Books Science The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding What do cheetahs and genetic bottlenecks have to do with interstellar colonization? Glad you asked… By James Davis Nicoll | Published on July 17, 2026 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Well-timed synchronicity is a wonderful thing. There’s nothing quite like the intellectual zing one experiences when one scientific presentation casts an unexpected light on a seemingly unrelated theory or idea. I was the beneficiary of this phenomenon last week, when scarcely twenty-eight years1 after reading Geoffrey Landis’ “The Fermi Paradox: An Approach Based on Percolation Theory,” a Lindsay Nikole video essay on an entirely unrelated matter suggested an interesting embellishment. But first! A quick background on the Fermi Paradox and on Percolation Theory as applied to it, for those of you who can’t be bothered to click the relevant links above. The Fermi Paradox isn’t really a paradox so much as a question for which we currently lack a compelling, satisfactory answer. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that even modest propulsion technology should be sufficient for a single technological species to spread throughout the galaxy in a geological instant. However, when we look around, there is no evidence that this has ever happened2. Thus, Enrico Fermi’s “But where is everybody?” Landis’ proposed explanation centred on the fact that even for technologically sophisticated species, interstellar colonization is likely to be difficult and expensive. Not every civilization will bother to invest scarce resources in projects that by the nature of light-speed lag and distance can do them no direct good. Furthermore, light-speed lag and distance mean that child civilizations must be functionally independent of parent cultures. That could be a full stop to further expansions, as there’s no guarantee that colony worlds will want to invest in spawning their own colonies. If the likelihood that colonies will be colonizers is low, then the effort peters out very quickly. Even when there is a civilizational commitment to colonization, the vagaries of chance will produce a patchy network of settled systems. Large swathes of space would remain unsettled. Perhaps an example is in order. For convenience, consider the Stellar Database entry for Sol. Suppose for the sake of argument that the longest practical distance for colonization is 6 light-years. There are at present two stellar systems within 6 light-years of Sol: Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s Star. The only stellar system within 6 light-years of Alpha Centauri is Sol. The only stellar systems within 6 light-years of Barnard’s Star are Sol and Ross 154. The only star within 6 light-years of Ross 154 is Barnard’s Star. Thus, the poor Solarians can only reach four systems before their technology is no longer up to the task3. Fans of the venerable tabletop roleplaying game 2300 AD know that increasing the maximum practical distance slightly (to 7.7 light-years) produces an interesting stellar road map where stars that are comparatively close to Sol while being farther than the maximum practical distance can only be reached via a circuitous chain of intermediary systems, if they can be reached at all. Tau Ceti, for example, is only about 12 light-years away but a ship limited to 7.7 light-year legs ends up covering 60 light-years as it dog-legs from system to system. This is merely a plot-enabling inconvenience in 2300 AD, which features faster-than-light travel. In a world where there is no FTL, where every intermediate system needs to be settled and developed before a flotilla can be dispatched further down the line, the chain of colonies might peter out well before reaching Tau Ceti. OK, so what does that have to do with Lindsay Nikole, who as you know is a zoologist and author with a colorful vocabulary whose interests, while expansive, appear to be entirely terrestrial? (That we know of.) Among Nikole’s interests: cats, big and otherwise. Thus, videos discussing various feline species. Thus, a video about cheetahs. Thus, a video titled “How cheetahs became genetically f***ed.” How did cheetahs become genetically f***ed? Long version, watch Nikole’s video. Short version: bottlenecks. Cheetahs experienced diverse catastrophes (see what I did there?) that left remnant populations with much smaller genetic diversity. Repeated catastrophes led to new bottlenecks, each of which further reduced overall species genetic diversity. This lack of diversity makes cheetahs vulnerable. Any disease that kills one cheetah will likely kill them all. We can apply Landis’ argument to interstellar colonization here: Each colonization is a genetic bottleneck. The first colony is a subset of the whole population of the mother world. The second one is limited to a subset of the first colony. The third… well, you can connect the dots. Let’s do some math. We’ll assume the colonizers aren’t idiots trying to emulate the Ptolemaic Dynasty… IN SPACE!4. Say they manage to preserve 90% of the genetic diversity of the species available to them. What does this look like in practice? Colony% of original diversity remaining1902813734665596537488439391034 Extend the sequence far enough and you probably get populations that are functionally so closely related you could do skin grafts between random individuals. While that would be tremendously convenient for the skin graft industry, it would leave the colonists in the same situation as cheetahs—so uniform that any circumstance that imperils one individual would imperil every member of their species on that planet. Which is bad. Maybe there’s a fix. If there isn’t—if genetic bottlenecks are an intractable problem—then what Landis called “percolation probability” would be low. To quote Landis, “For P<Pc, colonization will always terminate after a finite number of colonies.” Which is consistent with what we see.[end-mark] I often consider events that play out over geological time frames, so twenty-eight years is nothing. ︎We also don’t see any evidence of radio-based interstellar communication, something that is quite doable even with our modest technology. ︎At least for the moment. Stars move. ︎I hear the eugenicists protesting that this would be an excellent chance to select the very best genes, ensuring a planet of superhumans ten or twenty links down the line. But if we actually look at our own history, we note that the products of aristocratic inbreeding have fallen very short of superhuman. Second, which traits are desirable depends on context. The same traits that allow one to flourish in Toronto will serve you very badly at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. ︎ The post The Fermi Paradox, Percolation, and Inbreeding appeared first on Reactor.

