Books The Wheel of Time Reading The Wheel of Time: Rand’s Past and Present Collide in The Gathering Storm (Part 28) Rand’s reunion with Tam doesn’t go as well as was hoped. By Sylas K Barrett | Published on June 2, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share This week on Reading The Wheel of Time, things come to a head for Rand with the surprising arrival of his father, Tam, and the subsequent mental breakdown everyone, especially the reader, has been waiting for pretty much since Rand decided he had to become “hard.” Also, Min considers prophecies, while Tam has some very choice words for Cadsuane Sedai. Let us begin with the recap of chapters 47 and 48. Rand, unable to settle after the failed attempt at meeting with the Borderlanders, ends up roaming the halls of the Stone aimlessly, trailed by two Maidens. Regarding the strange, One Power-made walls, Rand observes the way tapestries and rugs try to hide how unnatural the place is, just as the titles and fine clothes try to disguise the fact that Rand is also unnatural, a creature of legend and prophecy,  He also realizes that what truly disturbed him about the encounter is that Hurin was there. The contact reminded Rand of the person he used to be, so different from the person he is now. Rand’s time with Hurin had ended at Falme. Those days were indistinct in his mind. The changes that had come upon him then—realizing that he had to kill, that he could never return to the life he had loved—were things he could not dwell on. He’d headed out toward Tear, almost delirious, separated from his friends, seeing Ishamael in his dreams.That last one was happening again. Rand can’t understand why, after all his efforts to harden himself and resign himself to what he must do, there is a little voice in his heart that whispers something is wrong. He pushes away thoughts of Elayne, who he misses, and reminds himself again and again that he must be strong. Coming across the chamber where Callandor used to be, he thinks angrily about how the sword is just another box. He also wonders why the Choedan Kal aren’t mentioned in the prophecies, since they are far superior to the flawed Callandor, which requires Rand to submit to female channelers in order to wield it safely. In his head, Lews Therin murmurs that he tried to warn everyone that the Choedan Kal were too powerful and dangerous, and that no man should hold such power. Rand isn’t sure what he means. After abruptly telling the Defenders standing outside the chamber to stop guarding an empty room, he continues on, seething with growing anger as he considers everyone who defies him—the Seanchan, the Borderlands, Cadsuane—until he comes upon a familiar hallway. Lews Therin realizes this is the place where Rand tried to use the One Power to bring a little girl back to life, until Moiraine stopped him. Rand wishes Moiraine were still with him, and considers that moment to be his first failure. But Rand is also ready to do something about his failures, and the defiance that the Seanchan have shown him. He tells his two attendant Maidens to fetch their spear sisters, and snaps at them when they don’t move quickly enough. When Rand returns to his room, he finds someone waiting inside, and is shocked to recognize his father. Tam had always seemed more solid than the world around him. His broad chest and steady legs could not be moved, not because he was strong—Rand had met many men of greater strength during his travels. Strength was fleeting. Tam was real. Certain and stable. Just looking at him brought comfort. But that comfort conflicts with the person Rand is now, and he is destabilized by the experience.  They sit and begin to talk, both awkward and uncertain. Tam notices Rand’s missing hand but does not mention it. Rand deduces that Nynaeve went to check on Perrin and that Tam asked to be brought to see Rand. Tam remarks that they have truly managed to turn Rand into a King, and asks what happened to the uncertain, wide-eyed boy Tam raised. Rand responds instantly that he is dead, and Tam agrees that he can see that. Rand admits that he has known Tam is not his biological father since Tam spoke of it in his fever-dreams, the day Rand left Emond’s Field. Tam supposes that he should not call Rand “son,” then, and although the voice inside Rand insists that Tam has every right, that Tam is his father, he does not say so. The Dragon Reborn couldn’t have a father. A father would be a weakness to be exploited, even more than a woman like Min. Lovers were expected. But the Dragon Reborn had to be a figure of myth, a creature nearly as large as the Pattern itself. He had difficulty getting people to obey as it was. What would it do if it were known that he kept his father nearby? If it were known that the Dragon Reborn relied upon the strength of a shepherd?The quiet voice in his heart was screaming. Rand tells Tam, in a rather pompous way, that Tam keeping the secret of where Rand was found probably saved Rand from being assassinated as a child, and that the world owes him a great debt. Tam muses on how funny it is to suddenly be a part of legends, but Rand counters that it isn’t funny at all. He tells Tam that he is a puppet for the Pattern and the prophecies, with no free will of his own. They discuss that lowly soldiers don’t have much freedom either, though Rand insists they could desert or find a way to retire; no matter what Rand does, the Pattern will push him back to where it wants him to be. Tam asks if it matters if Rand can or cannot run, if he knows that he would never do it. Rand counters by telling Tam that he is going to die at the end of this, and that he has no choice. Tam tells him that the choice is not always about what you do, but why you do it, and speaks of the different motivations soldiers have for fighting and dying. “I don’t know if it’s true that you’ll need to die for this all to play out. But we both know you aren’t going to run from it. Changed though you are, I can see that some things are the same. So I won’t stand any whining on the subject.” He also tells Rand that he believes it’s possible for Rand to survive, and that the Pattern will give him peace after everything he has done for the world. But a soldier going to battle always knows he might die. He asks why Rand is going to battle, and rejects Rand’s answer of “because I must,” complaining that Cadsuane should have come to get him sooner. Rand realizes that Tam did not come to see him by way of Nynaeve, but was brought to him by Cadsuane; he is part of her attempts to control and manipulate him. Tam admits that she instructed him to talk about Rand’s childhood and remind him of better times, and that she mentioned Rand might be angry if Tam mentioned her. Rand snaps that Cadsuane is trying to manipulate him through Tam. He can’t find calm or his habitual detached iciness, even when he tries the old trick of the Flame and the Void. He does find saidin. When Tam tries to speak again, Rand