News Skyward Brandon Sanderson’s Sci-Fi Novel Skyward Being Adapted Into a TV Series The Cytoverse is coming to television By Matthew Byrd | Published on May 20, 2026 Image: Charlie Bowater (artist) Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Charlie Bowater (artist) Brandon Sanderson’s Cytoverse will make the leap to television as Deadline reports that the author’s hit sci-fi novel Skyward is being adapted into a TV series. Sanderson will reportedly write the pilot for the just-announced series alongside Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen (who previously served as the showrunners for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). The show will be produced by Tomorrow Studios, who you may know as the studio behind Netflix’s hit One Piece live-action series. Tomorrow Studios’ CEO Marty Adelstein had this to say about the project. “Brandon has created a thrilling universe where courage, curiosity and determination to challenge what we think can change the fate of entire worlds. The vision that he, Jed and Maurissa have for a television adaptation is ‘defiant to the end’.” Skyward stars a teenage girl named Spensa who lives on the ruined world of Detritus with a band of shipwrecked survivors. Spensa dreams of becoming a pilot in the society’s defense force but must overcome her family’s tarnished legacy in order to be accepted into the academy. As noted above, Skyward is the first entry in the Cytoverse: a series of stories that exist in an imagined version of our own future in which various individuals across many species have access to powerful psionic abilities known as Cytonics. So far, the Cytoverse consists of the Skyward series and the short story Defending Elysium. There’s no word on any plans to adapt the subsequent books in that series or Defending Elysium at this time. It’s a busy time for Brandon Sanderson, to say the least. As we previously reported, the author recently signed a massive deal with Apple TV to write and produce shows and movies based on The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn series. At present, the plan is for The Stormlight Archive to be adapted into a TV series while Mistborn will be turned into feature films. The Skyward adaptation appears to be separate from those other projects, and there has been no indication that this new series will also air on Apple TV at this time. We’ll bring you further information on this story as it becomes available.[end-mark] The post Brandon Sanderson’s Sci-Fi Novel <i>Skyward</i> Being Adapted Into a TV Series appeared first on Reactor.

News Daniels Matt Damon to Star in Daniels’ First Movie Since Everything Everywhere All at Once Ryan Gosling was originally considering the role By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on May 20, 2026 Photo: Universal Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Universal Pictures Daniels (aka Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the writer-directors behind Everything Everywhere All at Once) are close to production on their next film. What that next feature is about has been very hush-hush. Today, however, The Hollywood Reporter has shared some general plot details and the news that Matt Damon will star in the project. According to the trade, the Universal Pictures movie involves “global warming, time travel, as well as a possible superhero angle.” It also takes place across two timelines: the 1980s and present day. The movie will reportedly have teenage protagonists (probably in the 1980s timeline?), but today we found out that Matt Damon (pictured above in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, The Odyssey) will be playing a dad of at least one of those timelines. Ryan Gosling, again according to THR, was supposedly eyeing the role but wanted the character to play a larger role. Rewriting the script (again), however, would impact the production schedule, so Daniels pivoted from Gosling, reportedly considered Jack Black(!) and then closed a deal with Damon. With Damon confirmed, it looks like casting for the teens is underway. No news yet on whose a contender for that, or what else this film involving time travel, climate change, and superheroes will be about. Given it comes from the duo behind Everything Everywhere All at Once, however, odds are good it will at the very least be an interesting watch. [end-mark] The post Matt Damon to Star in Daniels’ First Movie Since <i>Everything Everywhere All at Once</i> appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Young Adult Read an Excerpt From Bound by Fury by Noelle Monét A teen’s newly awakened magical abilities send her searching for answers at an elite boarding school… By Noelle Monét | Published on May 20, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Bound by Fury by Noelle Monét, a new young adult contemporary fantasy novel out from Margaret K. McElderry Books on August 18th. Harper grew up loving her grandma Gigi’s stories about pretty brown girls with magic from the stars, but they were just that—stories… until