Featured Essays Patrick Stewart Some of Our Favorite Sir Patrick Stewart Roles and Moments We all have a Patrick Stewart story, it turns out. By Emmet Asher-Perrin, Emmet Asher-Perrin, Emmet Asher-Perrin, Emmet Asher-Perrin, Emmet Asher-Perrin, Emmet Asher-Perrin | Published on November 6, 2026 Credit: Screenshot, CBS Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Screenshot, CBS We all have a Patrick Stewart story, it turns out. When the news broke of the legendary actor’s passing, Reactor essentially shut down for the day. As befits the staff of a magazine about sci-fi/fantasy books and media, we were stunned, shocked, saddened to hear that he was just… gone. Most of all, we were wistful. And in that we discovered that each of us were holding tightly to a show, a play, a skit, something Stewart had been in, done, or said, that had lodged itself permanently in our identities as people. That is how we should pay tribute to him, we thought. Sharing the most delightful and formative of the many gifts that he gave us; these fruits of a life well-lived. Star Trek is just where it starts… The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Oblivion was not Sir Patrick Stewart’s first video game voice acting performance. Though many of his earlier video game voice acting jobs saw him reprise his role as Captain Picard, Stewart’s iconic voice lent quite a lot of weight to games that, quite frankly, were not always worthy of his talents. Oblivion was different. The Elder Scrolls series had previously established itself as a kind of dream experience that allowed you to live out your fantasy… fantasies in a vast and creative world. Oblivion was developer Bethesda’s attempt to bring that experience to a wider audience with slightly more accessible gameplay and, more importantly, enhanced production values. It’s fitting, then, that the first voice players hear in Oblivion is Sir Patrick Stewart as Emperor Uriel Septim VII. Armed with a 90-page dossier about his character and his place in this world, Stewart delivers a Shakespearean performance that immediately sets a tone and standard that much of the rest of the game’s voice acting wouldn’t quite live up to. Hey, these were rough days for the emerging practice of fully voiced video games. Stewart’s performance helped set a standard for what would rapidly become a much more exciting age for video game voice acting and, perhaps more importantly in the moment, set the stage for what turned out to be every bit the dream fantasy adventure many hoped this game would be. Dune (1984) Sir Patrick Stewart has previously shared that he was accidentally cast in Dune. Though he didn’t reveal all the details, it seems that David Lynch thought he had cast someone else in the role. That’s quite remarkable to consider when you try to imagine anyone else having such undeniable gravitas while wielding a pug on a battlefield or teaching someone the art of really bad CGI melee combat. In a movie that lovingly showcases the consequences of big swings that don’t quite land, Sir Patrick Stewart’s performance as Gurney Halleck simply works. Maybe it’s because of Halleck’s commanding nature in a sci-fi universe, or maybe it’s because Sir Patrick Stewart has looked roughly the same for decades, but it’s hard not to watch him in Dune and see a lot of Jean-Luc Picard. Picard rarely wore form-fitting leather in TNG, though, so you should still watch Dune. His Extras Cameo Is it silly that one of Sir Patrick Stewart’s few Emmy nominations came from playing a version of himself in Extras, a show unfortunately created by Ricky Gervais? Yes, yes it is. That’s kind of the great thing about this appearance, though. Stewart was often cast in more dramatic roles or comedic parts that saw him effectively play the straight man. This appearance is an all-too-rare example of what we all know about Stewart from his social media presence: the man was incurably silly. That inherent silliness, which has arguably helped elevate Stewart throughout his career, is on full display in this incredible cameo. Though best remembered for Stewart sharing his pitch for a story about a man who has the ability to make clothes disappear, the true genius of this appearance arguably comes when Stewart is surprised to learn that an older guy who is unmarried and doesn’t have a girlfriend hasn’t seen Star Trek. “Good Lord,” indeed. The Salt-N-Pepa SNL Announcement Though many who follow SNL have long held Sir Patrick’s introduction of musical act Salt-N-Pepa in high regard (how many times can we get away with using the word “gravitas” in this article?), that moment became immortal when John Mulaney shared the story during a stand-up special. As Mulaney puts it, it’s almost like Stewart wasn’t sure if Pepa was there at all. Such was the thrill of heralding their arrival. In classic Stewart form, the actor embraced the resurgence of that moment on social media in a way that ensured its immortality. That’s maybe my favorite thing about this story and the moment itself. It’s the perfect example of Stewart being accidentally iconic and embracing and celebrating the reception to such moments rather than shying away from them, as other dramatic performers might be tempted to do. Actually, That Entire Saturday Night Live Episode I was a little thing and dad loved Star Trek: The Next Generation but I did NOT because that Captain Picard was MEAN* and he looked like teachers who yelled at me. I wasn’t a fan, even though one time I was home sick and got to watch him debate the devil and I was so transfixed it stopped me from throwing up. Regardless, I didn’t want to be around that guy. *To be fair, Stewart played Picard as a jerk on purpose in the first two seasons. And I have a whole essay somewhere in the dampness of my brain about how hiring Dr. Pulaski is a great example of bad team management. But anyway. In early February 1994 I was the perfect slightly-too-young age to be allowed to stay up late and watch Saturday Night Live. And who was hosting but that meanie Captain Picard! Except here we was bouncing out with a big uncharacteristic smile, and being very serious about how much he loved “Boney” and “Dr. Spock” on Star Trek, capping it all off with a fumbled Vulcan salute and a “Live long…uh…and be happy!” I was dying. It was the funniest shit I’d ever heard. From a guy who I had—just a minute ago!