The British robot thriller T.I.M. was released in the year after the first M3GAN film, and it seems to be interested in some of the same questions about the bond we form with our electronic assistants, but the way it goes about it doesn’t reach the same skill level. Whereas the titular robot in M3GAN has as its primary function the protection of a child, and then takes the meaning of “protection” to horrifying extremes, the robot in T.I.M. is a more vaguely defined “manservant” who one day becomes fixated on the concept of love and suddenly decides that his owner doesn’t need her husband anymore.
Our protagonist is Abi, a robotics engineer who has started a new job at a Big Tech company that is planning to launch a new model of human-sized and -shaped robot assistants. Her assignment is to fix the fine motor skills of the mechanical hands, which still can’t control their grip with enough precision. As part of the perks of her new position, the company has provided her with a luxurious smart home in the countryside and her own domestic robot to test. This doesn’t make her husband, Paul, too happy: he’s currently unemployed and going through a personal crisis of purpose, and it doesn’t help that T.I.M. performs better than him at satisfying Abi’s every need as a cook, gardener, shopping advisor, and foot massager. Paul begins to resent T.I.M.’s presence because it makes him feel redundant, and soon enough, T.I.M. comes to share the same opinion about Paul.
Australian actor Eamon Farren does a convincing job at portraying T.I.M.’s deceptively polite demeanor, letting its inner aggressiveness show only in the tiny twitch of an eyebrow or a lip. The rhythm of speech he chooses is too distractingly reminiscent of Brent Spiner’s carefully neutral delivery for the character Data, but the resemblance ends there. T.I.M. has no admiration for humans. Its only desire is to serve Abi—whether she likes it or not.
T.I.M.’s turn to full villainy is the movie’s weakest point. It was a more interesting character when it maneuvered behind the scenes to sow mistrust between Abi and Paul, planting clues here and there to lead her to suspect infidelity (which we learn has happened before). After its scheme is exposed, however, T.I.M. resorts to clichéd villain lines (“It doesn't have to end this way,” “You’re only delaying the inevitable,” etc.) that don’t sound believable.
In fact, T.I.M.’s motivation is confusing since the beginning. The scenes at Abi’s workplace show that her boss likes to skip quality checks to speed up production, which gives a hint that T.I.M. may not be following a very carefully written code, but even taking that into account, there’s no conceivable reason why it would harbor erotic desires for Abi. After a very basic conversation about the topic of love, T.I.M. starts stealing glances at her while she’s dressing, changes its hairstyle to match her browsing preferences, and adopts a creepy habit of smelling her clothes in private. Again, within the stated rules of this world, nothing points to T.I.M. having even the capacity for that type of desire. Its obsession with Abi happens because the movie needs something for you to be scared of.
It’s irritating to watch Abi’s continued refusal to believe Paul’s increasingly solid proof of T.I.M.’s true intentions. The broken trust implied in the backstory of their relationship can only go so far toward explaining why she’d be so slow to notice the obvious. The movie goes out of its way to set up the many ways T.I.M. can falsify images and sound, but somehow Abi forgets that information until her marriage has reached an irreversible state of crisis. T.I.M. is quite proficient at making Paul look like an incorrigible adulterer, but Abi’s obliviousness to the double agenda of its precisely timed malicious remarks stretches credulity.
There’s a hint of an interesting development regarding the enmity that grows between T.I.M. and Paul, in that Abi is trying to get pregnant, the one task at which T.I.M. can’t substitute Paul. But the script doesn’t flesh out T.I.M.’s personality with enough depth to explore that side of its jealousy. Also, Paul’s replaceability at home could have been better contrasted with Abi’s replaceability at work, given that we hear her boss explicitly describe her as a diversity hire, but the movie doesn’t do anything with that idea either.
T.I.M. is a mystery with no surprises, scary enough to justify giving it 1:41 minutes of your life, but not imaginative enough to be worth remembering afterwards.
Nerd Coefficient: 5/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
Sean CW Korsgaard is a U.S. Army veteran, award-winning freelance journalist, author, editor, and publicist who has worked with Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Baen Books, and Writers of the Future, and recently became the editor of Anvil and Battleborn magazines. His first anthology, Worlds Long Lost, was released in December 2022, as was his debut short story, “Black Box.” He lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and child, along with, depending on who you ask, either far too many or far too few books.
PW: Tell us about your new venture.
SK: So, the new venture!
Howard Andrew Jones and I conceived Battleborn shortly after Tales of the Magician's Skull was sold to new ownership, in part wondering how to improve upon the concept, in part wondering how to get a magazine under more stable footing. Though launch was delayed because of his death, what you see now with Battleborn is that same concept brought to life. The magazine 70k words an issue of cutting-edge sword-and-sorcery and heroic fantasy, with a focus on character-driven storytelling and hard knuckle action. Each issue will have some classic genre reprints, and our first two include a Michael Shea and David Drake story that have both been out of print for decades. We will also have around 10k words of non-fiction, ranging from genre history to book reviews, and even a comic that pays homage to Jack Vance and 2000AD. Through our crowdfunder, we hope to launch with three issues in 2026, and be able to pay if not pro-rates, close to it. We're also planning on rolling out audiobooks, merchandise, comics and even a line of reprints as resources allow, to keep the magazine more sustainable, and do so under a profit sharing agreement with the authors.
Our first issue is fully funded as of last week, our second is about halfway there, and we have well over a month to raise all we can to see Battleborn take to the frontlines of fantasy next year in bold fashion.
Another final touch you may appreciate: from first issue to final, Howard's name will be on our masthead as Editor Emeritus, a standard and role model for all who seek to submit to the magazine that, I hope, shall help carry on his spirit and love of this genre.
PW: So tell me a bit about the new authors you are looking to write pieces for, and how their work matches up with the genre reprints you are doing at the same time.
SK: We started with the authors who are well known in sword-and-sorcery - guys like John C. Hocking, James Enge, CL Werner, ones who have the well-earned reputations within the genre and are known by sword-and-sorcery buffs. Anyone familiar with Howard's tenure at Tales of the Magician's Skull should see a lot of old favorites among the ranks at Battleborn. Likewise, a lot of familiar heroes to genre fans - Werner's Shintaro Oba, Robert Rhodes' Gabriela de Quetar, Steven L. Shrewsbury's Rogan to name a few.
