Books worldbuilding Seven Plot-Friendly Ways to Spur Societal Collapse History can teach us the most exciting ways to destroy fictional civilizations… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on April 1, 2026 “Fire of Troy” by Kerstiaen de Keuninck Comment 0 Share New Share “Fire of Troy” by Kerstiaen de Keuninck I’ve recently gone down a rabbit hole, obsessively reading and watching works about the Late Bronze Age Collapse: a time when civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East suffered a near simultaneous implosion. Governments fell, trade networks collapsed, and some cultures lost writing1. Why did this happen? Ask that and you may go down the rabbit hole too. Historian and archaeologist Eric H. Cline thinks he knows why this happened, and also how to avoid it. In a recent video, “1177 BC: The vanishing of the first globalized world,” he lists seven pointers for cultures who want to avoid social collapse. I guess that’s fine for people who have become accustomed to enjoying regular meals, living in unburned homes, and not being stabbed to death by rampaging Sea People. You know, squares. But if you’re an author, you may look at that list and wonder if it could be a plot generator. Societal collapse can make for interesting reading! Aren’t we here for that? All we need to do is imagine societies that do the exact opposite of the strategies Cline suggests. You might not get a full-blown apocalypse—life might even improve, at least for some—but the results cannot help but be entertaining. Cline’s list: Have multiple contingency plans Cultivate resilience to invasion Be self-sufficient without alienating allies Be innovative and inventive Prepare for extreme weather Have a secure water supply Keep the working class happy The AntiCline list is the above, with the word “Don’t” appended to the beginning of each sentence. It’s astonishingly easy to come up with examples for each2. DON’T have multiple contingency plans One fictional example of a society that needed at least one more contingency plan than it actually had is the America of Michael Swanwick’s In the Drift. The Three Mile Island event spreads radioactive fallout across the Eastern Seaboard. Cities are abandoned and the US fragments. Recovery takes decades. Not fun, but very plot-friendly. DON’T cultivate resilience to invasion The nations of the world are understandably ill-prepared to resist aerial invasions in H.G. Wells’ The War in the Air, since aeronautical warfare is an entirely novel development. To make matters far worse, in the course of the novel it turns out that air forces are easy to produce and impossible to defend against… with the unpleasant catch that air forces cannot occupy, only destroy. Result: the end of civilization as we know it. DON’T be self-sufficient without alienating allies In Frank Herbert’s Dune, interstellar travel is dependent on Spice, a drug with a single known source, the planet Arrakis. As one does when supply disruptions could kneecap the galactic civilization, the empire has not only not developed substitutes for Spice, they’ve spent centuries brutalizing Arrakis’ Fremen, laying the foundation for some suitably charismatic visionary to use imperial dependence on Spice against the empire. DON’T be innovative and inventive In H. Beam Piper’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, only Styphon’s priests know how to make black gunpowder. They’ve used this closely guarded secret to make themselves the power brokers of an alternate North America. Efforts to reverse engineer gunpowder are presumably strongly discouraged. This very sensible approach has at least one significant flaw, which is that as soon as someone—a cunning alchemist, a disgruntled priest, a Pennsylvania cop accidentally dragged across timelines—reveals the secret, Styphon’s international order rapidly implodes3. DON’T prepare for extreme weather Kate Wilhelm’s Juniper Time is shaped by a development for which no government appears to have made sufficient plans. The entire planet is gripped by massive drought. The cause is unclear but no nation escapes the disruptive effects: famine, mass migration, societal disruption, and collapse (at least on local levels). DON’T Have a secure water supply In Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the Earth is (rather implausibly) dependent on lunar farms, which are in turn dependent on lunar ice mines. The problem is lunar ice is very much a non-renewable resource whose limits are fast being reached. The solution on which those running the Moon have landed is to ignore the problem. Result: the collapse of the old lunar order as desperate Lunarians finally rise up. DON’T keep the working class happy African American slaves in Terry Bisson’s Fire on the