throws him to the floor with flows of air, screaming at Tam for being Cadsuane’s pawn. Demanding to be free of everyone, he begins to channel through the access key, making balefire. When he sees the terrified look in his father’s eyes, his weave unravels and he stumbles back. Oh, Light, Rand thought with terror, shock and rage. I am doing it again. I am a monster.Still holding tenuously to saidin, Rand wove a gateway to Ebou Dar, then ducked through, fleeing from the horror in Tam’s eyes. In Cadsuane’s room, Min sits with the rest of Cadsuane’s Aes Sedai, reading a book on the prophecies of the Dragon. She was initially very resentful that Nynaeve’s submission to Cadsuane had apparently included Min too, and that she’d been very thoroughly drilled by Cadsuane about every one of her visions, but at this point she is just resigned. Her attention is caught by a cryptic phrase mostly ignored by scholars: He shall hold a blade of light in his hands, and the three shall be one. Most seem to believe this refers to the Dragon uniting three great kingdoms, and the blade of light is clearly Callandor. When questioned, Cadsuane admits that this line was what led her to investigate and eventually discover the flaw in Callandor that makes it only safe to wield when a woman is in control of a circle. But Min thinks that there is something else to the passage, something no one has figured out yet, and Cadsuane agrees. Beldeine is dismissive of Min’s attempts to act like a scholar. When Cadsuane suggests Beldeine apologize, the Green leaves the room. Min has a vision of a black dagger over Beldeine’s head. She also has a vision of Nynaeve “kneeling over someone’s corpse in a posture of grief,” but since Min can’t interpret it, she doesn’t mention what she has seen.  Tam suddenly bursts through the door, demanding to know what Cadsuane has done to Rand, talking about how the entire room seemed to grow dark when Rand entered. Min is horrified and terrified when Tam admits that Rand tried to kill him with the One Power, and has to remind herself that it was Semirhage, not Rand, who tried to kill her. Cadsuane asks if he used the script she prepared for him, and Tam answers that he did at first, but it didn’t work. When he continues to demand to know what Cadsuane did to Rand, Cadsuane lifts him into the Air with the One Power. Tam stared her in the eyes. “I’ve known men who, when challenged, always turn to their fists for answers. I’ve never liked Aes Sedai; I was happy to be rid of them when I returned to my farm. A bully is a bully, whether she uses the strength of her arm or other means.”Cadsuane snorted, but the words had irked her, for she set Tam down. When Nynaeve reminds Tam that he was told about Rand’s instability, Tam replies that he isn’t unstable, he’s insane. “If you’d explained to me how he regarded you,” Tam said, “it might have gone differently. Burn me! This is what I get for listening to Aes Sedai.”“This is what you get for being wool-headed and ignoring what you are told!” Nynaeve interjected.“This is what we all get,” Min said, “for assuming we can make him do what we want.” The room falls silent. Min realizes that Rand feels distant through the bond. Tam confirms that Rand seemed on the point of killing him, then suddenly appeared to be distracted by something, opening a gateway and leaving through it with his little statue.  Min announces that Rand has gone to Ebou Dar to kill the Seanchan, just as he told the Maidens he was going to do. My very first thought when Tam mentioned Cadsuane’s name was “didn’t she tell Tam not to bring her up?” I desperately wanted to know if it was Tam’s mistake or Cadsuane’s, so I’m glad that question was answered in the next chapter. Unsurprisingly, the mistake was Cadsuane’s. The thing about Cadsuane—and about Aes Sedai in general—is that she is very wise about many things. After all, she has lived a long time and is well-educated and a talented channeler. She has interacted with great rulers, has hunted men who can channel, and has experience leading both other Aes Sedai and laypeople. However, like most Aes Sedai, her understanding of humanity is general, not specific. She knows how to put pressure on rulers, how to present herself as the authority she is and inspire loyalty through awe and/or fear. But she doesn’t really seem to understand how people think, or more accurately why they think and feel as they do. I’ve remarked several times throughout the read that many Aes Sedai mistook Rand’s early arrogance as egotism, when it was usually a defense mechanism for not letting people see how much he was struggling. Even when it was arrogance, it was still a very different form of arrogance than we have seen from other characters, like Mazrim Taim or Logain, for example. Rand doesn’t think he’s better than anyone. He actually thinks he’s worse, but he also has a very large chip on his shoulder about the burden those shoulders have been forced to carry. Because he fears that his humanity is a weakness that will be exploited both to hurt him personally and to cause him to fail in his duty, the only part of himself that he feels he can lean into is the part that is supposed to be mythic and powerful and aloof and terrifying. Even his friends, like Nynaeve, failed to understand this about Rand’s arrogance, but it’s a little more surprising to me that none of the Aes Sedai clocked it, since it is, in many ways, exactly the same strategy they use to handle their own outward images. For the Light’s sake, the Aes Sedai chose to let the world believe that they allowed Malkier to fall, rather than admit they weren’t magical enough to cross the entire continent before the Shadow swallowed Malkier completely. They try to strike a balance between seeming like caretakers and like rulers, but they will always lean towards the latter, towards an appearance of harsh strength, rather than show vulnerability or even empathy. (An aside: This is why I sometimes think Nynaeve is the best Aes Sedai, even though she’s also really bad at being an Aes Sedai. Her sense of empathy is extremely high, keeping her grounded both as a person and a channeler, especially as her bluster and fear of failure has slowly been replaced by confidence and a sense of authority.) Most channelers see themselves as something a little more than ordinary humans, too; the good ones just don’t take it as far as the Forsaken do, remaining servants of humanity rather than desiring to rid themselves of it. This brings us back to Cadsuane’s mistake, because she may be a servant of humanity—and I think we can all agree that, whatever her flaws, her goal is to protect the world—but she certainly doesn’t think of herself as a servant to any individual human. Her desire to teach Rand to treat her with civility has always had an air of control about it. Rather than demand respect she is due from everyone, regardless of that person’s rank and title, it feels like she demands it as a