Books Reading the Weird Dueling Metaphors: Stephen Graham Jones’ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (Part 10) After weeks of projected guilt and petty sins, we’re finally through to the real confession… By Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth | Published on June 24, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches. This week, we cover Chapters 19-20 of Stephen Graham Jones’ Nebula- and Stoker-winning The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. The book was first published in 2025. Spoilers ahead! The Absolution of Three-Persons, May 1, 1912. Good Stab knows who Arthur is, and that Arthur knows he knows, and yet their bizarre Sunday co-confessionals continue. Unable to take any more of “the farce,” Arthur coats his log with sacramental wafers and wine to hide it from the keen-nosed Good Stab, and prepares to get the hell out of Miles City. What Good Stab doesn’t understand, Arthur thinks, is that Arthur’s a different man from the one who committed the crime for which the Pikuni seeks justice. Meanwhile Arthur still wavers between belief in Good Stab’s supernatural nature and denying that there’s “any tangible proof.” He hopes that Good Stab will take his disappearance as an admission of guilt and not “make [Miles City] pay for [Arthur’s] trespasses.” Arthur won’t disclose his destination. Suffice it to write he doesn’t expect to return, or even to survive the journey. He’s old and infirm. He must travel on foot, with meager supplies. But God never said absolution would be easy, and that’s “the only repast” he now seeks. The Absolution of Three-Persons, May 12, 1912. It’s been eleven days since Arthur’s last entry. His parishioners beat on the door of the church, but he doesn’t dare open it lest someone see the state of the chapel. He has barricaded the entryway with pews, and blacked out the windows with an inky paste made from the dampened pages of Bibles. He’s ventured to the rectory only to retrieve his log; God no longer hears him, so it’s his only confidant. Even Cordelia the cat has abandoned him. She can smell what’s transpired in the church. Those eleven days ago, Arthur walked “under cover of a starless night,” alone, northward into the open prairie. The next night he crossed the Yellowstone River, then built a fire to dry his clothes and ward off evil prowlers. Waking from a doze, he saw a pale, naked form sitting across the fire. It was the headless wooden body of his church’s formerly crucified Jesus. Good Stab had accompanied the figure, having traced Arthur by his smell. He tilted the statue into the fire. Hollow, it burned quickly. After remarking that they sat almost where his first skinned victims were found, he said he hadn’t finished his confession. No, Three-Persons couldn’t hear him out on the prairie. They must return to his “holy house,” where they started. He then rushed at Arthur and clamped the flat edges of his teeth around his throat, not to bite but to cut off circulation to his brain. As Arthur’s vision darkened, he saw stars “scratching lines” across the sky and knew he was being born anew. He woke two days later and found himself suspended above his own chapel, with a Jesus-eye view of the place, for Good Stab had bound him to the vacant crucifix. Good Stab stood below, and for the first time, he addressed the pastor as “Arthur Beaucarne.” He then proceeded to introduce Arthur to his new “congregation”—the variously decomposed corpses carefully propped up in the pews. In attendance were Sheriff Doyle, his star of office pinned through one eye; postmaster Livinius Clarkson, wrapped in his beloved American flag; the four lodging house porch-sitters. Behind them were arrayed the town’s stray dogs, lids skinned to permanently expose their dead eyes. A candle started Clarkson slowly grilling, providing unwelcome illumination of another corpse: the flayed “hump” at whose burial Arthur had presided. Arthur sobbed, pleaded “Why?” For the first time, Good Stab betrayed excitement, and Arthur realized that they were both “mired in up to our souls [in] the culmination of all [Good Stab’s] devious efforts,” his turnip-skin peeling of Arthur down to the “white meat.” Arthur recognized the “hump” as Benjamin Flowers, the man from San Francisco whom Doyle had identified. Flowers’ three sons were propped up beside him; the youngest and most recently flayed was Arthur Flowers. Cryptically, Good Stab asked if he was named after the pastor. Then he turned the subject to the massacre at Heavy Runner’s camp. Arthur arrived with other soldiers after walking four days in a blizzard; already three of his toes had blackened in his boot. His orders were to “strike them [the Blackfeet] hard.” He obeyed, killing sick elders, women and children. Nor was it the scout Joe Cobell who started the slaughter by shooting Heavy Runner, was it? Having held in too much, for too long, Arthur screamed, as he should have screamed for the soldiers to stop shooting. Good Stab screamed, too. This was the story of America, Arthur thought, told in a forgotten church to a mute choir of the dead. Voice recovered, Arthur made excuses: He followed orders, he was exhausted, the Blackfeet didn’t even fight back, another regiment would have done the same. Good Stab finally pried out the truth, that Arthur could kill the people “because you were just Indians!” And the men of the Flowers family were just napikwans, Good Stab countered. But they were more to Arthur. After Heavy Runner’s camp, Arthur consoled himself with a fort woman named Ava. Benjamin was the son Arthur never knew of, Benjamin’s sons Arthur’s grandsons. Good Stab had killed them because all of Arthur’s blood had to be spilled. To Arthur’s anguished “When will it be enough,” he demands, “When will napikwans have enough of our land?” Still bound to the cross, his heart finally on the ground as Good Stab wants it, Arthur hears his last confession, which includes his confrontation with the finally revived and potent Cat Man, who, it turns out, killed Good Stab’s white buffalo Weasel Plume and the boy Yellow Kidney. What’s Cyclopean: We’re not going to say the “two corrupt syllables” of Good Stab’s