Mountain are unpaid, abused, and terrorized. The slavers’ intent is to keep slaves too cowed to object. The result is a population highly motivated to rise up and drive out their oppressors, should the opportunity ever present itself. Thanks to Harriet Tubman4, the successful raid on Harper’s Ferry provides that opportunity. Result: not only does independent Nova Africa replace the slave states, and not only is the USA itself ultimately overthrown, but the imperialist world order itself collapses in the aftermath. Admittedly, all that is good for the people at the bottom, which is to say the vast majority of the human species, but I imagine people like Cecil Rhodes, Lorrin A. Thurston, and King Leopold II died angry. …Also a good result. The above seven are just a few of the possibilities offered by cultural AntiClines5. SFF abounds with examples I could have used. The odds are very good that I’ve missed your favourites. Comments are below.[end-mark] Writing would have been practiced largely by castes of scribes, castes dependent on government and commercial support. ︎The obvious option is to list five works set during the Late Bronze Age Collapse. There are least two very famous works, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Even with a very generous definition of five, two is not five. So I think I’ll go with seven current examples. How hard could that be? Later: not hard. ︎“But surely removing priestly boots from the necks of violent, highly competitive aristocrats is a good thing?” you ask. Styphon was motivated to keep conflicts going to ensure demand for gunpowder. At the same time, they needed to keep conflicts low-level, as apocalypse tends to undermine demand. How sure can we be that what followed the fall of Styphon’s international order wasn’t a recapitulation of the Thirty Years War? ︎“But what of John Brown?” you ask. He gets a lot of credit for what is actually Tubman’s strategic and tactical insight. The lesson here is ambitious men should be mindful for opportunities to upstage brilliant women. ︎Remember to CamelCase or geologists will get confused. ︎The post Seven Plot-Friendly Ways to Spur Societal Collapse appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV They Will Kill You They Will Kill You Is a Gore Fest Running Thin on Substance If I had a nickel for every time a woman tried to save her sister from wealthy devil-worshippers, etc… By Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on March 31, 2026 Image: Warner Bros. Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Warner Bros. To begin discussing They Will Kill You, there’s an immediate aside that comes up about the fact that two films featuring devil-worshipping wealthy folks who are trying to sacrifice a woman and her sister to appease their dark lord were released within a week of each other, and the plots were so similar that the trailer of one was cut to omit that fact entirely. (The trailer for this one, in fact.) Given the state of things, I’m hardly one to look askance at two similarly decorated cakes and call myself the injured party. Having said that, the greatest praise I can offer this film is that it is a diverting way to spend 94 minutes. If that’s all you’re looking for (and your tummy is unbothered by excessive, silly gore), go forth and enjoy! Extra cake for you, everybody is a winner. My first point of disconnect from the experience is a tonal shift that occurs right at the start. The opening of the film features Asia Reeves (Zazie Beetz) and her younger sister trying to escape a sadistic home. It is a dark, tense sequence with nothing remotely fantastical about it, and we get the background of our protagonist in full: Asia shoots their father when he catches up to them, but on hearing the sirens, she runs. She leaves her sister with their abuser still alive, and winds up getting caught anyway. Ten years later, she’s arrived for her new job at The Virgil, a fancy building in New York with a dark secret. If you assume that she’s looking for her little sister, Maria (Myha’la), you’d be head of the class. The film promptly descends into gonzo violence and absurdity, a world that feels totally disconnected from its first ten minutes: We learn that the building’s residents have a pact with Satan for eternal life, and their goal is to sacrifice Asia to keep that pact. They are immortal, so Asia can’t kill these people—only slow them down. Her sister is a maid in the building, and sometimes “the help” also get to join the pact (though they stay “the help,” of course). So Asia is stuck trying to outwit a bunch of wealthy, unkillable acolytes. There’s no more filling in between the lines; that’s the entirety of the story. What’s more, there’s practically no dialogue from that point on outside of