Then I went gunning for a few big names, with some outside draw - Michael Stackpole has a story in a setting very much inspired by Roger Zelazny, and Christopher Ruocchio will prove as adept at sword-and-sorcery as he has space opera. Speaking with a few others about the future, too - one author who might not make it in the first three issues (they're under deadline for their next novel with Tor) came to me with a wild idea for a setting I can't wait to showcase in a future issue.
The indies will prove to be the big wildcards for a lot of readers. Schyler Hernstrom has been a mainstay of small press sword-and-sorcery, and he's pulling double duty with a comic strip in the magazine, and a perfect introduction to his work, a novella that I feel is sword-and-sorcery's answer to Le Guin's Omelas quandary. Alyssa Hazel may be our biggest surprise - she's an expecting mother who handsells her self-published books at conventions, primarily horror and science fiction. I saw her reading Clarke Ashton Smith and asked if she had ever taken a stab at sword-and-sorcery, and her story Battleborn is her first - and given she turned in a gripping tale of a warrior with a Mongolian death worm on her heels that blew me away, no doubt the first of many more.
As for those reprints, I started with one key metric: A list of classic authors and stories, and compared them to how long they've been out of print. Our first two, Pearls of the Vampire Queen by Michael Shea and The Mantichore by David Drake, have both been out of print for decades, and Battleborn will be the first time either will appear in digital or audio form!
If all goes well and we fund to the level we need to, all remaining space will be going to an open submission period in October - we're looking at 50-60k words up for grabs split across three issues, and as excited as I am to showcase the authors and fiction we have already, THAT is something I'm looking even more forward to, knock on wood.
PW: I see on the crowdfunding page that additional artwork is part of the stretch goals, should the campaign succeed. Tell me about the importance for you of including artwork in sword and sorcery stories.
SK: Artwork is fundamental to the sword-and-sorcery subgenre - how many people were first turned into reading Conan and Elric by Frank Frazetta and Michael Whelan long before they knew the names of Robert E. Howard or Michael Moorcock?
It's also by far the most expensive part of the production process, I don't mind telling you. In spite of that, every story in Battleborn with have a black-and-white interior illustration. Two, if we hit that stretch goals.
I also wish to emphasize something here: AI Art will NEVER appear in Battleborn.
PW: That's great to hear about AI art being verboten. So what is it like to edit sword and sorcery, be it a reprint or new, in this day and age where sword and sorcery has a lot of competition from other fantasy sub-genres?
SK: Truthfully, I find it wonderfully refreshing. I've edited a LOT of fiction, from military science fiction to cozy fantasy, but getting to work in my favorite genre, sword-and-sorcery, is incredibly rewarding.
Even within sword-and-sorcery fandom, the approach we are taking with Battleborn involves a specific focus that maybe our contemporaries might not. For example, given the action-oriented focus of our fiction, I am giving special care to editing all the combat, that it feels tactile, authentic and exhilarating.
And that competition from other fantasy subgenres is part of why its so exciting - romantasy and LitRPG are having thier moment, but there's undeniably also an appetite and a market for more traditional heroic fantasy.
PW: So what feeds your brain lately in the heroic fantasy space, besides the fine works you plan on bringing to the public with Battleborn?
SK: So I read a lot of things at any given time, but lately? Scott Oden's new collection is wonderful, and I'm reading Elizabeth Bear's novel The Folded Sky for a review in Analog. Analog has been especially wonderful because it means I'm still reading science fiction, as opposed to fantasy entirely.
The big thing has been re-reading a ton of the sword-and-sorcery classics. There is another project I was working on with Howard - do remind me to read you in on that sometime - which means I have had to read if not the entire body of work of close to two dozen authors, close to it. I'm making my way through David Gemmell at the moment, he really was a master at staging his action scenes.
That has been one of the best parts of doing a deep dive like this - project or not, it has been highly educational, each of those authors has a unique touch or lesson to take away from their work.
PW: What else do you want readers to know about Battleborn, and where can they support it?
SK: For writers and artists? I want to be a fair dealer, cut you in where I can, and create the kind of magazine you will puff up with pride to have your work featured in.
For the industry types? I am sure there will some stumbles and some growing pains along the way, but I hope to do my best to create the kind of magazine worthy of being included in the company of such worthy outlets, from Analog to Clarkesworld.
For sword-and-sorcery fans? I hope in time that you trust our logo to strand for everything that you love in our subgenre, two-fisted action, and hardfighting heroes facing fearful odds, and with each issue, you feel that same rush you did the first time you picked up your first Conan or Elric paperback.
PW: Excellent. Where can readers find out more, and support the campaign?
SK: Our crowdfund is right here - we are a few hundred shy of guaranteeing digital releases of three issues next year, and at 10k and 15k, physical releases for two and three as well!
Longterm? battlebornmagazine.com, as well as everywhere fine books and magazines are sold.
Thank you, Sean!
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
Jack, I want you to paint me like one of your French games.
In the distance, across the vast sea, a daunting number stands as a beacon of mortality for those who live in Lumiere. Every year, the Paintress erases the number on the monolith, and every year she replaces it with one less, the number corresponding to the age of the sacrificial citizens of Lumiere. It has become the tradition of those in Lumiere to watch as those they love become flower petals on the winds of fate, to enjoy what little time they have left. But there are those who refuse to sit back; there are those who have no desire to let the Paintress take away their loved ones. These are the Expeditioners, the brave soldiers who set sail in hopes of locating the Paintress, of ending the war she sees fit to wage upon the innocent souls of Lumiere. But over the last seventy-six years, no expedition has yet been successful. Will Expedition 33 prosper where everyone else has failed?
The first few moments of Expedition 33 were enough to inform me that I was in for something special. As the camera zooms in over a distorted Eiffel Tower, the opening song, "Lumiere", grips with an enchanting sound, the prelude to an incredible soundtrack. The cutscene then focuses on Robert Pattin—sorry, Gustave as he gravely gazes in the distance toward the hulking Monolith, its aura threatening despite my lack of knowledge. Maelle and Gustave speak, and the dialogue feels natural, the characters’ histories in place, their ease apparent. The character models and facial animations, even the hair physics, all look wonderful. I’m already in.