Gigi’s sudden death awakens a dangerous power building beneath Harper’s skin. Desperate for answers, Harper finds herself drawn to an elite boarding school in the Appalachian Mountains.A school that Gigi herself attended, and one rumored to be haunted by the ghosts of witches past.Harper arrives at Black Mountain Academy determined to learn about her burgeoning power, even if that means dealing with Kai, her grumpy ex-best friend now hellbent on getting her to leave campus, and his cousin, Lucas, who won’t let her forget the almost-kiss from last summer. But Black Mountain Academy was built on secrets, and the deeper Harper digs, the more sinister rot she finds lurking beneath.When Harper unearths a chilling local legend about the gruesome deaths of twelve witches on campus, she feels an uncanny connection to the women. But someone doesn’t want her exposing the school’s dark past, and when it becomes clear they’ll kill to stop her, Harper has to decide whether to leave her history behind or risk everything for the truth of her own identity. Earnest, NC. 1926 Twelve nooses swing in the damp mountain air. Great oak branches bow beneath the hold of fraying taupe. The snap of fracturing wood moans below the howling wind, the ropes pulled taut against the weight of twelve bodies—limp and swelling quickly. Each face covered by a black sack. Stark-white paint the color of starlight crudely splattered in warning. She stands in the center of it all. Wind whips through her coiled hair, the strands catching on the fissures in her downturned lips. A furious glint shines in her mist-choked eyes. Her hands rest on a barely swollen belly. Around her the ashes of a once-sacred ground lash against her legs like shards of glass. Charred and splintered maple and birch. The heat-bent remnants of the bell. The hollow, mangled belfry. Of course, it all started long ago, far before any of them can remember. But she saw it clear as day. How history has a way of coming back around. Tonight, twelve witches have met an unfortunate fate. Above them the sky is a reverent void. The stars shine, their knowing glint illuminating the gruesome scene. The stench of sulfur and the slither of shadows precede the men in swirls like ribbons that curl across the ground like writhing snakes. Each man is cloaked in the deep red of spilled blood as one by one they wrap their hands around a strand of rope and pull at the still-warm bodies, lowering them to the ground with a solid thump. Deep down in the depths of the mountain, something stirs. A beast in waiting. Slumbering with a grumble that shakes the ground beneath her feet. She’d like to think the men can’t see it on her face. The satisfaction. The hunger for retribution. She’d like to think she isn’t snarling at them like she is, her lips pulled back, her teeth bared, her jaw clenched so tight, she fears she’ll crack a bone. In the distance the cliff plummets, and for a moment the woman thinks of running to it. Of flinging herself over the edge, of welcoming the unending bliss of eternal darkness. But she can’t. Not when she’s carrying this blessing inside her. When it is well and truly done and the bodies are piled for cremation, she drops to her knees, the pads of her fingers brushing the base of her throat. She’s nauseatingly empty. The effects of this night far more significant than she’d imagined. Tears stain her chest as she digs her nails into the soil and makes promise after promise. Twelve promises for revenge. Twelve promises for a miracle. Twelve promises for the prophecy come to lay claim, sealing all their fates. 1 Dawson’s Mini-Mart is a hole-in-the-wall convenience store crammed between a once-shuttered, four-screen movie theater and Gary’s Guns ’N’ Pawn. The sidewalks lining downtown Earnest are made of time-darkened clay bricks, and are hemmed by flowering dogwoods with blossoms like spun cotton and crape myrtles that bloom bright pink in the summertime. By late August even the breeze carrying down from the Appalachian peaks is warmer than what’s comfortable, and though it’s overcast, the humidity still coats like a second skin. It thickens the air until you’re choking on it. Until your flesh feels like it might as well just go ahead and slough off, it’d be more comfortable to be all bones anyhow. I long for turning leaves and the sharp scent of winter’s approach. I’ve never had the autumn winds and pumpkins along Main Street, the festival lights strung up in rainbow colors, or the snow piled in drifts along the backroads. At least, not here in Earnest, where I belong. Though now that I might finally get it, I never imagined it would happen like this. Bells chime against the shop door as I slam through it, eyeing the sun-faded posters plastered across it like tinted window cling. I stall on the one in the middle, less worn than the rest. The photo is obscured by the Sharpie mustache some shithead kid drew, but the black block letters printed along the bottom echo the flyers outside—one duct-taped to the lamppost on the corner, another tucked beneath the