kind’s common name. “Nachzehrer” better “captures the monster they would signify.” Vampire. Vampire. Vampire, vampire, vampire! The Degenerate Dutch: “Perhaps” all Indians are “monstrous… mind and heart spawned from the most sinful part of the Pit.” In which case, killing them is no “trespass,” right? Right??? Libronomicon: Bibles are used this week to make a sacrilegious paste for blacking out church windows, and as “medicine” to commemorate the killing of a particularly obnoxious missionary. Seven Deadly Sins and Counting: Arthur’s drinking is finally connected to his older, murderous sins against Heavy Runner’s camp. Ruthanna’s Commentary We’ve been waiting, through weeks of confession, for the real confession. It’s been obvious that Arthur is hiding things not only from the world, but from himself. He’s dropped hints, projected his guilt on others, redirected to petty sins, and insisted that he’s been reborn and doesn’t need to think about all those things that other guy did. This week, Good Stab forces it out into the open: Arthur led the massacre Heavy Runner’s camp. His admission is a mix of self-justification and self-flagellation. He was following orders, they didn’t fight back, manifest destiny made their deaths inevitable, they were just Indians. But also he should have stopped it, he’s felt guilty all this time, he’s a different person, he tried to fuck and then drink and then preach the memories away—doesn’t it matter that contributing to genocide is traumatic? It does, and it doesn’t. It matters because when we stop caring about the lives and well-beings of others, we stop caring about our own humanity too. And it doesn’t because Arthur’s alcoholism and dissociation don’t bring back the dead. And it does because his self-protective justifications then justify further horrors. And it doesn’t because he shouldn’t get to make the massacre a story about himself. I’ve just been listening to the If Books Could Kill episode about The Body Keeps the Score. It’s a book about trauma that a lot of people have found helpful, and which apparently has a lot of scientific and moral problems. It offers single-minded sympathy for people traumatized by their own roles in atrocity—a sympathy that’s interested in finding them “peace” but not atonement or justice, to the degree that either are possible. One that’s not at all interested in those whose lives they’ve destroyed, the further traumas that they’ve left in their wakes. This seems very much like what Arthur wants. What he thinks, at least sometimes, that his reinvention as a cleric should earn. Good Stab is trauma that he’s left in his wake, a body very literally keeping score. (There’s that count he keeps promising.) He in turn—no longer Pikuni—continues atrocity. Justice in the “eye for an eye” sense, but not in the sense that changes anything, or that makes a better world. Good Stab is a metaphor as well as a real bloody-minded vampire, but Arthur is also a metaphor. Or he wants to be – it’s another way that he justifies himself. He was merely part of the force of America fighting to be born. “You can’t stop a country from happening.” As if there were no other ways for countries to happen. As if the “pioneers” weren’t trying to stop already-existent nations from happening. He was the “different breed of men” needed to “forge a new land, a better country, one that made use of its resources rather than letting them lie fallow.” Manifest Destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery insist that only European extraction counts as a meaningful relationship. They also insist on themselves as forces of nature. You can’t be blamed for implementing the inevitable. Where there’s no alternative, there’s no guilt. At 70% through the book, we can’t be entirely done with reveals. Good Stab has more to say. And there are the ongoing parallels between the two men—made more parallel by Arthur’s insistence that he, too, has died and become someone new. It’s an odd insistence. It makes sense for Good Stab, who thinks of his original self and soul as collectively supported—there’s a real and consistent definition of “dead” there, even as he walks and talks and feeds. “Reborn in Christ” doesn’t usually imply death, but soul-cleansing. Arthur seems to want to have it both ways. “Who you claim to see inside me is long dead.” At the same time, he yearns for ostensibly-already-experienced absolution. But no. Jesus may forgive all; Good Stab has other ideas. Anne’s Commentary At present, I can’t find that any studio or network has officially signed to make a limited series of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, but considering the success of the novel and of films like Sinners, I have strong hopes for it. If anything can outdo Game of Throne’s Red Wedding, it would be the Redder, Deader confession scene in this week’s reading. Make-up F/X artists would be drooling to get their hands on the corpses. I don’t know about the dogs, however. Caninophiles might balk at all those dead and lidless pups blasting the screen with “their hungry, childlike gaze.” If any of us doubted that Good Stab is a Villain whose “mind and heart [were] spawned from the most sinful part of the Pit,” let us put those doubts aside. The guy spared Cordelia’s life because he’s a cat lover! Dogs, with him, are good for nothing but macabre background props. Killing a beaver for strictly selfish reasons deducts another point from Good Stab’s character profile. On the other hand, he gains a lot of points for adopting Weasel Plume and the other napikwan-orphaned buffalo calves. Arthur claims that, apart from his never-met French grandfather, his ancestry is primarily German. I say he must have some Egyptian blood, because he is sure in the running for King of Denial. Now, as late as in Chapter 19, he writes that he hasn’t found “any tangible proof other than his [Good Stab’s] attestation” that his tormentor stands apart from the natural world and its divinely ordained order. It’s a thorny question whether believing in a God or gods is not in itself acceptance of the supernatural. Or if God is in effect all of Nature, then everything that exists must be natural, whether you