News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: The Air Is Smoke, the Lettuce Is Bad, but the Vampire Is Lestat Plus: Major outlets are apparently still shocked that women read fantasy By Molly Templeton | Published on July 17, 2026 Image Credit: Image: Sophie Giraud/AMC Comment 0 Share New Share Image Credit: Image: Sophie Giraud/AMC Friends on the other side of the country, I am so sorry. I know exactly what it’s like to try to go outside and be stymied by unbearably smoky air. Wear your masks, run your air purifiers, and maybe, you know, stay indoors as much as you can? It’s vile out there. As if this year has not been difficult enough, this summer has taken a hard turn into bonus-level terrible, what with the exploding diarrhea virus and the unbreathable air, and the knowledge that some of these things could be stopped—or at least ameliorated—if, as a nation, our priorities were different. (That’s about as diplomatic as I can be on that front.) While you’re avoiding the outside this weekend, perhaps you want to hang out with some vampires, or go to space, or think about hungry stars? As always, hug your friends, call your reps, and—given that it’s summer—stay hydrated, okay? Seven Episodes Is Not Enough: The Vampire Lestat In this house it is The Vampire Lestat Finale Week which means I am tearing my way through The Queen of the Damned—which had better be this show’s fourth season, goddammit! I need renewal news!—and buying Calvino novels (those two Calvino references have to mean something, right?) and also considering spending much of my Saturday rewatching the first six episodes of this all-too-short season. It’s like watching two long Marvel movies! I can do it! And I guess what I’m saying here is that you could, in theory, make time to do the same. The finale arrives Sunday on AMC/AMC+ and given the tumultuous events of last week’s episode, I am ever so slightly frothing at the mouth to see where this wild series goes, and how they wind it all up, and did I mention I need renewal news like, yesterday? I have a feeling they’ll make any big announcements next weekend at San Diego Comic Con. But I am impatient. “This Star Just Ate a Planet” This one both is and isn’t the plot of a novel: “This Star Just Ate a Planet, and It’s Not Done Yet” is the headline of a fascinating New York Times article about … well, it does what it says on the tin. “For many planets, it is their cosmic fate to one day become engulfed within their own stars, then slowly melted down into their constituent elements,” writes Becky Ferreira. Isn’t this what happens (in part) in Slow Gods? I admit I was so invested in the characters of that book that I may have glossed over the planetary mechanics. Anyway! It’s always kind of neat—and maybe a little terrifying—when these things happen close enough (relatively speaking) that our little (in the grand scheme of things) human tools and minds can witness them.  Speaking of Stars, Planets, and Drama… … Strange New World returns to our happy little screens next Thursday! While the show’s last season was frustrating, I remain eternally enthusiastic about hanging out with this cast, and eternally hopeful that maybe, just maybe, Paul Wesley will still get a show starring his version of Captain James T. Kirk. Given all the changes at Paramount, that might not be likely—but one can still hope. My specific hope for this season is that it does not spend a lot more time shoving various interesting characters at Spock in the hope that some love interest sticks. And also that La’an gets a lot of screen time. And also Pelia. And also … you know, honestly, it doesn’t matter; I’m going to watch it regardless. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is back on Paramount Plus on July 23rd.  Apparently Women Just Discovered Fantasy This week, the usually quite good Guardian newsletter tackled romantasy, which was totally fine and good except when they wrote of the genre: “It also gives women an access point to fantasy, a traditionally male-heavy genre, both in authorship and fandom.” With all due respect to romantasy—which I do think has brought new readers into SFF!—I don’t think I have to tell Reactor readers that women have been writing and reading fantasy for as long as there has been fantasy. A statement like this erases a ton of work from a laundry list of incredible writers. So here’s my weekend suggestion for you: read a fantasy novel by a woman published at least 30 years ago. And for bonus points, look past the biggest names! I grew up almost exclusively reading fantasy by women, obsessed with authors like Jo Clayton, Melanie Rawn, Barbara Hambly, Diane Duane, Patricia Kennealy, Jennifer Roberson, Pamela F. Service, and Patricia McKillip. (I will note that in the mall bookstore in the ’80s and ’90s, one mostly found fantasy novels by white women. The diversity was not great.) There are so many more names; if you need a list to pore over, you might investigate James Davis Nicoll’s “Fighting Erasure” posts.  