wipers of the broken down beater out front. They’re spread like whirligig seeds all over this town. MISSING. The word sits in my belly like lead, and the back of my hand swipes across the sweat beading my upper lip as I make a beeline for the packaged desserts aisle. Buy the Book Bound by Fury Noelle Monét Buy Book Bound by Fury Noelle Monét Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget While I scan the shelves, my fingers find my phone again. I glance down at the black screen, tap it, sigh. No notifications. I need snacks for my solo, matinee viewing of Jacob Elordi’s newest movie, but I can’t stop thinking about what my mother said before I left the house this morning. I found this in your pocket while doing the laundry. You should wear it. It’s what she wanted. My chest still burns with shame. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to wear the necklace at first. I’d merely tucked it into my pocket and carried it with me, a weight to keep me tethered to the ground when all I wanted to do was float up, up, and away from here. From this ache. Releasing a shaking breath, I curl my fist around the curious gold charm, the metal warm against my palm as I shove those thoughts back into their box. Instead I turn my attention to the apple fritters. Should I get those or the rainbow brownies? A package of frosted mini donuts is crinkling beneath my touch when the old woman previously stationed behind the counter rounds the corner. Our eyes meet briefly, and we both do that strained, close-lipped grin of greeting. Every time I turn into a new aisle, I tense, wondering if this will be the moment that I come face-to-face with one of the boys. I can see it—our three sets of sticky fingers rummaging through the ice-pop freezer, back when Mr. Mahoney was still the owner, and we could slip through the legs of vacationers like water, coins clattering onto the counter as we ran back out into the blistering sun. The memories are a knife in my gut, and the pain only worsens when I recall what I saw last night. The glow from the window across the way. Malachi’s silhouette dancing against the gauzy curtains. A year of silence stretches between us. Unanswered questions. The rage of knowing how disastrously things ended last summer. I can’t tell if I’m desperate to see him again because I miss him so much, I can’t breathe—or because I’m desperate to wring his neck. Still, the heaviness of guilt unfurls in my chest. It’s all my fault. I touch my pocket, just in case my phone is vibrating and I haven’t noticed. It’s not. The cashier is busying herself with straightening the shelves, her pale hands idling on boxes of Ho Hos as her eyes cut to me once again. Weaving my way into the next aisle, I stiffen as she trails after me. I will the heat that burns in my lungs to go away. But it creeps, languishing in red as it blooms outward, spreading beneath my skin, darkening the tips of my ears, the back of my neck. I swipe a two-pack of Zebra Cakes off the shelf and turn another corner, rolling my shoulders against the building tension. I haven’t had a single fucking second to breathe in the last month. Not since I woke up on my sixteenth birthday and padded into my grandmother’s room, a strange, tingle-like anticipation buzzing across my skin. Instead of a sea of balloons to trip over and a wall of birthday streamers, what I found was a barren hallway and a closed bedroom door, wide open eyes and a mouth agape, and a pulse so thready I could have sworn it wasn’t there. Instead of sprinkle cake and sparkler candles, what I got was a throat ripped raw from screaming and bruised knees and the feel of her ribs cracking beneath my hands. No one tells you how bad giving CPR sucks. No one tells you that you have to hurt people to save them. And I did save her. But at what cost, and for how long? I grip the handle of the glass refrigerator and grab a soda, swallowing the lump in my throat. The cashier’s shuffling steps hit my eardrums like claps of thunder, and I try—and fail—to bury my growing agitation as I wander into the next aisle. Again, I grab my phone. Nothing. I rotate it in my hands. Short side, long side, short side, long side. Behind me a fluorescent light flickers. My mother told me she’d call the second anything changes. The nurses practically pushed me out the door. Said something about self-care. That she’s safe with them. Platitudes meant to placate me. I blow a raspberry as my gaze shifts to the rounded mirror at the end of the row, and I watch as seconds later, the cashier rolls back into view. Holding my breath, I will away the words barred by the gate of my clenched teeth. I press my palms against my thighs to staunch the tremor pulsing through my hands. The keys on the woman’s belt rattle as she continues to track me through the store, each scraping of the metal like a scalding nail down my spine. Truthfully, this feeling has been building in me for days. My composure a fraying thread that’s always one inconvenience away from snapping. Despite the fact that Gigi hasn’t said a