line raises further questions about the future direction of the imprint. We’ll be sure to update you regarding this story as new information becomes available.[end-mark] The post Harlequin Is Ending Its Historical Romance Line After Nearly 40 Years appeared first on Reactor.

Books Reading the Weird We Should Have Asked for Directions: Caitlin R. Kiernan’s “A Travelogue for Oneironautics” By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on February 11, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover Caitlin R. Kiernan’s “A Travelogue for Oneironautics,” first published in the September 2022 issue of Sirenia Digest. You can also find it in Kiernan’s recent Bright Dead Star collection. Spoilers ahead! Null: On a crimson sea, a dreamer pilots a dory over mountainous waves and monstrously deep troughs. Sunlight breaks so rarely through the storm-gray clouds that it’s become mythical. Featherless not-seagulls with leathery wings wheel overhead. He doesn’t know his name or that of the woman huddled in his dory, wrapped in tattered sailcloth. She asks if he’s trying to reach shore. He replies that he must be, for he’s come from somewhere and is going somewhere else. Long ago, the woman lived in a yellow house overlooking the sea. She grew a vegetable garden, so the sun must have shone there. She imagines she traded her name for passage over the sea. Perhaps the dreamer did the same. He assures the woman of his boating expertise, though he’s not sure he’s telling the truth. For all the waves, the air’s windless. Wouldn’t a boatman have noticed that before? Eines: The dreamer arrives at the cathedral-vast Pumphouse, all brick and wrought iron. He climbs a spiral staircase that rises through a “tireless labyrinth” of machinery. At the top, seven ancient men pore over schematics and blueprints. One complains that the dreamer’s late for his job standing watch.  He apologizes and goes to windows overlooking a desert “scrubbed raw by long ages of scouring wind and parching drought.” Nimbostratus clouds flick violet lightning towards the barren ground. What, he wonders, could approach the Pumphouse unseen? A woman appears beside him, who used to have the guard job. She responds with sarcastic vagueness to most questions, but says the desert was once an ocean. The Pumphouse masters found it inconvenient and risky, so drained it. The wind howls and the dreamer thinks of rain. Zwei: The dreamer enters an old-fashioned movie theater, where he’s been many times. He sits beside the only other moviegoer, a woman with golden eyes and a wolfish smile. He wishes he’d chosen another seat. The movie begins. It shows the theater exterior, the dreamer entering, seating himself, watching himself watch himself on the screen. He thinks of Russian dolls, infinite regressions. The woman’s breath smells of raw meat. She says the film’s disconcerting at first, but gets better. Onscreen, the woman becomes an actual wolf which devours the onscreen dreamer. The actual woman assures him it won’t “be anything like that.” On screen, the well-stuffed wolf trots out into the night. The woman assures him that this is where the movie gets good—he’ll enjoy it, she certainly does. Drei: I drive through the Virginia Appalachians to reach a lake crossed by a limestone bridge. I talk with a floating black sphere; it explains now that there’s “no gender, no sexuality, no race…no religion…” There’s no desire, no dissatisfaction, no need for government, laws, police, or prisons. But when the sphere adds that there’s also no art, I object. People “outgrew both representation and abstraction… outgrew differences in point of view and experience,” without which there is no art, only “perfect global homogeneity.” The lake holds animals from all over the world. The sphere explains that “Anthropogenic biogeographic redistribution” and “habitat reformulation” have corrected evolution and plate tectonics’ failure to distribute resources and experiences evenly. “Sameness is salvation.” I protest: Not everyone wants to live as “unfeeling black spheres in a homogenized world.” These people, says the sphere, are shown their error, sometimes through “humane somatic discard.” I look at the lake and wonder what’s across the bridge. Vier: The narrator roams through a deserted town. He wears no watch, nor can he remember the year. Exhausted, he sits on a park bench. Nearby is an enormous live oak, under which the shadows are darker than night itself. A nondescript dog follows him. It’s very chatty but can’t tell him what befell the town. The dreamer’s the first person the dog’s seen in ages. Can he help it access the canned dog food in the IGA? It also insists he stop looking at that live oak; something might be even hungrier than the dog. The dreamer agrees to go to the IGA. Fünf: In a library lapsed into “genteel shabbiness” sit six men, including the dreamer. They meet regularly to listen to a true but weird story. The dreamer’s tale concerns a cryptid he discovered while researching the Beast of Gevaudan. He obtained an obscure volume describing a man-made monstrosity used by the Nazis. This “Judenhund” could sniff out Jews but would also