News Toy Story 5 Toy Story 5 Trailer Leaves Us Asking: What Year Is It in the Toy Story Movies? Of course we’re doing ok. Why do you ask? By Matthew Byrd | Published on November 11, 2025 Photo: Pixar Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Pixar The teaser trailer for Toy Story 5 was just released, and it raises some serious (and possibly unknowable) questions about the timeline of the Toy Story movies. Let’s start with the essentials. The brief trailer shows our various toy friends reacting to a package like it’s the recently opened Ark of the Covenant. At the end of the trailer, we see that the package contains Lilypad: an electronic kids’ tablet voiced by the great Greta Lee. The trailer ends with Toy Story 5‘s theatrical release window (June 2026), and the implication that the age of toys may finally be over. On the surface, that all makes sense. It’s fair to say that most modern kids are more interested in playing with smartphones, tablets, and handhelds than traditional toys. It’s been that way for quite some time now (the last 10-12 years or so have seen a drastic shift in the toy market). As such, it stands to reason that a Toy Story movie would eventually address the idea of Bonnie becoming more interested in an electronic than her collection of toys (voiced by Tom Hanks though they may be). The problem is that it doesn’t really make any sense at all. Kids today are certainly more interested in electronics, but there is nothing to suggest that the Toy Story movies take place in the modern age. In fact, what we do know about the movies’ timelines suggests that Toy Story 5 takes place before a kid would realistically have their own tablet. Indulge my insanity for a moment. The first Toy Story opens in 1995 on Andy’s 6th birthday party. We know the year in that universe is 1995 thanks to the opening text of 2022’s Lightyear. By the end of Toy Story 3, we also know that Andy is 17 and on his way to college. So, 11 years have passed between Toy Story and Toy Story 3, which would mean it should be 2006 by the end of the movie. Toy Story 4 takes place roughly one year later, so let’s say it’s 2007 or maybe 2008 just to give us a little wiggle room for error. Going off of what we’ve seen in the trailer and other assumptions that are based on what we know about Toy Story 5‘s plot, Bonnie has probably aged no more than three years between Toy Story 4 and Toy Story 5. So that would make it 2010 or 2011 in the Toy Story universe by the time that Toy Story 5 kicks off. So this movie would have us believe that young Bonnie has access to what looks to be a fairly advanced tablet in the year 2010 or 2011. Mind you, the first generation iPad was released in 2010 (in our world). So what happened here? Did the launch of the Buzz Lightyear toy kick off a technological race between the toy companies that led to rapid advancements? Are the people in Toy Story living in some kind of toy-driven For All Mankind alternate world? Or does Pixar just think we’re stupid? Well, believe it or not, the math does make (some) sense. In 2011 (in our world), the company LeapFrog Enterprises released the LeapPad Explorer: a tablet version of their famous learning toy, the LeapPad. The Lilypad certainly seems to be based on the LeapPad Explorer and, if my dodgy math is correct, it could have realistically been available by the time that Toy Story 5 kicks off. Granted, the movie may be taking some liberties about how advanced that toy would actually be and how quickly the cultural shift from toys to tablets happened, but Pixar’s dicey timelines may have survived another round. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my head hurts from doing math that reminds me that I’m very old and have lost my ability to accurately recall the passage of time. I’m going to lie down and watch the Toy Story 5 trailer again. [end-mark] The post <i>Toy Story 5</i> Trailer Leaves Us Asking: What Year Is It in the <i>Toy Story</i> Movies? appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Combination of the Two: The Merge by Grace Walker Mahvesh Murad reviews a near future dystopian novel that requires some suspension of disbelief… By Mahvesh Murad | Published on November 11, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Grace Walker’s debut novel The Merge is set in an entirely recognisable near future, where climate change and overpopulation are fast leading humanity into planetwide societal collapse. It’s a familiar setup, but Walker presents a scenario where an option to cut the physical population down by half, very quickly and—apparently—effectively has been discovered. A company called Combine in the UK has found a way to merge two people’s consciousness into one brain and body. We don’t quite know how (the science and technology behind this merge is pretty much ignored and not explained, which may be the point), but what we do know is that Combine—the company—can create Combines, a single human body that is home to the minds (souls?) of two people. Double the brain, double the personality, half the impact on the planet. Especially handy for those with a loved one who is suffering a terminal illness, or those who want to keep their family small when faced with the inevitable breakdown of life as we know it, right? Except it doesn’t even sound good on paper. Which is why the entire premise feels rather odd; suspension of disbelief is going to be a high requirement for reading The Merge, which is actually very readable otherwise, if one can get past the idea that anyone would be happy with this scenario. The story begins when this merging has already taken place multiple times, and is now at a point where a trial session is being run for people who are not at their healthiest. 