Book #4 of 2026: Doctor Who: Lux by James Goss Novelizations are obviously set up for success on the strength of the source material that they inherit, and so one of Ncuti Gatwa’s best outings as the Fifteenth Doctor on Doctor Who unsurprisingly makes for a pretty fun read. And yet that characterization risks shortchanging …
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Book #3 of 2026: Two Twisted Crowns by Rachel Gillig (The Shepherd King #2) I liked the first volume of this fantasy series enough to pick up this sequel, and I do think it concludes the overarching story reasonably well. Unfortunately it does this in sort of a weird way, jettisoning the parts I enjoyed …
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Book #2 of 2026: World Tales edited by G. Randal Rau The 1985 World Fantasy Convention, held that year in Tucson, AZ with a theme of “Writers of the Southwest,” produced this souvenir book to resemble an issue of the old pulp magazine Weird Tales. (Seriously, look it up; designer Donald D. Markstein did an …
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Movie #1 of 2026: The Matrix (1999) This sci-fi parable of an artificial reality that surrounds us all is just a stone-cold classic, instantly iconic in its confident vision and worldbuilding. The Matrix really was like no other movie to come before it, or even any that followed, including its own sequels. The script is …
Book #1 of 2026: Star Wars: Master of Evil by Adam Christopher This is a solid but basically unspectacular Star Wars novel, unfortunately saddled with a misleading title, publisher’s summary, and cover art. It’s only a Darth Vader story in that he’s around for a lot of the plot, but he gets just a handful …
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TV #1 of 2026: Stranger Things, season 5 A satisfactory-enough conclusion, although not one that ever lives up to the early years of this show, when it felt more like an intimate character-driven horror thriller meets Amblin adventure and not a Marvel-ified action blockbuster. In fact, I’d say this final season is about on par …
Book #203 of 2025: Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #5) Author Patricia Highsmith’s final novel about the amoral Tom Ripley is unfortunately also her weakest. The only thing driving the plot this time is that a new couple has moved into town, seemingly with the express purpose of tormenting the antihero whom …
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Book #202 of 2025: The Bride Wore Black Leather by Simon R. Green (Nightside #12) And so the Nightside series comes to an end, more or less. (There’s still a collection of short stories in the setting, which I’ll be rereading next, and a few crossovers with some of author Simon R. Green’s other works …
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TV #58 of 2025: 12 Monkeys, season 2 The debut year of this program offered an uneven but promising sci-fi premise of a dystopian soldier and a contemporary doctor working together to try to prevent the pandemic that’s ravaged the planet by his era. It’s a loose reboot of the 1995 Terry Gilliam movie, less …
Book #201 of 2025: Superboy: A Celebration of 75 Years by various This 2020 anthology commemorates three-quarters of a century of the titular junior superhero via a selection of comic book issues from across that span. In fact, it turns out that four different Kryptonians have each worn the mantle of Superboy at one point …
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