Column Babylon 5 Rewatch Babylon 5 Rewatch: “A Tragedy of Telepaths” Lochley attempts to negotiate with the telepaths, and G’Kar finds an old friend in the Centauri palace… By Keith R.A. DeCandido | Published on May 4, 2026 Credit: Warner Bros. Television Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Warner Bros. Television “A Tragedy of Telepaths”Written by J. Michael StaczynskiDirected by Tony DowSeason 5, Episode 10Production episode 510Original air date: March 25, 1998 It was the dawn of the third age… We open with Lochley providing a personal log voiceover bringing us up to speed: the telepaths have locked themselves in downbelow, and Lochley is stuck dealing with it alone, as Sheridan is far too busy dealing with the various IA ambassadors, who are pissed about their cargo ships being attacked. She has only one solution that she thinks will work: she has CnC put in a call to Bester. Lochley asks Allan for an update. The problem is that every time a welder starts to make progress in cutting through the bulkheads, the telepaths make him think something’s wrong—the latest is the worker is convinced that there’s a bomb in the wall—at which point they have to get another cutter and start all over again. After telling Allan to keep trying, she announces that she’s going to go through the very tiny maintenance hatch herself to go talk to them. Allan objects, she overrules his objection. On Centauri Prime, Mollari is bumfuzzled by the fact that the military’s production budget has increased. This usually only happens when they’re at war—which they aren’t at the moment. G’Kar suggests that the Centauri have decided to invade themselves. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Mollari is revolted by the fact that G’Kar is eating fresh spoo. He saw a cart taking it to a wing of the palace and grabbed a bowl. But only Narns can tolerate eating fresh spoo—Centauri can only eat it after it’s processed. Mollari reveals that the wing of the palace the cart was being taken to includes the dungeon. Realizing that the spoo is probably for a Narn prisoner—of which there shouldn’t be any anymore—G’Kar demands that they investigate. They check the cells to find Na’Toth. She’s been there for a couple of years now, having been on the Narn homeworld when it was bombarded. She was brought to Centauri Prime for “entertainment.” She’s been in the cell for some time, and Mollari—after swearing up and down to G’Kar that he had no idea she was there—assumes that she was forgotten and slipped through the cracks. The problem is, the emperor is the one who put her there, which means that Mollari, who is the prime minister and therefore of lesser rank, cannot countermand it. Only the Regent can, and he’s not likely to be an ally in this. But Mollari does promise G’Kar and Na’Toth that he will find a way to get her out. On B5, Lochley makes it through the ductwork and is taken to Byron, who telepathically encouraged her to come. However, Byron makes it clear that they won’t leave their improvised bunker, and they also won’t give up the telepaths who are still roaming free on the station. Lochley asks Byron’s followers to come peacefully with her, but nobody takes her up on it. Frustrated, she asks Byron why he summoned her here if he wasn’t going to help, and he says he wanted to her to know directly what Byron’s thoughts and plans were. Lochley has been fair to them, even when she’s disagreed, and Byron appreciates that. Credit: Warner Bros. Television Garibaldi and Sheridan, after discussing Lochley’s batshit plan, talk about the cargo ship attacks, talk about the latest wrinkle in the attacks on cargo ships: the Drazi found a fragment from a Brakiri ship in their latest attack. On Centauri Prime, G’Kar informs Mollari that he has found a transport that will rendezvous with them when they return to B5 and take Na’Toth back to Narn. Now they just have to smuggle her out somehow. A woman comes to give Mollari some news, and the prime minster gets an idea, asking the woman to loan him her clothes… On B5, the Drazi ambassador accuses the Brakiri of being behind the attacks. But then the Gaim ambassador announces that they found a fragment from a Drazi ship in the wreckage from an attack on them. Sheridan points out that this feels like a setup and also adds that they examined the wreckage, and found that the fragments were cut, not blown off by weapons fire. The respective nations are still massing their militaries, so Sheridan makes it clear that the White Star fleet is watching them. The ambassadors are not happy about any of this. On Centauri Prime, Mollari goes to Na’Toth’s cell and orders the guard to stop guarding her cell. There’s to be no food or water delivered there henceforth, and in three days, the cell is to be walled off. Na’Toth believes that this means her death, but then Mollari and G’Kar remove her from the cell, dressed now in Centauri finery, along with a veil. They head toward the transport, Mollari being loud and obnoxious and seemingly drunk, while flirting with the woman who appears to be a Centauri female, albeit with her face covered. They make it to the transport, with no one the wiser, and Na’Toth is sent