"I've done a lot of time-dilated travel." This statement encapsulates the essence of Grace's journey, highlighting the profound effects of traveling at speeds approaching light, where time for the traveler slows down significantly compared to those remaining on Earth.
Outlander, now wrapping up its eighth and final season, has had this kind of massive, fervent fandom from the very beginning, and although it's rarely thought of in the same company as big buzzy shows of the moment - never nominated for any of the major Emmys, rarely the source of "what is TV now" think pieces like Succession - Outlander has been out there for years inspiring screams, sing-alongs, and packed fan pits.
This is a shame, because his best work belongs with the greats of fantasy, horror, and sci-fi. Summer of Night is a tighter, more satisfying version of Stephen King's It. Carrion Comfort is a brick-sized epic about psychic vampires that reads as breezily as a trade paperback. The Terror, which inspired the well-regarded show, is for its first three-quarters a brilliant and non-supernatural speculative take on a real doomed Arctic expedition.
For the sheer quantity of its gibbering, jabbering nonsense, this movie deserves some points. That, and the amusing cameo at the end from Keith David as the Simulator, AKA God, who explains to the awestruck mortals that God is an entirely free creator, rather like a self-published novelist, then grows irritated when the mortals think that being self-published is lame: It's not my fault if you don't understand the industry! This is an exhausting indie romp on the subject of time travel,
It's a simple but effective premise: Your hero dies. He awakens, only to relive his last day. He dies again. Over and over, this cycle happens until our hero has conquered the time-loop he's stuck in, having become stronger, faster, and wiser in the thousands of times that he's been resurrected. It's the video game conceit, as a thrilling alien invasion story.
Apple TV+ has become one of the best streaming services for sci-fi, with hits like Pluribus, Severance, Foundation and many more. There are so many shows that it's easy to forget the one that started it all. For All Mankind was the platform's very first attempt at sci-fi and it's finally coming back after two years for season five on March 27. The next season will run for ten episodes on a weekly basis. It concludes on May 29, with new installments dropping each Friday.
What is available is the daydream-a limitless realm of freedom. In this other world, one might be famous or rich, finally catch the attention of their beloved, or simply sit on a beach as a waiter brings them cocktails. They might fly or speak to animals, heroically save a child, tell off their boss with no consequences, win the Super Bowl at the whistle, or travel to another continent, planet, or time period. No one can stop them; no one can even object.
Subsequently, runaway children turned the valley into a fortress, surviving on food they could catch or grow, with occasional forays into the towns below. Riley has heard the rumours, but it is only when she sees a green-clad boy or is it a girl? hovering outside her bedroom window offering directions on how to find Nowhere that she realises this might be her chance to escape and save her little brother from their sadistic guardian.
Tropes, as these bullet-point ideas have come to be known, have taken over romance. Those who write, market and read romantic fiction use them to pinpoint exactly what to expect before the first page is turned. On Instagram, Amazon and bookshop posters you'll find covers annotated with arrows and faux-handwritten labels reading slow-burn or home-town boy/new girl in town. Turn over any romance title and they'll be there listed in the blurb.
Tom Layward, the narrator and main character of Ben Markovits' new novel, The Rest of Our Lives, introduces himself in a curious way: On the very first page of the book, he talks, matter-of-factly, about the affair his wife, Amy, had 12 years ago, when their two kids were young. Amy, who's Jewish, got involved at a local synagogue in Westchester; Tom, who was raised Catholic and is clearly not a joiner, remained on the sidelines.