like that particular aspect of the All or not. Such a belief is a tough ask. Who wants to accept that famine, tornadoes, cancer, and Pick-Your-Scariest-Invertebrate are really acts of God? Good is God with an extra O. There’s no E-V-I-L in GOD! Evil must be apart from God, from Nature, therefore SUPERnatural. That’s better. It’s easier to believe that undesirable elements in one’s Umwelt are of the Devil, hence best eliminated if possible. That would include troublesome peoples, like those “just Indians” of whom Arthur Beaucarne oversees the eradication. But not Pastor Arthur Beaucarne. Previous Arthur’s a “different man, in a different life, and in a different time to boot, with necessities so remote from the contemporary mind as to be practically unretrievable.” While remembering the most visceral details of the massacre, Pastor Arthur can say—can attempt himself to believe—that “I wasn’t really there.” No wonder Good Stab responds to that assertion “in savage objection.” In so savage an exception, in fact, that Arthur stammers his last and feeblest excuse, “They didn’t even fight.” It’s “the first part of the admission Good Stab had been leading [him] toward for weeks.” Combined with seeing Good Stab’s blood-tears and the way his chin quivers just as Arthur’s does, the self-protective, self-destructive shell between Pastor Arthur and Soldier Arthur shatters. He screams from the crucifix, reunited with the raw truth of his past, suppressed and roiling for too long. Good Stab screams along with him, fallen to his knees, forehead to the floor, and though their despairs are their own, the pain of both wails harmonizes into what Arthur comes to believe is the “story of America.” It’s the strongest and most devastating passage in the novel. It’s unbearable, but it must be borne by both actors in the drama of confession and potential absolution. “You tore the heart out of my people,” Good Stab says, still bowed to the floor. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Arthur says, still on the cross. The potential absolution doesn’t come yet. Given the psychological and spiritual realism to which Graham Jones adheres, it cannot. Arthur can only answer Good Stab’s demand for why he killed with more excuses. Good Stab has one more death to account for. Arthur spared Yellow Kidney’s life at Heavy Runner’s camp. Given the many children he didn’t spare, he feels the emptiness of this claim is as much as Good Stab does. Confession must continue—final or otherwise—in the next chapter of the Nachzehrer’s dark gospel. Next week, prepare for yet another kind of crisis with Matthew McDonald’s “How to Deal With Fallen Gods.”[end-mark] The post Dueling Metaphors: Stephen Graham Jones’ <i>The Buffalo Hunter Hunter</i> (Part 10) appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays Planet of the Apes Why a Planet of the Apes Sequel Was Weirdly More Faithful to the Original Book Developmental woes, money, and studio concerns can make for fascinating changes to a text. By Don Kaye | Published on June 24, 2026 Image: 20th Century Fox Comment 0 Share New Share Image: 20th Century Fox When Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel La Planète des singes was optioned for film by producer Arthur P. Jacobs, it must have been difficult to imagine that the movie, which finally arrived five years later as Planet of the Apes, would ever reach the screen at all. Science fiction was still largely considered B-movie material, and no studio in Hollywood was willing to accept Jacobs’ pitch about a movie set in a civilization of talking apes. Yet the 1968 film became an enduring sci-fi classic—but not without significant changes that made it possible to bring Boulle’s story to life. Strangely enough, once Planet of the Apes officially became a multi-film saga and sequels were churned once a year between 1970 and 1973, it was one of those entries—1971’s Escape from the Planet of the Apes—that ended up returning unexpectedly to many aspects of Boulle’s original vision. Escape also became the most acclaimed of the four initial sequels, second only to the original itself, and remains a fan favorite to this day. Image: 20th Century Fox Boulle’s novel opens with a husband-and-wife pair of astronauts enjoying an interstellar cruise when they come upon a bottle floating in space. The literal message in a bottle is a manuscript penned by a journalist, Ulysse Mérou, who relates how he undertook a voyage to the star Betelgeuse with two scientists, with time dilation causing just two years to pass on the ship while centuries zoom by outside. Upon landing on a planet that they name Soror, the three men find themselves among a tribe of mute “savages” who appear to be more or less human. The tribe is attacked by gorillas on horseback wielding weapons; one of Mérou’s companions is killed, while Mérou himself is captured and brought to a modern city. It soon becomes evident that on Soror, apes are the dominant, intelligent species, while humans are considered little more than animals. But when Mérou makes it clear that he is intelligent and can speak, a chimpanzee scientist named Zira takes an intense interest in him. Mérou is eventually accepted by ape society, allowed to live in comfortable surroundings and given clothing, and even speaks before an assembly of apes. Meanwhile, Zira’s archaeologist fiancé, Cornelius, discovers incontrovertible evidence that there was once a human civilization on Soror that was eventually overthrown by the simians. At the same time, Mérou learns that Nova, the Sororian woman he has mated with, is pregnant—and since the baby will be the first offspring born of an intelligent human in centuries, the new family represents an existential threat to an ape society that now in all likelihood will seek their extermination (Nova was also pregnant in an early draft of the Planet of the Apes script). While La Planète des singes reads more like a Swiftian satire than the sci-fi action film that it spawned, Planet of the Apes does retain the spine and some of the tone of the book. The French journalist Mérou becomes a misanthropic American astronaut named Taylor (played by Charlton Heston), but