home. Bester arrives on B5. The rogue telepaths who are still at large sense his presence, and assume (correctly) that the bloodhounds aren’t far behind. They head to the armory. Meanwhile, Bester is brought to where the cutter was working and he removes the image of the bomb from his head and he also “pushes” the telepaths away from the wall. Credit: Warner Bros. Television However, the rogue telepaths then ambush Bester, Allan, and the rest. Byron senses this and is saddened that people are being shot and killed in his name. Bester’s bloodhounds arrive soon thereafter, and we end as we began, with Lochley providing a personal log, expressing her sad belief that there is no way any of this will end well. Get the hell out of our galaxy! Sheridan is not having a very good time, as the IA is already starting to fall apart thanks to these attacks. Never work with your ex. Allan wants Lochley to take a PPG with her to meet the telepaths. Lochley rightly points out that there are a lot more of them and a PPG won’t help her if they decide to attack her. Better to be unarmed and non-provocative. The household god of frustration. Garibaldi gives a speech talking about how history isn’t defined by peace, it’s defined by wars, because wars are more exciting. In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic… Mollari tells a story from when he was a child about a guard who always stood in the garden. Apparently, years ago, the emperor’s daughter was worried about a particular flower and so ordered a guard to stand over it to make sure it remained unharmed. The young woman eventually forgot about the flower and the flower itself died—but the order was never rescinded, and so a guard continued to be assigned to that part of the garden thenceforth. He tells that story to illustrate why he can’t simply order Na’Toth to be freed. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free. Na’Toth was on the Narn homeworld when it was bombarded. She has spent the last couple of years in a cell not knowing that Narn has been freed. She tells Mollari that she’d kill him if she had the strength, and Mollari allows as how she’d have to wait in line. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The Corps is mother, the Corps is father. Bester gets to say “I told you so” to Lochley when she summons him to the station to deal with Byron and his gaggle. No sex, please, we’re EarthForce. The servant who delivers the message to Mollari and then is asked to remove her clothes is very accommodating, as she apparently did many a sexual favor for Cartagia. Both Mollari and G’Kar waggle their eyebrows at the whole thing, and it’s all very yucky. Welcome aboard. Several recurring characters in this one: Walter Koenig, back from “Strange Relations” as Bester; Robin Atkin Downes, back from “In the Kingdom of the Blind” as Byron; Jonathan Chapman, back from “Day of the Dead” as the Brakiri ambassador; Kim Strauss, back from “The Paragon of Animals” as the Drazi ambassador; and Leigh J. McCloskey, debuting the role of Thomas. Koenig, Downes, and McCloskey will be back next time in “Phoenix Rising,” while Chapman and Strauss will return in “And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder.” But the big guest is the return of Julie Caitlin Brown as Na’Toth. The character last appeared in “Acts of Sacrifice,” played by Mary Kay Adams, while Brown last appeared in the role in “Chrysalis.” (Brown also played Corey in “There All the Honor Lies.”) Trivial matters. Na’Toth was last mentioned in “And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place,” but was not seen, and her involvement in the events of the episode were purely fictional to trick both Vir and Refa. We see flashbacks to the bombing of the Narn homeworld from “The Long, Twilight Struggle.” Bester was last on the station to take Byron and his people into custody in “Strange Relations,” but was put off 60 days by quarantine regulations. It apparently has been less than two months since then, since Bester is brought back prematurely…. The echoes of all of our conversations. “With everyone now on the same side perhaps you’re planning to invade yourselves for a change. I find the idea curiously appealing. Once you’ve finished killing each other, we can plow under all the buildings and plant rows of flowers that spell out the words TOO ANNOYING TO LIVE in letters big enough to be seen from space.” —G’Kar’s response to the news that Centauri military production has increased. Credit: Warner Bros. Television The name of the place is Babylon 5. “This place is one long exercise in frustration.” The Centauri Prime half of this episode is pretty much just paperwork. Na’Toth’s fate has been a mystery since the character disappeared. It’s completely watchable, because any time you’ve got Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas on screen together, it’s at the very least watchable. And I love the story Mollari tells to illustrate why he can’t just order Na’Toth freed, because it was an order given by the emperor and a mere prime minister can’t gainsay that. But the storyline mainly shows just how badly the show failed the character of Na’Toth. While Vir and Lennier were both