Worf, Canon Events, and Free Fiction!

Plus Book Recs! To view this email as a web page, go [here.]( [Tor.com Newsletter]( [Forward to a Friend]( CRUSHIN’ ON TURTS [All the Way Down: Five of the Greatest Turtles and Tortoises in Fantasy]( They’re slow. They’re steady. They win races against arrogant bunnies. Turtles and their tortoise brethren have long been fabled creatures—they may be seen as purveyors of wisdom, or transport characters to new worlds. Once, these creatures carried the weight of Aesop’s pithy morals. Now, they shoulder so much more, and our fantasy stories are often better off with turtles and tortoises in the mix. From Discworld’s Great A'Tuin to the Psychic Tortoises of Simon Jimenez’ The Spear Cuts Through Water , Cole Rush shares five of his favorite fantastical turtles! [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( MONSTER-LOVERS UNITE [The Allure of the Beast: Examining the “Monster Husband” Story]( Around the world, tales of animal bridegrooms, or stories of human women betrothed or married to an animal or animal-esque figure, pervade folklore and legend, from “The Snake Prince” (an Indian fairytale in which a human woman marries a snake) to “Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless” (a Russian fairytale featuring three avian suitors), and, of course, “Beauty and the Beast.” Michele Kirichanskaya looks at the enduring appeal of this trope and its development over time, including a few stories that bring welcome subversions and queerness to the tale as old as time. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( CELEBRATING TRANS STORIES [Queering SFF: Three Stories by Trans Creators]( If you’d told Lee Mandelo twenty years back that—even just within the sf genres, let alone outside them—there would be enough books being published by trans folks that they couldn’t keep up with them all, they wouldn’t have believed you. But, delightfully, here we are! This time around, in keeping with the “boosting things that maybe got less attention otherwise” goal of their ongoing essay series, Mandelo uses the latest Queering SFF column to look at three stories by trans creators they’ve never covered before. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( PLEASE TELL ME WHY [Five Works About Intelligent Beings Who Are Their Own Worst Enemies]( As far as can currently be determined, we are the only technological civilization in this universe. There are many explanations as to why this would be so, but one explanation is that of a great filter—some reason that any life that emerges elsewhere will fall prey to some kind of bottleneck and stagnate or die before it reveals itself to our instruments. In his latest essay, James Davis Nicoll explores five stories that run into the bottleneck of intelligent tool-using, including novels from Alfred Bester and Andre Norton, and Hayao Miyazaki’s manga, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( DOES WHATEVER A SPIDER CANON [Canon Event, Schmanon Schmevent: Can Spider-Man Reject the Tragic Nature of Superheroes?]( Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is an innovative film in some obvious ways—its frenetic, explosive animation and freewheeling approach to a multiverse story have brought new life to the increasingly stale superhero subgenre. But Leah Schnelbach is interested in the film’s more subtle innovation: could it be that Miles Morales’ story questions the idea of Spider-Man as a superhero doomed to suffer under the weight of tragedy and responsibility? [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS [Jo Walton’s Reading List: May 2023]( The one benefit to being stuck at home is that you can spend more time with your books. In Jo Walton’s case, May was such a time, which is why her latest Reading List includes 35 books! And as ever, Walton’s reading covers a wide range—everything from Men and Women Making Friends in Early Modern France, a volume of academic essays on the changing definitions of friendship, to Harry Kemelman’s 1978 mystery Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out , to Isabel Yap’s “absolutely brilliant” short story collection, Never Have I Ever. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( HONOR AND TEA [The Wonders of Worf’s Character Arc]( I am Worf, son of Mogh, house of Martok, son of Sergey, house of Rozhenko, bane to the Duras family, slayer of Gowron. I have made some chamomile tea. Do you take sugar?” In our latest Close Reads essay, Giles Gough celebrates Worf’s evolution from “biggest, toughest, and in [Gough’s] estimation, coolest character” in Star Trek: The Next Generation, to the man we meet again in Star Trek: Picard : older, wiser, and willing to tell a new acquaintance that he’s “working on himself.” And, as Gough explains, it’s that lengthy introduction that’s the key to Worf’s character. [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( FREE FICTION! [Download the Tor.com Spring 2023 Short Fiction Bundle]( Catch up on the latest short fiction from Tor.com! Our Spring 2023 Short Fiction bundle features stories by A.C. Wise, E. Lily Yu, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Yoon Ha Lee, Kemi Ashing-Giwa, and Jeffrey Ford. If you haven’t subscribed yet, be sure to sign up for the Tor.com Short Fiction Newsletter to get Tor.com’s seasonal short fiction bundles delivered directly to your inbox! [Read more]( SHARE THIS: [Publish to Facebook]( [Publish to Twitter]( Follow Tor.com to get updates on all of our original fiction. FOLLOW US: [Follow Us on Facebook]( [Follow Us on Twitter]( [Follow Us on Tumblr]( [Follow Us on Pinterest]( This email was sent by: Macmillan 120 Broadway New York, NY, 10271, US We respect your right to privacy - [view our policy]( Macmillan believes piracy hurts writers, readers and everyone who loves books. Learn more and report suspicious activity [here.]( To subscribe to this or other email communications from Macmillan, please click [here](. Visit our [profile center]( to update your email address and/or other information. 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