Zira, Cornelius, and Dr. Zaius (in both the book and movie, a powerful orangutan official who wants to suppress all knowledge of humanity’s past) all make the transition from page to screen relatively intact (played by Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowall, and Maurice Evans respectively), as does the idea that the ape society was preceded by a human one whose downfall led to the ascendance of its simian cousins. Image: 20th Century Fox But one of the biggest changes from the book is the now legendary ending. Confronted with a ruined Statue of Liberty in the wasteland the apes call “the Forbidden Zone,” Taylor realizes he’s back on Earth, 2,000 years after humankind has destroyed itself in a nuclear holocaust. In the book, Mérou, Nova, and their baby son actually make it back to Earth, also millennia later, where—just like on Soror—humanity has fallen and apes are in control (a somewhat muddled version of this turned up in Tim Burton’s 2001 Planet of the Apes remake). Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, one of two credited screenwriters (along with Michael G. Wilson) on Planet of the Apes, is largely attributed with conceiving that haunting final image of Lady Liberty. But an almost equally significant change occurred after Serling handed the writing duties off to Wilson. Serling’s original script followed Boulle’s version of a contemporary ape society, with teeming cities, automobiles, fashionable clothing, aircraft, and many modern technological advancements, adjusted for anthropoid use. The apes wear suits, ties, dresses, and other human-like clothing, unlike the more uniform outfits seen in the film. Serling estimated that shooting the movie that way would cost “a hundred million dollars,” telling Cinefantastique magazine in 1972, “It was an altogether 20th-century technology, a New York City in which the doors and automobiles were lower and wider… but of course that was much too expensive to do.” Indeed, it would have been no mean feat at a time when the film’s first proposed budget of $7 million got a firm “pass” from Warner Bros. Pictures (20th Century Fox ultimately bankrolled the movie for $5 million, with the budget going $800K over). It was Michael G. Wilson who came up with the idea of the apes living in a rural, agrarian society. Advancements like rifles and primitive cameras are present, but the apes’ homes are made out of stone and nestled on hillsides, while transportation is by horseback or carriage. This not only eliminated the budgetary issue of creating a modern society for the monkeys, but also positioned their civilization as somewhat timeless, making it more difficult for Taylor (and the audience) to ascertain where he really was. Many of the ideas that were excised from the final script for Planet of the Apes—outsiders finding themselves in advanced societies where they are considered barbaric until deemed otherwise, those same outsiders later being perceived as a threat to the current order, a pregnancy as the catalyst—eventually found their way into Escape from the Planet of the Apes three years later, but only after the massive success of the first film spawned a sequel that put the filmmakers in a creative corner. Image: 20th Century Fox 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes finds Taylor, Nova, and another astronaut named Brent (James Franciscus) caught in a war between the militaristic gorillas who have come to power in the ape society and mutated, telepathic humans who live underground in the nearby ruins of New York City. With Fox insisting that the series end with this film, the climax has Taylor detonate a powerful weapon, worshiped by the mutants, that can and does destroy the entire world. And that was seemingly that—until Beneath became an improbable box office hit and screenwriter Paul Dehn famously received a telegram that read, “Apes exist. Sequel required.” Dehn’s solution was not only a clever conceit that turned the Apes franchise into a full-blown futuristic saga, but managed to channel some of the original intent and vision of Boulle’s book. Escape from the Planet of the Apes has Cornelius (McDowall), Zira (Hunter) and a third chimp named Dr. Milo (Sal Mineo) salvage, repair, and launch Taylor’s original spacecraft just before the Earth is destroyed. The shockwave sends them hurtling back through time to our present, where the world is initially stunned and aghast to learn that they are intelligent beings from our own future (early drafts had the “ape-o-nauts” actually landing on a different, Earth-like planet with a human civilization like ours, until it was changed to Earth itself). Image: 20th Century Fox Milo is killed early on in an accident, but Cornelius and Zira—never more charming and likable than in this film—are soon treated as celebrities, taken shopping for clothes on Rodeo Drive and moved from their initial quarters at the Los Angeles Zoo to a suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Cornelius is treated as an esteemed historian, Zira is invited to speak to feminist organizations, and both become genuinely popular luminaries. But then it’s revealed that Zira is pregnant, with the president’s paranoid science advisor, Dr. Otto Hasslein (Eric Braeden), also coaxing the knowledge out of her that the Earth will be destroyed in a war between apes and humans. The two chimps become for all intents and purposes enemies of the state, with Hasslein deducing that their intelligent progeny could in fact be the starting point for the evolutionary pivot that has apes ascend over humans. Zira and Cornelius are violently murdered in the movie’s shocking climax, but their baby survives, paving the way for the next two sequels. Image: 20th Century Fox Escape from the Planet of the Apes cost $2 million to make—nearly two-thirds less than the original film—thanks to the fact that there were only three actors in ape makeup, and that a number of real locations in Los Angeles were used (even a primitive ape village cost money to build). Yet as a result, Escape gives us a sense of what a live-action Planet of the Apes truer to Pierre Boulle’s setting might have looked like. (The short-lived 1975 