20-something year old gonzo journalist/activist Amelia has convinced her mother to sign up for the merge, because Laurie has Alzheimer’s and is starting to lose herself. Amelia is convinced she can keep her mother forever by merging with her, or at least, that’s what she’s told Laurie. What she hasn’t told her is that she’s doing this only to investigate the Combine company, and to gain an all access pass to the process of becoming a Combine. Amelia plans to refuse at the very last minute, but of course, even the best laid plans go awry in the face of vengeful capitalist control. Others in the same pre-merge orientation group include Ben, who will merge into his pregnant wife Annie so their family can remain small; Noah, who has cancer so will merge into his healthy younger brother Lucas; and Lara, a young ex-addict, who is being coerced by her father Jay to merge with him, so that he can keep her safe and make sure she never relapses again. The obvious ethical implications of one body and brain housing two separate individual consciousnesses are not really considered in the narrative too deeply, because Combine promises that after a few months of therapy and adjustment, there is a seamless integration between the two people who have merged. Not just that, but Combine promises all sorts of positive changes for the merged, such as having far fewer mental health issues than they did as individuals, making claims like “a ground-breaking 99% decrease in existential anxiety, demonstrating the transformative impact of shared consciousness on existential concerns,” and also an “impressive 80% boost in job performance ratings, suggesting that shared skills and collective problem-solving lead to heightened workplace efficiency.” Combines are also offered kickbacks, tax breaks, and better housing, to the point that un-merged individuals are being forced out of their homes so that Combines can be moved in. Buy the Book The Merge Grace Walker Buy Book The Merge Grace Walker Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget It is a weird cannibal-style colonisation of the human race: Combines, with their double-barreled names, their neck tattoos and special green clothing, are given preferential treatment, almost as if they were the true first class citizens of a promised future land. It’s all hugely problematic, of course, much beyond the idea of just giving up individuality, even if it is being pitched as the “merging of humanity towards a shared destiny… [and] recognising that our differences are our greatest strength and that, together, we have the power to heal the planet.” None of this is spoiler territory: The table of contents makes it pretty clear that Amelia and Laurie will merge. The initial half of the book is told in alternating first person perspective from Laurie and Amelia each, but after the two merge, the story switches to a single narrative; a “we,” though the Combine therapists insist that the newly minted Laurie-Amelia start to think of themselves as a single entity as soon as possible. Laurie’s pre-merge fear that this “societal cleansing” and “only the rich and healthy will be left standing” has already set the reader up to expect the worst. Walker creates unique voices for Amelia and Laurie with confidence in the first half, and the segue to a post-merge version is deftly handled, as we see the navigation of this new reality from the POV of the characters’ newly combined consciousness. What happens next is a slightly rushed descent into chaos, without a very satisfying resolution. It does, however, leave the reader with plenty of questions, which is not a bad thing. Walker asks, how do you hold on to your principles when under huge systemic changes? Do you accept a change that feels inevitable, or do you keep fighting until your final breath? It’s a little confusing as to why Combine (the company) has so much power, or how it has been accepted as the way forward by so many, so fast (Government conspiracy? Billionaires pushing for a more manipulatable population? BigPharma wanting to sell more pills? Take a guess), or how so many people who are involved seem to know and be playing along to something so obviously shady, but again, suspension of disbelief is important to enjoy this otherwise well written first novel. The Merge is an interesting look at the limitations of really saving the planet, tyrannical control and resistance, but also at family, love and obligation.[end-mark] The Merge is published by Mariner Books. The post Combination of the Two: <i>The Merge</i> by Grace Walker appeared first on Reactor.