word since her stroke, she spent all yesterday jackknifing up from her bed, her bony, now-emaciated hands ripping at the gown, pulling it from her neck like she was trying to escape from something. I spent the day covering and re-covering her chest and whispering into her hair, “It’s okay. You can go now. You can go now.” When the meds finally lulled her into a fitful sleep, I watched the glittering stars from her hospice room window and willed the stories of my childhood to be true. Begged them to be true. Stories of pretty brown girls with magic in their blood. Stories of generations of women born of the stars. They were bedtime stories and make-believe, but they never failed to bring a smile to my grandmother’s lips. I’d forgotten them, too caught up in everything hard and real about life. But last night I pulled out every memory I could find and laid them bare in front of me. I squeezed my eyes shut so hard, I got a tension headache, and I prayed for a miracle. I prayed for power, for magic, for secrets—anything to save her. But there was nothing. Nothing inside me but despair. Behind me the woman clears her throat, and it’s like a surge of searing light cuts through my mind. The tinge of blood floods my mouth, and I sniffle, glancing over my shoulder. The woman is still there, watching me. I spin on my heel. “Can I help you?” Graying eyebrows shoot to her forehead as the she holds up her hands. “I’m just doing my job.” Somewhere in the back of the store a beeping begins. I shake my head. My skin burns like it’s on fire. The air around me undulates like heat waves off a summer road. “No, you’re following me around the store. Why?” The woman sputters, but her eyes are hard. “I know your type. It ain’t illegal for me to protect what’s mine. You come in here checking your phone like you waiting on somethin’. Y’all think that ’cause we just simple white folk, we don’t know your ways? The law applies to you just like it do e’rybody else.” As if I give a shit about this crotchety old lady or her dusty-ass store. It doesn’t matter how many times something like this happens—just because I saw it coming doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. “Are you kidding me?” My hands ball at my sides, and her eyes flicker to them warily. “I’m not stealing anything, lady. I’m just trying to buy a snack.” The sardonic grin that splits her face makes my stomach knot. “I ain’t no goddamn idiot! You may not be stealing, but that’s only ’cause I’m here keeping my eye on you. That’s the only way your kind will ever stay in line. Might as well go back to wherever the hell you come from if you don’t like it!” Confusion and ire war within me. This woman doesn’t even know who she’s discriminating against—all she sees is the brown of my skin and the width of my nose and the curl of my hair. It doesn’t matter to her what I am, just that I am not like her. The high-pitched beeping at the back of the store crescendos as fury, bitter on my tongue, overtakes me. My Gigi is dying, and this woman wants to accuse me of trying to steal from her?! My whole body shakes as I regard her sneer, the way her hand hovers at her phone, finger poised above the nine. Gigi would say that I should rise above, but that’s where we differ. I don’t want to rise above racists. I want to meet them in the depths of hell and watch as the fire melts the flesh from their bones. Static burns at the tips of my fingers, something raw and uncomfortable cracking open at my core, flooding my veins. My vision blurs, the layering of a thousand murmuring voices in countless languages buzzes in my head, disorienting me. The woman looks at me expectantly, 911 dialed on her phone. I open my mouth to spit my response, but my words are stolen by the sprinklers in the ceiling as they activate. The first droplet of water hits my face, and instantly the feeling evaporates—whatever the fuck that was. Gripping the store shelves, I turn my face to the sky and let the artificial rain douse the flames of my anger. “What the hell?” the woman screeches, abandoning our argument and bridging her fingers over her head as she scampers toward the back of the store. My heartbeat slows to a dull thud as I abandon my Zebra Cakes for a bag of chips and a Kit-Kat and walk past the register, tossing a ten-dollar bill on the counter and flipping off the camera that stares from the corner. I feel empty now that the pressure in my chest has dissipated and I’ve returned to my baseline existential panic. Like a piece of me has up and run away. But in the hollow of its absence, something stirs. No longer in the mood for a movie, I burst through the door and round the corner with only one regret as my phone begins to ring in my pocket. I should’ve just stolen the shit. Excerpted from Bound by Fury, copyright © 2026 by Noelle Monét. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Bound by Fury</i> by Noelle Monét appeared first on Reactor.