—been convinced was a total bastard. It was more than just Stewart proving he was a gifted comedian. That one monologue introduced me to the entire concept of acting. This guy and Captain Picard were the same person? How??? I’ve since flirted with comedy as an adult (you don’t wanna know about it) and have absorbed enough Saturday Night Live to know that Patrick Stewart was incredibly focused throughout his entire episode, and that the whole episode is near-perfect as a result. (Jon Hamm would break out in the same way a decade or two later.) Just listen to that opening monologue. He doesn’t break his Shakespearean cadence even once (well, until he’s supposed to in his closer). He turns on his punchlines with supreme confidence. It’s like watching a bald Steve Martin. The TNG finale “All Good Things” came out only a few months after this. Then Star Trek: First Contact. Then X-Men. And I got old enough to take his role as Picard seriously. But I’ve never, ever forgotten that expectation-shattering SNL episode. I would watch him do anything after that. Except watch him make more of his highly specific erotic cakes. No judgment but that life is not for me. Credit: Screenshot, NBC/Universal Jeffrey My first knowledge of Patrick Stewart was probably actually Dune, since I have a blurry memory of being in a dark room that was only lit by a TV playing it—which is objectively the best way to remember that film. But the first time I was truly aware of Patrick Stewart, it was, like a lot of the Reactor crew, through my daily after-school viewing of TNG. Which is why I was so ecstatic to see him in Jeffrey. Jeffrey is an early ‘90s play-turned-indie-movie, written by Paul Rudnick (the same person who wrote the original draft of Sister Act, Addams Family Values, and In and Out) about a young man named Jeffrey (played in the movie by Steven Weber) who swear off of sex because he’s terrified of AIDs. More specifically, he’s terrified of watching someone he loves die of the disease. (To be clear, this is an often hilarious comedy.) The movie is already good, but when Patrick Stewart shows up as Jeffrey’s friend Sterling, that’s when it really lights up. Sterling starts off as what could be a stereotype the “fabulous gay man”. He works as an interior designer, always has a witty quip at the ready, gives strangers unsolicited fashion advice, and Stewart is delightful playing that. But what makes it work is that he layers the performance to show that Sterling doesn’t care whether anyone thinks he’s a stereotype—he’s moving through the world the way he wants to, and he’s not going to dull himself down for anyone. But this is a play written at a time when drug cocktails were only just starting to hold AIDs at bay for a while. There was no long-term solution then. When Sterling’s HIV-positive partner Darius (Bryan Batt) sickens, and finally dies, he has to live the very thing that Jeffrey’s been so afraid of. Sterling goes from being the effervescent highlight of a comedy, to being the broken heart that has to keep beating anyway. Stewart’s performance shades into a new depth that grounds the whole film as Sterling’s grief, and his anger at Jeffrey for hiding from life, turns a light comedy into a much more resonant look at a particular time in queer life. The Graham Norton Show Circumcision Story I’m sorry, but I only really watched Star Trek over my mom’s shoulder when I was little—she was obsessed with the man she referred to as “Captain Baldy”, sorry to Sir Patrick and also sorry to my mom for telling the internet this—so when I think of Sir Patrick, I think primarily of his appearances in John Barton’s Shakespeare acting tapes which I watched during theater class in high school, and also this absolutely unhinged story from the Graham Norton show. There are many great clips of him on this show, and the rest of this particular episode with Hugh Jackman and later Sir Ian is excellent all the way through, but this story takes the cake. Look, we often think of this man as dignity personified—he’s known for his incredible presence, that special gravitas he brings to every role no matter the genre. But here, he’s just a guy goin’ thru it, talking about his junk on telly. I was unprepared to know this much about Sir Patrick’s Sir Patrick, but it’s so goddamn funny, I’m glad he overshared. And his immediate regret after telling it is so good. I, Claudius (1976) Credit: Screenshot, BBC I’m not sure how old I was when I first caught a rerun of I, Claudius on PBS—it was before I was old enough to recognize most of the amazing cast from anything else (though of course, it’s an absolute treasure trove of acting talent, from Derek Jacobi in the title role to the great Sian Phillips, John Hurt, Brian Blessed, and Rocky Horror’s Patricia Quinn giving wildly memorable performances). As young as I was, I was absolutely hypnotized by this strange fever dream of court politics, plotting, betrayal, and murder—it was a formative experience, to say the least (is there anything better than a juicy historical drama done well?) And right in the middle of everything, the one actor I did recognize (in spite of a rather famous wig), was Patrick Stewart as the treacherous and doomed Sejanus, who more than holds his own among the hissing, mugging, and high-class scenery-chewing that makes the series such a delight. It was apparently this role that led to David Lynch casting Stewart in Dune, and Stewart is so magnetic as a scheming villain that it’s well worth seeking out I, Claudius—fifty years later, and it’s still one of the wildest, most fascinating adaptations ever produced by the BBC, and I love it. Incidentally, I only got to see Patrick Stewart on stage once, in the 2008 Broadway run of MacBeth, but it was a revelation. Stewart, Kate Fleetwood, and the rest of the cast managed to mine a surprising amount of dark humor out of the horrors unfolding, which I’d only ever imagined as straightforward tragedy—apparently, there’s a 2010 film version of that production, for anyone who might be interested in yet another tour de force Stewart performance. The Alphabet Song There are plenty of excellent outtake reels from Star Trek: The Next Generation, which are always good for a laugh when you need it. But the best out-of-character moment comes from a little birthday message our beloved captain recorded for Gene Roddenberry’s birthday—The Alphabet Song, complete with a hat and cane, and a little dance. I can never decide whether this or the Sesame Street B soliloquy deserves the top spot in his alphabet performances. Because he has more than one. “Goodnight, Sweet B” Oh hey sorry while we’re talking about the alphabet… Wonderful! Wonderful! The Nightmare Before Christmas Monologues At the opening of The Nightmare Before Christmas, there’s half a poem leading us in to the action, read by Ed Ivory, the very same actor who voices Santa Claus. It’s a slightly odd choice because Ivory is putting on a very different tenor in the narration, making it clear that this isn’t meant to be Santa narrating, but a sort of strange omniscient party who never shows up again. Santa was meant to finish the poem at the end of the film, but this was scrapped. Instead, the full opening and closing poems were recorded for the film’s soundtrack—and Patrick Stewart was brought on board to do the bracketing narration. The performance contains all the gravitas that’s missing from the actual film, and the monologues themselves contain a little extra information. The closing monologue in particular arguably changes the entire emotional arc of the film: The Narrator (presumably Santa) asks Jack, years down the line, if he’d repeat the film’s plot, knowing how the whole thing would turn out. And Jack, with a house full of kids, presumably still partnered to the love of his undead life “smiled like the old Pumpkin King that I knew / then turned and asked softly of me …Wouldn’t you?” With a weighted reading of rhymed couplets, delivered as only he could, Patrick Stewart fundamentally changed the entire point of the narrative. Rather than the story of how one lucky skeleton got something great out of a midlife crisis that he roped his entire community in on, the end thought is simply: This was worth it. Seeking out your happiness, learning something new, prodding at the places in your life where there are missing pieces. It was chaos, and the chaos was needed. You are worthy of discovery, however inconvenient. “Someone has come along.” There are reams of thought in the X-Men fandom that direct the reader toward the gleeful statement that “Professor X is a jerk!” After all, Charles Xavier does spend a lot of time hamstringing some of his most powerful cohort and trying to break bread with oppressors who are happy to erase people like him from existence. The tension between Professor X and Magneto exists for a reason, and Xavier has done some truly heinous things in service of his own mission, if you read comics or enjoy cartoons. What’s fascinating is how many folks who are aligned with this point of view… will still give a pass to the iteration that Stewart played. I think a lot about this phenomenon in particular, how the correct actor embodying a character makes their humanity undeniable, even if you don’t agree with many of their choices. But it’s also true that most of the X-Men films also make a point of showing what, precisely, in Charles Xavier’s mode of engagement works: Providing a safe place for students to grow up and demanding that people live up to their best attributes, no matter the cost. None of that is better encapsulated than a moment in Logan, when our titular leading man sees a family on the side of the road, in trouble. They are still being chased, and so he makes to drive right by, insisting, “Someone’ll come along.” And Charles Xavier, mind ravaged by cognitive decline, broken for years after his powers harmed the people he loved, still says: “Someone has come along.” That is what Charles Xavier stands for at his best, and it needed an actor like Stewart to bring it to the fore: You are frightened and endangered and running out of time and, still, you have no excuse to opt out of offering help. And this choice doesn’t ultimately prove something beautiful and righteous about adhering to that code—in fact, the people who they help wind up murdered by the very group that Logan, Xavier, and Laura are trying to avoid. This was never meant to be some kindly lesson that doing the right thing leads to better outcomes. You don’t have a punchcard of good deeds that you get to cash in on later.  Someone has come along and it’s no more profound than just that. Get to work.[end-mark] The post Some of Our Favorite Sir Patrick Stewart Roles and Moments appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts fantasy Read an Excerpt From A Fist of Molten Fire by James Rollins The final book in the Moonfall series from James Rollins, a sweeping tale of relentless adventure and survival in a world on the brink of annihilation. By James Rollins | Published on November 5, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from A Fist of Molten Fire, the fourth and final novel in the Moonfall series by James Rollins, out from Tor Books on December 1st. As earthquakes shatter continents and storms ravage the skies, the moon descends—its burning face growing larger each day. Impact is imminent. Extinction is certain.Nyx and her allies have one last hope: two colossal engines buried deep within the planet’s core, capable of restoring the world’s spin and casting the moon back into orbit. But such power requires a lost key—one sought by others.An undying figure of bronze rises to claim it: an ancient enemy of unmatched strength and cunning, determined to turn moonfall into a weapon of total annihilation.As war engulfs the Crown, Nyx and her companions must fight their way toward the Fist, a deadly volcanic stronghold hidden beyond the Mýr swamps. Here, alliances fracture, wills are broken, and hope fades amid wonders that defy the imagination and horrors that threaten sanity.Because the truth behind the key is more dangerous than anyone imagined.To save the world, Nyx must make an impossible choice—one that will decide if she becomes its savior… or its destroyer. Buy the Book A Fist of Molten Fire James Rollins Buy Book A Fist of Molten Fire James Rollins Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Holding fast in the Fyredragon’s wheelhouse, Nyx waited for the quake to end. The wyndship shook and bucked, fighting the mooring lines that bound the massive vessel to its berth. Their group had gone to ground a week ago, seeking refuge and a hiding place in the Dödwood, a forest on the northernmost edge of the Guld’guhl territories. The crew had lowered the Fyredragon’s bulk into the courtyard of an ancient castle that had fallen to ruin millennia ago. Buried in the forest and long forgotten, the place did not even have a name. All that remained was a scribing of storm-scoured bulwarks, covered in moss and lichen. As Nyx stared past the arc of the airship’s windows, a section of the old castle’s curtain wall broke away and tumbled in an avalanche of heavy bricks and dust. Through the new gap, a greater view of the Dödwood opened. Beyond the ruins, the quake shivered the towering forest, which spread toward the distant sea in a tangled expanse of leafless branches and stone trunks. Long petrified, the forest was more graveyard than woodland. The cause of its demise remained lost in the Forsaken Ages. Some alchymists claimed an ancient volcanic eruption had buried the forest in ash. Under that fiery blanket, minerals slowly turned vibrant life to dark stone. Until, over the passing millennia, winds slowly eroded away the petrifying dust to reveal the forest again, transformed into a stony boneyard. Nyx’s heart grew heavy at the sight. Is this what the world will become if I fail? She pulled her gaze from the woodlands to the skies. The full face of the moon hung above the forest. It shone through the mists, bright enough to reveal the crimson corona edging its silvery glow. Over the months it had taken the Fyredragon to traverse the Barrens and return to the Crown, the moon’s angry blush had deepened, warning of the destruction to come, of the relentless approach of moonfall. She flashed back to her feverish vision, the one that had started her on this long trek around the globe. In that venom-born dream, the moon had glared like a fiery eye in the sky. Much like it burns now. From the outset, another had also confirmed this same threat. The bronze woman, Shiya, using ta’wyn knowledge, had warned that the world had at best three to five years before the moon crashed into the Urth and destroyed all life. And nearly two years have passed already. While despair weighed upon Nyx, impatience burned in her chest. The quake served as yet another harbinger of the doom ahead. With every passing month, the Urth shook more violently, marking the moon’s