developed nicely, nothing of consequence was ever done with Na’Toth, though half-hearted attempts were made in her inaugural appearance in “The Parliament of Dreams,” and also in “Deathwalker,” but that was really it. And then we hardly saw her in season two. Allegedly this was due to the new actor not playing the part well, but I find that impossible to credit, having seen Mary Kay Adams in other things. In particular, she excelled while acting alongside the great Armin Shimerman in two episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. She could have done wonders, had she been given actual material to work with. And to exacerbate the show’s failing the character: Na’Toth doesn’t actually play any kind of role in this episode. She’s totally passive, sitting in the cell and telling what happened to her in an exhausted monotone—appropriate, given what she’s been through, but it has the result of making her a sideline in what’s supposed to be her story. As for the stuff back on the station, those two plotlines have their own issues. For starters, the ability to determine whether or not a piece of metal has been separated from the rest of what it was attached to via an explosion, or instead via being cut, existed on twentieth-century Earth when this show was produced. So how is it that these space-faring, multiplanet nations were able to determine the provenance of those pieces of debris without noticing the fact that they were cut away rather than blown away? As a setup, this is hilariously primitive and easy to see through and the fact that the Brakiri, Drazi, and Gaim can’t see through it is yet another example of writing the species who aren’t represented in the opening credits as morons, a writers crutch this show has indulged in way too often. Then we have the telepath plotline, which is finally moving toward its endgame, which comes as something of a relief, as this story thread has long since worn out its welcome. What should be a dramatic confrontation between the station commander and the leader of the rogue telepaths is instead a contest to see who can be more boring. (Robin Atkin Downes “wins” by a perfectly coiffed hair.) Bringing Walter Koenig back just serves to show up the inadequacies of the other actors in that prong of the plot. Interestingly enough, the best work Tracy Scoggins does is in her two voiceovers at the top and bottom of the episode. They both do a very good job of setting the tone, the opening for the rest of the episode and the closing for the next one. Next week: “Phoenix Rising.”[end-mark] The post <i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “A Tragedy of Telepaths” appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Daredevil: Born Again Daredevil: Born Again and the Fascism of State Gangsters The show doesn’t shy away from its depiction of Fisk’s authoritarian tactics. By Zack Budryk | Published on May 4, 2026 Credit: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Marvel Studios Content Warning: This article involves brief discussions of state-sponsored genocide. The existence of Daredevil: Born Again can feel like a minor miracle. To begin with, there’s the sheer feat of corralling the original cast seven years after the cancellation of the Netflix series where they debuted, to say nothing of sticking the landing after the complete creative retooling the series underwent mid-production. But the actual content of the show, which explicitly depicts it as noble to resist authoritarian government even through extralegal means, was striking in early 2025, an era when the entertainment industry in general and Disney in particular had seemingly resigned itself to behaving as though reactionary politics had won the culture (a wildly premature conclusion, as it would turn out). And yet, two months into Donald Trump’s second term, here was a mainstream TV show in which the cops and political leaders are the bad guys.  Much of this feels like an easier sell in the show’s second season, when real-life jackbooted thugs beating and shooting Americans in the street have drawn fierce backlash, and indeed, people involved with the show have subtly conceded the similarities between mob boss-turned-Mayor Wilson Fisk’s anti-vigilante shock troops and ICE aren’t a mere coincidence. But the show’s depiction of Fisk’s specific authoritarian tactics are also a genuinely enlightening depiction of how fascism works in practice, with this literal gangster illustrating how authoritarian governance functions as a combination of gangster tactics and the state’s monopoly on violence. Authoritarianism has historically had a deceptively complex relationship with organized crime. More traditional criminal organizations are often the subject of purges–when he took power in the 1920s, Benito Mussolini cracked down on the Mafia, largely because their regional influence in southern Italy threatened his agenda of centralized national control (they gave as good as they got—Lucky Luciano, the man often credited with inventing the structure of the American mob, allegedly provided crucial intelligence to the Allies during World War II).  