questions about where Asia is, and why they need her to just give up and allow herself to be sacrificed. It feels as though screenwriter Alex Litvak and co-writer/director Kirill Sokolov had a book full of action sequences they wanted to film and made some sparse choices about the plot as an excuse to knit the whole thing together. Obviously, They Will Kill You has the vaguest echoes of the seminal Get Out and its more direct companion Ready Or Not, but both of those films were explicit commentaries about the institutions they were critiquing. They Will Kill You pretends to try—there are one or two pieces of extremely on-the-nose dialogue to that end—but knows it doesn’t really have to. Asking your audience to root against wealthy death cults isn’t a tall order when the general populace is pretty fed up with the uber-rich pretending that they have society’s best interests at heart.  Acknowledging that there is a clear racial aspect to this disparity could have been one place where They Will Kill You distinguished itself. The outline of a suggestion is there via The Virgil’s (mostly) POC staff and (mostly) white residents, the elevation of its superintendent (Patricia Arquette’s Lillith Woodhouse) and her husband (Paterson Joseph’s Ray Woodhouse), and the disagreement between Lillith and Ray about continuing to participate in this heinous ritual. But the way the film goes about addressing these issues only raises more questions: Ray tries to help Asia, and when he’s caught, he tells his wife that he used to believe in what they did for Satan because they were “cleaning up the streets” but now they were just murdering unfortunates. So, apparently, Ray thinks that some impoverished people are worth saving and others aren’t? Or that certain types of criminals deserve to die? That kinda seems like a big deal? The action sequences are cribbing a lot from giants of the genre in ways that feel frankly self-indulgent. Asia begins her evening at The Virgil sitting up in bed and clutching a lighter with a samurai etched into its casing, every flip of the lid suggesting the cut of a katana and a spray of red. It turns out that Asia also packed a machete, and soon she dispatches her first assailants with Kill Bill-esque gouts of blood. Later on in the film, Maria asks Asia where she learned to fight like that, and Asia glibly replies, “Prison.” You’d assume that meant we were in for a flashback of epic proportions, where we finally get introduced to Asia’s sensei? Ah… nope. That was the whole joke. Also, the samurai-style trappings are quickly dispensed with and never really return. There are grotesque body horror elements to contend with as well, as the immortal denizens of the building recover from every indignity that Asia visits on them. The only one that really garners the enjoyment it should is Sharon Vanderbilt’s (Heather Graham) plucked eyeball that rolls about trying to find Asia as her head regrows. It’s a lot of fun (even if the “regrowth” aspect doesn’t make much sense) until you notice that the eyeball can apparently hear all by itself? Sans ears? At which point, a really enjoyable bit promptly falls flat. Even noting that, I sort of wish the eyeball had become more of a main character throughout the film’s duration—it was one place where the film’s better tonality comes clear. The pig head on a stick as the avatar for the Devil is less exciting than they clearly think it is, though. If you’ve seen Peter Jackson’s earlier zombie films or anything Sam Raimi puts out or you went through a Cronenberg phase, this is just more of that thing you’ve already seen done better. The movie keeps upping the ante for action, and ends in the sort of bloodbath you’d expect, but the machinations stop being interesting long before we reach the summit. There’s also setup for a sequel that feels entirely unearned, though not surprising. It’s a shame because Beetz deserves a better career than the one she’s currently embarked on, and she is dead fun to watch. Someone give her a better action hero than this.[end-mark] The post <i>They Will Kill You</i> Is a Gore Fest Running Thin on Substance appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Horror Read an Excerpt From These Familiar Walls by C.J. Dotson Preteen Amber ignores her family’s misgivings when she befriends the troubled new kid in the neighborhood… By C.J. Dotson | Published on March 31, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from These Familiar Walls by C.J. Dotson, a suburban horror novel publishing with St. Martin’s Press on April 14th. In 1998, desperate loneliness pushes preteen Amber to ignore the misgivings of her family, particularly her younger sister, when she befriends the troubled new kid in the neighborhood—a boy with dead eyes, a fascination