approach. Those same tidal forces stirred up savage storms and flooded coastlines. Nyx knew what this all meant. We must get moving before it’s too late. As the quake finally settled into a low rumble, she turned to the door that led into the neighboring chartroom. A few of the crew were ensconced there, gathered around Shiya. During the long passage to the Crown, the bronze woman had worked with Krysh, the alchymist aboard the Fyredragon. The pair had used the farseeing lenses of the ship’s scopes to study the growing face of the moon. The two had also consulted with Frell, an alchymist in Azantiia who had access to the vast libraries of Kepenhill. Everyone awaited Shiya’s latest assessment. They needed to know how long they truly had to turn this tide, to cast the moon back into its proper orbit, before the doom became unstoppable. Sensing time’s narrowing, Nyx chafed at every delay. While she hated that they remained buried in this dead forest, she recognized the necessity. The blisteringly hot voyage across the Barrens and back to the Crown had depleted the wyndship’s supplies. The water cisterns had gone dry. The flash-burn for the vessel’s forge-engines had dwindled to a trickle. Even their food had nearly run out. Everything needed to be replenished before they voyaged deeper into the Crown. She let out a breath as the quake finally settled—though the same could not be said for her spirit. “Nyx!” a voice shouted at her. “Come see this!” She turned, drawn by the excitement in her friend’s voice. Jace hy Shanan stood with Fenn, the ship’s navigator. The pair were bent over the array of the station’s farscopes. Relieved for the distraction, she called over. “What is it?” Jace waved for her to join him. His raw excitement reminded her of their years at the Cloistery, a school buried deep in the Mýr swamps. Four years older than her, Jace had been her friend and tutor. Back then, she had been near-blind, her vision clouded over, reduced to a play of lights and shadows—until a poisoning by the venom of a Mýr bat had cleared her eyes. She sighed softly. This long voyage has changed us all. Some for the better, some for the worse. As she crossed the wheelhouse, she glanced to her left hand, where her littlest finger had been torn away. It had barely healed. Other scars scribed her body, both inside and out. She had also shorn her dark hair to shoulder’s length, to make it easier to don her leather riding cap. In doing so, she had brought out the gilded highlights buried in her dark tresses. Or maybe those brighter strands had simply grown in number following her years of wielding bridle-song, as if that golden fire had been slowly transforming her, consuming who she once was. As she reached the navigation station, she joined her friend. Like her, Jace had been forged anew by this journey. Back at school, he had kept himself buried in the Cloistery’s libraries, lost among the scrolls and texts. His cheeks had been jovially chubby and red, his belly well-rounded. Only now any paunch or softness had been worn away. Between the deprivations aboard the ship and his training with an ax, his body had hardened and gone lean. His face was all granite planes, softened by the rust of a beard. But that was the slightest of his transformations. As she stepped to Jace’s side, a smoky shadow swept out of his body, forming a pair of thin wings, a snaking neck, and a viperish head. He had gained this ally—if it was an ally—during the assault upon the Dragon of Black Glass, the former stronghold of a Revn-kree army. Fully revealed, the creature stretched as long as Jace’s arm, with a wingspan twice that. It circled once, then settled over Jace’s shoulders, wrapping languidly as it tucked its wings. As it did, it rested both on and in Jace’s flesh, as if her friend were the one made of smoke. This phantom had the appearance of a kezmek, a reptilian assassin-wing. Though, in truth, it was far more dangerous. It was a creature born from a fragment of dysmeld still locked inside Jace. As Nyx drew closer, eyes of black diamond stared back at her, while a thin, forked tongue flickered out like a black flame. She studied the creature in turn. Maybe Jace’s current excitement had pushed forth this phantom, but Nyx suspected it was her approach that had drawn the creature out. The bridle-song in her blood—what the ta’wyn named synmeld—was the antithesis of what Jace carried inside him. If the two opposite powers came in contact, they would annihilate one another. Knowing this, Nyx kept her distance. Jace seemed oblivious of her hesitation. He raised his hand and absently ran a finger down the kezmek’s neck. The creature curled luxuriantly in response, seeming to feel his touch. Jace’s other hand motioned toward the ship’s navigator. “Nyx, take a look through Fenn’s farscope.” As the young Bhestyan navigator shifted from his station, his fingers combed a fall of white-blond locks from his green eyes. “You should. The forest beyond the old castle is far from dead. Come see.” She took his place and peered into the scope. The view—which passed along a convolution of mirrors and lenses—pierced the gap in the quake-shattered wall and delved deep into the Dödwood. Distantly, a bank of steamy fog marked the coastline of the Boiling Bay. Sea winds blew traces across the petrified forest, turning everything ghostly. The massive stone trunks of the woodland were a dark gray, while the higher branches were a tangle of skeletal white. Yet, under that dead canopy, green life struggled to flourish. Scrabbly saplings fought for the sky, pushing out of a dense undergrowth of thorny bushes and brambles. She tried to take heart in this new growth, remembering her earlier despair at the desolation of the Dödwood. Even here, life fought to survive. As must we all. Still, she failed to see what had excited Jace. She and the rest of the crew had already been warned that the Dödwood was not without its dangers. “Look to the northeast,” Jace urged her, drawing to her shoulder while waving the kezmek to the side. She shifted her gaze to that corner of the woods but saw nothing of note. A small hillock rose in that direction, a tall hump that looked as if it were fighting to break free of the canopy. “I don’t see what—” Then the entire hill, encrusted over with a thick growth of saplings and brambles, shifted. She had to blink and took another breath. From the bottom of the rise, a gray leathery head protruded, staring with heavily hooded eyes. To either side, massive legs dug furrows and drew the huge beast slowly along. “Do you see it?” Jace asked. “It looks like a knoll grinding through the forest.” “I do, but what is it?” “It’s called a bronsik. Only a small number of them are left in this forest. They’re not unlike the turtles we have back home in the Mýr swamps.” From its giant size, Nyx found this difficult to believe. She remembered a huge turtle—a centuries-old dappleback—that made its home in the Fellfire Scour, a freshwater spring outside her family’s winter barn. They had come to call it the King of the Scour. Yet, that turtle was but an olive pit compared