sort of offering or gesture of fealty. When she demanded Rand speak to her with a certain degree of politeness and deference, it felt more about keeping him in line than keeping him from walking all over other people just because he’s the Dragon Reborn. And let us not forget that it isn’t only trauma and mistreatment by Aes Sedai (and others) that have driven Rand to this place. Saidin has been cleansed, but any effect of the taint remains on anyone who wielded it before that time—and Rand had been wielding it a lot. Plus he has now used the “True Power,” and we know what the corruption of that can do to a person. Looking at you, Ishamael. Speaking of Ishamael, I have found myself thinking about those early days of Ishamael/Ba’alzamon invading Rand’s dreams and insisting that the Aes Sedai will “put strings” on him and use him as a puppet for their own ends. His whisperings planted a fear in Rand that he has carried since the beginning, and while that fear has been amplified by the Aes Sedai themselves (Rand doesn’t even know Galina was Black, and sees the torture she inflicted on him as something any Aes Sedai would do), it also stands to reason that the seeds Ishamael planted were watered and grown into something monstrous by the effects of the taint. We even see Rand consistently using the same language that Ishamael used, phrases like “Cadsuane’s puppet” and “everyone wants to tie strings to me.” I really do wonder how things would have gone if Tam hadn’t mentioned Cadsuane. It’s clear that, while she told him not to mention her name, Cadsuane did not let Tam know how much Rand hates and fears her. Tam found the script she gave him was unhelpful, so it stands to reason that a firm but casual sentence like “he might be angry if you say my name” wouldn’t have seemed to Tam like a particularly important warning. Indeed, Tam was expressing disapproval of Cadsuane when he mentioned her. If Rand’s dislike of Cadsuane had been ordinary and manageable, that could have been a bonding moment for them, rather than the spark to an over-filled barrel of illuminator’s night-flowers that it turned out to be. Also, Cadsuane’s advice was bad! Tam abandons it when he sees that it’s not working, but reminding Rand of a childhood he misses and a life he can never go back to doesn’t exactly strike me as helpful. At best it makes Rand sad—an emotion Cadsuane knows he’s avoiding. At worst, it heightens his feelings of alienation from the world and the pain of an identity he did not choose, which is why he started avoiding emotions in the first place. You can see the moment when Tam abandons following Cadsuane’s directions, too. It’s right after he comments that he shouldn’t call Rand his son and Rand does not disagree with him, instead giving a pompous speech about how Tam has performed a great service for the world by keeping Rand’s identity a secret. Tam doesn’t challenge Rand’s perspective or grow angry with his apparent arrogance; he is merely quietly amused, and when Rand notices that, he identifies his own words as pompous and begins to relax and speak more honestly. The first thing he does in that honesty is apologize for losing the sword Tam gave him, which in and of itself is a reminder of a better time. The conversation that follows is less stilted and uncertain, flowing more naturally between the two men. Tam is, after all, someone Rand looked to for guidance and understanding all his life. It is natural for him to seek that out now, as long as his head doesn’t get in the way. Honestly, the most heartbreaking moment in the chapter wasn’t even Rand using the One Power against his father, or Tam’s fear at seeing the channeling of balefire—which he wouldn’t have been able to identify but certainly seems to understand the basic threat of. Rather, it was the moment when Rand thought to himself that of course Tam should call him son, and of course he is Rand’s father, but stops himself from saying the words out loud. The Dragon Reborn couldn’t have a father. A father would be a weakness to be exploited, even more than a woman like Min. Lovers were expected. But the Dragon Reborn had to be a figure of myth, a creature nearly as large as the Pattern itself. He had difficulty getting people to obey as it was. What would it do if it were known that he kept his father nearby? If it were known that the Dragon Reborn relied upon the strength of a shepherd? Rand doesn’t believe that shepherds are less than other people, or even less than him. But he is so convinced that everything is a liability; every human connection makes him weak and makes him look weak to others. Again and again he rejects the strength and wisdom his connections can offer him in favor of soldiering on alone—and then he turns around and resents the world for that very aloneness. And while there’s no telling just how much of his madness and despair is taint, trauma, fear, or good old fashioned self-pity, in this moment it is mostly Rand’s misunderstanding of the purpose of emotions causing the problem. It’s something I’ve talked about at length in other posts so I won’t dwell on it now, but I will point out that it’s this self-pity that Tam is addressing when he responds to Rand’s claim that he isn’t as free as an ordinary soldier, and the implication that Rand’s existence is not fair. I found it a bit condescending the first time Rand made this comment, calling the poor and ordinary people free while he himself is a prisoner of the Pattern. It is certainly true that Rand carries a greater responsibility, and affects more of the world, than a foot soldier or peasant might. But every person’s life is their own world, and every person is at least somewhat trapped by the circumstances of their birth. A peasant born to poverty might be able to improve his station through hard work and luck, but he will always have less opportunities than a man born to wealth and status. A sword-for-hire could potentially have chosen another career (if he had other marketable skills) but the need to make money exists no matter which of his limited choices of occupation he settled on. The man whose body spontaneously combusted or the one who turned into insects certainly had less freedom than Rand does; they were just random victims of the corruption of the Pattern, tossed aside by the very circumstances that make Rand’s existence necessary. All that being said, Tam’s point is better, and more useful than mine. I think it speaks to the only healthy philosophy one can have in a world like The Wheel of Time, where the question of “is there actually free will” and “how much of life is fated beyond my control” might be debated in degrees, but can’t ever be answered without the admission that much of one’s fate is already dictated, woven without one’s input or consent. To some extent or other, everyone’s life is controlled by the Pattern and dictated by the Wheel; everyone was chosen, so to speak, to be born into their identity and purpose in the