Excerpts Young Adult Read an Excerpt From Break Wide the Sea by Sara Holland In the treacherous waters surrounding Kirkrell, sailors hunting magic whales fear the finfolk—bloodthirsty sea fae who sink ships and curse bloodlines. By Sara Holland | Published on November 11, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Break Wide the Sea by Sara Holland, a young adult novel publishing with Wednesday Books on November 11. In the treacherous waters surrounding Kirkrell, sailors hunting magic whales live in fear of the finfolk—bloodthirsty sea fae who sink ships and curse bloodlines. Nineteen-year-old Annie, as heir to the city’s preeminent whaling company, is determined to carry on her parents’ life’s work. But she keeps a secret from everyone: she’s cursed to transform into a monster, with scales spreading up her arms and claws growing from her fingertips.Her fiancé August offers comfort, but their love falls apart when Annie discovers his plan to take over the company. Desperate, Annie makes a deal with Silas Price, a young captain rumored to be half-finfolk. He says he knows how to break the curse—but only if Annie promises to stop the practice of whaling forever.As Annie, August and Silas sail north, Annie wrestling with her family’s legacy, the threat of the finfolk and August’s ambitions increasingly force her to put her trust in Silas. Yet Silas has secrets of his own, and they might be the most dangerous of all. Chapter I Girls on the shore must guard their hearts For the men tend to die catching whales.Yet nothing we do for all our arts Will keep them from their sails. —Abbonish nursery rhyme, recorded in Kirkrell in third month, seventeen hundred and fifty-three years FC The box from the dressmaker arrives just in time. After our housekeeper carries it to my room, I kneel and sort through the contents, careful not to let my fingernails—long, sharp, reddish-black—snag the expensive fab­rics. Gloves, two dozen new pairs in linen and leather, velvet and silk, of various muted colors. A gray silk pair, I think, for tonight. I’m tugging them gingerly on, a set of movements perfected by years of practice, when a bright voice from the doorway makes me jump. “Is that a new dress?” Lydia asks. Glancing over my shoulder, I see my younger sister teetering in the doorway, craning to get a glimpse inside the box. Heart in my throat, I lean over it to block her view of my hands as I finish pulling the gloves on. “No,” I say, letting the lid fall shut and sit­ting on its edge to face her. “Just some new petticoats.” She knows that I always wear gloves, but not why. And I don’t want her to see the new shipment and ask again. I have enough lies to keep straight tonight. “Oh,” Lydia says, disappointed. She’s ready for the sharehold­ers’ meeting in a dress the pale yellow of corn silk, her hair drawn up and her cheeks pink with excitement, or maybe rouge. “You’re wearing that old thing?” I look down, chagrined. I’m wearing a dress from a few years ago—dark blue velvet, the color of the ocean late in the evening on certain summer nights, when the sky has faded to twilight. It falls almost to the floor, skimming my body, with long sleeves and a high neck. I chose it carefully, hoping to make the sharehold­ers see me as more than an incompetent child, as someone to be reckoned with. “This isn’t a walk on the promenade, Lydia. It’s a business meeting.” Double-checking that the gloves haven’t snagged, I move to my bedside vanity to fix the last few buttons at my nape, the tricky ones. Maker knows I’ve had enough practice at this over the years, but with Lydia watching it’s harder. “Our appearances are only important insofar as they inspire the shareholders to have confidence in us,” I tell her reflection in the mirror. Although I fear that inspiring confidence in the shareholders will be an impossible task. Lately nothing I do seems to impress them. Perhaps short of magically transforming into my dead father, nothing ever will. “Did you get Kit to bed?” I ask. In the mirror, I see Lydia drift into the room, despite how often I’ve told her to stay out unless invited. “Yes, though I suspect he’ll be up for a while.” She pauses to examine the contents of my open wardrobe. “I told him he could read for half an hour since we ‘re making him miss the party, so I give it two hours before he’s asleep.” “It’s not a party,” I say, pointlessly, because she’s not listening. She’s radiant, as always, but I can read the nervousness in her pale, set face, how she glances in the mirror and tugs at one lock of carefully curled hair. Should teach her how to hide that, I think, soon, before— “This is pretty.” She reaches for the seashell on top of my writing desk, a peach-and-white conch shell nested in a black silk handkerchief. Buy the Book Break Wide the Sea Sara Holland Buy Book Break Wide the Sea Sara Holland Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget I whirl around, almost tearing one of the buttons from my dress in my haste to fling a hand out and block her path. “Don’t touch that!” She steps back, raising her palms in a conciliatory gesture. “All right, I won’t.” Her brown eyes are wide, alarmed. I take a deep breath and step back, aware that I moved too quickly. “I’m sorry.” I opt for a partial truth in hopes that she’ll buy it. ‘Tm just nervous for tonight. The shell is from August and I suppose-I suppose I’m rather protective of it.” As I speak, I wrap the shell in the handkerchief—the spines sharp even through two layers of silk—and place it carefully in the top drawer of my dresser. When I look back up, my little sister is watching me, quiet, considering. “If you say so,” she says eventually. “Do you want me to do up your buttons in the back?” “Please.” I turn around so my back is to her and move my dark blonde braid over the front of my shoulder, eyes down so as not to meet my own gaze in the mirror. Lydia comes up behind me, lifting her hands. I will myself to be calm, to act like I have nothing to hide. Because why should I be afraid? Her fingers are soft and warm and nimble, fixing the lace at the nape of my neck, where my skin is still smooth. Her smile in the mirror is sweet, placid. If she feels my pulse thudding under my skin, she says nothing. There have been times, these past few years, when I’ve caught her looking at me strangely, or for too long. Times when she asked if I was all right, and when I said I was, she held my gaze like she was trying to catch me out in a lie. But those moments grew fewer and farther between, and now she never asks at all. Our conver­sations center around frivolous things, everyday matters. News from the docks, gossip from the neighbors. I’m not sure if that’s because I’ve gotten better at lying—at hiding—or if she’s simply given up on hearing the truth from me. My fingers itch in their gloves. I grip the corner of the vanity and try not to think about it. From Break Wide the Sea by Sara Holland. Copyright © 2025 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Break Wide the Sea</i> by Sara Holland appeared first on Reactor.