The Nazi party likewise targeted the urban crime syndicates known as Ringvereine. But gangsters have also been major assets for authoritarian governments in need of someone who knows their way around targeted violence. Henri Lafont, who ran the French auxiliary of the Gestapo, was a local gangster authorized by the Nazis to recruit his old partners in crime from prison. Decades later, the Indonesian genocide that killed up to a million communists (real or accused), union organizers, ethnic Chinese and other minorities, was largely carried out by organized crime elements, including Anwar Congo, who re-enacted his own crimes for filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer in his harrowing 2012 documentary The Act of Killing. “We need gangsters to get things done. Free, private men who get things done,” then-Indonesian Vice President Jusuf Kalla tells a cheering crowd in Oppenheimer’s film. On a more philosophical level, though, fascism and the mob go hand in hand because fascism runs on mob tactics. The most obvious is the use of brutal, swift and disproportionate violence, both from agents of the state like ICE or the SS and from state-affiliated paramilitaries. But there’s also the constant, ambient cloud of scams and heists and rackets, from the Nazis’ looting of Jewish valuables to Donald Trump’s longstanding fixation on “taking the oil” from uncooperative nations. Born Again teases out the extent to which Fisk’s mayoralty reflects this. The brutal Praetorian guard of cops who will become his Anti-Vigilante Task Force are introduced relatively early, but they’re not that out of place in a superhero story. It’s only later in the first season that we see his broader agenda, to profit personally from a zoning loophole that allows him to use a marine terminal as a free-trade zone. Despite a few little throwaway hints to the contrary, not only is Fisk still a gangster, he’s using the machinery of the state to both personally enrich himself and, like Mussolini, eliminate the non-state competition. That’s also what makes his task force, and their real-world equivalents, a unique threat: it’s not just that they’re violent and heavy-handed, it’s that they’re a private army in the guise of public employees.  There’s something particularly dread-inducing about the depiction of authoritarianism at the municipal level; particularly in a country the size of the United States, one can know an illiberal, authoritarian national government is in place but rarely see its effects in person unless you live in a city targeted by its security forces or, like I do, go to work amid National Guard patrols and ostentatious banners outside staid federal agency headquarters. Fisk’s tyranny, however, manifests as skin-crawlingly intimate even in the vastness of New York, in contrast to uneasy allies like Matthew Lillard’s affable CIA emissary. It’s no easy feat to flee an authoritarian country, but there’s something particularly claustrophobic about being trapped on an island with a dictator. In real life, we’ve seen local and state leaders stand against federal overreach, but when your mayor is the one having people dragged out of restaurants and bodegas, no one in government is coming to save you. That dearth of “legitimate” allies makes the season’s ongoing philosophical debate between Matt Murdock and Karen Page over the morality and practicality of revolutionary violence particularly immediate. Batman may be committed to never taking a life, but Batman is also friends with the police commissioner; these principles can be a far heavier lift when the cops, the nominal legitimate keepers of the peace, are prepared to shoot you on sight. Fisk’s use of the police to brutalize dissidents feels especially resonant, precisely because even in the negotiable reality of superhero media they feel so much like real-life cops. Fisk and the task force’s brutish leader Powell, much like their real-world counterparts, assert a mandate to bring down their fist on the worst of the worst but their violence is overwhelmingly concentrated simply on people who piss them off. In real life, big city mayors and New York mayors in particular are often strong-armed by their police forces (during the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings, the NYPD notoriously doxxed then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter) but the brutality Fisk’s cops inflict is with his enthusiastic blessing and support. When Fisk gruesomely murders his uncooperative police commissioner, Gallo, in the first season finale, he’s not just settling a personal score, he’s making an offering to cops like Powell by killing the kind of man they perceive as tying their hands. With Fisk’s backing, Powell and his thugs deal out violence in deeply realistic way, from Powell’s assault of a journalist in the first season to his cold-blooded murder of one of his own as an excuse to turn the police response to a protest into a riot (In an amusing bit of meta-irony, Fisk’s cops are depicted as huge fans of the iconography of the Punisher, just like their real-world counterparts, but with the added cognitive dissonance that they are actively seeking to kill one another).  