Pattern. Tam offers Rand an alternative perspective, and an alternative action. Instead of bemoaning the fact that he was born to carry this burden and be this legendary figure—a fact he cannot alter or control—Rand can focus on what he can control. And what he can control is meaning. He can create and give meaning to his own life, to his own choices, and to his own emotions. Tam tells Rand: “I could have left those wars. But, at the same time, I couldn’t have. Not without betraying who I was. I think it’s the same for you. Does it matter if you can run, when you know that you’re not going to?” Then he encourages Rand to think about why he is going to battle, perhaps to die. It’s unfortunate that Tam got frustrated and mentioned Cadsuane, because I think there was an opportunity for Tam to push Rand a little. When Rand’s first response is that he is going to battle “because I must,” Tam tells him that reason isn’t good enough. If Tam had asked Rand to try again, pressed him to find a reason, Rand might have done just that. He might have looked for the motivation, and understanding, that I think he had once. After all, the conversation was already headed that way before Rand’s resentment of fate came up; he was already asking Tam for perspective, and even accepting Tam’s prompts and direction. He was beginning to open up, if only a little. He was pleased that Tam cared enough to come check on him. Perhaps Rand’s breaking point was inevitable, and even if he’d never discovered that Cadsuane was behind Tam’s arrival, something else would have set it off. Those intolerable and mounting pressures weren’t just going to go away because his dad gave him better advice on how to engage them. And of course, Rand’s madness was always there as well, muddying the waters. Still, it is significant, I think, that we saw Rand begin to respond to Tam’s gentle, loving, but firm guidance. This is what he has always needed: someone who could call him out and challenge his perspective without making him feel belittled or as though they were trying to control or force him. Min could do this, sometimes, but Semirhage got in the way of their connection. Elayne also can, and I think Aviendha would be able to as well, but they are both too wrapped up in their own journeys and responsibilities and are both far away from Rand. This firm but loving approach is also one of the reasons Rand did better with, and felt safer with, Moiraine. She wasn’t just walking a line of careful obedience in order to get him to listen to her. Moiraine really cared about Rand, and understood him, and wanted to be the type of councilor that he needed, rather than making him into someone who would take advice delivered the way she wanted to deliver it. The way Cadsuane does. Tam is right that Cadsuane is a bully, and that many Aes Sedai are. This attitude comes in part from their extremely hierarchical organizational system; a woman used to having anyone weaker in the power have to defer to her would certainly come to expect even more from those with no ability at all. It also comes from the Aes Sedai need to be taken as an authority by those who are more likely to fear their power than respect it. Rand has been a bully for the same reasons—increasingly so, as he labors under the belief that the only way to unite the world is for them to submit utterly to his authority and do whatever he says. And now he has gone to destroy the Seanchan. Hopefully his horror at what he nearly did to Tam will ultimately stay his hand. After all, while he was already intending to kill the Seanchan before he discovered Tam in his room, part of the move in the moment was to sublimate his desire to kill away from Tam and Cadsuane and towards a more acceptable target. We will have to wait and see if the right lesson sinks in. He is certainly taking the wrong lesson from the sudden explosion of feeling he is experiencing. Obviously suppressing his emotions for so long would leave him unprepared for when they (inevitably) burst forth. He is now unused to having to navigate them, unused to weathering a storm of feeling that normal people might turn into a crying fit, or journal about, or look for a punching bag, to deal with. Rand, powerful and suffering and maladapted to normal human emotions, turns to genocide instead. More people should listen to Min, obviously. Her comment about how this is the result of everyone trying to make Rand do what they want felt like something Moiraine might have said when she was still around. Advice that she might have given. You can never force people to do and be exactly what you want—not unless you break them so completely that they are practically not human anymore, the way the a’dam does or the way strong forms of Compulsion do. But everyone has done just that with Rand, and now, he has indeed broken. When it comes to Min’s interpretation of the line, He shall hold a blade of light in his hands, and the three shall be one, I was tempted to point out that the blade of light doesn’t have to be Callandor. After all, we saw Rand make a sword of light with the One Power quite a bit after he lost Tam’s sword. But from a narrative perspective, I think there are far too many clues that Callandor is about to be very important for me to be right about this. Min and Cadsuane’s interpretations might be red herrings, but Rand spent a good portion of chapter 47 musing on Callandor, its flawed nature as a trap, or “box,” and the memory of the time he tried to use its power to bring the dead little girl back to life. This is clearly an indication that we are leading up to something, and a very obvious one at that—Sanderson’s narrative clues are less subtle than Jordan’s. When it comes to the three being one, there are two ways to tackle trying to make sense of it. The first way is to assume that the entire sentence is talking about two incidents that will happen at the same time, but aren’t necessarily related. If we read it that way, the phrase could mean just about anything, and there are not really any clues to know what the words “the three” are is referring to. But if we look at the two phrases as a sort of if/than equation, I think it’s possible to guess at the meaning. The most obvious interpretation would be that Rand will wield Callandor in a circle with Aviendha and Elayne. “The three” could either mean the three of them, or possibly it could refer to Rand’s three bonded lovers, with Aviendha, Elayne, and Min becoming one in some kind of spiritual or symbolic way. Min is not a channeler, but her connection to the rest through the bond could have any number of effects that might draw her into the circle. The other idea I had was to wonder if Rand might end up controlling saidin, saidar, and the “True Power” through his wielding of Callandor. We know that Callandor amplifies the effects of the taint, which makes me wonder if the “flaw” in the not-sword allows it to be a sa’angreal not just for saidin but perhaps