Honestly, twenty years ago I thought we were maybe finally through with the “Ooh, women have discovered genre!” conversation. But apparently not.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: The Air Is Smoke, the Lettuce Is Bad, but the Vampire Is Lestat appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Five Books About Battling Doubles, Doppelgängers, and Clones From evil twins to alter egos that take on a life of their own, you’re always your own worst enemy… By Lorna Wallace | Published on July 16, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Science fiction, fantasy, and horror books can be filled with foes of all kinds—from aliens and orcs to ghosts and slashers. But there’s something uniquely and horribly unsettling about having to battle a version (or multiple versions!) of yourself—be they a double, doppelgänger, or clone. Facing off against a double is a fairly common problem in the world of superheroes, with everyone from Superman to Captain America having gone toe-to-toe with themselves. Such mirror matches usually play out the same way: the characters are a physical match, but something about the hero’s idiosyncratic identity—be it their tenacity, heart, or past experiences—gives them the extra boost needed to defeat their alternative (often evil!) self. Outside the world of comic books, however, dealing with doubles can get a little more complicated. Not only do doppelgängers and clones often bring a character’s inner demons to the surface, but defeating them can also be a little trickier—as the five books below demonstrate. The Dark Half by Stephen King (1989) Thad Beaumont has made a successful career out of being a novelist—but not under his own name. All of his best-selling books—which are ultra-violent crime novels—have been written under the pen name George Stark. The story starts with Thad deciding to retire the pseudonym, which he does by staging a fake funeral for his alter ego. But Stark doesn’t want to be killed off and literally claws his way out of the grave to enact bloody revenge on anyone who had a part in his death. The Dark Half is clearly a personal book for Stephen King, who wrote a few novels under the pen name Richard Bachman. So it makes sense that there’s a good deal of introspection about personal and authorial identity in the story, but it’s also full of gruesome kills thanks to Stark’s murder spree (which lands Thad in hot water because while they aren’t 100% superficially identical, the two do share fingerprints and DNA). The Dark Half might not be one of King’s best books—it’s admittedly hard to top masterpieces like The Stand (1978) and IT (1986)—but it is one of his most underrated. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (2016) Dark Matter is a sci-fi thriller that works brilliantly when you go in knowing absolutely nothing. Since it’s on this list, I’ve already revealed that there’s some sort of double or doppelgänger shenanigans going on, but what form that takes can still be a surprise (and won’t be revealed in the description below!). The book starts with physics professor Jason Dessen being knocked out while walking home one night and then waking up to a changed world. His wife claims they never married, his teenage son doesn’t exist, and he’s apparently been working on an experimental physics project. All Jason wants is to get his family back, but achieving that might not be so easy. The journey that Jason goes on in Dark Matter is hectic, twisty, and mind-bending. That isn’t exactly ideal for our main character, but for the reader it results in a fast-paced plot that barrels breathlessly forward. The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson (2017) In some sci-fi stories, clones get on fairly well with each other, but The Murders of Molly Southbourne is not one of them. Molly Southbourne has a bizarre condition: every time she bleeds a clone of her is created, and that clone will eventually try to murder her. The novella starts with one of these clones—which Molly refers to as “mollies”—waking up chained to a wall in a basement. She’s confused and can’t remember how she got there, and then Molly comes in and tells her the story of her life. Tade Thompson manages to pack a lot into this compact novella. The tale that Molly tells is strange, engrossing, and, as would be expected from the premise, very bloody. Such Lovely Skin by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne (2024) Teenager Viv has had the summer from hell, but her life is about to get even worse. She accidentally killed her little sister and then lied about it and she’s been wallowing in a pit of grief and guilt ever since. With school about start up again, she decides to try to get back to some sense of normality by doing her first Twitch stream—which is how she makes money—in months. While doing an offline run-through of an indie horror game, Viv reveals the truth of her sister’s death to an NPC (non-playable character). But telling this secret allows an evil mimic to latch onto her. The demonic doppelgänger starts causing mayhem, but Viv is only able to convince one person that she isn’t the culprit: Ash, an outcast boy who she’s previously spread nasty rumors about (unbeknownst to him). I found Viv’s self-obsessed personality to be a little bit grating, but the visceral horror imagery throughout the book more than makes up for that. The Other by Annie Neugebauer (2026) I’m a sucker for any story that takes place in the woods (and I just recently put together a list of horror stories set in jungles and rainforests!) and The Other makes great use of its nature setting. Elise and Logan are at a crossroads in their marriage, so they’ve gone on a multi-day hike in the woods to give them space to think and talk through their relationship. It’s initially a quiet retreat, but then they come across another couple on the trail who look eerily like them. Although a little unsettled by the coincidence, they’ve already set up camp and it’s rapidly getting dark so they decide to stick it out. But then they wake up the next morning to find that the other couple are now not only identical to them, but they’re also claiming to be them. The Other is the kind of fast-paced novella that can be read in just a couple of sittings. It’s an incredibly stressful premise—Elise and Logan aren’t even sure of each other anymore, but they know that they can’t let their doppelgängers get back to the car at the trailhead—and it’s made all the more tense by the isolated setting. There are surely plenty of other books out there that feature someone having to battle an alternate version of themselves. Be it a classic or something more modern, feel free to leave your suggestions and recommendations in the comments below![end-mark] The post Five Books About Battling Doubles, Doppelgängers, and Clones appeared first on Reactor.

News Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender Heads to Select Theaters as Tickets Go on Sale Sorry to everyone who’s not in NYC or LA By Molly Templeton | Published on July 16, 2026 Image: Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Paramount+ New York and Los Angeles Avatar fans, it’s your lucky day. Variety has the news that the upcoming animated film Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender will play—for one week only!—in select theaters in these two cities. From July 24th to July 30th, the movie will have three showings daily at Los Angeles’ AMC Burbank Town Center 6 and Manhattan’s AMC Empire 25. (Those attending San Diego Comic-Con also have a chance to see the film on the big screen on July 24th.) While this is a treat for fans, it also has a more practical purpose: As Variety notes, “The news signals that Paramount will likely be campaigning Avatar Aang for next year’s Oscar for best animated feature and other accolades.” Avatar Aang continues the story told in Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s both a sequel to that series, and a prequel to The Legend of Korra. The synopsis says: The new film, based on the animated series created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, sees Avatar Aang, the world’s last Airbender, learn of an ancient power that could save his culture from extinction. With the help of his friends, he embarks on a global quest to find it before it falls into the wrong hands and threatens to upend the peace they sacrificed everything to achieve. The movie stars Eric Nam as Aang, Dave Bautista as Tagah, Jessica Matten as Katara, Román Zaragoza as Sokka, Steven Yeun as Zuko, and Dionne Quan as Toph. Freida Pinto, Ke Huy Quan, Taika Waititi, Geraldine Viswanathan, Ronny Chieng, and Ken Jeong also provide voices, and Dee Bradley Baker returns to voice Appa and Momo. It’s directed by Lauren Montgomery and co-directed by Steve Ahn and William Mata. Tickets are on sale now. If you’re not near one of these two theaters, you can watch the movie when it streams on Paramount Plus starting July 25.[end-mark] The post <i>Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender</i> Heads to Select Theaters as Tickets Go on Sale appeared first on Reactor.

