Speculative Fiction Links of the Week for March 30, 2018

It's time for the weekly round-up of interesting links about speculative fiction from around the web, this week with  Pacific Rim: Uprising, Isle of Dogs, Ready Player One, WonderCon, an uproar about the upcoming Hugo Award finalist announcements as well as the usual mix of awards news, writing advice, interviews, reviews, con reports, crowdfunding campaigns, science articles, free online fiction and much more. 

Speculative fiction in general:

• Tiffany M. Davis talks about the soaring trajectory of black presence in speculative fiction. 
• Nicole Hill shares seven books featuring complicated sibling relationships.
• Jeff Somers shares his favourite SFF books about magical bureaucracies. 
• Corey J. White shares five books about the collapse of New York City. 
• Sandy Ferber revisits the 1938 novel Dreadful Sleep by Jack Williamson.
• Deuce Richardson revisits the 1976 science fiction novel The Reavers of Skaith by Leigh Brackett.
• Alan Brown revisits Samuel R. Delany's 1968 science fiction novel Nova.
• John Dugdale revisits the 1968 James Bond novel Colonel Sun by Robert Markham a.k.a. Kingsley Amis.
• Meghan Ball shares her appreciation for the works of Christopher Moore. 
• Abigail Nussbaum shares her appreciation for the works of Iain M. Banks.
• Natalie Zutter takes a look at George R.R. Martin's 1980 novella Nightflyers as well as at the upcoming TV adaptation.  
• Nick Stember takes a look at the Tao of Ursula K. Le Guin. 
• Liz Bourke calls the film adaptation of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer amazing and full of women. 
• Todd VanDerWerff calls The Terror, a miniseries adapted from the eponymous novel by Dan Simmons, a masterpiece of survival horror. 
• Benjamin Lee calls The Terror is chilling and menacing horror series. 
• Jake Nevins calls The Titan an unexciting science fiction film that squanders its premise.
• Paul Levinson shares his thoughts on the pilot of the time travel series The Crossing.
• Tara Lynne shares her thoughts on the last ever episode of The X-Files. 
• Dave Richards shares his thoughts on episodes 8 to 10 of Marvel's Jessica Jones.
• David Cantwell shares his appreciation for Tom King's take on Marvel's The Vision. 
• Ruben Ferdinand talks about horror and the aesthetics of fascism in the manga Attack on Titan. 
• Emily Asher Perrin finds some connections between Harry Potter and the battle for gun control.
• Ben Child wonders whether James Cameron can revive the Terminator franchise by ignoring its past.
• Ben Child also wonders whether the Han Solo Star Wars spin-off movie is spiralling towards disaster.
• Keith Stuart takes a look behind the scenes of the 1993 movie Super Mario Bros: The Motion Picture and finds that the backstage drama was much more interesting than the actual film. 
• Actor Joel Edgerton declares that critics mostly hated his movie Bright, because it was on Netflix, but that fans actually liked it.
• Beth Elderkin reports that Amazon might be planning to adapt The Three Body Problem trilogy by Liu Cixin.
• Star Trek Deep Space Nine actress Terry Farrell has married Adam Nimoy, son of Leonard Nimoy. 
• The BBC reports that the family of actor Anton Yelchin, best known for playing Pavel Chekhov in the new Star Trek films, have reached a settlement with the manufacturer of the malfunctioning car which caused the death of Yelchin in 2016. 
• Actress and stuntwoman Debbie Lee Carrington, who appeared in Star Wars, Total Recall, The Bride of Cucky and other genre movies, has died aged 58.

Comments on Pacific Rim: Uprising: 

• Gary Westfahl shares his thoughts on Pacific Rim: Uprising and declares that the movie gets better as it goes along.
• Emily Asher-Perrin declares that Pacific Rim: Uprising keeps the spirit of its predecessor alive.  
• Glen Weldon shares a unique non-review of Pacific Rim: Uprising.
• Ian Cardona explains how the kaiju return in Pacific Rim: Uprising.
• Renaldo Matadeen explains how Pacific Rim: Uprising sets up a sequel.
• Alasdair Stuart takes a look at the Pacific Rim tie-in comics.

Comments on Ready Player One:

• Inkoo Kang calls Ready Player One a feat of pop culture navel-gazing. 
• Meg Downey calls Ready Player One a huge spectacle with a muddled message.
• Beth Elderkin finds a major problem with Ready Player One. 
• A.A. Dowd finds Ready Player One both soulful and soulless, but does not dislike it as much as he feared. 
• Vivian Kane calls Ready Player One not terrible, which is more than she expected.
• Constance Grady explains the backlash against Ready Player One.
• The Hugo Award Book Club discusses Ernest Cline's novel Ready Player One and the problem of nostalgia. 
• Alex Nichols declares that Ready Player One is a terrible book and will be a terrible movie.
• Todd VanDerWerff considers Ready Player One an awful book, but is still looking forward to the movie.  
• Damien Walter declares that there is room for a great novel about gaming, but that Ready Player One isn't it.
• Joel Cunningham interviews Ernest Cline. 
• Germain Lussier explains why it took eight years for Ready Player One to be adapted into a film. 
• Jordan Commandeur explains how Ready Player One sets up its own sequel.
• Inspired by Ready Player One, Jill Grunenwald shares gaming and virtual reality novels featuring fierce female characters.
• Jeff Somers shares a list of essential media you should know in order to understand Ready Player One.
  