to the monstrosity out there. Still, knowing the immense forces, both friend and foe, who were descending upon her homeland swamps, she prayed the gentle King was still alive. With this memory, her throat tightened, holding back a swell of homesickness and melancholy. What ruin will I be bringing to those shores? Failing to note her distress, Jace continued his instruction. “Unlike our turtles, bronsiks only travel across land, carrying a part of the forest on their backs, furrowing and seeding the loam with their passage. It’s said they’re the true wardens of this forest. We’re fortunate to see one.” Nyx straightened and swallowed down her misgivings. Jace must have noted her pallid complexion. He touched her arm. “I wanted you to see it. Maybe it’s a good omen. To show, even in death, life will find a path. You just have to look for it.” She nodded and struggled for such hope. She turned to the windows and studied the misty forest. Maybe Jace is right. Maybe we should heed the lesson of this resolute beast, a determined creature dredging through a dead forest to bring forth green life. It served as a reminder to never give up faith. She took in a deeper breath, fighting to take this message to heart. Before she could, a loud commotion drew her attention to the chartroom at the back of the wheelhouse. A clutch of men and women—both brigands and Pantheans—pushed out, all looking ashen. What’s wrong now? Nyx waited until most of the group had dispersed out of the wheelhouse, clearly rushing off to share what knowledge they had gained. Curious, Nyx crossed toward a trio—two men and a woman—who headed in her direction. “Surely we have more time,” Graylin demanded of the woman, his face dark with concern. Then again, that was the man’s usual expression. Graylin sy Moor, a former Hálendiian knight, remained forever a dark storm in manly form. He wore his past in the traces of gnarled scars, in the knot to his jaw, in the limp to his left leg, all traits earned from his betrayal of his king. Graylin had broken his vow for the love of a woman: Marayn, Nyx’s mother, a royal pleasure serf. His efforts to escape with her had ended in his capture, torture, and eventual banishment. Nyx’s mother, abandoned and alone, died in the Mýr swamps after giving birth to Nyx. It would take another fourteen years before estranged father and bitter daughter found each other again. While this wound had mostly scarred over, it had left a hardness between them. Though, at the moment, the ship’s captain—Darant hy Tarn—was in lockstep with Graylin. The ebon-haired Klashean swept aside the fall of his half-cloak, exposing the twin whipswords sheathed at his hips, as if trying to threaten away the foul tidings. He glared at the source of his ire. “Shiya, how firm are you about your assessment? I thought we had a year, maybe two, to find this accursed key to the turubya.” “That is the time frame when the moon will strike the Urth,” the bronze woman reminded him. She stood as tall as both men and weathered this storm with a placid demeanor. “For any hope of reversing this course, of stopping moonfall, we must act far sooner.” Nyx met them, drawing Shiya’s attention. The woman’s features shone in hues of dark copper, the bow of her lips a rosy gold. Bronze filaments, so fine they stirred as she walked, formed the plait of her hair, even her eyelashes. Upon a casual glance, it would be easy to mistake her for some tanned noblewoman, a queen of exceptional beauty. Only her eyes gave away her unnaturalness. Though distinctly glassy, they glowed with an inner fire that could not be ignored, turning her deep azure eyes into the blue of a lightning-struck sea. When Shiya’s gaze found Nyx, the woman’s expression turned sorrowful. Nyx swallowed, fearing the worst. Shiya was a member of the ta’wyn, a class of ancient artifacts crafted by the Elders. She hailed from before the Forsaken Ages, a turbulent time when the once spinning world had become trapped in amber, leaving one side forever facing the blazing sun and the other locked in darkness and ice. Nyx fought to hold Shiya’s wounded gaze, refusing to shirk from whatever came next. “Tell me,” Nyx demanded. “When must we engage the two turubya and set the world to turning again?” Shiya sighed, like a wind through reeds. “No later than midsummer.” Nyx felt the blood drain from her face. “This midsummer.” Shiya bowed her head, as if in both shame and certainty. “Two months hence. Or there is no hope.” Nyx stumbled away, trying to deny these words as much as Graylin and Darant had. She ran into Jace, who had come up behind her. He steadied her with a hold on her elbow. But she shook free and stood on her own. If Shiya was correct, they had less than two months to discover the key buried in The Fist, a volcanic mountain at the center of Mýr swamps. While she and the others had managed to seat the two turubya—the great world-turning forges—into the core of the world, they still had to secure the key that would unlock the means to wrest control of those idling engines and set the world to spinning again. But now… “Two months…” Her words came out as a moan. “Is that even possible? The Fist… it dwarfs most mountains. It’s a cauldron of fiery cliffs and steaming vents. It could take years to search its volcanic depths.” Darant added to this misery. “Be mindful, those slopes are also home to a vast colony of venomous bats—brethren to Bashaliia, your winged brother—who guard their nest with poison and savagery.” Graylin frowned. “And we still do not know how that horde will receive us, even with you bonded to one of their own.” Jace drew abreast of the group. “Even worse, the Hálendiian army—guided by Eligor—will be hunting for the same. Last we heard from our spies, those forces are already moving south in great numbers, preparing to lock down the swamps.” Nyx took a hard breath. Eligor was a ta’wyn, like Shiya, only far more powerful. He was a Kryst, the order’s highest caste. Countless millennia ago, a war had broken out during the Forsaken Ages. It was waged between the ta’wyn loyal to their original mission—to protect the Urth—and those who had broken away, those who sought dominion over the world. The latter called themselves the Revn-kree and did not care if they destroyed all life. For even in a barren landscape, they could survive. Eligor had almost won that ancient war, until his army had been rousted and broken, leaving his body shattered. Unfortunately, those bronze fragments, buried long ago, had been resurrected by the Iflelen—a dark sect of the Shriven. Now revived, Eligor sought the key to controlling the turubya, to become master of this world. With such power, he could save the world or destroy it, forcing all to his will. If necessary, even moonfall could serve him. For he and his kind—sculpted of bronze and fueled by alchymy—had no need for a planet full of life and air. Regrettably, the Revn-kree leader also had one distinct advantage over them. Nyx voiced it to the others, raising the greatest concern of all. “According to rumors gleaned by the Razen Rose, it was Eligor who hid the key before