Books Short Fiction Spotlight Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: April 2026 This month’s best stories include a frozen home, an AI book club, and a record deal that’s too good to be true… By Alex Brown | Published on May 20, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share What do intrusive AI, strange houses, animal conservation, and labor exploitation have in common? This column! My ten favorite short science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories I read in April explore these themes in weird ways. “book club for bots” by Clay McLeod Chapman (Three-Lobed Burning Eye — March 2026; issue 47) By this point, we’ve all heard of those AI book club scams, right? The ones where an author gets a long, overly effusive, and obviously LLM-generated email from someone claiming to run a book club that wants to bring the author in as a guest speaker. If you’re an author, there’s a good chance you’ve gotten one yourself. Chapman’s story takes that premise and rips it open to expose its gooey guts. Our protagonist, Clay, is an author who feels under appreciated. AI bots give him exactly what he asks for, and it doesn’t go well for him. “Dear Search Committee” by Tehnuka (Baffling — April 2026; issue 23) The Wandering Knight submits her application to be the next King of Peatland, but the interview process doesn’t go the way she, the Princess of Peatland, or the hiring committee expect. On the surface, this is a fun little romp through a fantasy land. But dig a little deeper and the critique of imperialism, resource extraction, and xenophobia become apparent. A clever piece of queer speculative fiction. “Digital Love Spell – 78% Effective!” by Katharine Tyndall (Fusion Fragment — March 2026; issue 27) So, I’m asexual and aromantic and I don’t date. One of the best parts of figuring out that part of my identity was the realization that I never had to wade into the dating scene ever again. Reading stories like Tyndall’s and hearing what my cisallohet friends go through on dating apps, I cannot express to you the blissful relief I feel at not having to do that. Tyndall blends the horror of dating apps with the uncannyness of AI. When I finished this story, all I could think was “don’t let the tech bros read this.” We all know they have a habit of building the Torment Nexus despite sci-fi explicitly telling them not to. And with the incursion of AI into dating apps, it’s not long before they try what Tyndall warns them not to. “The Girl Detective” by Nadia Radovich (Cast of Wonders — April 20, 2026; issue 684) What a beautiful story! Each vignette takes place every decade of the protagonist’s life, from twelve to her sixties. The two preteens play a computer game, The Girl Detective, but the game’s owner, Zofia, dies in seventh grade. The protagonist recalls that girl detective over and over, her influence on their life popping up again and again. It’s the kind of story that makes you want to call up your bestie for a chat. “The House Knows” by Meghan Arcuri (Diabolical Plots — April 2026; issue 134A) This one really weirded me out (complimentary). A beleaguered spouse returns home to find their husband and daughter frozen. The whole house is silent and still as if trapped in amber. Worse, this isn’t the first time this has happened. But what bothers the spouse more is their daughter’s refusal to use a coaster and their husband day drinking while watching yet another James Bond marathon. I could see this story being a side plot on Widow’s Bay. (Side note: why aren’t you watching Widow’s Bay?!) “I Spin Records Into Gold” by Daria Lavelle (Reactor — April 29, 2026) A rock band in the 1970s—named, funnily enough, Nirvana—gets the chance of a lifetime. All it takes is for them to sacrifice their futures. When they learn that all that glitters is not gold and they try to take back control, they lose everything. It’s hard to talk about this great fairytale-esque story without spoiling the big reveal, but all you really need to know is that you should read it. “Raja” by Moh Afdhaal (Flashpoint SF — April 2026; issue 2) I didn’t expect to get all teary-eyed from flash, but this story got me good. Raja is the name of both a mahout and his elephant, but neither are what you think they are. Afdhaal does a surprising twist at the end that tugged on my heartstrings. The story is a lovely bit of commentary on labor exploitation. “Rara Avis” by Meg Elison (Kaleidotrope — Spring 2026) In this version of our world, pterosaurs still exist. In Mexico, quetzalcoatlus roam, and in New York, where Andrew Zhao lives, there are nyctosaurs. Pterosaurs and humans live mostly side-by-side in the same way bears and mountain lions live next to us in our world. And like our world, in the story the pterosaurs’ habitat is encroached on enough that they start hunting people and pets. But this isn’t a horror story. Elison doesn’t offer a happy or tragic ending, nor is this a story offering solutions. It is a slice of one man’s life in a world he can’t fix but that he can still appreciate and try to do what he can to improve. “What the Trees Took Back” by Marvin Garbeh Davis, Sr. (The Deadlands — Spring 2026; issue 