Books Teen Horror Time Machine The Dangers of Dating: Deadly Attraction, Double Date, and Killer’s Kiss  Oh no, not the secret THIRD identical sister! By Alissa Burger | Published on July 16, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Romance is a major theme in ‘90s teen horror: someone’s always hooking up, breaking up, going out with someone they shouldn’t, or wishing they could be with someone they can’t have. Teenage love is never easy, but it gets even more complicated when someone tries to have it all by secretly dating multiple girls (or less frequently, guys). And when the truth comes out, things get complicated, which is the case in Diane Hoh’s Nightmare Hall book Deadly Attraction (1993) and R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books Double Date (1994) and Killer’s Kiss (1997).  In all three of these books, male protagonists carry on relationships with multiple girls, with varying levels of subterfuge. Deadly Attraction’s Robert Q. Parker III is just having a bit of fun with a girl from Salem until his “real” girlfriend comes back to him, Double Date’s Bobby Newkirk wants to date two identical twins without either one finding out, and in Killer’s Kiss, Vincent Milano can’t make up his mind between wild Delia and “good girl” Karina, so he just keeps dating them both. As far as these guys are concerned, all’s fair in love and war, and they go to pretty outrageous lengths to keep dating as many girls as they can … though the girls are also willing to go pretty far to get their guy or in some cases, their revenge.  Many of Hoh’s Nightmare Hall books are quite insular, focusing on the on-campus community of Salem University. While the students make trips off campus for a bite at the local diner or pizza place, or to do some shopping in town, there isn’t a lot of authentic interaction between the people who live in town and the Salem University students, with a pretty stark division of town and gown. But worlds collide when Robert Q. starts dating Darlene, a waitress from the local diner. She is infatuated with him and does everything she can to fit in with him and his friends. But it’s all for naught: Robert Q. is just having some fun with Darlene until his ex-girlfriend Gerrie gets tired of dating his friend Richard and comes back to him. When Robert Q. brings Darlene to a fraternity party, and then gets back together with Gerrie, Darlene quickly becomes disposable as far as Robert Q. is concerned. A Salem University student named Hailey comforts Darlene in the bathroom after Darlene sees Robert Q. and Gerrie getting cozy together, and the two girls overhear Robert Q. talking with Richard as he says “Look, Richard, twenty bucks is my final offer. You take the townie home. Get her out of here. Just drop her at her house. It’s on Fourth Street. Not that far. Twenty bucks for twenty minutes, that’s not bad” (31). Darlene and Gerrie are very different, in terms of both social class and life experience, but as far as Robert Q. and Richard are concerned, they’re a lot like moveable game pieces, capable of being picked up, passed back and forth, and disposed of at will.  Robert Q. and Gerrie seem well on the road to reconciliation, at least until someone beans Gerrie in the head with a rock outside the fraternity party and she has to be rushed to the hospital. Someone sets Robert Q.’s sports car on fire and when Richard catches someone trying to steal his car at the mall and tries to stop them, the perpetrator hits Richard with his own car, killing him. Many of the Salem University students see Darlene as the prime suspect and while Hailey stands up for her, she starts to have doubts of her own—especially because Darlene refuses to let go of her belief that she and Robert Q. are destined to be together and it’s just a matter of time before he comes back to her. Hailey’s alternate suspect is Darlene’s brother, who is a Salem University student, but Hailey doesn’t know his name and can’t figure out who he is to track him down and ask him a few questions.  Hailey does eventually solve this mystery:Darlene’s brother is actually her half-brother, has a different last name, and happens to be the guy Hailey herself has recently started dating, Finn Conran—but it’s actually Finn’s friend Pete Torrance that they all ought to be worried about. Pete has been friends with Darlene and Finn since they were all kids and while he has had a crush on Darlene for years, she’s never given him a chance. So he figures if he can take out the competition, frame her brother for the attacks, and basically make sure he’s her only remaining option, she’ll have to go out with him. Pete lures Hailey to Darlene and Finn’s house, planning to murder her and frame Finn, but she defends herself with chemicals from Finn’s photography dark room, traps Pete in the basement, and calls the police, saving herself before Finn can come to her rescue, though she sure is happy to see him when he shows up. Even Darlene gets a happy ending of sorts, reunited with her ex-boyfriend Bo (though there’s a bucketload of red flags in that relationship too, including a troubling level of obsession on both sides).  