for the True Power as well. I was already suspecting that Rand’s ability to wield the “True Power” without the Dark One’s permission would be important in the eventual showdown at Shayol Ghul, and that Rand might be able to use the Dark One’s own power against him in order to avoid either half of the One Power being tainted by his touch, as saidin was when Lews Therin and the Hundred companions sealed the Bore. Perhaps he could shield the Dark One, the way channelers shield each other, even when they channel the same half of the One Power. Or maybe he could wrap the True Power around the One Power somehow, much like he used saidar as a conduit to channel saidin and dump the taint into Shadar Logoth, keeping the Dark One from being able to reach through it to taint saidar or saidin. The thing about prophecies, as Min reflects in chapter 48, is that it’s really hard to tell what they are talking about until the moment referenced is happening, or has happened. Aside from the omens and portents which are there to let you know when the Dragon appears, most of the Karaethon Cycle is treated as a guide towards action by the Aes Sedai, and by Rand himself. And yet there have not been many times when a passage from the prophecies have given Rand more than the vaguest clue about what he needs to do next. Taking the Sword That Cannot Be Touched was one of the first major prophecies that he had fulfilled. But was his taking of Callandor a meaningless sign, or was it a step? Everyone knew the prophecy, but few asked the question that should have been inevitable. Why? Why did Rand have to take up the sword? Was it to be used in the Last Battle?The sword was inferior as a sa’angreal, and he doubted that it was intended to be used simply as a sword. Why did the prophecies not speak of the Choedan Kal? He had used those to cleanse the taint. The access key gave Rand power well beyond what Callandor could provide, and that power came with no strings. The statuette was freedom, but Callandor was just another box. Yet talk of the Choedan Kal and their keys was absent from the prophecies. These passages show Rand struggling with interpretations of the Prophecies. It also shows the limitation of a Foretelling or prophecy’s usefulness, as well as the inherent difficulty in looking past one’s own desires and biases to see the truth. Rand believes that the sword is inferior as a sa’angreal, but this is because it doesn’t work in a way that makes him feel comfortable. He views the need to wield Callandor in a circle controlled by a woman as a flaw and a disadvantage, but one could argue that such great power should not, and cannot, be safely controlled by a single person. Wielding it in a circle, giving a female channeler some control over him and his choices, provides a sort of checks-and-balances system on a very powerful sa’angreal. It also means that Callandor’s use, if handled properly, will be by men and women working together. And we know that this is how the greatest works of channeling have always been done. It is very probable that Callandor is supposed to be used as a sa’angreal in some momentous moment during the Last Battle. Rand doesn’t believe it will be, because he can’t accept what using it would require of him. But Min and Cadsuane believe that it will be, and I expect that they are right. And then there is the issue of Rand’s comfort item, the male Choedan Kal. The only thing which makes him feel remotely safe right now, and an item that even the madman in his head thinks he shouldn’t have. Rand wonders why the Choedan Kal, more powerful and more suitable than Callandor, isn’t mentioned at all in the Prophecies. But he never considers the most obvious answer to that question, which is that they aren’t meant to be: Rand won’t use the Choedan Kal in the Last Battle or at Shayol Ghul, at least not if the Dark One is defeated and the Pattern continues. It is perhaps too much of a stretch to say that the absence of the Choedan Kal indicates that its use will result in Rand’s failure. However, there is a very important clue about this danger, and it comes from Lews Therin himself. I told them…  Lews Therin whispered.Told them what? Rand demanded.That the plan would not work, Lews Therin said, voice very soft. That brute force would not contain him. They called my plan brash, but these weapons they created, they were too dangerous. Too frightening. No man should hold such Power… Rand has difficulty recalling exactly how Lews Therin’s plan to seal the Dark One’s prison was supposed to go, but what is most significant about this exchange is how badly Rand misinterprets it. Lews Therin has said, very clearly in my opinion, that however much the other Aes Sedai thought his plan was too risky, Lews Therin saw the Choeden Kal as even more dangerous, too dangerous to be used. He states outright that no one should hold that much Power. And yet, as Rand considers Lews Therin’s words, he wonders if the lesson is that Lews Therin made the wrong choice, that the Choedan Kal should have been used. It doesn’t feel like he is disagreeing with Lews Therin here, but rather that he is misunderstanding him. Even after his failure, even after the death of his wife and his own suicide, Lews Therin is still in Rand’s head whispering that his plan was a better choice than creating the Choedan Kal. But Rand hears the opposite, or nearly the opposite, and turns his mind again to the idea that the Choedan Kal should be the answer, that they should exist in the Prophecies. (Note: I don’t think that Rand doesn’t know that the female Choedan Kal was destroyed. He only knows that the Access Key Nynaeve used was destroyed, but that isn’t the only way to access the Choedan Kal. I’m pretty sure there were more Access Keys created, though I can’t remember where I read that. And one could theoretically access a Choedan Kal directly as long as you knew where it was and could get to it. So Rand is thinking about both Choedan Kal, even though I have sometimes referred to just the male one in this post.) They say absolute power corrupts absolutely, and whether Rand is in that place of corruption because he thinks he should have absolute Power or because he fears what will happen if he doesn’t have it, the results are going to be the same. He’s either going to commit genocide… or he’s going to have to get rid of the Choedan Kal. We’ll find out which option he chooses next week, whenReading The Wheel of Time we cover chapters 49 and 50 of The Gathering Storm, as well as the epilogue.[end-mark] The post Reading The Wheel of Time: Rand’s Past and Present Collide in <i>The Gathering Storm</i> (Part 28) appeared first on Reactor.