animated series Return to the Planet of the Apes was set in a technologically advanced ape society—the format not having the same financial restrictions—but it only lasted for 13 episodes and was hampered by the typically poor animation of many Saturday morning cartoon shows of the time.) In Escape, the visitors out of space and time do not find themselves in a rural cliffside village, but a modern metropolis in which the humans they once saw as little more than brutes are now running the world. Writer Paul Dehn even consulted Boulle about inserting more satirical elements: The idea of seeing apes dressed in human clothing—one of the reasons why the first movie was stuck in development for so long—is turned on its head here as Cornelius and Zira go out shopping. The initial impulse on seeing them is perhaps to giggle (the fear of studio executives hesitant to greenlight the original film), but Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter are so endearing, their reactions so amusing, that the sequence works. In another scene, Cornelius—ostensibly an animal to the people around him—is appalled by the violence as he watches a prize fight, while the supposedly “civilized” humans around him cheer and shout. Image: 20th Century Fox Charlton Heston’s Taylor is never embraced as a celebrity by the simian society in the Planet of the Apes film, although Mérou is heralded as such in the novel—until he’s perceived as a danger, that is. This is exactly what happens in Escape: Dr. Hasslein decides that the apes and their child must be terminated to save humanity. The notion of how rapidly we can turn on people whom we hold up as equals or cultural figures is mocked here with a few deft strokes. Cornelius and Zira find themselves ousted from the Beverly Wilshire and sent to a military camp; just like Mérou in the original novel, society quickly wants nothing to do with them. Unlike Mérou (and Taylor, at least initially), they are fated to be gunned down in cold blood… although the apes ultimately have the last laugh. Even with its humor, modern setting, and satirical elements pushed to the fore, Escape from the Planet of the Apes wouldn’t live up to its title unless it had the kind of downbeat ending that the series became known for, and that even Boulle himself managed to convey in his own sardonic way (the astronauts that find Mérou’s manuscript? They’re chimps too, and they dismiss the whole thing as a fantasy story). Yet Escape also offers something else—a funhouse mirror glimpse of how a rigorously faithful live-action adaptation of the source text might have looked.[end-mark] Sources Planet of the Apes Revisited by Joe Russo and Larry Landsman with Edward Gross Cinefantastique #6 (Summer 1972) Planet of the Apes: The Evolution of the Legend by Joe Fordham and Jeff Bond “The Secret Behind Escape” mini-documentary on the Escape Blu-ray The post Why a Planet of the Apes Sequel Was Weirdly More Faithful to the Original Book appeared first on Reactor.

Column Science Fiction Film Club Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes: Charmingly Low-Stakes Time Loop Hijinks A bunch of friends accidentally discover a time paradox-vortex-loop thingy in this goofy, delightful comedy. By Kali Wallace | Published on June 24, 2026 Credit: Europe Kikaku / Tollywood Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Europe Kikaku / Tollywood Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (Japanese: ドロステのはてで僕ら, trans. We at the End of the Droste) (2020) Directed by Junta Yamaguchi. Written by Makoto Ueda. Starring members of the Europe Kikaku theater troupe. Over the past few weeks, we’ve watched a selection of low-budget, high-concept films that make use of minimal productions to place characters in strange and unsettling science fictional situations. It feels fitting to end the month with a film that reminds us we needn’t take everything so seriously all the time—not even accidentally creating a time paradox with your friends in a Kyoto café after hours. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is a mere 70 minutes long, and it spends barely five of those minutes establishing its science fictional premise. Kato (Kazunari Tosa), a café owner in Kyoto, discovers one night after work that the computer in his café is linked to the computer in his apartment upstairs by a two-minute time glitch. When he looks at his home monitor, he can see what is happening exactly two minutes in the future from the perspective of the café’s computer. This is, of course, completely bewildering to Kato, but he doesn’t get much time to think it over before café worker Aya (Riko Fujitani) and friend Komiya (Gôta Ishida) catch on and begin playfully testing the curious little time loop. Two more friends, Tanabe (Masashi Suwa) and Ozawa (Yoshifumi Sakai), show up to join in. In spite of Kato’s misgivings, the other characters want to figure out what they can do with this ability. Naturally, their minds go to using the “Time TV” to make money, but they quickly realize the limitations of being able to see only two minutes into the future. Ozawa comes up with a way around that. If they set the two computers facing each other, he reasons, it will create an infinite mirror that will show each subsequent layer two minutes farther into the future. This is where the film’s Japanese title comes from: ドロステのはてで僕ら, or We at the End of the Droste, refers to the Droste effect, which describes when an image occurs recursively inside of itself. The effect is name for an advertisement created by Jan Misset in 1904; his artwork for the Dutch cocoa brand Droste shows a woman holding a cocoa tin that features the same image of her holding a cocoa tin. Over Kato’s rather feeble objections, the group excitedly follows Ozawa’s suggestion. They place the two computers facing each other and end up with a view several minutes in the future. (Note: I have no trouble suspending my disbelief for the timey-wimey stuff, but I kept wondering how long the cables are for this computer. Kato must be using the longest extension cord in Japan.) That’s where things start to get a bit more complicated. Kato sees his future self excitedly announce