with fire, and no remorse. Their turbulent relationship is brief but creates lasting consequences.Twenty-two years later, in 2020, he resurfaces to kill Amber’s parents, and is in turn betrayed by his accomplice and killed in Amber’s childhood home.After the deaths, Amber inherits the house and, in an effort to save money, moves in with her husband and two children, hoping to reclaim some sense of stability in the grief and chaos surrounding her. Instead, she finds that the familiar walls are haunted by more than just bitter memories and lockdown stress. She shifts in and out of dreamlike trances, her reflection won’t meet her gaze, and a menacing voice whispers to her from the gathering shadows. Although she tried to brush off the strange happenings as stress-fueled hallucinations, Amber is soon forced to admit that something much more real—and more dangerous—haunts her family. But Amber has deadly secrets of her own, and she must resolve these long-buried truths or lose the life she’s contrived for herself. A Secret Place May 2020 Amber made her way to the room off the hall to the garage, formerly her and Hannah’s playroom, where she’d had the movers leave her home office supplies. As Ben called the kids to lunch, Amber shut and locked the door. She turned, letting her gaze wander. If she set her desk in the corner under the window, filing cabinet and printer in arm’s reach, the room would still be half empty. Maybe she could get a small sofa, and the built-in shelves were perfect for jigsaw puzzles and books. Tightly wound muscles in her back loosened, and Amber savored a bubble of growing pleasure in her chest; her office, a space for no one else, and the quiet to work in it, all alone. The movers had left the furniture along the wall farthest from the window, and boxes filled the middle of the room. Amber shifted the cardboard stacks out of the way. When she lifted the last box, the contents within slid with a series of soft clack-clacks. Opening that one first, she found a surprising number of candles, a handful of trinkets, a little green lighter, and a small decorative mirror with an oversized, ornate frame. Amber had no plan for these things, but it might be nice to arrange them on the built-in shelves, at least until she had a better idea. She started with a candle, a vanilla-scented pillar of creamy off-white. She set it on the shelf, scooped the lighter out of the box, and lit the wick. The soothing glow heightened the relaxation of this much-needed alone time. Amber let her gaze linger for a moment on the small flame. Next, she pulled the little mirror from the box. As she turned, an impression of motion in her peripheral vision made her pause. She glanced back down at the glass, and when she blinked—was her reflection slower to open its eyes than she’d been? The impression left as fast as it had come, and she saw nothing more than her face, tired and small in the overwrought frame. Come to think of it, Amber didn’t actually like that mirror much. Rather than prop it up next to the candle, she set it to one side, face down. The next candle came in a glass jar, dark green, with three wicks. She set it next to the first, began to turn away, then paused and picked up the lighter. Eyeing her desk, considering whether she could lift it or if she’d have to drag it across the carpet, Amber touched the flame to each wick. Artificial pine scent mingled with the vanilla. Lifting the desk proved possible, if strenuous. Amber walked it halfway across the small space before she set it down, leaned over, and pulled another candle from the box. This one was pink, in a holder with beads on it, and she lit it as well and set it with the others before she finished moving her desk. Everything would be right where she wanted it. When had she last felt this content? On her way back across the room, she stopped to fish out another candle, bright red and never burned. She lit it and set it down. A handful of tealights followed. Her wheeled office chair rolled easily to the desk. She put a sculpted-wax sea turtle candle on the shelf, one she’d had for so long she didn’t remember getting it, and lit the wick. Like the desk, the filing cabinet was too heavy to move in one go. That was okay, Amber didn’t have to rush. While she paused, she lit two more candles. A smooth, shiny wax sphere in swirling, glittering shades of brown came next, but the shelf was too full. That candle went onto the next one up. She set another simple pillar next to it and lit them both. Three more tealights fit in one hand. Two thin candles in old fashioned holders went one on each end. Time to start unpacking the office supplies. First, Amber reached into the box of decorations again. She felt around, paused, and glanced in at a clutter of