Double Date’s Bobby Newkirk is conceited and obnoxious. He dates and discards one girl after another, doesn’t spare a single thought for their feelings or see them as human beings deserving of respect or consideration, and feels that it’s his duty to date as many girls as possible, because he doesn’t want to “deprive” any of them of the (dubious) pleasure of his company. When he sees identical twins Bree and Samantha Wade, he bets his friends he can go out with both girls in a single weekend, without either of them finding out about the other. Much like Robert Q. and Richard in Deadly Attraction, he views the girls largely interchangeable. When his friend Paul says “I couldn’t tell them apart […] Which one was Bree and which one was Samantha?”, Bobby’s response is “What difference does it make? […] They’re both totally hot! […] Talk about dating two girls at once! What would it be like to go out with twins? Wow” (10). And, confident in his desirability and powers of persuasion, Bobby goes for it, asking Bree to come see his band play on Friday night and meeting up with Samantha at the mall on Saturday.  Bobby quickly learns that there are some major differences between the twins: Bree is quiet and reserved, while Samantha is more of a risk-taker, capping off their date night at the mall by shoplifting earrings from a jewelry store and running from security guards. Samantha knows that Bobby is dating both of them and Bree starts to get suspicious, which is when things begin to take some pretty wacky turns. First, Samantha warns Bobby that Bree could be potentially dangerous, telling him that if she finds out about Bobby dating them both, there’s no telling what might happen. Samantha hints that Bree has a history of instability, though she doesn’t go into detail, telling Bobby that “She’s starting to go over the edge. You don’t know her. She’s fragile—like glass […] If she breaks, she could do anything” (62, emphasis original). One of Bobby’s many ex-girlfriends, Melanie, is friends with the Wade twins and tries to steer him away with cryptic warnings as well. But no challenge or danger is too big for Bobby and he keeps on dating both sisters, confident that he can tell them apart by the small butterfly tattoo that Samantha has shown him on her shoulder, which distinguishes her from her sister. Things get even more complicated when Bree tells him that they have a secret third sister, Jennilynn, who is actually the unstable one. She tried to kill Samantha and Bree, and for everyone’s safety, she lives with their aunt and uncle now, but it seems like she has tracked them down and is trying to make their lives miserable again … and claim Bobby for herself, which is simultaneously an ego boost and a mind game, as Bobby goes back through his encounters with the girls, trying to figure out who he was with when, who he should be afraid of, and whether or not he can level up by making out with triplets instead of twins, even if it could be potentially fatal. Jennilynn lures him to her family’s cabin in the woods and knocks him unconscious. When he wakes up, he’s in his T-shirt and underwear and tied to a chair as she pours honey all over him and then dumps a box full of biting ants on his head, as he screams and tries to free himself. Jennilynn flees, Bobby finally gets loose, and when he escapes the cabin, he runs into Melanie, who tells him she came to the cabin looking for Jennilynn and offers him a ride to the Wades’ house so he can warn them (but not before she digs some beach towels out of the trunk to avoid him getting her car set all sticky. Dude is a mess). But when they get to the Wade house, the joke is definitely on Bobby, as he is humiliated and mocked by all the girls he’s used and discarded. There’s no Jennilynn. The twins have known what Bobby was doing the whole time and decided to teach him a lesson. Nobody has a tattoo, but a sheet of temporary tattoos have allowed the twins to switch identities back and forth to mess with him. Bobby is terrified and publicly humiliated, both by the girls he wronged and the Wade twins’ parents, who can’t figure out why a half-naked guy covered in honey is in their living room screaming about a third Wade daughter who doesn’t exist. Bobby still seems a bit perplexed—his final question to the gathered girls is “You—you mean you don’t like me?” (152, emphasis original), before “Defeated, he turned and slumped out of the room, their laughter ringing in his ears” (152). The lesson may or may not stick as well as the honey did, but the girls have leveraged sisterhood and solidarity in getting their revenge on Bobby.  