Like any other mob boss, or aspiring mob boss, Fisk as mayor has people who understand when he needs someone killed, to the point that he doesn’t need to directly order it. Part of what makes his murder of Gallo so shocking is that it’s the first time he’s personally killed someone in the series after doing it left and right in the Netflix era. It’s a further point on the board on Karen’s argument for a more proactively ruthless approach when, as Fisk makes explicitly clear during his brawl with Matt, he holds all the cards as the only player willing to kill.  By the second season, all of this coincides with Fisk instituting martial law as part of his purge of vigilantes, with not just active vigilantes like Matt Murdock driven underground but anyone who either supports them or is a political dissident in general. Authoritarianism and fascism thrive on contradictions, on the idea of a world gone mad. If nothing means anything, state officials can corruptly benefit from their offices while also fearmongering about a different, scarier kind of criminal, one who will have free reign if the regime itself is constrained by the law. If a cop can’t shoot or shake down whoever he wants, both Fisk and his real-world analogs warn, we’ll be at the mercy of the thugs.  It’s easy to see all this stuff and wonder what the hell any of us are supposed to do about it once we understand it. Daredevil: Born Again understands how paralytic this can be, and even as Daredevil and his allies undertake individual missions to push back against the Fisk regime, much of their downtime is tactical debates between Matt and Karen that wouldn’t be out of place in Andor. Ultimately, Matt and Karen and the show itself eschew easy answers, because we know this real-world moment doesn’t have easy answers, or at least, it has answers that require patience, community organizing and a willingness to accept the idea that you might not see the seeds you plant bloom. But ultimately, it can be an odd comfort to understand how much of the fearsome force of an out-of-control state is simply cheap thugs who can’t work to their full capacity if we deny them our fear. That’s why their natural enemy, in both the show and real life, is a man (or a person) without fear.[end-mark] The post <em>Daredevil: Born Again</em> and the Fascism of State Gangsters appeared first on Reactor.

Books SFF Bestiary Fox at the Pinnacle: Rita Mae Brown’s Hierarchy of Creation The Sister Jane novels involve several intelligent species in a highly interconnected world, all centered around a complex sport. By Judith Tarr | Published on May 4, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share While I was reading Rita Mae Brown’s Mrs. Murphy mysteries, I had Questions about the role of horses as compared to cats and dogs. It seemed in the volumes I read that equines got shortchanged, even when they were nominally the center of the book. In the interest of further research, I dipped into another of her series, the Sister Jane novels. Sister Jane is a form of Virginia royalty: Master of Foxhounds, managing and overseeing the multitude of people and animals that participate in a fox hunt. Brown is writing what she knows. According to her bio, she holds that august office herself. In sixteen volumes and counting, Brown dives deep into the complexities of the sport. It’s an obsession and a passion, and as Brown writes it, it’s great entertainment. It’s also good worldbuilding. Brown’s setting is very much a part of the real world, but it touches on myth and magic. There are ghosts at the top of Hangman’s Hill, and the Grim Reaper might be seen up there with his scythe. Signs and omens come and go, and animals, and occasionally humans, take note of them. In this universe, animals talk to each other. They try to talk to humans, though not with much success. Humans, in animal terms, are functionally illiterate. Even when they seem to understand what’s being said, it may just be a coincidence. The main players are foxes, hounds, and horses. Sister has a house dog or two as well, and a calico cat who considers herself above it all, often literally, high on a shelf in the house or up a tree outside. Athena the great horned owl is a regular visitor, usually with wisdom to offer; later in the series, Bitsy the screech owl moves into the barn. Here, finally, I got my wish about horses. The horses in these books have distinct personalities and clear opinions. They’re willing partners in the hunt. Not every human rides well, and sometimes human ego or cluelessness causes problems, but Sister and her staff are strong and courageous riders. The horses appreciate that. They have their own take on what happens at home or on the hunt. They have a wicked sense of humor, and they take pleasure in pricking the bubble of human arrogance. The hounds are numerous, far more so than the horses, but Sister knows every one by name, and we meet many of them. We learn about their bloodlines, what they’re bred for, what kind of country they’re best for hunting in, who they are individually. Hounds are counted in couples and hunted in packs; they’re profoundly communal, but one, especially if they’re young or egotistical, may go off on their own, and get into various forms and levels