Books Five Books About Five Books About Speculative Human Evolution What the hell Is a human being, anyway? By Isabel J. Kim | Published on June 2, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Science fiction is often defined as being about technological progress and often projects a future in which the moral arc of history bends toward computational and scientific mastery. Alternately, it might showcase a future brought to ruin because of what technological progress, coupled with social or cultural has wrought. And that’s usually the whole story: one quick snapshot of time where everything is exploding (see: my novel Sublimation, which I’m contractually obligated to mention whenever possible).  I, however, want to talk about speculative evolution, a microgenre where time ebbs and flows and society and technological progress and intelligence and sapience itself rises and falls with the centuries, and the thing we call a “human being” or a “person” just gets weirder and weirder. The first well-known instance of this microgenre is Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon, published in 1930, which charts the history of humanity over the next two billion years, with the rise and fall (and various offshoots) of “Men.” Since 1930, there have been a number of other novels that develop on this premise or aspects or the premise, some of which I have collected for your perusal here today.  I’ve specifically curated this list to follow a narrow criteria. The books need to be about human evolution, in which human cell stock is either manipulated by other humans or by an alien lifeform, and it needs to at least partially focus on the effects of the manipulation, and the long-term effects.  Though, if I’m being honest, this is at least a partially vibes-based list, and I had a secret agenda. My hope is by exposing you to this microgenre, I will inspire you to read the books I’ve listed, and then to also write a book about speculative human evolution. Because then I’ll get to read it.   And there are some pretty obvious criticisms with this microgenre: It can be a platform to describe a very biased projection of the future as if it is fact. It tells a story of what the future might hold as filtered through the author’s own societal prejudices in the time period it is being written. It can edge into eugenics. But at its best, this microgenre is a love letter to deep time, to the persistence of biological life in an uncaring universe, and to the belief that intelligence and sentience and love and personhood and society can be reassembled across deep time.  Anyway, I love this weird little microgenre of novel. I love the weird, gross anatomy. I love the genuine stabs at biological plausibility around how a human being, after millennia of time, might end up looking something like a porpoise or anteater. I love how arrogant this genre of novel is, and I love how imaginative it can be.  And it’s fun to imagine ourselves as one bead on a grand chain of lifeforms, slowly evolving into the next. Did I say fun? I meant weird and unsettling. But life is weird and unsettling. So, you know, just try to have fun, and enjoy the billions-of-years ride. Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future by Dougal Dixon If you can get your hands on a copy of this bad boy, it’s got some of the most powerful illustrations known to man (after man). Notice that I didn’t say good. I suppose they’re technically well rendered, but, well, a lot of these drawings are unsettling, and a little gross, and slightly disturbing. And they’re supposed to be weird! Written more like an encyclopedia than having a single narrative thread, Man After Man imagines what human-derived organisms and species might look like after years of evolution and manipulation, both inflicted by time and by genetic engineering, as human beings speciate into various branches of “type of animal” after the Earth becomes moderately uninhabitable and people take to the stars and the seas and the forests.  Also, it’s the origin of the Seasons Greasons meme, if you’ve seen that.  All Tomorrows: A Billion Year Chronicle of the Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man by C.M. Kösemen All Tomorrows is Man After Man, but with aliens. Whether that makes it better or worse is really a matter of personal preference. The artwork is just as unsettling, there’s more of a hint of a storyline, and the things that happen to humanity are done with more intention (aliens) and are crueler (also because of the aliens). That being said, the ultimate arc of history in All Tomorrows is also more uplifting than in Man After Man, with the eventual message that the universe bends toward iterations of civilization and sentience, one after another. In a weird way, it’s remarkably optimistic. Even though every single human and human-derivative is dead at the end.  Evolution by Steven Baxter Evolution, unlike the other entries on this list, considers the deep past along with the far future. It presents quick snippets of high drama from the various organisms that inhabited the earth before us (dinosaurs, little tiny rodents, various hominids etc) before turning toward the organisms that currently inhabit the earth (us) and the organisms that inhabit it after. Zero weird illustrations. Occasionally very dry. Moderately depressing at points. I still enjoyed it quite a bit, and it’s very science fiction science fiction.  Children of Time Series by Adrian Tchaikovsky  Now we shift gears to a series containing a plot with some actual density beyond following the lineage of humanoid evolution. There are other ways to describe it, but for our purposes: Children of Time and its sequels follow the consequences of introducing an uplift nanovirus to various organisms on various planets (including humans) in what I can only describe as a post-earth-cataclysm future. While each book in these series contains an actual plot throughline, many sections are devoted to describing the speedrun of evolution across the various animals (and humans), and how the various species, all seeded by human intervention, end up cooperating.  Runaway to the Stars by Jay Eaton Unlike everything else on this list, Runaway to the Stars is (a) a hard science slice of life webcomic, (b) incomplete (though Iron Circus Comics will be printing the first bound volume, according to Jay Eaton’s website), and (c) focused on xenobiology as well as human evolution. In fact, the human evolution takes a backseat to the xenobiology, but I’ve included it here because the intersection of human culture, genetic modification, and rigorously described xenobiology is really delightful, and I think it’s in the spirit of the project that I’ve set upon myself here today. Look, I told you it was a vibes based list. I get to choose the vibes. And the vibes I’m choosing are “centaur (not what you’d think) anatomy.”[end-mark] Buy the Book Sublimation Isabel J. Kim Buy Book Sublimation Isabel J. Kim Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Five Books About Speculative Human Evolution appeared first on Reactor.