This game is gorgeous. And French, very French. For instance, there is a set of “baguette” costumes for each character in which they don black pants with a black and white striped shirt, black suspenders, a red beret, and a baguette wrapped in a red and white sash. While the story can be dark and devastating at times, the developers did their best to add a bit of light to balance out their chiaroscuro foundation. The art style, from character to design to the splashes of paint used to decorate the UI, invites the player to stare at the screen. The game’s world, influenced by the extravagant and grandiose Belle Époque, creates a dazzling atmosphere. Each area is robust and filled with character and color, bursting with an enigmatic history of some long-forgotten battle. Even the world map, once it becomes available to the player, is a gorgeous proof of the ability of Sandfall Interactive’s veteran developers. Despite being this studio’s first game, it isn't the developers' first rodeo, and every ounce of love and effort poured into every facet of this game is evidence.
Exploration is simple and straightforward. While limited at first, the game opens up to allow for more traversal options, as is standard. Though I do wish there was some better form of fast travel, at least in the post-game, the map is captivating enough to observe over and over again as you pick up your last music records and pictos. While it’s exciting to scan each individual area for loot and discover little trinkets and mini-bosses throughout the map, I found that some areas that looked explorable were barred by invisible collision detectors. I don't mind keeping blinders on; a bit of suspension of disbelief never killed anyone, but when there is a rock that is less than a foot high, I should be able to climb atop (especially if I have a jump button and can do the same to other rocks of the same size in other areas). I also found that sometimes the developers created little hidden spaces that felt like they were meant to be discovered, only to find nothing waiting for me. If it happened once or twice, I wouldn't mind, but these were both frequent occurrences.
Before we get back to the good stuff, I must urge Sandfall to remove all platforming challenges from their future games. The jumping mechanic is serviceable, no doubt about it, but is it good? No, and it doesn't need to be. The Gestral beach challenges, where platforming was necessary, were some of the lowlights of the game. Though optional, they still interrupted my enjoyment of the game. It is my strong belief that if your game isn't built for platforming, it should not include any kind of platforming challenge. And what did I get for my toil? A costume.
I’ve spoken a bit about player input for exploration, but what about combat? Well, that part is absolutely brilliant, and if this wins game of the year, it will be the primary reason. Expedition 33 takes the classic turn-based JRPG-based team combat system and adds a massive twist: Souls-like dodging and parrying. I played on normal difficulty, and the game put up quite a challenge at times. Easy mitigates some of the reliance on dodges and parries (the former easier to pull off, the latter more difficult, though it offers a reward), while the harder difficulty will absolutely necessitate them. I find this to be a terrific balance on the part of the developer as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has an enticing story, characters, and world that should be enjoyed by players with lower skill as well as those looking for a challenge. Parries and standard attacks increase the AP (Attack Point) gauge by one, which in turn allows each character to use special abilities. In addition, weapons, Lumina, and Pictos alter combat so significantly that swapping them almost feels like playing a different game.
Speaking of variety, each character’s play style is so significantly different from one another that learning each one is a joy. Sandfall didn't simply alter or tweak the genre for the sake of tweaking it; every combat change they made was for the betterment of the genre. While I don't expect (nor want) every game to adapt something similar throughout any future games in the turn-based RPG genre, I would be shocked if this interactive, versatile, and diverse combat system doesn't heavily influence other creators. It should, it really should.
There’s more than one way this game takes influence from the Souls games: bosses. Bosses and mini-bosses litter the map and the storyline and challenge the player in ways they hadn't been before. New boss animations and abilities constantly kept me engaged and excited for the next encounter. The design on both bosses and standard enemies is wonderful and inventive, matching the world and creating enticing battles throughout the entire runtime. Good luck with Simon if you get there.
If the combat system is the roast beef of this French dip, the art, music, and UI are the baguette that surrounds it, then the story and its characters are the au jus, submerging all and giving extra flavor to every ounce of this fantastic game. There are huge moments, small gentle moments, character reveals, motivations, and growth that all drive the game forward. I was sucked in by the nuance each character showed and the relationships they forged along the way. The vulnerable decision to divulge more information back at camp always intrigued me (though I wish there was something to tell you when another character was ready to speak with you, as it was easy to avoid camp for long stretches of time). As one who does not wish to spoil anything story-related, I’ll have to leave it minimal and vague.
Despite my enjoyment, I had three primary issues with the story/revelatory mechanisms. First, while the game is meant to convey an air of mystery, there are many moments that feel like the developer is holding back for the sake of holding back; these moments feel like a contrivance and don't serve the plot, like Sandfall's hand is visibly holding back pages from you. When the concealment is done with care, it works well, when it isn't, it is quite noticeable. Second, the pacing is fantastic… until the third act. If you like to explore before finishing your game, make sure you don't start the third act, as it’s just one mission with no warning (as opposed to the first and second acts, which run for multiple hours across multiple missions). Third, there are moments where the game reveals things to the characters, though the player has no idea what these things are. Instead of feeling excited alongside the characters, in the moments you don’t feel like you’re part of their experience, but on the outside looking in.
While I noticed these small issues throughout my playthrough, they pale in comparison to how phenomenal this game is. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 delivers on every front that it intends to (minus the platforming). With such charming characters and engaging systems, it’s no wonder this game found immediate success. If this is Sandfall Interactive’s first swing at their own take on the genre, I can only imagine what they have in store for us next. I would recommend this to JRPG lovers, Souls-like lovers, and anyone who enjoys a unique world encircled with wonderful music, great characters and story, and engaging, unforgettable combat. And let me not forget the heavy helping of melancholic whimsy that accompanies the player until the very last brushstroke of this fantastic adventure.
--
The Math
Objective Assessment: 9/10
Bonus: +1 for unique gameplay, characters, and world. +1 for visual splendor and engaging soundtrack.
Penalties: -1 for obscure for the sake of being obscure. -1 for any platforming levels.
Nerd Coefficient:9/10
Posted by: Joe DelFranco - Fiction writer and lover of most things video games. On most days you can find him writing at his favorite spot in the little state of Rhode Island.