odds and ends. She pushed aside a framed photo of her wedding day and moved a clumsy, handmade mug from Xander. No more candles. Irritation marred Amber’s relaxation. She wanted to light another candle. The annoyance gave way to perplexity. Wasn’t it strange that she’d run out? Hadn’t she just been surprised by the number of candles in this box? Amber turned to the shelves and her last scrap of soothing calm melted away. Nearly twenty candles flickered there, the flames small but numerous enough that the room had grown warm. The tall ones singed blackening spots onto the bottom of the shelf above them. Grimacing, Amber leaned forward and blew them all out. Ribbons of smoke drifted up from the wicks and Amber stared, her mind moving slowly. Why had she lit that many candles? She retraced her actions and shook her head. The furniture was arranged how she wanted it, she’d been working until the moment before, but the details were fuzzy. Strange. “I’m tired,” she told herself, surprised by the rasp in her voice. “It’s been a long couple days and I just had a… a weird blank moment.” The wicks left the room vaguely smoky, a scent that brought Nathan Teldegardo to mind, as he’d been the summer they’d met. A smell of smoke had always hung around him, sometimes faint but never missing. All the tension she’d banished while setting up her office crawled back up her spine, across her shoulders. Her one relaxing moment, spoiled. She wasn’t ready to go out again and put all the priority back on her role of parent and wife, but it was either that or keep working in the too-hot room, trying to ignore her unease and the hint of smoke. Rubbing her temples, Amber went out to face the rest of the day with a hesitant stride. From These Familiar Walls by C. J. Dotson. Copyright © 2026 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group. Buy the Book These Familiar Walls C.J. Dotson Buy Book These Familiar Walls C.J. Dotson Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Read an Excerpt From <i>These Familiar Walls</i> by C.J. Dotson appeared first on Reactor.

Books Front Lines and Frontiers New Wrinkles in Time: A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle The further adventures of the Murry family as they work for greater peace in the universe. By Alan Brown | Published on March 31, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement. Today, I’m going to look at A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the first two sequels to Madeleine L’Engle’s best-selling children’s book A Wrinkle in Time. I reviewed that first book recently, and enjoyed revisiting it so much, I decided to pick up the sequels, books I’d never got around to reading. I had told my wife about a boxed set of L’Engle’s work that I saw online for a reasonable price, and she bought it for my recent birthday. So, for this review, instead of books from the library, I’ve got my very own copies to read. I had thought that A Wrinkle in Time was the first book of a trilogy, but it turns out this boxed set contains five books, labeled as the “Time Quintet”: A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. This edition was published in 2007 by Square Fish, a Macmillan imprint I’d never encountered before. The cover paintings are by Taeeun Yoo, although they are more illustrated borders than full paintings. About the Author Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007) was an American author who frequently wrote for children, with themes that featured science fiction and fantasy. She also wrote a play, short stories, poetry, books for adults, and works on Christian theology. She found success with A Wrinkle in Time, and many of her later works were set in the same universe as that original book. I reviewed A Wrinkle in Time in a previous column, and that review contains additional biographical information. The works of Madeleine L’Engle’s have been mentioned many times on Reactor, and I would especially draw your attention to essays by Mari Ness, who looked at a number of L’Engle’s books. Some Thoughts on Fantasy Tropes Folk and fantasy tales are often based on common tropes and share familiar themes—for example, the hero’s journey, as discussed by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. There are three common tropes in particular that I personally do not care for, and since these tropes are central to A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, I’d like to discuss them before looking at the books themselves. The first trope is the idea of a protagonist being deliberately tested. In A Wind in the Door, Meg is told she will have to face three tests to heal damage both to the universe at large and to her younger brother. But it seems these tests are shaped by her evil opponents, which