News Obsession Obsession Director Wants an Anthology TV Series If He Can Explain a Major Plot Hole Curry Barker would love to helm an Obsession TV series, but there’s at least one annoying detail in the way By Matthew Byrd | Published on June 1, 2026 Screenshot: Focus Features Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Focus Features Obsession continues to shatter expectations and records, thanks largely to the kind of word-of-mouth buzz that modern movies rarely enjoy. Naturally, a fair bit of that talk now includes speculation about what Obsession director Curry Barker will do next. The director is reportedly receiving some big money offers for his next project, even though Barker himself seemingly isn’t sure what that next project will actually be. So far as an Obsession sequel or follow-up goes, though, Barker has said that he’s certainly considered the possibility. Specifically, he’s interested in an Obsession anthology TV series based on one of the film’s twists. “I obviously have a couple more things that I’m excited about next, but I do see Obsession 2, maybe,” Barker said in an interview with Total Film. “But what really is exciting to me is maybe an anthology. Like a one-hour episode [where] each episode is a different wish that goes completely off the rails. Maybe I’ll direct the pilot with the same DP, and then you could invite other filmmakers to kind of give their spin at it. That would be really cool.” That does sound pretty fantastic, though to be clear, Barker is not saying that there is any deal in place for such a project. One imagines he has the clout required to get the ball rolling on that idea, though, as the director notes, there are other ideas he seemingly wants to work on next. Besides, such a series would require Barker to figure out what he admits is a fairly notable plot hole in Obsession’s premise: the idea that the One Wish Willows actually work and make people’s wishes come true “It’s kind of a plot hole. It’s something I don’t like to think about too much because it totally doesn’t make sense,” Barker admits. “If there’s a world of people making wishes… it really doesn’t make sense at all.” As Barker explains, a world where everyone is having their wish granted (or at least multiple people) would result in crazy things such as “dragons.” Based on what we see, though, the world of Obsession is pretty normal. Barker then offered his own take on how that whole thing possibly works. “Every time someone makes a wish, they enter into an alternate reality where their wish comes true,” the director muses. “So you’re not experiencing everybody’s wish at the same time.” Hilariously, the director soon realizes that the explanation doesn’t make sense as we see another character’s wish for a billion dollars be granted in real-time. Given the creative potential of that series premise, though, perhaps it’s worth a bit of a hand-wave if it fulfills my wish for the next great horror anthology series.[end-mark] The post <i>Obsession</i> Director Wants an Anthology TV Series If He Can Explain a Major Plot Hole appeared first on Reactor.

News Escape from New York Zack Snyder Is Eyeing a Remake of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York The 1981 film is perfect… just sayin’ By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 1, 2026 Credit: Embassy Pictures / StudioCanal Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Embassy Pictures / StudioCanal Zack Snyder, the force behind movies like 300, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Rebel Moon, has set his sights on a remaking of John Carpenter’s 1981 classic film, Escape From New York. The original movie featured Kurt Russell as the eyepatch-wearing Snake Plissken, a military man turned outlaw who is tasked with rescuing the President from a crash landing in Manhattan, which in this dystopian version of 1997, has been turned into a walled penitentiary. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Snyder will be shopping the remake to studios in the upcoming weeks, with plans to have the film release in theaters rather than on a streamer. The director plans to have the movie be more “more down and dirty” and lean more on practical effects than CGI. This isn’t the first attempt to push a remake of Escape From New York. Carpenter also came out with the sequel Escape From LA in 1996, but more recently, New Line and 20th Century Fox tried to make Escape From New York films with numerous directors and actors attached. Snyder is now trying with StudioCanal, which THR reports is trying to amp up its franchises, something they’ve already done with Paddington and Evil Dead. Synder’s project is still in its very early days, so it’s certainly possible his version of the movie will never make its way to a theater near you. There’s a perfect Escape From New York movie already out in the world, however, which I encourage you to give a (re)watch. [end-mark] The post Zack Snyder Is Eyeing a Remake of John Carpenter’s <i>Escape From New York</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed Looks to Both Future and Past Alex Brown reviews the “thorny, sprawling” sci-fi epic inspired by the Arab Spring. By Alex Brown | Published on June 1, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share It’s not uncommon in speculative fiction to take a prefix or suffix and tack it on to every genre label. “Cozy” is popping up in conjunction with fantasy and science fiction, and I’ve even seen it attached to horror. Another popular one is “-punk,” with newer terms like hopepunk and elfpunk competing with stalwarts like steampunk and cyberpunk. We’re also seeing “-futurism” appended to racial/ethnic/cultural groups. I’ve dived into Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and Indigenousfuturism quite a bit, but Arabfuturism is a new one for me. Mahmud El Sayed’s The Republic of Memory was my introduction to this subgenre, and what a starting point. The Republic of Memory is set in the 27th century, shortly before the 200th anniversary of Launch Day. The Safina and her crew are halfway through their 400-year journey to the Earth-like planet of Hurriya. After the artificial intelligence empire known as the Network colonized most of Europe, Asia, and South America, some great disaster befell the planet. To save its AI-assisted humans, the Network built a massive generation ship. Tens of thousands of people were put into cryostasis, not to be woken until they reached their destination. These ancestors also brought living relatives with them to keep the ship going so the chosen ones could live. Not long into their trip, the crew rebelled and abandoned the Network. The AI running the Safina was ripped out, but not fully destroyed, not as long as the ancestors remain. A Compact was forged, the berths realigned by language, and life went on. Two centuries later, the Ezz family finds themselves at the center of a burgeoning revolution, whether they want to be or not. Iskander is a Translator, a bureaucrat who liaises between crew and Admin. He wants things to change, and has a long-term plan to bring about reforms to help the common person. His younger sister, Damietta, is a hot-headed revolutionary ready for destruction and anarchy. She is in love with the idea of overthrowing the empire, but doesn’t have much of a plan for how to rule after. When an unknown group, either terrorists or rebels, depending on who you ask, temporarily disables the ship, a few hundred ancestors are woken up early. Distraught over what to them feels like a death sentence, the ancestors start formulating their own coup. One of those ancestors is Hilal, the sister-in-law of the first Ezz on the Safina. She wants nothing to do with restoring the Network, nor is she eager to either shatter or retain the Compact. She can see what most cannot: All three options lead to oppression (not that she is enamored with democracy either).  