Hail and well-met, strangers! Welcome to the next leg of the journey to the speculative realms. I’ll be your guide as we embark on a perilous quest through the sixteenth week of the year. Choose your weapons. Mount your steed. Join the guild, and let’s go!
Sunday
Just in time for the premiere of the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, our intrepid party — Shara, J.L., Venessa, and Gina — share their initial reactions to season 7‘s airing last year. Relive the shockers, theories, and spoilery delights as we commence the beginning of the end of one of the most celebrated, controversial TV series this decade.
Monday
Hark! A wild bard appears! In honor of the release of As Close to the Edge Without Going Over, author and poet David Silverberg stops by the MFT for a glimpse into his genre loves. We’ve got fantasy, science fiction, and horror — with classics from Tolkien, Piers Anthony, Harlan Ellison, and Stephen King — as well as video games, art, poetry, and music. We have a wide variety of things to explore with Silverberg — check it out here!
Tuesday
Calie continues her column Changing the Map — chronicling a long, winding sojourn through genre — with the awesomely titled “Women Bleed.” Yes, that: a biological and cultural coming-of-age for girls seldom covered in fiction in a realistic way. I’m reminded of the scene in Game of Thrones where Jon Snow explains what swooning is to Ygritte, and gives the example of girls who faint at the sight of blood. Ygritte, reminding us that Jon Snow knows nothing, points out that “Girls see more blood than boys.” Yup. Calie’s post is a fascinating analysis of the works that make use of menarche. Definitely worth a look!
Photo by Valentin Salja via Unsplash
Wednesday
Erin further realizes her Resolution Project by powering through her games list on Steam. In this post, she visits some buzzworthy, gorgeous games: Gris, Cultist Simulator, and Subsurface Circular. Do they have brains as well as beauty? Do they live up to the hype? Enjoy a fun, spoiler-free time with sim, platform, and text-based games full of mystery and adventure.
Thursday
Nu gives us her take on Netflix’s latest superhero offering, The Umbrella Academy. And what a bizarro checklist it creates: talking chimpanzees, nanny androids, cruel billionaires, time travel, monster possession, white violins, throwing knives, and other seemingly random assemblages. I heard a rumor that you shouldn’t miss out on this post!
Friday
Casey reintroduces us to the “snap heard ’round the world” and her brilliant idea for a topic: who should not return from Thanos’s Snap in the MCU? J.L. answers the call in a special Sound Off! post that takes a look at the fallen and who should stay dead. Because really, some of these guys are bound to come back!
Book Club
It may seem early, but the summer will soon be upon us! June 21 is fast approaching, and we’re honoring the Longest Day by making the solstice our book club theme for June. We need your votes! As of this post, The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell is in the lead, followed by Lidia Yuknavitch’s Book of Joan. Our third offering, Megan Little Reilly’s We Are Unprepared, is trailing behind. Will it catch up with the others? You still have time for this side quest — vote today!
This is where I leave you. May the road rise to meet you, and may the wind be at your back; may your horse never lose its shoe; may you never lose the dungeon map. Be wary of slimes and false treasure chests; be wary of extended RPG metaphors that run aground when your quest leader runs out of ideas for what to say in her Roundup. Stay tuned this time next week, where I generate a new theme for the recap…or not. Sometimes the unadorned truth is the best way to go. Safe journey, friends.
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