raises the question: are the forces of good and evil colluding to test her? It reminds me of the biblical tale of the trials faced by Job, where Satan seems to be acting as a subordinate of God, and not a rival. In A Wind in the Door, we never get an answer of why Meg specifically has been chosen for these tests. In A Wrinkle in Time, she is on a mission to rescue her father, and their family bonds are crucial to that rescue. But in A Wind in the Door, there is no such bond. The second trope I dislike is the idea of the intrinsically evil other, an opponent who is simply evil for evil’s sake. I much prefer tales with well developed protagonists and antagonists to those populated by cardboard heroes and villains. In A Wrinkle in Time, the forces of evil were never really defined or named, but in these two sequels, they are given a name: Echthroi (a Greek word that means “enemies”). And it is made clear that they are the architects of the evil that plagues our world. This attribution of evil acts to the influence of an outside force takes away the agency of the people performing those acts. Human anger, greed, and selfishness are quite sufficient to generate suffering in the world without any outside force. And branding opponents as agents of evil prevents us from understanding their own motivations, making it difficult to resolve conflicts without resorting to violence. One of the strengths of A Wind in the Door is that, after engaging in the trope of the evil other throughout the book, in the end Meg moves beyond labels and works to understand her opponents. The third trope that tries my patience is that of special bloodlines. A Swiftly Tilting Planet shows the world at the brink of a nuclear holocaust, and sends young Charles Wallace through time to find a “Might Have Been,” a decision that could alter the course of history, and remove the threat of war. And it turns out that the branch in history came from who married who in the past. In the days of kings and nobility, bloodlines and breeding were seen as a force that gave people innate nobility or other special qualities, but this idea has largely been discarded in modern times. Despite being abandoned in the real world, however, the idea of certain bloodlines being special persists in fiction. While genetics shapes our biology, it is environment, upraising, and education that shapes a person, their ethics, and their behavior. It is a testimony to L’Engle’s storytelling ability that she was able to keep me engaged through both A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet despite the books being shaped by tropes I dislike. A Wind in the Door About a year after the events of A Wrinkle in Time, Meg Murry is still scrappy and impulsive, although she now is more self-assured and in a relationship with Calvin O’Keefe. Her youngest brother, Charles Wallace, tells her there is a dragon in the yard, but she initially doesn’t believe him. What concerns her are the bullies who are harassing Charles Wallace and beating him up at elementary school, where his discussions of issues beyond the comprehension of his fellow students, and even his teachers, are causing him to stand out from the crowd. She goes there to confront Mr. Jenkins, the principal of the school (and her old nemesis). He is not eager to listen to a youngster, but does not have his own viable solution to Charles Wallace’s problem with bullies. Later, in her own yard, Meg has an encounter with a creature who appears to be Mr. Jenkins, but disappears with a scream that leaves her terrified. Later, out at their favorite stargazing spot, Meg and Calvin see what Charles Wallace had told her was a flock of dragons, but is actually a single creature with a plethora of mismatched wings and eyes, who greets them with the statement, “Do not be afraid.” This creature is a cherubim, Proginoskes, who fits the biblical description of angels and cherubim (which is quite unlike the version embraced by most art and popular culture). Progo, as they nickname him, is quirky and abrasive, and turns out to be one of the best characters in the book. He is joined by a large dark man, Blajeny, who is a “Teacher,” and is there to teach Meg how to be a “Namer,” which will involve three tests. As a character, Blajeny is unfortunately a wasted opportunity, as he never becomes anything more than a mysterious presence. Progo takes Meg to another planet, and shows her how forces of evil, the Echthroi, are wreaking destruction across the universe, destroying or ‘X’ing things from the size of stars right down to tiny living cells. This explains why Mr. Murry is off doing scientific work for the government during this adventure, because astronomers have detected some of this destruction on the macro scale. It then turns out