42) “The rubber plantation stretched for miles, the Hevea trees planted in straight, obedient lines that obeyed no man but the Company…But Row Four was not like the others. Here, the scars were not only on trees.” On a rubber tree plantation is a row of trees that aren’t trees. Zuo lost his father to the plantation, and when he gets the opportunity to destroy what destroyed his family, he takes it. When we talk about there being no ethical consumption under capitalism, this is what we mean. “Windows” by Ibrahim Ojedokun (The Dark — April 2026; issue 131) “We have always been what we are: openings. People look through us to see what lies beyond. We don’t see how that’s bad.” A house in an up-and-coming neighborhood in Ibadan, Nigeria, receives several residents over the course of several decades. In each family, one (or more) are ensnared by the windows. They can’t stop looking through them. What do they see? Nothing extraordinary. Why do they look? Not even they know. Occupant after occupant, each searching for something. A chilling horror story.[end-mark] The post Must Read Short Speculative Fiction: April 2026 appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Exploring the Other: The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang Jenny Hamilton reviews a novella that’s “dizzyingly ambitious in scope and morality.” By Jenny Hamilton | Published on May 20, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Ro has always cherished dreams of becoming a Senior Linguist, and since his acceptance at the Warren, he’s dreamed of something greater still: making the “jump” to occupy the body of a Star Eater, the most mysterious species in the galaxy. While he acknowledges some moral reservations about the process—is it right to displace a living Star Eater from its own body, even for the short span of Ro’s Ponto lifespan?—he’s desperately eager for the knowledge he can gather and send back to his home planet of Orro. Yet his Seniors say he’s too scattered, not serious enough, not focused enough. Just as he begins to doubt his fitness for the jump, he achieves it. In the body of a Star Eater, Ro begins to learn ugly truths that his Warren has kept from him—truths about his own species and the galaxy as a whole. Still, he’s determined to do his best for his home planet, amidst the constant terror that he will be discovered as a fraud. The Star Eater language is such a tricky one, so foreign even to a talented linguist like Ro, and the Star Eaters themselves are standoffish and purely focused on the work of harvesting meridian, the galaxy’s most precious resource. Ro, accustomed to the warm and cuddly nature of his own Ponto species, struggles to acclimate to the strange, chilly Star Eater culture. There’s a lot that The Language of Liars does well. Ro isn’t human, the Star Eaters aren’t human, and as far as we can tell, nobody in this galaxy is human. It’s a pure secondary world, or else humans have gone extinct, and Huang’s clever about exploring the embodied experience of her non-human protagonist. I pictured Ro like a largeish, upright rabbit or otter—something sweet—although here again, Huang includes signifiers that prevent the reader from settling into any one-to-one correspondence with familiar creatures for Ro or the Star Eaters. Their otherness is the point, allowing Huang to highlight the fundamental person-ness of people, regardless of species or background. It also makes the world feel fully fleshed out—impressively so, for a novella! Huang cleverly channels this through Ro’s all-consuming interest in linguistics, so that we hear about numerous worlds, planets, and species via their use of slang, or their anomalous use of personal and relative pronouns, or their vowel placement. As I was reading, I kept thinking how stress-testable the world of the book felt, like I could exert some pressure on its world-building mechanisms, and I would find solid drywall behind them. It’s impressive for any book, but particularly for a book of novella length, and I did keep having to pause to give thanks for the blossoming of the novella form over the last ten years of SFF. Huang uses a similarly clever mechanism to clue in readers on the backstory of the Star Eaters. Each chapter begins with a quote or excerpt or transcript relating to the Star Eaters and their current status in the galactic conglomerate. This could have been unbelievably clunky, but Huang is deft about conveying exposition without making it seem like exposition. The transcript of a debate about Star Eater gender hints at broader galactic conversations about Star Eaters; the remarks of a so-called political commentator suggests the ugly, acquisitive xenophobia lurking beneath the veneer of civilization. Sometimes I think I have read too many books. Like maybe there was some Book Rubicon I crossed that doesn’t allow me to experience joy anymore. This concern is untouched by the knowledge that I have, on this very site, in this very year, raved and screamed about multiple books I adored. Maybe those were the