Brutal, harrowing, and an incredible film that plumbs the depths of violence, despair, and friendship. (Spoiler free)
I read The Long Walk novel a few months ago in anticipation of the movie coming out, so I knew what I was getting into with this. But seeing it the same week in America that multiple acts of gun violence were committed, it was hard. Really hard. I considered rescheduling, actually, given that I wasn't sure I could handle even more violence on screen.
The film revolves around a dystopian battle royale-type contest: Young adults in an alternate America volunteer for the Long Walk and are drawn by lottery to participate. The last man still walking takes away the prize — untold riches and whatever your heart wishes. If you stop walking below 3 m.p.h., however, you're shot after three warnings by a slowly moving military vehicle that has rifles trained on everyone.
So, yes, it's like The Hunger Games and Squid Game, in that young people are forced to outlast each other to the death in the face of unspeakable fear and callous violence. But both of those movies feel more removed from our current-day environment, while The Long Walk seems much more realistic in that there's no futuristic capital city, no high-tech arena with sponsored gifts.
The main characters are walking on screen for the entirety of the film, and as the miles pile up, you can feel their exhaustion, dread, and fear. The first half-marathon's length doesn't seem so bad. Just a long walk, right? But there's no stopping. For anything. Watching the participants begin to stumble is gut-wrenching. When one character gets diarrhea, you see it happen in real time, along with what happens to him when he can't recover. The first death is incredibly graphic, and that's on purpose. I saw in an interview that Stephen King mentioned that he had one condition for making the movie: The deaths had to be shown. Why? To make sure that the audience knew that this wasn't just entertainment, and to show the pointless, absurd violence of the march. After that first death scene, I started looking away. It was too hard for me to watch again and again.
As night begins to fall on the first day, you start physically feeling the tiredness and exhaustion of the young men. No matter what, you can't stop, even if your shoe starts filling up with blood from blisters or you twist your ankle. The fear of being brutally shot reverberates through their young bodies as they march on. Sleep is stolen in small bits while hanging on to the person next to you. Every moment, you're reminded that you will either win the entire thing or you will die. There is no other option. There is no second place.
What prevents The Long Walk from just being torture porn, however, is the incredible performances of the actors who are along for the journey. Much like the bonds and alliances that are made in The Hunger Games, the friendships in this film are its heart, and they're truly impressive. In between moments of heart-shattering violence and long-distance-induced body horror injuries, you have a core group of characters that are slowly but surely making their sacrifices count. When they're not running for their lives, they're talking, laughing, and trying to make sense of the world and how they got to be on the Long Walk. Every few minutes, they experience trauma after trauma as they watch their companions fall. Similarly, every few minutes, I would think about how tired they are, how in pain they must be. Imagine walking as far as you'd ever walked before, then having to keep walking indefinitely or else face death.
Ray Garraty and Peter McVries, our two main characters, quickly become fast friends while walking, and their relationship is truly touching to watch as they traverse hundreds of miles across rural Maine backroads.
When I mentioned earlier that consuming this movie is hard, I wasn't joking. I'm not sure what to take away from it. The message that violence is wrong is very clear. But I think what I'll take away personally from it is the power of support during periods of intense, overwhelming fear. You're with these characters in essentially a locked room (except the room is always a small piece of tarmac), faced with the certainty that all but one will die. No matter how it ends, it's going to be tragic for nearly everyone.
I always thought the folks who go on reality shows and say "I'm not here to make friends" were being silly. Of course you're not, you're there to win money. But on theLong Walk, despite offering untold riches, it practically demands friendship to ignite. Why? Because their humanity is at stake. These are young men scared out of their minds, and the other kids aren't the enemy. The enemy is a dystopian system that made them think they had no other choice at a future than to participate in a state-sanctioned murder lottery game. Stephen King wrote the first draft of this story when he was just 19. For context, this was the late 1960s, and it's easy to see the comparisons of the violence in the story to the Vietnam War and the draft. While that was almost 60 years ago, the theme still resonates in the modern era as we face needless violence in other ways.
I'm not sure I'll watch The Long Walk again, but if I do, it will be to revisit these incredible performances and the story that gives you a little bit of hope in a tale full of death.
--
Baseline Score: 8/10
POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.
Martin Cahill is an Ignyte Award-nominated writer of fiction and non-fiction living just north of NYC, with over twenty short stories published across magazines such as Reactor, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and many others. He is a contributor to Critical Role: Vox Machina – Stories Untold and the author of Critical Role: Armory of Heroes. His debut book, Audition For The Fox arrives on September 16th from Tachyon Publications. You can find him online @mcflycahill90 and his website, martincahillwrites.com
Today they tell us about their six books.
1. What book are you currently reading?
For review, I’m reading Sarah Gailey’s Spread Me and C. L. Clark’s Fate’s Bane, both of which I’ve been looking forward to immensely. On my own time, I just finished The Practice, The Horizon, and The Chain by Sofia Samatar, which was even deeper, richer, and more brilliant than I had thought it would be, I’m halfway through Dead Hand Rule by Max Gladstone, fun and thoughtful and epic all at once, and I’m about to start Cadwell Turnbull’s last book in his Convergence Trilogy, A Ruin, Great and Free.
2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?
Oh man, where to begin! The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow, The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri, The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes, King Sorrow by Joe Hill, Queen Demon by Martha Wells, Happy People Don’t Live Here by Amber Sparks, Tell Me Yours, I’ll Tell You Mine by Kristina Ten, and You Weren’t Meant To Be Human by Andrew Joseph white.
3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to re-read?
You know, I just found my original ARC of one of my very favorite books, All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders and having finished her newest (and spectacular!) novel, Lessons in Magic and Disaster, I have a real hankering to go back and remind myself of why I love this debut in particular so dang much.
4. A book that you love and wish you yourself had written?
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Brilliant, beautiful, bittersweet, surreal, and so utterly human. It is relevant and timeless, both, and mesmerizing in the ways only great art can be, as page by page, she pulls you away from the world and into the many halls and tides and rooms that our protagonist occupies, and adores. Whew. A true masterpiece.