of trouble. Sometimes they deepen a mystery. Sometimes they solve one. Singly and collectively, hounds are highly intelligent. They have a distinct hierarchy of age and position. When they hunt, they follow the instructions of the huntsman, supported by their own leaders and elders, but the huntsman respects their superior senses. It’s very much a cooperative venture. The pinnacle of all this creation, the reason for the hunt, the most intelligent of all creatures, is the fox. There are two subspecies in Brown’s Virginia, the red and the grey. They live and breed separately, but they share territory, and they may cooperate in a hunt if it suits their purposes. In the first volume, Outfoxed, the foxes collaborate in a grand strategy to avenge a slain fox and oppose an enemy, St. Just the Crow, who has a vendetta against one of the red foxes. It’s a complex plan with many parts, and one of those parts is set up and orchestrated by Sister Jane. She, being human, never knows how extensive the plan actually is, but she plays her part; she gets it done. She has better hound sense than most humans, and she understands foxes remarkably well within her limited capacity. She has tremendous respect for their intelligence. In this corner of the world, it’s a bad thing if a hunt harms a fox. Part of a master’s job is to look after the foxes in their territory, to recognize individuals, to be aware of the locations of their dens and runs. If conditions are difficult, they’ll make sure the foxes are fed and have access to shelter and clean water.  Brown’s foxes understand this and take it as their due. They have an interesting relationship with the hounds. They’re not enemies; they’re opposing teams. It’s all about the game. A hunt is a chase, a quest, with the hounds seeking a fox or foxes, and the fox setting out to outsmart the hounds. Some of them even have friends on the other team. Inky the black fox has a special relationship with the hound Diana, for example, and they share knowledge and information. On the hunt, each will support her team, but when they’re at home they have a surprising amount in common. This is a highly interconnected world. Everyone has a role to play, and while they may be on opposite sides of a game or a hunt, real and active enmity is rare. St. Just the crow hates the fox because killed his mate. He does dastardly things, but he has a reason for it. That’s true of the humans, too, though humans are far more cruel and egotistical than animals. There’s always a reason, or least an excuse. The best of them serve and protect each other and the animals with whom they share the world. They may not understand what the animals are saying, or that they’re talking at all, but they try. Sometimes they even succeed.[end-mark] The post Fox at the Pinnacle: Rita Mae Brown’s Hierarchy of Creation appeared first on Reactor.

Books classic science fiction What Was the First Book You Bought From Each SF Publisher? Let’s take a trip down the book-lined pathways of Memory Lane… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on May 4, 2026 Photo by Vrînceanu Iulia [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Vrînceanu Iulia [via Unsplash] I don’t just follow authors whose work I like—I also follow editors who buy the sort of book I enjoy, and the publishers who make those books available. Often, I have very specific memories about when and where and from whom1 I bought my books, which I am sure is a great comfort to friends whose names I clearly have misplaced. In some cases, I can even tell you which was the very first book from a given publisher that I bought. Not the older publishers—or at least, not always. But the dewy-cheeked infants of publishing, lines founded after I started buying books? Those I remember. Here are five (well, maybe six) such books from my shelves. DAW Books DAW Books was founded in 1971 by Donald A. Wollheim and Elsie B. Wollheim, Early DAW had two characteristics that brought it to my attention: DAW specialized in science fiction and fantasy and DAW paperbacks had bright yellow spines that were visible from across a store2. There are whole shelves of yellow spines in my library. My first DAW was the June 1972 mass market edition of Gordon R. Dickson’s 1971 Tactics of Mistake. Tactics, part of Dickson’s unfinished Childe Cycle, details the adventures of military genius Cletus Grahame in the early days of interstellar colonization. It’s not my favourite book in the series—Cletus doesn’t show much genius, it’s just that his enemies are dolts—but it was my first DAW purchase. Orbit Books To quote Wikipedia: “Orbit Books was founded in 1974 as part of the Macdonald Futura publishing company.” I don’t know anything about the personalities involved. Oddly, despite Orbit being very much British3, the first Orbit-published book I owned was by American author Poul Anderson. Specifically, the September 1975 paperback of Anderson’s 1974 novel A Midsummer Tempest. Tempest details efforts to ensure Charles I’s victory, thus saving the Fair Folk. If “GO STUARTS FOR GREAT JUSTICE” wasn’t unusual enough4, Tempest is set in a world in which Shakespeare was the Great Historian, a world in which Shakespeare’s