Books Jo Walton Reads Jo Walton’s Reading List: October 2025 Theatre! Sonnets! Philosophy! Plus some horror, SF, and fairy tales… By Jo Walton | Published on November 11, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share October started in Chicago, then I took the train to Stratford, Ontario where I saw some excellent plays at the Festival, and then came home, again by train. I saw Goblin:Oedipus, very interesting production, but not quite as good as their Macbeth, an excellent Dangerous Liaisons, and a very good adaptation of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility—and seeing both of those together and directed by the same person made me think a lot about how close together in time those stories are, even if they seem like different universes. The English Channel and the French Revolution lie between them, and a totally different worldview in terms of human nature. Fascinating. I’ve been at home since, reading, doing the copyedit of Everybody’s Perfect, and working on the new novel. I read eleven books, and they’re kind of a mix. Perspective(s) — Laurent Binet (2023), translated by Sam Taylor This is absolutely brilliant. It’s an epistolary novel, set in sixteenth-century Florence. It’s very funny and very clever and even in the few places where I caught it in errors of historical context I forgave it. Wonderful characters, and just delightful. Featuring Cellini lying about jumping off the Palazzo Vecchio and landing on a haystack! Such a beautiful, clever book. I haven’t read any other Binet and I must. The Art of Travel — Alain de Botton (2002) This is a book of philosophy, I suppose (at any rate, de Botton is a philosopher), but in this book he takes two places in each chapter—one that he visits himself and writes about the experience, and one that is a historical instance of a trip someone made and wrote about—and compares them. Sometimes there’s more than one. None of them are obvious, all of it is very well written, and it’s a really excellent reading experience. Highly recommended. Not like anything else. If you’re a fan of his, what should I read next? Death in the Spires — K.J. Charles (2024) Murder mystery set in Oxford in 1905. It was all right. That sounds so grudging. I really wanted to like it more. Sonnets from the Portuguese — Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850) I went to a book fair in Chicago and I picked up this very beautiful little hardback with silhouette illustrations, and then I made the mistake of sitting down to look at it and reading the whole lot in one go. I subsequently wrote a whole pile of Petrarchan sonnets, some of them about being stuck with my brain on sonnets and some of them about EBB. These are great, truly, excellent sonnets… very specific and concrete sonnets about her particular and specific love for Robert Browning, and consequently they work very well. But sensible people read them one at a time over a reasonable period, and not all of them in an hour. (My EBB sonnets are on my Patreon if you want to see them.) Corvus — Marko Kloos (2025) Second volume in the Frontlines: Evolution series, don’t start here, start with Scorpio. This is military SF, and if you don’t like milSF you won’t like it, but I do when it’s good, and this is very good. Kloos is better than anyone at writing battle sequences that are genuinely interesting and exciting—normally I am so bored by action sequences, but not here. Great fun, just preordered the sequel. I’ll keep gulping these down as fast as they get written. Princess Puck — Una Lucy Silberrad (1902) Another wonderful book from Silberrad, and I think this is my favourite of what I’ve read of hers so far. So excited to see more of her work becoming available! This is a Victorian novel and so of course it has a crusty old man, a beautiful house, a village, a vicar, some cousins, ancestral complexities, and inheritances, and it does them all very well. But it also has a heroine called Bill, nobody calls her Wilhelmina (and since my cousin whose name was Wilhelmina went by Wella, I suspect nobody ever called anyone Wilhelmina), whose main characteristics are honesty and a liking for doing physical work well. Bill is terrific, the plot is fun, and I enjoyed every minute of this book. It’s free on Project Gutenberg, and there is more Silberrad coming soon. The Adventure of the Demonic Ox — Lois McMaster Bujold (2025) Another Penric & Desdemona novella, and like the last few it was fun, but felt like just more of the same. I will no doubt keep on reading and mildly enjoying these. Worlds Out of Words — Barry Torch (2026) This is an as yet unpublished PhD thesis written by a friend. It’s about the humanists in Rome around the papal court in the fifteenth century, including the one who