that the woman next door, Megumi (Aki Asakura), has accepted an invitation to come see his band play. But when he goes over to ask her, she turns him down. Aya convinces him he has to tell his past self that she accepted, because he saw his future self say it, therefore not doing it will create a paradox. This is an assumption all the characters, genre-savvy as they are, bring into the situation. They accept that the future is controlling the present in some way—or they don’t want to find out what will happen if it doesn’t—and that remains true even when things take a turn for the dangerous. Relatively dangerous, that is, because this is not the kind of movie where the tone ever dips darker than “mildly concerned.” The friends accidentally run afoul of some hapless gangsters who live upstairs, and there is an amusing sequence of events where Kato goes to confront them while carrying one screen (longest extension cord in all of Japan!) so the others can watch the future broadcast below and hurriedly prepare him. Then the Time Cops show up, and Kato and Megumi finally ask the question that the audience has been asking all along: Why do we have to do what we see our future selves do? Can’t we just… not do that? The future isn’t actually controlling us, is it? And they’re right, at least from their own perspectives. There is no cataclysm. They don’t accidentally create a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Life just goes on, now with the two of them getting to know each other in the café, and Kato firmly turning off his Time TV monitor. Just about everybody involved in the making of the film came from the Kyoto-based Europe Kikaku, a theater troupe founded at Doshisha University in 1998. The troupe specializes in comedic performances with sci fi or fantasy elements, so this film is right in their wheelhouse. The setting is a real café where the members of the troupe liked to hang out, and the film was made over the course of seven days for a total cost of about ¥3 million (about $18,000). It premiered in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdowns in a small Tokyo theater to a socially-distanced audience of exactly twelve people—but it was picked up by Toho Cinemas, the theater-owning arm of the Japanese film giant, and would go on to screen at a number of festivals. According to an interview with director (who was also the cinematographer, camera operator, and editor) Junta Yamaguchi, writer Makoto Ueda first conceived of the basic premise of Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes several years before they found the right time to make it. And when they did, the biggest challenge was getting the one-take, real-time aspect right. Time for a quick diversion into film trivia! Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes was not actually filmed in a single long take; it was edited to look that way. That’s a tried-and-true approach to filmmaking that’s been around for a long time: Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman (2014) and Sam Mendes’ 1917 (2019) are two modern examples that make use of it. Prior to the usage of digital cameras and projectors, the length of a single take was limited by the length of a reel of film. That was the problem Alfred Hitchcock ran into when he was making Rope (1948). Film stock at the time could record only seven to ten minutes of action, and two reels could be loaded into a theater film projector for a maximum twenty minutes of continuous runtime. That’s why Rope is made up of a series of seven-minute scenes in which the cuts alternate between hidden cuts (such as close-ups on the same image) and obvious cuts. (I learned from reading about this that apparently Iñárritu hates Rope and was not shy about expressing it during Birdman promotions. It’s an opinion he shares with Hitchcock himself, who considered the film a failed experiment. I quite like Rope. I like audacious experiments in film.) The advent of video technology extended the length of a single true take considerably; Béla Tarr’s made-for-television Macbeth (1982) clocks in at 62 minutes, with a single five-minute scene followed by one that is 57 minutes long. Digital filmmaking naturally pushed the limit even farther, and now there are several movies from around the world that are true single-take films of over two hours long. These include the Tamil-language Indian horror movie Agadam (2014), filmed in a single 123-minute take; the Iranian experimental film Immortality (2016), which consists of a single 145-minute shot on a train; and the German crime thriller Victoria (2015), for which the full 138 minutes were filmed three times because the director was dissatisfied with the first two takes. This concludes our detour into film trivia, because that’s not what Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is doing. This movie takes it cue more directly from the 2017 Japanese zombie movie One Cut of the Dead, which is a film-within-a-film meta satire about the production of a single-cut zombie film that ends up using real zombies. That film was also made for quite a low budget over a handful of days, with Shin’ichirō Ueda both directing and editing. It was also extremely successful, demonstrating that there was at least a little bit of interest in the film world for low-budget, high-concept speculative films with some fun editing trickery. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is not a long film, but making it required intense attention to detail in both filming and editing. To be able to keep moving around the characters—and following them as they haul computers up and down the stairs—Yamaguchi used a tiny, handheld camera fixed to an iPhone that served as its monitor. He said about the process, “We paid particular attention to time management. The two-minute time delay needed to be very accurate, we couldn’t go off even one second. Everything, from the camera movement to the actors, had to be very precise.” That makes it another film, like Coherence (2014), where the confined setting and short time frame hide just how much preparation and editing go into making a film that convincingly portrays a group of people having an ordinary evening interrupted by science fictional phenomena. Making it look easy on screen is never actually easy at all. One thing I really liked about Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is its charming self-awareness in keeping the scale small and the stakes low. The characters even poke fun at the time travel trope of glimpsing the future and seeing a post-apocalyptic hellscape. It never tries to explain the causality or paradox built into the premise; those are not things the characters would be able to work out in an hour. They marvel at the phenomenon, they play around with it, and they only get about as far as using it for scratch tickets and gashapon prizes before getting waylaid. All of that feels believable for a bunch of friends who accidentally discover a time paradox-vortex-loop-thing in a café one night. Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is very silly, a bit of slapstick with a romantic comedy at its core, and quite a lot of fun. Yamaguchi, Ueda, and the Europe Kikaku troupe have revisited the premise of two-minute time travel in River (2023), which is about a group of people at a ryokan getting caught in a two-minute time loop. I haven’t watched it yet, but critics seem to have liked it, so it’s probably worth checking out. What do you think of Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes? What would you do if your computer showed you exactly two minutes into the future? Maybe it does and you’ve just never looked at the right window… I have recently reached a milestone here at the Science Fiction Film Club: As of this month, I’ve written about over 100 films. For the first week of July, I’m going to write something about favorites, hidden gems, pleasant surprises, and other things related to what I’ve watched, researched, and learned over the past couple of years. After that, we’ll get back to the regular weekly schedule with a new theme.[end-mark] It’s a Really Good Idea to Let Machines Do Our Thinking I have no idea why this theme is on my mind lately. It just came to me out of nowhere. It’s just such a common sci fi story premise. I can’t explain it. So let’s watch a few cautionary tales about what happens when we let technology we don’t fully understand drive important decisions regarding things like war and peace and life and death and the fate of the entire human race. July 8 — Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), directed by Joseph Sargent It’s a really good idea to give control of nuclear weapons to machines. Find it online. View the trailer. July 15 — Westworld (1973), directed by Michael Crichton It’s a really good idea to let corporate greed drive decision-making with dangerous technology. Find it online. View the trailer. July 22 — Zardoz (1974), directed by John Boorman It’s a really good idea to let a machine control human immortality. Find it online. View the trailer. July 29 — The Terminator (1984), directed by James Cameron It’s a really good idea to… you know what. Never mind. None of this is a good idea. Find it online. View the trailer. The post <i>Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes</i>: Charmingly Low-Stakes Time Loop Hijinks appeared first on Reactor.

Books reading recommendations Five Books About Futures Worth Fighting For Speculative fiction can show us the way to a better world, envisioning futures that are both achievable and optimistic. By Ruthanna Emrys | Published on June 24, 2026 Infomocracy cover art by Will Staehle Comment 0 Share New Share Infomocracy cover art by Will Staehle When I was invited to join the crew planning the Protopian Prize, my first question was “What’s protopian?” I’m familiar with all sorts of hopeful SF categories, from solarpunk to policy fiction. But despite my suspicion that I’d probably already written some, the term was new to me. Protopian stories, so named by Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly, depict futures that are achievable and optimistic—neither flawless nor catastrophic nor static, but workably better than what we have now. (Kind of like A Half-Built Garden (minus the aliens), so it turns out I had indeed written some.) There are many reasons to read and write protopian fiction, but one of them is that a surprising number of the people working for better futures have trouble imagining them. Democracy 2076 found that democracy activists focused on what they’re trying to prevent, unable to picture plausible futures that they can work toward… They find this frustrating and disempowering—they want these stories. This fits my own experience too—when I’m depressed about the state of the world, I often want a kickstart from someone else’s brain. I want cool ideas and adventure, but also a sense that we could pull some of those ideas out into real life. I joined the Protopian Prize committee to help bring more of these stories into the world. Here are five books that I’ve already enjoyed that show futures that are worth working toward—please mention your own recommendations in the comments! The Wildcraft Drones by T.K. Rex What if we rebuilt civilization around a very different model of agriculture, slowly replacing monocultured farms with resilient food forests? Rex’s linked short stories cover several centuries of rewilding, automation, and debate and protest over the role of humans in Anthropocene ecosystems. None of the time periods are perfect—the flaws of one often provoke the plot of the next—but all have their advantages and I can imagine living, working, and arguing in any of them. I can also imagine eating, with pleasure, in any of them. You could start toward this future by visiting your local food forest or community garden, or doing some guerrilla seed planting if you don’t have either. In the House of Aryaman, A Lonely Signal Burns by Elizabeth Bear Aryaman is part of Bear’s larger world centered on the technology of “rightminding.” The terminology is Orwellian, but the tech is actually a collection of tools to give people greater say in their own mental health care. It includes everything from exercise to therapy to measuring your neurotransmitter levels and adjusting your medications as needed. This