his forces were sacked. Which means he knows exactly where it’s buried inside The Fist.” “If that’s true,” Jace said, “with Hálendiian forces already moving south, we have far less than two months to find that damnable key. If the king’s legions lock that mountain down, then we’re doomed already.” Nyx pictured what that failure would look like. If the threshold was passed, if moonfall became inevitable, all they could do was watch as lands were torn apart by quakes and tidal forces—until the world finally ended in a thunderous cataclysm. She flashed to her prophetic vision of that moment. —the moon grows ever larger. The war machines fall quiet all around her. Screams and cries of agony malform into a chorus of terror. The ground quakes under her knees, ever more violent with each breath. But the worst was what came next, the aftermath of moonfall. She only had to close her eyes to touch that silence that followed. It wasn’t the hush of a tomb, but a finality without end, an enormity that stretched out of the void between stars. That is our fate if we fail. Nyx tightened her fists, knowing there was only one path open to them. Certainty hardened her voice as she turned to the others. “We must wait no longer.” Excerpted from A Fist of Molten Fire, copyright © 2026 by James Rollins. The post Read an Excerpt From <em>A Fist of Molten Fire</em> by James Rollins appeared first on Reactor.

Books Found in Translation Found in Translation: Palestine +100, Edited by Basma Ghalayini A speculative look at Palestine’s near future. By Hache Pueyo | Published on November 5, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share Found in Translation is a bimonthly column reviewing books translated to English in a variety of speculative shapes. Some traditional, some experimental, some told through cultural narratives that might seem peculiar if you’re not used to them, but all have the same unifying factor: there is always more out there. Every day spent away from Palestine, in the life of a Palestinian refugee, is one that they believe brings them a day closer to their return. Dystopia, from the Ancient Greek dys- (“bad”) and -topia (“place”), is a word used to characterize future or alternate states that are extreme in how oppressive, violent and unjust they are to human life. How to call, then, the science fiction and imagined futures of a society that is undergoing genocide? Whose people have been driven out of their homes, bombed, imprisoned, tortured, murdered? One thing is certain: everyone has the right to exist and conceptualize their experiences through art, and it is impossible and unfair to ask artists to filter massive suffering out of their creative input. The central theme of Palestine +100 is to imagine the country in the year of 2048, exactly one century after the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing, mass killing, and displacement of Palestinians that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Twelve writers tried to answer the difficult question posed by editor Basma Ghalayini with stories that range from the very worst, with horrific new technologies, to fraught peace agreements that play with ideas of the two state solution and the erasure of individual and political memory. Not every short story of the anthology is a work in translation, but the bulk of the book was, considering that a considerable portion of it is composed by the last novella. Still, I decided to review all of them because even the authors who wrote in English are not doing so as native speakers, but as refugees, with cultural references and linguistic patterns that come from Arabic and other languages, a reality I understand well as both a multi-lingual author and an author in translation. Song of the Birds (Saleem Haddad) opens the anthology with a strong and haunting concept: in a liberated Gaza, suicides are growing among the youth, and a girl whose brother has recently died starts seeing visions of a destroyed land. The result is a chilling story that reads at times like horror—how could it be anything else?—as it explores a different stage of occupation, in which even hope and longing can be used as colonial tools. In Sleep it Off, Dr. Schott (Selma Dabbagh), a future is characterized by states of extreme surveillance. A young woman is hired to monitor the potentially romantic relationship between an Israeli and a Palestinian researcher and regrets what she finds. The story is told through logs, recordings and messages, and while it might cause some initial confusion, the format is fun and makes itself understood soon enough. N (Majd Kayyal, tr. Thoraya El-Rayyes) presents a quieter tale, in which the so-called two-state solution takes literal form: after the complete destruction of Gaza, Israel is pressured to accept the liberation of Palestine, and an amend establishes the two countries will exist henceforth, occupying the same land in different realities that can be accessed through tightly contained borders, but only the Palestinians born after the amend can take this trip. The next story, The Key (Anwar Hamed, tr. Andrew Leber) is another striking story that reads more as horror than science fiction. After decades of discussing the Palestinian question, Israeli scientists invent a way to keep both sides in the same land by creating invisible walls everywhere that only people with the right codes can cross, but this backfires when Israelis start hearing home invasions that are not happening, feeling always on the verge of seeing someone enter their house. It’s a clever way of conceptualizing the keys kept by survivors of the Nakba as a fear of the settler. In Digital Nation (Emad El-Din Aysha), a cyberattack ensures that every Israeli network and device are converted into Arabic. Society quickly collapses as automatic cars stop working, every data is displayed in a language most don’t understand, radios only play Arab music, and media is entirely catered to Palestinians, leading to generalized confusion and, eventually, to the creation of a unified Palestinian state. Personal Hero (Abdalmuti Maqboul, tr. Yasmine Seale) takes a different and moving approach to virtual realities—a common theme in the anthology—as it recreates Palestinian heroes through VR, in particular revolutionary leader Abd Al-Qadir al-Husayni, killed in 1948, through a meeting with his elderly daughter. In a future where environmental issues have led citizens to receive a lifemask at birth in order to breathe, a young man seeking revenge starts working for the man he wants to kill. The world of Vengeance (Tasnim Abutabikh) might be an unkind one, but its characters refuse to be, finding ways to protect each other and their cultural identities despite the weight of injustice. After another round of invasions fragments Palestine into isolated city-states, the newly founded Gaza City Republic has spent years rebuilding into a high tech country in a period of tense peace. In Application 39 (Ahmed Masoud), two brothers who survived the previous war decided to play a prank: submit an application for Gaza to host the Olympic Games. To