school bullying is the least of Charles Wallace’s problems. His health is deteriorating, and Mrs. Murry thinks it might be farandolae, invisible organelles within his mitochondria. Meg’s success with her tests may be the key to saving Charles Wallace’s life. At this point, one would think that Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace might recall their previous adventures and experiences in the previous book, but they don’t. Perhaps it was felt that writing a sequel without referring to the previous volume would make it more accessible to new readers. But the adventures of the characters in A Wrinkle in Time were so transformative that not mentioning them makes the story feel a bit disconnected and strange (and since Mr. Murry had become capable of teleporting to other worlds by using his mind, his new role of consulting with the government seems a vast underutilization of his abilities). Meg’s first challenge comes when she meets three versions of Mr. Jenkins, and must decide which is the original. Surprisingly, once Meg figures it out, she feels compelled to ask him to accompany them on their next adventure. Mr. Jenkins agrees, even though, after seeing the evil copies of himself and hearing about evil creatures who want to destroy the universe, he would be well within his rights to curl up in a ball, ignore her invitation, and cry a little. Progo then takes the trio to a far-off world where they can be transformed into something small enough to interact with the tiny farandolae. There, they meet a mysterious silver mousy/shrimpy creature named Sporos, who turns out to be a farandole himself. And then they are transported to a cell within Charles Wallace’s body. It turns out the Echthroi are there, encouraging Sporos and his fellow farandolae to selfishly not transform into the next stage of their existence, a process essential to Charles Wallace’s health. And it is up to Meg, Calvin, and Mr. Jenkins to encourage them to embrace their destiny. Meg learns to “kyth,” a way to link telepathically to other people and creatures. Learning Mr. Jenkins had once been kind and provided Calvin with new shoes when his own abusive family would not, Meg begins to appreciate him, and that generosity turns out to be a key to completing this second test. Meg’s final test, to interact with the Echthroi, involves her developing a rapport with them, and “naming” them, a process I didn’t really understand, but seems to be a way that love and understanding can overcome the forces of hate. And it will be no surprise that, in the end, everyone is reunited, Charles Wallace is healed, and Mr. Murry returns home just in time to hear what happened (reacting with a remarkable degree of acceptance). L’Engle is adept at rooting her tales in the details of ordinary life, and those are the parts of the book I enjoyed the best. I found the more fantastic parts of the narrative less than believable, even though they were wrapped in the trappings of science. A Swiftly Tilting Planet This book jumps forward ten years. Meg Murry is now married to Calvin and carrying her first child. He is overseas to present an academic paper at a conference, and it is Thanksgiving, so Meg is spending the holidays with her parents, and sleeping in her old attic room. Charles Wallace is now a teenager. Calvin’s mother, the abrasive Mrs. O’Keefe, has decided to accept an invitation to dinner, and her presence has unsettled the family. Of course, the family is even more unsettled by the looming possibility of a nuclear war, threatened by a South American dictator called Mad Dog Branzillo, who leads the fictional nation of Vespugia, located somewhere in the Patagonian region. Mr. Murry receives a request for advice from the President, which amazes Mrs. O’Keefe (in this, she reflects the viewpoint of readers who might feel the Murry family is a bit too intelligent and capable to be believable). Mrs. O’Keefe decided to come to dinner because she is convinced that Charles Wallace has something important to do, and teaches him a verse she says will protect him, a verse taught to her by an Irish grandmother, which resembles a prayer known as Saint Patrick’s Breastplate. Charles Wallace goes out to the stargazing rock and recites a portion of the verse, which summons a winged unicorn named Gaudior. The unicorn tells him he must travel through history and view it through the eyes of a series of other people (with most of those people being located near the Wallaces’ present-day home). Only by telepathically merging with these people scattered in time can Charles Wallace find the “Might-Have-Been,” a point where a person’s actions can be changed to prevent the impending nuclear war. Gaudior warns that during their travels they will face attacks from the