murder mystery is the earliest of the stories chronologically, set 50 years from now and featuring such advanced mood-management techniques as a treadmill desk. By the time of Ancestral Night, many thousands of years later, you can set your brain for hyperfocus or crisis readiness on demand—but the central ideas remain the same. People should have agency over their own minds, mental health treatment should be based around consent, and society should encourage us to prioritize each other’s well-being. You could start toward this future by advocating for better mental health coverage in your local medical system, or by learning conflict mediation techniques. Infomocracy by Malka Older In the near future, Information rules the world. Or, rather, they rule the way the world is ruled—they run the elections through which neighborhoods vote on what government they’ll join for the next decade. They also run the fact-checking that keeps the elections fair, aided by ninja researcher-enforcers. It’s a little bit cyberpunk and a little bit policy wonkery. It passes my test for future-of-politics stories, which is that I come out with really strong political opinions about a world that doesn’t (yet) exist—don’t approve the mantle tunnel! Vote for Policy1st! Elections should be far enough apart to give governments real power! At its core, it’s about finding the right scale for meaningful democratic decisions, and protecting the institutions that are necessary for democracy to work at all. You could start toward this future by supporting local journalists who investigate and share accurate news, or by protecting the polls at the next election. When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift Hester is a documentary filmmaker who has followed the slow rewilding of England over fifty years, accompanied by beloved wolf-dogs whose ancestor she rescued from the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Lucy is an activist who learned to care for nature from her grandparents during the COVID-19 outbreak, and has spent the years since fighting to reclaim the commons so that everyone can make those connections. In 2070 the two talk around a campfire, reminiscing about their roles in changing the world but also about their loves and griefs. It feels gentle in parts, but also gut-wrenching. We see the importance of their individual choices, and of the communities in which they’re embedded. I did spot a four-star review complaining that there aren’t enough wolves, and it’s true that it’s more a book about wanting wolves than having them. Or maybe it’s a book about the possibility of wolves, and why you should want them, and the long fight needed to get them. You could start toward this future by checking out nearby rewilding efforts—in the Netherlands, we have bison in the dunes! Or you could follow Antonia Malchik’s writing about reversing commons privatization. Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy I dithered about including this, because the future sections are framed like a classic utopia. Connie, pulled mentally forward from the misery of a 1970s mental institution, gets a tour of everything that’s great about Mouth-of-Mattapoisett. But tour guide Luciente is clear that it’s a work in progress, and that they are constantly debating changes to their society. It’s also the book that first convinced me that there are alternatives to corporate-defined progress. It exposed me to ideas about queer liberation, about gender non-essentialism, about equity, about ecological care, that I’ve been fighting toward ever since. It was the first place I ever encountered a scene with a man nursing a baby—something that at least one reviewer objected to when I put it in A Half-Built Garden 47 years later, suggesting that we’ve still got some work to do. Maybe a lot of work, but worth doing. You could start toward this future by protecting trans kids from outdated ideas about gender, or by organizing for better ‘village’-level child care.[end-mark] The post Five Books About Futures Worth Fighting For appeared first on Reactor.

News Forgotten Island You Won’t Forget the Latest Forgotten Island Trailer You might even be reminded of Dunkaroos once you meet Raww. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 23, 2026 Screenshot: DreamWorks Animation Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: DreamWorks Animation We have a new trailer for DreamWorks Animation’s Forgotten Island, which introduces us to more of the magical world two best friends stumble into and the entity there who steals people’s memories. We’re also introduced to a weredog named Raww (voiced by Dave Franco) who, for whatever reason, reminds me of the kangaroo mascot for the delicious 1990s snack, Dunkaroos. Dunkaroo nostalgia aside, the film’s animation looks fantastic, with a compelling story based on Philippine mythology. Here’s the full synopsis: While celebrating their last night together, Jo and Raissa stumble upon a mysterious portal that transports them to the fantastical island of Nakali, packed with magical and mythological creatures they grew up hearing stories about from their Filipino families.Some of these figures will become friends, some foes. Joined by well-meaning-but-hapless weredog Raww (Dave Franco) and a small-but-mighty pack of pals, Jo and Raissa must face The Dreaded Manananggal (Lea Salonga), the most feared creature on the island. When they discover that the memories of their entire friendship are the price for returning home, Jo and Raissa will race to find a way to leave the island before they forget each other forever. In addition to Franco and Salonga, the movie features the voices of Jenny Slate (Marcel the Shell with Shoes On), Manny Jacinto (The Good Place, Top Gun: Maverick), Dolly de Leon (Triangle of Sadness), Jo Koy (Haunted Mansion), and Ronny Chieng (M3GAN). It’s written and directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, who also brought us Puss and Boots: The Last Wish. Forgotten Island premieres in theaters on September 25, 2026. Check out the trailer below. [end-mark] The post You Won’t Forget the Latest <i>Forgotten Island</i> Trailer appeared first on Reactor.