anachronisms (and presumably, his geographic liberties) are simple historical fact. Del Rey Books Ballantine imprint Del Rey Books was founded in 1977 and named for Judy-Lynn del Rey. It happened that her tastes and those of her rather curmudgeonly husband, Lester, lined up with mine. Each month, I’d look for the Del Rey ad in the SF magazines I read, then pester long-suffering booksellers about whether the featured books, whose release dates were unambiguously months away, had arrived yet. My first Del Rey was the March 1977 paperback of James White’s 1977 Monsters and Medics. Monsters and Medics is a collection rather than a novel. Contents include an author’s introduction, a short novel, three novelettes, and three short stories, all of which I enjoyed enough to become a James White fan. Tor Books Founded by Tom Doherty in 1980, Tor is the inspiration for this article. Or rather, @purblind.bsky.social’s question (wondering what the oldest Tor we have on our shelves are….) was the impetus. There are two books that were my first book from Tor. Which one was actually first depends on whether you count Tor as a continuation of Tor / Pinnacle Books or as two different, if closely connected, companies. If Tor / Pinnacle is just an early phase of Tor, then my first Tor was the June 1981 paperback original of Poul Anderson’s The Psycho-Technic League. The collection gathers stories from an early future history Anderson had discarded. I gather that Anderson had second thoughts about the setting’s political views, but I’d liked the individual stories and was happy to have them in one place. Also, the book had that JIM BAEN PRESENTS banner. I followed Baen from Galaxy to Ace to Tor and—but more on that later. If Tor / Pinnacle is distinct from Tor, then my first Tor was the 1982 paperback original of David Drake’s Time Safari. The Time Safari stories, which I recall as having been inspired by de Camp’s 1956 novelette “A Gun for Dinosaur,” detail the experiences of Henry Vickers as he guides would-be hunters in the age of dinosaurs. Baen Books Jim Baen5 founded Baen Books in 1983, following a somewhat convoluted sequence of events beginning with the collapse of Pocketbooks’ Timescape imprint6. Having followed Baen from Galaxy to Ace to Tor, of course I followed him to Baen. My first Baen was the August 1984 paperback of Lewis Shiner’s proto-cyberpunk novel Frontera—which tells what happened to the Martian colony after governments collapsed on Earth. So, those are my firsts with those particular publishers. Do you remember your first books from various publishers? If not, you can probably work out what they must have been using the ISFDB. It is a game everyone can play.[end-mark] I gather booksellers don’t expect customers to thank them for their excellent service half a century after the store in question went out of business. ︎It may surprise people to learn that I am much more adept at spotting books and book-related items than anything else. I once failed to notice the schoolmates I was looking for because my attention was distracted by an unfamiliar-to-me Book Nook two blocks behind them. Don’t worry! I did manage to slip away from the field trip to buy a couple of bags of books. ︎The US Orbit came along much, much later. ︎The only reason Charles I is not the worst king ever is because “worst king ever” is an exceedingly competitive field. Looking at you, Emperor Huizong! ︎With Tom Doherty’s assistance. It apparently still comes as a surprise to some fans to learn that Doherty has always been and still remains a silent partner in Baen Books. ︎For reasons of word count, I am limiting myself to publishing lines that are still around. That said, my first Timescape book was Syd Logsdon’s 1981 A Fond Farewell to Dying. (I’ve written in more detail about the Timescape line here, if you’re interested.) ︎The post What Was the First Book You Bought From Each SF Publisher? appeared first on Reactor.

News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: All Along the Binge-Watch Tower—Battlestar Galactica Returns to Streaming Plus: All the animated animal films you could be watching instead of Animal Farm By Molly Templeton | Published on May 1, 2026 Photo: Universal Content Productions Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Universal Content Productions Happy May Day, folks! If, like me, you only learned about May Day in terms of maypoles and general springiness as a child, there is much more to this particular date, which is also known as International Workers’ Day. If you are out there taking part in May Day events and rallies, please look out for yourself and your fellow humans. I hope the skies are clear and the future is … at least visible. It’d be nice for the future to be visible rather than cloudy and murky and mostly alarming. Hug your friends, give skritches to your favorite animals, call your reps, and get some sun, yeah? So Say We All: Battlestar Galactica is Back on Streaming Yes, Vanessa already told you about this, but it’s worth mentioning twice. At least twice. As of today, you can watch all of Battlestar Galactica and its assorted spinoff shows and movies on Paramount+, and most of it on Pluto