5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?
The Redwall series by Brian Jacques is what comes to mind immediately, and the more I think about it, the more true it becomes. From all those many books I learned much of the art of writing and storytelling in general; each book spoke to me in different ways but they all celebrated that you could balance serious storytelling with moments of bright whimsy, that you could look danger and hardship in the eye and still offer it a place at your table, that good and bad would always exist but they were not always equal, and not always so binary. That simple things were worth fighting for, and loving; that it was better to go together; that there is worth in rest and enjoying the taste of cherry and dandelion cordials, in spite of bad days and deep fear. And personally, it taught me that you could be a young mouse named Martin and that even if it didn’t happen that day, one day you would find the heart to stand tall and face your bad days.
6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome?
Audition For The Fox is awesome because it is more than one thing at any given moment! Time travel? Yes. Trickster gods and other divine beings? Yuh-huh. In-world fables about said gods? Sure thing. Distinct prose styles in every section. Oh yes. Comedy in moments of great crisis? Quite! Epic storytelling and worldbuilding balanced against character? Indeed. Audition For The Fox has a little bit of everything, and I don’t know if it’s always perfect but I do think all of the above work hand in hand to tell a unique, heartfelt, sometimes funny story of proving oneself, resisting oppression, standing up for the little guy, and doing what you can when you feel you’re powerless. I hope you pick up a copy and enjoy!
Thank you Martin!
POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social
I haven’t had this much fun with a book in quite some
time
I first heard about this book, which chronicles the many
hundreds of classroom educational films produced from the late 1940s through
about 1970, on a podcast about the evolution of the American teenager, and I
tracked down a copy at a used book sale. Used copies are readily available
online, and if you have even the slightest interest in independent filmmaking,
ephemeral films, or retro pop culture, I can’t recommend it highly enough.
You know these educational films from their endless parodies
on The Simpsons, usually starring Troy McClure, or featured appearances on Mystery
Science Theater 3000. But you probably don’t know the people
responsible for making these movies, the reasons they became so prevalent, and
the way in which, taken as a whole, they chronicle almost the entire postwar
American experiment.
Ken Smith profiles hundreds of these films, along with the
individuals and companies responsible for making them. But beyond that, Smith
weaves this information into a broader story told with a lot of insight and
humor. In fact, the longest section of the book is a catalogue of hundreds of
titles with blurbs about each of them. When I first got my copy, I figured I’d
read the narrative chapters and probably skip the catalogue, or just look
at it as a reference source. Instead, Smith’s descriptions were so entertaining
and in many cases the choices the films made were so bizarre that I found myself
reading the whole thing, and often subjecting my family to the
descriptions after I broke up laughing while reading on the couch.
At the time this book was written, these films were not
available to the public. Smith combed university archives and relied on the
assistance of icons in the film preservation field like Rick Prelinger to
screen these films privately and subsequently write about them. Thankfully for
big ol’ nerds like me, many of these films are now available on YouTube or
archive.org. I put together a playlist if you want to dive in.
Classroom Social Guidance Films
During World War II, the U.S. government relied heavily on
filmmaking for the first time to aid in the war effort. Famously, directors
like Frank Capra and William Wyler left Hollywood to create pro-Allied
propaganda films. Disney and Warner Bros. also contributed cartoons that had
some type of training angle or rallied viewers to the cause. The government
realized that you could train thousands of soldiers all at once, all
across the globe, by showing them a film. The military produced a ton of
films on different topics, and one of the most widely seen was Sex Hygiene,
directed by John Ford and starring George Reeves of the Superman TV show
fame, educating servicemen about how to not get syphilis.
1943 Collier's cartoon
Immediately after the war, progressive educators saw an
opportunity to use this same idea to benefit kids in school. My cursory
understanding of these films before reading the book was that they were a
method for enforcing conformity across society, but the truth is far more
complex.
Smith breaks up the bulk of Mental Hygiene into three
sections: The Genres, The Producers, and The Films.
The Genres include Fitting In, Cautionary Tales, Dating,
Girls Only, Drugs, Sex Education, Bloody Highways, and Sneaky Sponsors. Each
genre contains a spectrum from “kinda good” to “mostly ok” to “wow, that’s
cringe” to “oh no” to “what the hell did I just watch??”
The Drugs and Bloody Highways categories are the most likely
to make your skin crawl. Many of the anti-drug films, which really emerged in
the 1960s, rely on exploitative scare tactics and have almost no relation to
the reality of drug use. Seduction of the Innocent, for instance, claims
that marijuana is a powerful hallucinogenic. That movie’s 11 minutes of full-on
batshit crazy. The Bloody Highways collection, which famously scarred
generations of drivers-ed students by including real footage of mutilated bodies
at accident scenes, is worse. These films remain grisly and
disgusting – they are essentially snuff films – and Smith references other
reporting that suggests that the producers of these films were giving kickbacks
to police and ambulance companies to get out to accident scenes first, and that
larger bribery and corruption scandals arose out of those arrangements.
I expected the “Fitting In” and “Dating” categories to
be oppressive in their encouragement of rigid conformity, and some of that is
definitely there (Control Your Emotions essentiallyadvocates
not having any emotions), but I found something else that I didn’t expect –
actual good advice.
Isolation, a lack of community, and difficulties making
meaningful connections plague our current moment, here in 2025. I have
heard countless people online and in person talk about the challenges of just
knowing what to do in social situations. What’s expected on a date? Should you
pay for your date, or no? Is sex expected, or no? How do you make friends? How
do you keep them? What do healthy
relationships look like? Check the YouTube comments on a number of these social
guidance films, and you’ll find modern viewers relating to the feelings of
these characters and taking comfort in the fact that people have always had
these social anxieties.
In Shy Guy, a young Dick York (later of Inherit
the Wind and Bewitched) plays a high school student in a new town
who loves tinkering with radios and doesn’t know how to make new friends. His father
suggests just going to where other students hang out, not making a big deal of
it or putting too much pressure on himself, but just putting himself out there
where it’s at least possible to meet people. So Dick heads to the hang out at
the malt shop or wherever, and watches how people interact. He notices that the
people who have the most friends seem to be good listeners, ask questions, and
take a sincere interest in other people. This is still good advice. If you meet
a new person, you’re much more likely to grow that relationship by asking
questions and listening to them than by plowing over them and talking about
yourself the whole time.