In Killer’s Kiss, Vincent Milano sees himself as a real catch, much like Bobby and Robert Q., but in a bit of a twist, he is also framed as a desirable prize to be won. Delia and Karina have competed for everything their whole lives, from the best grades to homecoming queen. They’re always trying to one-up one another: as Delia tells her friends “I’m the front-page editor, but Karina is editor of the whole paper […] I manage the volleyball team. Karina is the star player” (17). And now, in senior year, they’re competing for the prestigious Conklin scholarship, which is based on a combination of academics, a talent competition, and artistic achievement. On top of that, they both have their sights set on Vincent, who tells both Delia and Karina that she’s his one and only. Vincent plays them off one another, telling Delia that Karina is delusional and believes she’s dating him, but swears it isn’t true. The girls finally realize what’s going on when Delia sees Vincent and Karina together. They have a pretty good conversation and Karina tells Delia “he made it easy to believe what I wanted to believe. He should have told me. He should have told you too. He lied to both of us” (71). But the truce doesn’t last long and before they know it, Vincent is playing them off one another again. Tensions rise even higher when someone starts to sabotage Delia’s Conklin competition materials, destroying her guitar before the talent portion and defacing her portfolio before the artistic evaluation. To top it all off, it turns out Karina and Delia aren’t enough for Vincent—he starts making out with Delia’s younger sister Sarah as well.  It all comes to a head at Vincent’s birthday party, which he decides to hold in an abandoned house on Fear Street. The partygoers spend a lot of the night wondering where Delia is … until she shows up late, looking like a disaster. The gathered teens look on in horror as “Delia staggered into the doorway. She took two steps—then stumbled. The heel of one of her red shoes had snapped off […] The right sleeve of her dress was ripped at the shoulder” (99). She is covered with bruises, scratches, and blood, and tells everyone that it’s because Karina tricked her into coming over and then tied Delia up in her room to keep her away from Vincent’s party. It’s a wild end to the night, but the next morning is even more intense, when Delia and the others show up at the house to help Vincent clean up and find him dead, with a lipstick print in Delia’s signature shade on his cheek. Once again, it looks like Karina is out to get Delia, this time framing her for murder: the lip print is reversed, planted on his cheek with a paper that Delia used to blot her lips. The police find several of these blotting papers in Karina’s room, who vehemently denies everything, but this apparently evidence enough to get Karina charged with Vincent’s murder and institutionalized.  But Delia seems to be a good friend, going to visit Karina in the hospital with their friend Gabe. As they wait for Karina’s doctor to finish in her room so they can see her, Delia and Gabe talk about how she won the Conklin scholarship and their bright futures that are waiting for them after graduation. Delia muses that “It’s not the way I wanted to win it” (143), before telling Gabe “Karina would have won, you know […] If I had let her” (144). Once Delia starts talking, the truth comes tumbling out: Delia did it all. She sabotaged her own guitar and portfolio. She faked her injuries the night of Vincent’s birthday party, killed him after everyone else had left, and planted the blotting papers in Karina’s room to frame her for the murder. As she confesses to Gabe, “I was losing everything. Everything. Vincent. My sister. The award. I saw everything slip away […] I had to kill him for liking Karina better than me. And for kissing my sister […] And if I could pin the blame on Karina—then all my problems would be solved!” (146-7). Gabe is understandably horrified and Delia tries to make him promise not to tell, but Karina’s doctor overheard the whole thing, calls the cops, and begins to set things right.  In Deadly Attraction, Double Date, and Killer’s Kiss, when guys try to date multiple girls, things end badly, with consequences ranging from humiliation to death. There are a lot of moving pieces in all three books: the guys treat the girls badly, using and exploiting them, viewing them as prizes to be won rather than people to know and respect as equal partners. In competing for these young men’s affections—none of whom seem to be worth the trouble, to be honest—the girls go to great lengths as well. In Deadly Attraction, Darlene is fixated on Robert Q. and when she gives up on getting back together with him, she becomes just as intensely fixated when she gets back together with her ex-boyfriend Bo, as Hailey laments that “Darlene’s switched heroes […] but she’s still using the same script. Woman overboard. She may not be a killer, but she sure could use some help” (179). The girls in Double Date go to elaborate lengths to get their revenge on Bobby, while Karina and Delia publicly attack one another as their fight over Vincent in Killer’s Kiss. All might be fair in love and war, but the consequences end up being more than any of them bargained for.[end-mark] The post The Dangers of Dating: <em>Deadly Attraction</em>, <em>Double Date</em>, and <em>Killer’s Kiss</em>  appeared first on Reactor.