became a pope, and the one who was arrested in a plot to assassinate a (different) pope, and the prefaces and other things they wrote advancing their agendas and trying to get jobs. I enjoyed reading it, and will try to remember to remind you when it gets to be a proper book. Black Swan, White Raven — edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (1997) Another collection of retold fairy tales, many of them very good but with one absolute standout, a science fiction version of Tam Lin by Bruce Glassco. Sadly, he does not seem to have written anything longer than other short stories, but I’ll be looking out for them; this one was perfect and I keep thinking about it. Nonesuch — Francis Spufford (2026) ARC sent to me by the author, who is a friend of friends. This is a horror novel set in London in WWII, and it does a lot of very difficult things very well. Spufford has done his research, and holds the challenging balance between fascists and metaphysical monsters. It’s really well written, even better than Spufford’s earlier work. However, I found the end very disturbing—not just the “to be continued,” which came as a big surprise, but the events of the very end, which are impossible to discuss without spoilers but which seemed to undermine a lot of what I’d loved about the earlier part of the novel. Again, I’ll try to remember to remind you when it comes out. Why Read the Classics? — Italo Calvino (1991), translated by Martin McLaughlin A collection of essays by Calvino; first, a fascinating essay on why people should read classics, then a bunch of essays about books written at different times, then two essays on imaginary books. It was funny reading it, because I kept saying “Of course he loves that!” Of course he loves Orlando Furioso, why, he clearly got the idea of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler from the experience of reading it! Of course he loves Don Quixote! Of course. Terrific collection, interesting and fun. [end-mark] The post Jo Walton’s Reading List: October 2025 appeared first on Reactor.

News VisionQuest Lauren Morais and Diane Morgan Round Out the Stacked VisionQuest Cast The AI voices are all getting human bodies. Surely nothing will go wrong. By Molly Templeton | Published on November 11, 2025 Screenshot: Marvel Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Marvel Studios In May of 2024, it was announced that Picard showrunner Terry Matalas would make the leap from one franchise to another, trading Starfleet chronology for Marvel continuity with the WandaVision spinoff VisionQuest. Since then, Matalas and his team have been quietly stacking the cast of VisionQuest—which obviously stars Paul Bettany as Wanda’s robot love. (They were being weird about the title for a minute—and at one point Jac Schaeffer was working on Vision Quest, two words—but now it seems pretty definite.) Matalas has already cast two of his Picard stars in the show: Todd Stashwick as the mercenary Paladin and Orla Brady as F.R.I.D.A.Y. He’s also got Ruaridh Mollica (The Franchise) playing Thomas Shepherd, aka the grown-up version of Wanda and Vision’s son Tommy, and T’Nia Miller as the powerful robot Jocasta. The latest additions are an interesting pair. Variety reports that Lauren Morais and Diane Morgan have signed on, and that “Morais is playing Lisa Molinari, a character closely connected to Mollica’s Thomas Shepherd, while Morgan is playing an associate of Stashwick’s character, Paladin.” Morais has appeared in the series The Red King and The Crow Girl, while Morgan is best known for her character Philomena Cunk, from Cunk on Life and Cunk on Earth, among other projects. VisionQuest will bring back many a familiar character, including James Spader as Ultron—who is just one of the Tony Stark-created AIs appearing in the series. According to an Entertainment Weekly report from New York Comic Con, at some point in the series Vision “walks into a giant mansion, where he meets personifications of various programs, including Henry Lewis as DUM-E, Jonathan Sayer as U, James D’Arcy as J.A.R.V.I.S., Orla Brady as F.R.I.D.A.Y., and Emily Hampshire as E.D.I.T.H. This appears to be playing out inside Vision’s mind, as his android brain attempts to navigate his memories.” At NYCC, Bettany explained where his character is as the series begins: “Red Vision gave White Vision all of his memories, including all of his memories from within the hex,” referring to the spell Wanda cast on the town of Westview, New Jersey. Connecting to those memories proves somewhat difficult for the newest version of the character. VisionQuest is expected to arrive on Disney+ late next year.[end-mark] The post Lauren Morais and Diane Morgan Round Out the Stacked <i>VisionQuest</i> Cast appeared first on Reactor.