Other social guidance films, like More Dates for Kay,
take this too far. Kay basically knows everything about everybody and constantly
reminds every other student she sees about their upcoming tests or doctor’s
appointments and everything else, to the complete elimination of her own
personality, or any personal wants or needs. So don’t be like Kay. But Dick
York thinks everybody will laugh at him fixing radios, until he’s at a party
and overhears another kid talking about building a radio. The 1950s didn’t have
language for “finding your people,” but that’s basically what Dick does in Shy
Guy.
The moral of other films is sometimes totally inscrutable.
My daughters and I watched Are You Popular? in which all the boys have
gone out with Jenny and so they think she’s a tramp, but they’re all also going
out with Caroline every night, and she’s great. We were unable to determine a
difference between Jenny and Caroline, or why Caroline wound up at the dance
and Jenny wound up standing by a bus bench crying one perfect tear.
Before the rise of the anti-drug scare films, these social
guidance films were intended to be a progressive resource for kids, providing
them with a framework for understanding expectations in new situations. In the
postwar economic boom, millions of Americans were moving from rural to suburban
communities, many families had stable economic resources for the first time,
and the rise of the automobile and commuter culture were changing the fabric of
society. These films were an effort to help kids adapt to new environments, and
some actually managed to do so successfully. Some less so. Like Cindy Goes
to a Party, where little Cindy’s fairy godmother comes to her in a dream
with tips for how to behave at her first party at a friend’s house, including
the rock-solid advice, “Don’t Break Things,” which is optically printed onscreen
when Cindy looks at a lamp that she presumably would’ve been fine with breaking.
Recontextualizing Conformity
However much fun I had reading this book, though, I
don’t want to gloss over the actual, profound effect it had on me and my
broader understanding of America in the 20th century. I have
always had an appreciation for both educational and marketing films of the
1950s. Animated educational films from production companies such as John
Sutherland (Destination Earth, Rhapsody in Steel, A is for Atom) were
produced in partnership with commercial firms and industry groups, while
companies like General Motors (Design for Dreaming) made consumerist
fantasies designed to sell housewives on new kitchen technology and commuters
on the latest automobiles.
These films were stylistically adventurous,
especially the animated ones, and provide a truly unique time capsule of a
period where innovation was happening rapidly, and the American middle class
was exploding in size. Against the backdrop of the dawning Cold War, the films
equate the ideas of American patriotism with being a good consumer,
and promise a future of ease and contentment. But until Mental Hygiene,
I never fully realized that classroom social engineering films were a distinct
category, separate from the types of industrial/educational films I was already
familiar with. And it’s the story of these mental hygiene films that really
allowed me to recontextualize much of my understanding of the 1950s.
For many people, the prevailing impression of the 1950s that
lingers today is one of forced conformity. The image of the nuclear family – the
breadwinner father, the homemaker mother, the two clean-cut kids staying out of
trouble and getting good grades – is central to the iconography of the era. For
too many people, that iconography is the only thing they know of the time. This
leads to a misguided sense that “everything was better” in the 1950s – that it
was an ideal time we should harken back to and try to somehow recapture. That
misunderstanding (or willful misrepresentation) obscures several realities of
life at the time (off the top of my head):
The
horrors of segregation and the Jim Crow South
Polio
The
Red Scare
The
Lavender Scare
The
forced exclusion of almost everyone but white men from the workforce
The
extraordinary prevalence of alcoholism and emergence of medications in
pill form (and subsequent rise of both acceptable – “Mother’s Little Helper” (Valium) to help
women forced to stay in the home battle anxiety – and unacceptable – teen –
drug abuse)
The
untold levels of trauma in World War II veterans who had returned home
The
collapse of extended family support networks as large corporations began
relocating workers to brand new communities around the country
The
unbelievable amount of death caused by motor vehicles that had yet to
implement safety protocols, and
The
creeping cultural anxiety of the Cold War and possible nuclear holocaust.
But the successes of the New Deal and the defeat of global
fascism (…at the time) created a sense of open horizons and limitless
possibilities. Social guidance classroom films played a part in that and
presented an opportunity for educators to try to build a better educational
system that benefited the children and broader society, as well. The origin of
these social guidance films was rooted in progressive education, and an
anti-fascist focus on community. These films were largely good-faith efforts to
help kids and reinforce a community-centric worldview that had helped defeat the fascist threat in Europe.
But here’s the rub: without anyone realizing it, the world
had already moved on.
The people who were making the films – the writers,
directors, and educational consultants – had endured all of that history…but
the kids had not. These children, the Baby Boomers, were born into maybe the
greatest economic upswing in human history, but at school they were being
preached a wartime-rationing way of being in the world when it was no longer
necessary and General Motors was telling them that to be good
Americans they had to be good consumers.
Even the projectors themselves were products war. The
armed forces had pioneered the practice of using films to train thousands of
soldiers quickly. The projectors in school classrooms used to play these social
guidance films had been used first to train soldiers, and then given to
the schools as war surplus. This gave progressive educators what they thought
was a golden opportunity to teach kids using these same, industrialized
approaches.
Then many of these kids came of age into a draft and
multiple, new foreign wars. They'd grown up told by a cartoon turtle to hide under their desks
in case the Soviets dropped a nuclear bomb on their town. They were being taught pro-social messages and told
that if they followed these rules, they’d be happy, well-adjusted, and they’d
fit in. But why? To grow up a drunk like dad, or take Valium like mom, or go
fight Koreans and Vietnamese who never did anything to them?
Traffic Safety films blamed teenagers for the massive
fatalities on the road, when it had far more to do with a lack of basic safety
features in cars, paired with increasingly powerful engines in vehicles built
by manufacturers that didn’t - any of them - have a safety department. Ralph
Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed did what no scare-all classroom film
could do – it got Congress to mandate safety features in cars. Only then did
traffic fatalities begin to decline. In 1951, the rate of vehicle fatalities per 100 million miles driven was over 7. Since 1991, it's never been above 2. Yet teens had to watch films like Last
Date (another Dick York role) that shared the concept of “teenicide,” where
kids kill themselves before they can turn twenty by driving recklessly. It’s
all your fault, kids!