kill non-Jews. Its hindbody looked like a greyhound’s. Its forebody had human arms and hands and a face with huge glowing violet eyes. Its other features were hidden under matted white hair, except for rows of sharklike teeth. The dreamer has also heard of an unpublished account by an Austrian rabbi who immigrated to Israel, The Book of the White Hound. He hasn’t been able to access it yet. As proof of his story, the dreamer produces an eighty-year-old black-and-white photo… Null: The dory runs aground on a rocky island. The dreamer and woman sit on the beach while not-seagulls wheel overhead. The woman holds a cigar box full of keepsakes: a plastic Virgin Mary, a silver medallion, an antique key. Though the dreamer apologizes for not landing near her home, the woman gives him her box. She discards her tatters and sheds her skin, to emerge as a praying mantis/jellyfish hybrid. It drifts away, leaving the dreamer contemplating the unclimbable black cliffs guarding the island’s interior. Perhaps he’s nameless because he’s only a ferryman. Taking the cigar box, he returns to his dory. * * * What’s Cyclopean: The dream sea is “the color of a cardinal’s feathers, the color of sindoor, of Turkey Red and the delicate petals of Remembrance Day poppies.” The Degenerate Dutch: In a stuffy library, the dreamer tells the story of a Nazi monster created to hunt Jews (and anyone else who happened to be in the way). Libronomicon:The future of the spheres has removed all books that might offend someone, anyone. Which, eventually, means removing all the books—all “memories of discrimination or slavery or colonialism or genocide or discovery or freedom or joy.” Presumably this includes the books cited during the storytelling session: Le Démon Pâle: Le Récit d’un Soldat (ostensibly in German despite the title being French), and The Book of the White Hound. Weirdbuilding: Are those leathery-winged creatures in the sky perhaps nightgaunts? Ruthanna’s Commentary I admire authors who can get something story-ish out of their dreams. Mine tend toward “late for a flight while stuck in an overflowing bathroom during the apocalypse,” with emphasis on the terrifyingly unusable toilet. My little corner of the Dreamlands is not the sort that a weird fiction author ought to get assigned, but I suspect that I’m better off not complaining to the management. Kiernan’s travelogue has that same sense of being stuck in the middle, cut off from either assignment or resolution of goal. But the settings seem worthier of sharing. Dream stories will almost always be fundamentally mood pieces, but I like the way the different dreams interweave, echoing characters and fears and tropes in a way that feels both story-like and dreamlike. [ETA: Unlike Anne, below, it didn’t occur to me that the different dreams might belong to different dreamers. After some consideration, I find them interesting as aspects of the same set of anxieties and obsessions, and am sticking with the idea of one dreamer tossed from dream to dream.] My first reference for dream stories is usually Lovecraft, who wrote snippets of actual dream, and the Dreamlands themselves—though of course he’s taking a page from Dunsany and Poe. These set the boundaries of what you can do with such a tale: you have to have enough logic for the paragraphs to hang together, but not so much that it stops being plausible as a dream (or a place that’s a source of dreams). You need continuity of mood and setting, but also the weird shifts that make dreams so wondrous and frightening. Kieran manages that balance admirably. The pumphouse guard struggles with the same uncertain, maybe impossible sort of goal as the man at the tiller, but the pumphouse has also destroyed the sea he was navigating. The woman is an uncomfortable companion no matter where encountered, and regardless of whether she’s a wolf hanging over your shoulder or a mantis-jellyfish abandoning you on a desert island. You’ll never know where you’re going, or if the journey will end, or who you started out as. Emptiness, forgetfulness, endless repetition. And someone keeps counting in German in the background. Religion weaves through the dream-places too: gospel stations in the “high places” of Appalachia, even in the face of a far-future sphere promising the destruction of all sources of difference (religion included alongside art). A rabbi records  a Nazi “hound” with about as much resemblance to a dog as the Hounds of Tindalos. Travelogues tell you about the places a traveler has gone. Usually, though, they include both landmarks and maps to find them, destinations and routes. Separate those out, and it’s hard to tell which is which. The dory can’t be following a route, because we will never know where it came from or where it meant to go, or even if such things exist. The pumphouse sits amid impassible desert. The Appalachians are unstuck in time. The storytelling library is in New York, but we never see the city out the windows. If you, too, are an oneironaut, you will learn nothing here about how to reach specific places or times. The best you can get is the reassurance that, if you find yourself in one of these