last ones! Maybe I have loved the last books I will ever love! This came up for me with SL Huang’s The Language of Liars, a book I had every confidence would be a top-five favorite of the year. I’ve loved SL Huang’s work in the past—her Cas Russell series did not receive the attention I felt it deserved—and I knew The Language of Liars was going to be about linguistics and atrocities, two of my absolute tip-top favorite things for science fiction to be about. And yet. To discuss this in more detail, I’ll have to reveal the big twist of the story, so please consider this your spoiler warning. You’ve been warned. I’m going to talk about it now. Ready? Here we go. Buy the Book The Language of Liars S.L. Huang Buy Book The Language of Liars S.L. Huang Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget At the end of the book, we find out that there are no more living Star Eaters. Contrary to what Ro has been taught, many species—not just the Ponto—can make the jump into Star Eater bodies, and they have been doing so for decades, occupying Star Eater bodies to harvest meridian, then siphoning off meridian supplies for use by their home planets. Little by little, the Star Eaters have been replaced, all of them, by people from other planets, each hoping to get a cut of the precious supply of meridian, each willing to commit what they believed was a one-off theft of Star Eater personhood. Terrible, perhaps, but worth it for the greater good of their own species. The reveal in The Language of Liars hit the way it was supposed to, a gut-punch. And then I finished the book, and I closed it, and two minutes passed, and I thought, oh no, but this doesn’t make any sense. The reveal is thematic, allegorical, a story about how small, individual choices, made by mostly well-intentioned people, can become, in aggregate, a massive, unrecoverable atrocity. Thematically, I love it. Unfortunately, by creating such a textured and stress-testable world, Huang conditioned me to expect a degree of specificity and plausibility that the book’s reveal just can’t support. For one thing, what is the mechanism by which other species jump into Star Eater bodies? I was willing to handwave it for the Ponto as part of the book’s set-up, but for oodles and oodles of very different species all across the galaxy, I fear I will need more explanation. Also, has the math always worked out perfectly that each individual Star Eater body has one invading person in them at all times, and that person generally survives to the expected end of that species’ lifespan? Has it never happened that the invading person lived out their natural lifespan and died and now the Star Eater is empty of any person at all? And another question: What about peer review? Let’s assume the math I mentioned above works out. Let’s assume there’s some handwavey mechanism for other species to jump into Star Eater bodies. We know that the knowledge Ro brings to his work comes from non-Ponto researchers. Does nobody involved in this research community ever speak to anyone else involved in this research community? Does nobody send out snippy little interplanetary emails because their Star Eater informant says something different than the Star Eater informant the other researcher has been hearing from? If Star Eater scholarship is shared among species and across planetary boundaries—which, clearly, it is—every single frontline researcher would have had to lie about the source of their information, and the entire network of peer reviewers would have to be like “that’s okay, we trust you :)” and I simply do not buy it because nerds talk. Nor do I find it credible that Ro is the first Star Eater occupier ever to make friends with his fellow Star Eaters, and thereby to set the stage for the truth to be discovered. Look: I am not saying that people aren’t capable of atrocity. I am not saying that people aren’t capable of unfathomable and mindless cruelty, under the guise of promoting scholarship or protecting their own or advancing technology or whatever other justification comes to mind. What I do not believe people are capable of is keeping their damn mouths shut. I can’t believe in the entire suspension, across decades and planets, of our desire to connect with each other. We gossip, we make friends, we exchange research notes, we blab and yap and yammer. I cannot stare into the bleak and stony heart of human cruelty while pretending that the squishy and endearing and aggravating parts don’t also exist. The Tordotcom novella line remains a space for some of the most grim, strange, fascinating work being done in the genre today, and The Language of Liars is dizzyingly ambitious in scope and morality. Landing among the Star Eaters didn’t quite work for me, but in the era of content produced to satisfy an algorithm, I’m thrilled we have SF writers like Huang still willing to shoot for the moon.[end-mark] The Language of Liars is published by Tordotcom Publishing. The post Exploring the Other: <i>The Language of Liars</i> by S.L. Huang appeared first on Reactor.