their surprise—and everyone else’s—the application is accepted, leading to a series of diplomatic incidents, some of them amusing, some extremely painful. The Association (Samir El-Youssef, tr. Ralph Cormack) displays a future where peace is achieved only through a denial of the past that is so extreme studying history is essentially illegal. A journalist that never questioned this new reality starts going down the rabbit hole after a historian is assassinated, giving a noir touch to a story that is short but intriguing. The future in Commonplace (Rawan Yaghi) is not so different from the present. Bombs and attacks are still part of daily life, and a dealer moves through his day as he thinks of his brilliant and lovable sister who was tortured and left to die sometime in the past. This is the most internal story of the anthology, and, like N, the one most focused on family connections. A technological blackout drives Palestinians and Israelis out of their houses, and confusion turns into fear as a spaceship approaches. Final Warning (Talal Abu Shawish, tr. Mohamed Ghalainey) might be the most hopeful story of the entire anthology, and although the premise is fairly straightforward, it offers a touching possibility of connection in the shape of alien invaders. The last and longest, The Curse of the Mud Ball Kid (Mazen Maarouf, tr. Jonathan Wright), is a novella divided in several chapters that work as a patchwork of fragments of a bleak world in which only one Palestinian remains, but instead of being seen as the ultimate victory of occupation, he’s seen as a breathing time bomb, storing within him the energy of all those who were killed. If he dies, everyone else dies with him, a problem that creates a delicate balance in a story that is both science fiction and magical realism. Palestine +100 could be brushed aside as too bleak, but the book doesn’t cause a sense of defeat: instead, it reinforces the hopes for a Palestine with a future. Hope is present from start to finish, in fact, appearing sometimes as glimpses rather than happy endings, as reminders that human connections are precious, and that collective memory is a goal worth fighting for, even—or especially—after liberation.[end-mark] Palestine +100 was originally published in 2019 in the UK (Comma Press/Deep Vellum), and features work in translation from Arabic to English. Buy the Book Palestine +100 Edited by Basma Ghalayini Buy Book Palestine +100 Edited by Basma Ghalayini Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The post Found in Translation: <i>Palestine +100</i>, Edited by Basma Ghalayini appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Godzilla Minus Zero Godzilla Minus Zero Is a Dark, Loud, and Emotionally Gutting Kaiju Opera Takashi Yamazaki has given us another celebration of the power of LOVE. And giant screaming monsters. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on November 5, 2026 Credit: Toho Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Toho Studios All else aside, we live in a world where the New York Film Festival hosted the U.S. premiere of Godzilla Minus Zero. I was lucky enough to see the movie twice over the course of the Festival, and I’ll admit I went in with some trepidation. How could the new film possibly live up to 2023’s Godzilla Minus One? I’m not sure it does—it might actually surpass it? I’m still thinking about that! But if you just want to know whether or not to see it, the answer is yes! It’s a loud, terrifying, awesome rollercoaster. The performances are emotionally gutting, the action sequences are stellar, and it’s the first Japanese film made for IMAX, so see it in that format if you can! Takashi Yamazaki is back as not just the writer and director, but has also worked on the visual effects once again, along with VFX Director Kiyoko Shibuya, and Takayuki Ueki, and Eishin Okubo. All the principle actors from the first film are back, along with some excellent additions to the cast. There are a couple of sequences that made my audiences applaud. There is one sequence that would be my favorite scene of the year—if not for  the “Who’s On First” scene in You Can See Everything, and, well, the entirety of The Devils restoration. I’m going to try to talk about the new one without spoiling anything, because you want to go in as cold as possible. The thing about Godzilla Minus One was that in addition to being a big, fun, LOUD action movie, it took the idea of Godzilla seriously. What would it actually be like if Godzilla attacked Japan mere months after the end of World War II, and the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What would it be like to be a young person barely scratching out survival in a defeated nation, orphaned, betrayed by your government, with no real hope for the future… and then a literal fucking unstoppable monster rises from the sea and attacks your home? At that point, how would you not just lie down, close your eyes, and wait for it all to be over? Yamazaki took those questions and thought through them. What if one character was a “failed” kamikaze pilot, who now faces a future he wasn’t even supposed to have? What if you were half-mad from the grief of being orphaned, only to have someone hand you a terrified baby and disappear without a trace? What if your whole family and world and life were destroyed, but you had to find a way to build a friendship with someone who betrayed everything you believed in? What if you knew that your work had led to the deaths of countless people, that you could never make amends, but you just kept waking up anyway? In Minus One, those questions become characters: the kamikaze pilot, Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) who builds an unlikely relationship with Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and the baby she’s now caring for Akiko (Sae Nagatani). The three become the neighbors of Sumiko Ōta (Sakura Ando), who initially treats the makeshift family as an emotional punching bag for all of her grief. And all of them end up forming an alliance with scientist Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) when Godzilla attacks. The movie isn’t (just) about Godzilla stomping stuff, it’s about how these five people, and some friends and allies they gain along the way, fight back against certain doom. How they choose hope over despair, again and again. Each time I watched Minus One in the theater, I noticed the same pattern: people would start off vocally excited by Godzilla, even cheering his attacks—but by the last third of the film I’d hear sniffling. By the film’s end I’d hear open sobs from the people around me. The challenge that stood before Godzilla Minus Zero was matching that level of intensity. Part of the first film’s success was the surprise that a monster movie from a very long-running franchise could suddenly show up in theaters with an incredibly moving anti-war message. Now that we’re familiar with Yamazaki’s game, how could the new film possibly do anything new? The answer is that it doesn’t exactly try to. Rather than try to recreate that element of surprise, Yamazaki and his