Sponsored films were sneaky, although sometimes playing an
important role. Tampon manufacturers were the only ones willing to make
menstruation films, which was a positive, but they did so while promoting their
own branded products. Many other companies produced pro-consumer propaganda
films hoping schools would show them as educational films and not notice or not
mind the product placements. Jam Handy, who was possibly the most prolific
producer of these kinds of films, said they were intended “for people whose
minds are to be reconditioned.” Oof.
I have to believe that the teenagers of the 1950s and
60s saw through this. The counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s seems
inevitable as a reaction to the forced conformity of the 1950s that definitely was emphasized. But learning about these films showed me it’s also possible
that the rebellion stemmed also from a generational divide, with parents and
children talking past each other against the backdrop of unprecedented economic
abundance and ever-intensifying cultural inequality and uncertainty.
The 1950s Indict the 1950s
With all this longing for the halcyon 1950s being so popular
these days, it’s valuable to ask what folks in the 1950s thought about all
that.
Two films stand out. The first is 1955's The Sound of a Stone,
directed by Herk Harvey for Centron Pictures in Lawrence, Kansas. Harvey made
hundreds of films for Centron, but is best remembered for directing the ghost
story film Carnival of Souls. A careful reading of Carnival of Souls
reveals a male director and male screenwriter working in 1962 acutely aware of the hazards
young women faced. In the film, Mary begins to experience frightening visions,
but they are in some ways depicted as less menacing than the reckless challenges of drag-racing boys on the road, the advances of her aggressive male neighbor,
or the powerlessness she experiences as a church organist under the gaze of the
pastor, who can throw her out of the congregation and rob her of her livelihood
simply for playing the wrong music. I think Harvey picked up this sensitivity
by making films for young people in a deeply troubled time.
In The Sound of a Stone, a young English teacher
assigns a book to his class, but when a student’s father discovers
the name of the book on a list of “subversive titles,” the English teacher and
his wife begin suffering under a reign of terror from the community. Soon, even
students who worked with the teacher on the school paper are also swept up, and
they begin receiving threats. It isn’t commented on, but one of the actors has
a severe limp in the film – most likely the result of Polio (see above). Soon
the boy’s father actually reads the book he was so quick to condemn, and stands
up at a school board meeting and recants. He does the right thing, and
everybody learns their lesson about blind censorshipthe Un=American
Activities Committeethe McCarthy hearings jumping to conclusions.
Or so it seems, until the final scene in the movie when somebody else throws a
brick through the teacher’s window, almost hitting his infant son, and letting
them know that they’d still better leave town. It remains a genuinely
compelling film today, but it’s not uplifting.
Then there’s 1959's What About Prejudice? In this film, none of the other students like
the new kid – Bruce Jones. They accuse him of stealing things they misplace, or
of starting fights, and attribute his behavior to “his kind,” an idea their
parents all reinforce. But then two of the gang crash their car into a bridge,
and the only witness to the accident is Bruce, who receives horrible burns all
over his body while rescuing the two other kids. This causes the gang to
rethink their blind hatred of Bruce, and reflect on how maybe they should’ve
looked at Bruce as a person first, and not just as a member of a group they
didn’t like. Here’s the conceit of the film, though – as much as Bruce is clearly
presumed to be Black, the filmmakers intentionally never show him, so that the
audience can insert Bruce into their own personally disfavored group. Maybe
Bruce isn’t Black. Maybe he’s Jewish. Or Catholic. Or Hispanic. Or any kind of
immigrant. Hell, maybe Bruce just has long hair. The film chooses not to say. The
fact that in 1959 the producers of an educational film about prejudice for high
schools intentionally didn’t show the object of that prejudice so the audience
could fill up that mental space with any number of widespread societal hatreds
is itself a horrible indictment of the society that produced it.
Mental Hygiene? Five stars, good book, very fun,
thought-provoking.
The 1950s? One-star, would not go back.
__
Posted by Vance K - co-founder and cult film reviewer for nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012. Sometime public service announcement and educational film professional.
Fran Wilde’s A Philosophy of Thieves mixes a heist story, a found family story, and a nuanced and considered look at a post-climate-change future story into a readable combination
Roosala Vane lives a double life (at least double). She’s studying at great expense at an academy in New Washington, her technical skills blossoming and growing. In her world, she seeks to become a creator and designer and builder of printed objects (and also, a hacker). But that is not her own identity. She is really Roo.
Roo is a member of the famous (and infamous) Canarvier troupe. The rich and powerful of this world have a particular game they like to play. They like to hire troupes of thieves to crash their opulent parties and steal from the guests and the estate. These hirings are carefully negotiated as to where and what is out of bounds, and the game is to try and catch the thieves before time runs out. The Canarviers are the best in the business. They don’t get caught, they stay within the contract, they are flashy and showy, and give the guests a good time. But times are tight and they have to take a tricky contract. One that will push Roo to the limit.
And, it turns out, Roo has an identity that she herself doesn’t even know...
Roo’s story is the heart of Fran Wilde’s A Philosophy of Thieves.
The heart of the book is Roo’s drives. She is the engine that keeps the novel going. We start off with a Canarvier heist, but things go wrong from the get go. The leader of the Canarviers, King, is captured. The Canarvier troupe is on the knife’s edge, and Roo not only needs a way to free King, but help keep the Canarviers solvent. And so she agrees to do a gig for Mason Graves and her girlfriend Evangeline Benford. The Benfords are rich and powerful, and the money for the gig could be enough to spring and free King on bail before he is shipped off to Alaska. So Roo is determined to get this gig to go off, get the money, free her mentor, and keep the Canarviers going.
This does not quite go to plan, and the novel delves into a rapidly rising series of improvises, plots, plans (including Mason’s) and the aforementioned identity that Roo is thrust into, very unwillingly. It’s not so much a heist novel as a post-climate-change technothriller that has strong worldbuilding and revolves around family and family relations, and the prices one is willing to pay for their ambitions and dreams.