TV, which also has an all-BSG, all-the-time channel, if you’d like to return to that cable-TV era feeling of just watching whatever happens to be on. (Unless it’s “Black Market.” I speak as a completist when I say: Do not waste your time on “Black Market.”) I suspect you’ll still have to dig up some DVDs if you want to watch my favorite episode in its extended form (that’d be “Unfinished Business,” aka “Everyone boxes out their feelings and it gets super awkward”). You can, though, watch Caprica, a show I started rewatching recently and then simply forgot to continue. But I meant to, at the very least for Magda Apanowicz as a teen struggling with literally everything including, maybe, the fate of the world. (There are maybe too many things out there to watch?) Anyway. BSG universe. On Paramount+. I’m so happy about this. You Should Watch Literally Any Animated Animal Movie Except Andy Serkis’s Animal Farm Watch Chicken Run. Watch Flow. Watch fricking Bambi. The Land Before Time? An American Tail? Ratatouille! That’s a good one. Just don’t watch the new Animal Farm. Yes, this is an anti-recommendation. It’s a warning. At first, it was just that the trailers looked dubious. But then Andy Serkis went and gave Animal Farm a happy ending. An entire new third act, according to a USA Today piece. The world is just too bleak for George Orwell’s story as written. “So we wanted the next generation, the kids who we hopefully are going to be watching this film, to at least have the ability to question what they should do next time around. History will inevitably repeat itself,” Serkis said. It appears not to have occurred to him that if he wanted to tell a hopeful story, he should have picked another dang story. But it’s okay! There are so many other animated animal movies to watch. If you’d like something hopeful, how about Paddington 2? Paddington 2 is perfect. Time to Get Back in Bed With The Vampire Lestat It’s just over a month until rock-god Lestat has his say about things in the rebranded Interview with the Vampire—now, in its third season, called The Vampire Lestat. This is, of course, the name of the second volume in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. And now is a very good time to read it. Or reread it. Or re-re-read it. You know. If it’s been a while. I really need to get my hands on a nice mass market paperback with the iconic red ’80s cover. But any cover will do. If you would prefer to go into the show without knowing anything, I respect that. But as someone who spent high school rather immersed in this world—quietly, secretly immersed, though in crushed velvet leggings sometimes—I feel I owe it to Book Lestat to revisit his version of things before TV Lestat (Sam Reid) takes over everyone’s imagination.  The first page of the book is basically Lestat telling you how awesome and hot he is: “Right now I am what America calls a Rock Superstar.” He’s on MTV! Bless. On the second page he explains, “But in spite of my French accent, I talk like a cross between a flatboatman and detective Sam Spade, actually.” God, I cannot wait to hang out with this ridiculous man again. A Treasure Trove of Wondrous Randomness In the process of writing these weekly posts, I have developed a small obsession with Wikipedia’s wonderful, absolutely baffling selection of speculative fiction anniversaries. Sometimes you find things that kind of make sense, and/or are very strange bedfellows, like the fact that May 3 is the 20th anniversary of the publication of Rick Riordan’s The Sea of Monsters, but the 30th anniversary of the Pamela Anderson movie Barb Wire. May 4 isn’t just Star Wars day; it’s the 25th anniversary of The Mummy Returns! But then there are other things. Other TV shows and books and authors and dates in speculative fiction history that just seem … random. The esoteric loves and foibles of those editors who keep this list really show, and it’s beautiful. Somehow May 1 is the publication date of both a two-part Deep Space Nine tie-in novel and a Michael Chabon essay collection. May 2 is the date that both The Magician’s Nephew and X2 came into the world. Also, there are so many more strange SF TV shows than I ever knew existed. May 1, 1991: “My Secret Identity, a Canadian science fiction television series, finishes airing on CTV.” You know how long you can go down rabbit holes thanks to this one Wiki portal? Actually, let’s not talk about it. But also: have fun. And Featuring David Bowie: The Prestige One last note: Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige is now streaming on Hulu. Is this movie perfect? Absolutely not. Did I go see it a second time the very day after I saw it the first time, because I wanted to figure out how it worked? Absolutely yes. And frankly I will never get David Bowie as Nikola Tesla out of my head. If you would like to complete your set of 2006 magician movies, you can also watch Edward Norton in The Illusionist on Prime and Netflix. It’s just not quite as good, though. Maybe just not as … magical. I’ll see myself out.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: All Along the Binge-Watch Tower—<i>Battlestar Galactica</i> Returns to Streaming appeared first on Reactor.