Comments on Isle of Dogs: 

• Chris Klimek is very impressed with Wes Anderson's animated film Isle of Dogs.
• Alissa Wilkinson calls Isle of Dogs a lightweight ode to Japanese cinema.
  

Awards:

• The finalists for the 2018 Prometheus Award have been announced.
• The shortlist for the 2018 Kurd Laßwitz Preis has been announced.
• The winner of the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award has been announced.
• The nominees for the 2018 British Academy Games Award have been announced.
• Mike Glyer collects some backlash against the fact that the 2018 Hugo finalists will be announced on March 31, which happens to be both Easter Saturday and Passover, i.e. a major holiday for two world religions.
• Kevin Roche, chairperson of WorldCon 76, apologises for the inconvenience caused by announcing the Hugo finalists on a major holiday weekend.
  

Writing, publishing and promotion:

• Tripwire shares Ray Bradbury's twelve rules for writers.
• Oren Ashkenazi shares five common pitfalls of stories with deep ideas.
• M.T. McGuire explains how to use mundane events to fuel your writing. 
• Becky Mandelbaum explains why every writer should have a secondary passion.
• Blake Powell declares that writing is like exercising a muscle.
• Courtney Alameda explains what Alien taught her about writing monster horror. 
• Neile Graham talks about her experiences as the director of the Clarion West writing workshop.
• Katja Meier explains how she uses Instagram to sell books and connect with other writers.

Interviews:

• George R.R. Martin interviews Walter Jon Williams.
• David Mitchell and David Peace interview each other.
• Joel Cunningham interviews Matt Wallace. 
• Ross Johnson interviews Grace Ellis. 
• The Geekiary interview Dan Vogler.

Reviews:

• Liz Bourke reviews Ironclads by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
• Tom Whitmore reviews March of War by Bennett R. Coles.
• Ceridwen Christensen reviews Torn by Rowenna Miller. 
• Kelly Anderson reviews A Veil of Spears by Bradley P. Beaulieu. 
• Tadiana Jones reviews Guardian of the Crown by Melissa McShane.
• Liz Bourke reviews The Queen of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton.
• The Expendable Mudge reviews The Armored Saint by Myke Cole.
• John Langan reviews She Said Destroy by Nadia Bulkin.
• Ceridwen Christensen reviews Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory. 
• The Little Red Reviewer reviews Borne by Jeff VanderMeer. 
• Taya Okerlund reviews Snow City by G.A. Kathryns.
• Kiran Millwood Hargrave reviews The Wren Hunt by Mary Watson.
• Michael Patrick Hicks reviews They Feed by Jason Parent. 
• Ross Johnson reviews The Oracle Year by Charles Soule. 
• Karen Haber reviews The Art of the Pulps, edited by Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse and Robert Weinberg.
  

Crowdfunding:

• Writer William Browning Spencer needs some help with medical expenses.
  

Con reports:

• Meg Downey reports about Jim Lee's spotlight panel at WonderCon in Anaheim, California. 
• Meg Downey also reports about Scott Snyder's spotlight panel at WonderCon.
• Nicholas Eskey reports about a WonderCon panel featuring Jenna Rhodes, Tina LeCount Myers, R.A. Salvatore and Patrick Rothfuss.
• Albert Ching reports about the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D panel at WonderCon.
• Ellen Datlow shares some photos of the latest Fantastic Fiction reading at the KGB Bar in New York City, featuring Kelly Robson and Chandler Klang Smith.
• Will Shetterly talks about the privileges of attending science fiction conventions and what being banned from a convention means.
• Elysa Gardner reports about the Broadway premiere of the musical version of Disney's Frozen in New York City.
• Jeff Lunden also reports about the Broadway premiere of the musical version of Frozen.
• Camestros Felapton reports about a performance of The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui by Berthold Brecht in Sydney, Australia.
• Watch a video of a panel by Seanan McGuire a.k.a. Mira Grant about surviving the zombie apocalypse at ConCoction 2018 in Cleveland, Ohio.
  

Science and technology:

• Ari Shapiro and Alisa Chang explain why scientists are not fans of creating meteor showers on demand.
• The BBC explains how DNA can be used to store data.
• Martin Gordon explains how forensic engineers investigate bridge collapses.
  

Free online fiction:

• "Garda" by Kameron Hurley at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog. 
• "A Priest of Vast and Distant Places" by Cassandra Khaw in Apex Magazine.
• "Domestic violence" by Madeline Ashby in Slate. 
• "Under the Spinodal Curve" by Hanus Seiner, translated by Julia Novakova, at Tor.com. 
• "Flow" by Marissa Lingen in Fireside Fiction.
• "Old Habits" by Nalo Hopkinson in Uncanny Magazine.
• "Like a River Loves the Sky" by Emma Törz in Uncanny Magazine.
• Episode 1 and episode 2 of Return to Dominaria by Martha Wells at Magic, The Gathering.
  

Odds and ends: 

• Watch a trailer for season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale.
• Watch a trailer for season 3 of The Expanse. 
• Watch a trailer for The City and The City. 
• Watch a trailer for season 2 of Westworld.
• Watch a TV spot for Avengers: Infinity War.
• Watch a video of a life-size animatronic T-Rex going up in flames at a themepark in Colorado.