Echthroi. As he moves through history, Charles Wallace will kyth with Meg, which will help anchor him to the present day. This at first seemed to be overly complex, with Meg linking telepathically to Charles Wallace who is linking with people from the past, but it did serve to keep Charles Wallace’s episodic adventures in the past a bit more grounded. Charles Wallace first observes a boy in the mythical past who rides a giant bird. Then, after he and Gaudior survive an Echthroi attack, he observes a boy who is an early Welsh immigrant to the New World, who also knows the verse Mrs. O’Keefe taught to Charles Wallace. We see the Welsh travelers intermarry with local inhabitants. And through this series of different characters from over history, we see the ancestors of the O’Keefe and Murry families face witch trials, survive the Civil War, and encounter other challenges. We also see how some family members emigrate to Vespugia, tying the families to the current-day dictator. Traveling through both time and space is dangerous, and Gaudior and Charles Wallace survive a gripping sequence that revolves around the perils posed by a wet rope after they lash themselves together (sometimes a threat posed by a common object is easier to imagine than monsters or existential threats). Throughout these adventures, Meg gathers information in the present to help guide Charles Wallace in his efforts. To be honest, I found some of these segments tedious, with the people from the past feeling like clichés instead of characters. And, as I mentioned above, I find narratives that involve promoting the specialness or superiority of certain bloodlines to be distasteful. The one historical episode I did find satisfying was learning about Mrs. O’Keefe’s past and seeing the traumas that had shaped her life, making her a more sympathetic character. Like the other books, the interactions between family members and the details of their ordinary lives were my favorite elements of the story. Final Thoughts Madeleine L’Engle’s work remains in print for good reason. She had a wonderful gift for telling stories through elegant prose, and grounding even the most fantastic elements with details that made them feel real and lived in. Her characters are compelling, and her stories are suffused with positive messages, without being heavy-handed. While the books sometimes rely on storytelling tropes and conventions I do not enjoy, L’Engle kept me engaged and turning the pages. And now I turn the floor over to you: If you’ve read A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, or other books by L’Engle, I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.[end-mark] The post New Wrinkles in Time: <i>A Wind in the Door</i> and <i>A Swiftly Tilting Planet</i> by Madeleine L’Engle appeared first on Reactor.

News Supergirl Kara Makes Friends (Sorta) And Must Save Krypto in the New Supergirl Trailer I just think there are other ways to create tension than putting cute animals in danger By Molly Templeton | Published on March 31, 2026 Screenshot: DC Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: DC Studios What did we say last time, DC Studios? We said DON’T HURT THE DOG. But of course they didn’t listen. The latest trailer for director Craig Gillespie’s Supergirl gives a little more sense of what kicks off the plot of this movie—and it’s not pretty. Avert your eyes, dog-lovers: The villainous Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts) takes a shot at Krypto, who then “has three days.” And he’s all Kara (Milly Alcock) has got, you know? We get friendly, people-loving Superman (David Corenswet) on a TV screen to drive this home. She hasn’t found her people. She thinks she doesn’t have any. But at that point, she hasn’t met Lobo (Jason Momoa) yet. Or Ruthye (Eve Ridley), the kid with whom she’s going to team up with on “an epic, interstellar journey of vengeance and justice.” (She may also be teaming up with Lobo; the synopsis refers to an “unlikely companion,” which could be either. Or both!) Supergirl used to have the subtitle Woman of Tomorrow, which is the name of the Tom King & Bilquis Evely comic series that inspired the film. It has since lost that subtitle. The basic plot—the team-up with Ruthye, the villain—remains the same; the color palette, though, is notably different from the comic, which might make a person wonder how much else the movie has changed. The screenplay is by Ana Nogueira, who is working on a whole pile of DC productions. Director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya; Pam & Tommy) remains an odd choice for this project. Supergirl is in theaters June 26.[end-mark] The post Kara Makes Friends (Sorta) And Must Save Krypto in the New <i>Supergirl</i> Trailer appeared first on Reactor.