crew and actors dig even deeper into the themes of the first film—and they also make a couple of truly unhinged choices that I think transcend the first film. Shikishima and Noriko, still nursing physical and emotional injuries sustained in the the first movie, have tentatively built a life together with Akiko. Shikishima works as a pilot now, and Noriko helps out in the school/foster home that Sumiko runs for children orphaned in either the war or the Godzilla attacks. They lead a quiet life punctuated by occasional visits from the crew of the Shinsei Maru, the ship that Shikishima worked on after the war, which led to his meet-cute with Noda. And speaking of Noda. My favorite character from the last movie is now heading up the hilariously named “Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau”, and has gained new allies in Kanji Murakami (Min Tanaka), a biologist, and “weather forecasting prodigy” Makoto Aoyama (Masami Nagasawa), a woman who has the same single-minded determination to her work as he does to his. (She uses weather patterns to predict the movements of a new threat that looms on the horizon, and it’s ludicrous but also awesome.) There’s also a small but vital appearance from The Wailing’s Jun Kunimura as Noriko’s doctor. All three of these additions bring new arcs, new weight, and some fascinating quirks to the story. Photo Credit: Toho But about that new threat. Technically it makes itself known in the terrifying opening scenes of the film, but I wanted to ground everyone first before we got there. I don’t want to spoil the nature of the threat for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie. I’ll just say here that it builds on all the horrors that were wreaked in the last film, and will, I think, delight fans of this franchise. The new threat also leads our heroes to make a decision that in lesser hands might seem almost comic, but instead plays out as a solemn moral choice that everyone thinks might doom them, spiritually speaking. And all weighty thematic stuff aside, when the choice actually plays out, it’s fucking awesome. The element that I think makes Minus Zero the equal to its predecessor is related to that moral choice. Yamazaki’s script digs even harder into the open wounds of World War II. Shikishima and Noriko are both still healing from the last movie, Akiko is barely functional, and getting dragged into a new nightmare tears whatever healing they’ve managed to shreds. But even more than that, another character is revealed to be a survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima, still overwhelmed with grief for his lost family. His trauma, and his plans for vengeance, create one of the most thrilling scenes in the film, but Yamazaki never uses his pain for shock value. This film is intense. The new threat brings with it harrowing scenes of catastrophe and death. Possibly even more so, the flashbacks to Hiroshima are exactly as upsetting as they should be. Yamazaki made this film partially as a response to Oppenheimer, to show some of the horrors that Christopher Nolan (wisely, I’d say) chose to leave offscreen. (You can read about this decision in this Time article, but be warned that there are spoilers here that I didn’t include in this review.) I talked a little about the parallels between Oppenheimer and Godzilla Minus One in my review of that film, and I’m really pleased to see the ways Yamazaki chose to confront Nolan’s masterpiece here. Scenes that would have been hideously inadequate in the biopic of the Father of the Atomic Bomb instead show the Japanese experience of the bombing, the aftermath, the sense of reality itself being knocked off its axis, and it adds them to the context of the Godzilla franchise, which has always been a response to the atomic age. The film doesn’t cheapen the horrors of the war. At one point, characters travel through a region that’s been decimated by violence, and we’re made to sit with them in the aftermath—not just wrecked buildings, but real human beings in agony from their injuries, parents mourning children who die in their arms, lives that are irreparably broken. The movie takes this seriously, and doesn’t allow us to look away. Screenshot: TOHO Another thing I love is that the role of Americans is uncompromising. The Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau cannot trust them, and they know that—but the Americans also have weaponry and funds that might save Japan from the new threat. How many compromises have to be made? As in Minus One, the needs and desires of Shikishima and Noriko’s little makeshift family are set against the needs of their larger society. Is it heroism to protect your partner and child if it means saying no to a battle that threatens your whole country? What do any of them owe to Japan, after everything they’ve already given? Once again, the people of the Disaster Response Bureau have to macgyver a solution to a kaiju-sized problem, and once again it would be ludicrous if it wasn’t so fucking fun to watch. Godzilla Minus Zero is big and bold and just as operatically emotional as the first one, and by the end I found myself tearing up and beaming with happiness and hope just like last time, so maybe the 2020s simply demand an over-the-top kaiju movie every now and then.[end-mark] The post <em>Godzilla Minus Zero</em> Is a Dark, Loud, and Emotionally Gutting Kaiju Opera appeared first on Reactor.

News Godzilla Minus Zero New Godzilla Minus Zero Trailer Shows [REDACTED] This isn’t Godzilla we’re talking about… By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on November 5, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share It’s not even an ostensible secret anymore who the new threat is in Godzilla Minus Zero. A previous trailer has teased his voice! But if you want to go into the movie cold, click away now. Otherwise… …the trailer released today gives us Ghidorah in all his glory! Here’s an image from the trailer, if you don’t want to wait: Courtesy of TOHO He looks so cute! While Godzilla Minus Zero features both Ghidorah and Godzilla (Godzilla lives!), writer-director Takashi Yamazaki has said he doesn’t view the film as a monster versus monster movie. He explained that the monsters’ size makes them feel disconnected from the human characters, and he wanted the two to be closely intertwined. (That doesn’t mean, however, that the monsters won’t come face to faces with each other, but to say more will be saying too much.) That human connection comes through in today’s one-minute trailer. The bulk of it centers on the Shikishima family; how they’re afraid not only of the monsters, but of making sure those they love stay safe and/or come back alive from trying to protect those they care about. It’s all about family! (And if anything happens to Akiko I’m going to be very upset.) You can see relatable human struggles in the face of kaiju threats right now: Godzilla Minus Zero is now playing in theaters. Check out the trailer below if you need more enticement to go. [end-mark] The post New <i>Godzilla Minus Zero</i> Trailer Shows [REDACTED] appeared first on Reactor.