I do want to say a few more words about Roo, no matter what name you give her. (More importantly, and a subtle point Wilde makes, it’s her for to decide how she names herself.) Roo is an extremely Wilde character that readers of her earlier work will find classic grace notes in. A relatively young woman, intelligent, clever, fierce in all the right ways. Sometimes self-doubting, but always loyal and determined to achieve her ends, which often revolve around her family and those whom she loves and protects. The very forward way Roo moves to try and meet her goals (which are so aligned with others, rather than herself) is endearing and sometimes painful. While we have a good sense of all the characters, especially the alternate POV Mason, Roo is where the heart of this book lies.
But it is the world, no surprise to anyone who has read more than one of my reviews, that really sucked me in and kept me turning pages. Yes, I was engaged strongly with Roo and her plight, struggles and adventures. (I only slowly warmed up to Mason; I kept seeing him as an adversary although he is much more *opposition* than *adversary* to Roo.) But it is the world that we see that is real and developed just enough for us to exert a playground of the imagination.
It’s a world after climate change has had its hammer blow. Seas have risen. Areas everywhere are devastated, to the point that even the atmosphere outside of domed or climate-controlled areas is detrimental to human health. There is a definite social and economic stratification of society in this world: Enclaves, Towns, and then the Skirts, which are definitely a drop in social class, and then the often poisonous and barely habitable regions outside of those. Crossing those regions is dangerous in and of itself, as we see a situation where a crossing goes wrong and leaves some of the characters in a salt flat where, if not rescued, they will absolutely die.
Wilde’s worldbuilding goes far beyond geography and goes into the implications of a post-climate-change world on things large and small. The loss of some of our cultural heritage as the seas rose, and the preciousness by which the rich hoard what they do hoard, is a particularly noticeable beat. And while this is a word of hacking and 3D printing, there are things that are hard and rare to come by. Natural foods like fresh blueberries are a treat only for the rich, grown in a greenhouse at high expense. And this is a world that is disconnected, too. We don’t get a sense of the grand politics (is there a United States still? *Maybe*), but not only are the city-states of this world seemingly semi-autonomous if not even more so (with a heaping side of corporate state politics), but getting to other Towns and Enclaves is mentioned as being difficult even for the ultra-wealthy Benfords.
It’s not something that is ever casually done. This leads more to the idea that this is a fragmented world, where Towns and Enclaves, with their Skirts around, are islands of civilization surrounded by devastation. While the rich and powerful are doing okay, those on more slippery rungs of the ladder need help. This is a society that the rich barely recognize as a society. And yet, while it is not the most pleasant of post-climate-change worlds, but it is one that Roo helps us be convinced is worth trying to save, rebuild and improve.
One interesting bit of worldbuilding and also a way to convey information is the in-world documents that pop up between chapters. Wilde’s excerpts from a digital magazine called Enclave and Towne provide board messages, private feeds, and more. It all feels a bit like Wilde has taken a page from Stand on Zanzibar, although the messages, articles and more are very much hyperlocal. Rather than trying to build out the world beyond the narrative (as we see in the Brunner novel), these documents review, reflect and comment on the action or action-adjacent items. It helps focus and direct the worldbuilding further to the plot and characters, and yet allows us the playground of the imagination that suggests there are plenty more feeds and channels like this we do not see.
I’ve been thinking about expectations lately, where a book’s logline or descriptive text do or do not match the reading experience. And so I want to quote from the promotional materials from the book:
“In these pages, you’ll find aspects of gaslamp fantasy complete with suave lords, charming rogues and high-stakes social events. You’ll find intricately planned and dangerous heists, brought together by a team of sniping but loving family members united around reclaiming their leader and father, King. And you’ll find astute interrogation of climate change and class in the tradition of our most esteemed science fiction.”
This all comes out nicely, except the phrase “gaslamp fantasy” kind of sticks in my craw a bit. Is it that we don’t quite have a good phrase for the kind of SFF that this book is a part of? There used to be, once upon a time, a phrase called “Fantasy of Manners” that was common in some corners of the SFF genresphere... back when it was in paper fanzines and maybe early newsgroups. It’s a mode of SFF that is very social- and class- oriented in nature, and often would deal with these strata of society in one form or another. Wilde’s novel definitely does this in spades, commenting on the very stratified society of her post-climate-change setting. There are a lot of scenes of intrigue, manners and social situations inside of those halls.
It’s not quite steampunk or dieselpunk; the punk is not there, but the aesthetic and feel are there. But can you have it outside of the time period?
The first time I came across this was in Walter Jon Williams’s Drake Maijstral novels, where a minor aristocrat/burglar in a galactic empire where Earth is conquered gets himself into some very funny situations, with social commentary to match. The feel is of this Fantasy of Manners throughout. Also recently, is work such as Malka Older’s Mossa and Pleiti novellas, which are set on space platforms orbiting Jupiter. While the nobles are replaced by academics squabbling and jockeying with each other, the “gaslamp fantasy” feel is there. Novels such as Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit also seem to partake of this sub-sub-genre. But again, can you have gaslamp fantasy set in the future? It’s not a gigantic niche of books, and gaslamp is the closest thing we have to a way to describe it. Gaslamp fantasy may almost set the expectations for the reader, but as a term for novels set out of period, it is a frustratingly incomplete and inaccurate term for novels such as Wilde’s. (A counterpoint: there ARE airships of a sort, even on the cover of the novel itself.)
Genre assignments aside, the novel does feel complete, deliciously done and recommended to all and sundry. However. the ending suggests a potential for future stories, and the back cover has #TheCanarvierFiles. Is there a sequel in the works? If so, I’d read it. Roo, once again, is a main draw, as is the world Wilde has built. I far more associate Wilde with her fantasy than with her SF, and this novel shows that I should recalibrate that association. More, please.
Highlights:
The strong and abiding main character of Roo, and her struggles with identity, and her drives and needs.
Vivid commentary by illumination of class, power, and wealth in a post-climate-change society.
Come for the heists, stay for the worldbuilding.
This Highlight approved by the Enclave and Towne, Stillwater Edition.
Reference: Wilde, Fran. A Philosophy of Thieves [Kensington Books/Erewhon, 2025].
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