Various other characters step in and out of the narrative, such as Badreddine, the elder laying the seeds for rebellion for years; Billy and Britva, the young activists ready to sacrifice their lives; Lebanon and Taki, two crew trying to survive as the revolution washes over them; and even Safina and Juma, two of the artificial intelligences aboard the ship. Throughout it, the characters grapple with what to do with a civilization that has outpaced its founders. Reform or revolution? Slow-and-steady or an immediate explosion? Is it better for a society to have too many choices or too few? And what happens when too many factions can’t agree or refuse to collaborate? The crisis on the ship is a ticking time bomb. The crew has put off these questions for generations, but now they must answer them or die. Or answer them and die.  Buy the Book The Republic of Memory Mahmud El Sayed Buy Book The Republic of Memory Mahmud El Sayed Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget As much as I enjoyed the book, there was a stylistic choice that El Sayed made that didn’t work for me. Multiple POV is a common conceit in speculative fiction, and one I usually like. It’s fun to jump around with different characters as the author builds out an event through their unique perspectives. In The Republic of Memory, each POV brings the reader a step closer to revolution. My issue was that there were too many perspectives. I counted twelve individual close third person POVs, several of whom only get one personalized chapter before popping up in other people’s stories. Even having reread some of these chapters after finishing the book, I remain unconvinced that all were necessary. The book spends so much time exploring every conceivable angle of the birth of the revolution that it starts to feel like “can we get on with it already?” Perhaps the drawn out build-up was the point; revolutions aren’t instantaneous but put together by lots of people over time. From my perspective as a reader, with each introduction it began to feel like we were repeatedly kicking the tires instead of getting on the road—especially given the cliffhanger the first book ends on. Multiple POVs can be helpful, in that if your reader dislikes one character they have plenty to choose from. When you have a cast as big as this, sometimes the opposite happens. Sometimes the reader doesn’t get to know anyone well enough because everyone comes and goes, or the author spends too much time building up a few characters only to divert the reader away from them just when their story gets juicy so the other characters feel interruptive or distracting. In the acknowledgments, El Sayed mentions that he originally had “plans for a three-hundred-thousand-word sci-fi epic,” and that DNA is still present. Were all the POVs enlightening? Sure. Did I like the slice-of-life aspect? Mostly. Could several have been cut without altering the main story? Probably.  The trouble with having a cast this large is that the author must do something with all of them. Weaker characters or ones who are less fleshed out stand out like a sore thumb. Case in point: Damietta. I work with teenagers and I read a lot of young adult fiction. To me, Damietta was more a caricature than a character. She is the kind of teenager people who don’t read YA accuse YA protagonists of being. If she were in a real YA novel, she would be the secondary character who does something foolish that puts the revolution at risk, and the main character has to fix it, at great cost. I understand what the point of her character was, particularly in contrast to Badreddine and Britva, but she also felt fairly one-note to me. The other big stylistic choice El Sayed made that did work for me: his use of languages. Language unites—and divides—each berth. It is the thing around which all culture revolves on the Safina. The crew speaks the future equivalents of Japanese, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Turkish, Arabic, and English, and it is implied that others exist. On the Safina it doesn’t appear there were any people from countries where English or European languages like German or French were predominant, so “Inglez” became the lingua franca for Translators and Admin after the Compact. It has no cultural or spiritual connections to anyone aboard, so it is deemed “neutral.” (But what is neutral about the language of colonizers who were later colonized by an AI network?) There’s also NuPol, a sort of Frankensteined Esperanto. It’s cobbled together from words in all languages on the ship, slang, and pidgin, almost like a creole but only spoken by activists, outsiders, and rebels. El Sayed writes several chapters in NuPol, which isn’t the easiest to read but forced me to deeply engage with the text in a way I appreciated.  With twelve POVs, it’s pretty impressive that El Sayed managed to make them all sound individual. I could tell Taki from Kalila from Britva even though they barely appear. Hilal actually has three distinct voices. When Hilal is heard from the perspective of the crew and her descendants, she sounds like she’s speaking in an old-fashioned way described as “pristine Arabek” but written like faux-Medieval English (“‘Hold there, sirrah!’ [Hilal] called. ‘This physicker is with me.’”). In her mind speaking with her VI, Juma, she sounds like a regular person, no frills or accents. And when reading her POV chapters, the close third person narration is reminiscent of a detective in a hardboiled noir (“Hilal was just about to open her mouth to ask what the hell that meant when an ape wielding a gat stepped out of a doorway and pulled the trigger.”). In the Arab Spring-inspired The Republic of Memory, Mahmud El Sayed asks us what we owe our past and what we would risk for our future. It is a thorny, sprawling story that weaves between slice-of-life, detective mystery, political treatise, and family drama. It’s a heady novel with one too many digressions, but is nevertheless startling in its breadth and depth.[end-mark] The Republic of Memory is published by Saga Press. The post <i>The Republic of Memory</i> by Mahmud El Sayed Looks to Both Future and Past appeared first on Reactor.