dreams—and can remember anything from beyond the dream—you are there in company. Anne’s Commentary In their introduction to Bright Dead Star, Kiernan offers insight into two recurring features of their fiction: characters seeing psychiatrists and characters dreaming. About the dreams, they write: “[My tales] are replete with dream. I would argue this technique isn’t some lazy shortcut to the mind of a character. They are, in the parlance of our computer-battered times, a hack, circumventing the firewall of the conscious mind so that we might access the chewy Tootsie Roll center.” What a great metaphor. As a veteran Tootsie Pop fan, I know there are basically two kinds of Pop-eaters, those who patiently lick and/or suck away the hard candy coating and those who eventually just bite into the damn shell to free the chocolaty core. Kiernan visualizes the writer using dreams to crunch into a character’s unconscious mind. I’m visualizing the reverse, where the unconscious mind uses dream-tongues and dream teeth to subtly or explosively communicate with the conscious mind. Such a Tootsie Pop would be interactive candy for the adventurous, rather like Monty Python’s Spring Surprise sweetie. (Jump to the sketch titled “Crunchy Frog,” another fine confection manufactured by the Whizzo Chocolate Company.) Ahem. And now for something incompletely different. To “A Travelogue for Oneironautics,” Kiernan appends an author’s note. Themself an oneironaut or chronic “dream-sailor,” they often feature dreams in their fiction. Some, part of a longer narrative, are associated with a particular character. Others stand alone, as in “A Travelogue,” allowing readers to decide for themselves what the dreamer-protagonist’s “waking life” might be. I take up that challenge. The two “nulls” or “zeroes” bookend “Travelogue.” My guess is that their dreamer’s an avid boater. Maybe he sails on weekends, or takes his bass boat out to hook some big ones, though not as big as that snaky thing underneath his dream-dory. Maybe he’s single in waking life, but wishes he wasn’t, hence the woman who just shows up in his dory. Too bad she morphs into a mantis-jellyfish and slithers off, leaving him alone on the beach. Maybe the dreamer, though a ferryman, does have a name, say, Charon. Maybe his job’s to transport the dead from their little yellow houses to Hades. It’s a bitch of a job, especially if you fall in love with one of your passengers. Dream “eines”: The real-life dreamer could be a Secret Service agent, or else a mall security guard. From the Pumphouse and Pumphouse masters he envisions, he’s a steampunk fan. He’s in a “What’s it all about” crisis re his career, possibly his whole life. He fanboys Daenerys Targaryen, hence the pale, white-haired, blue-eyed woman who joins him at the windows. The doorkeeper kid isn’t her son but some miscellaneous Targaryen, because you can’t love (or hate) just one. Dream “zwei”: The real-life dreamer’s a fixture at repertory theaters: A film buff and/or snob. He even knows what a 35 mm Kinoton FP30ST projector is, and his heart beats to its click-click-click. He may be conflicted about his movie obsession, though, hence the way he finds himself watching a movie of himself watching the movie of himself, and so on in infinite regression. In real life, he’d never be brave enough to sit needlessly beside an unknown woman. That this woman turns out to be a maneater reflects his deepest fears. Or is she really only “drawn” as a maneater on screen? Meat-locker breath isn’t a good omen. Dream “drei”: Here’s a change, a first-person dreamer. In real life, they’re into nature and environmentalism. Their favorite song is Lennon’s “Imagine,” but they wonder if its philosophy is workable. Not to the extremes the black sphere takes it! They’re also a Fahrenheit 451 fan, dream-revising the “Montag-Captain Beatty” conversational duel. They may want to escape over the bridge, but remember its guardrails are rusted out, and if one fell into that lake full of “anthropogenically redistributed” predators, game over. Dream “vier”: The real life dreamer has watched too many shows about sole-survivors of the apocalypse. A Boy and His Dog might have made him ambivalent in his anxiety. A talking dog would make a good companion post-Armageddon, as long as you could keep it fed. Oops, another anxiety-driver. Dream “fünf”: The RL dreamer could be a young academic approaching the horrors of an oral defense committee, hence the five other storytellers much older than he. Or he could be a tenured professor having a flashback dream. Walt Whitman’s not his favorite author. The dreamer should ditch his tired Bete du Gevaudan thesis for one about his Judenhund find. But what if the National Library of Israel won’t let him access The Book of the White Hound? This could reflect the dreamer’s struggles to access the Necronomicon or something. That would be enough to give anyone nightmares. Next week, join our new longread with Chapters 1-2 of Stephen Graham Jones’ Buffalo Hunter Hunter.[end-mark] The post We Should Have Asked for Directions: Caitlin R. Kiernan’s “A Travelogue for Oneironautics” appeared first on Reactor.