Asking the Wrong Questions

For those of us who follow pop culture, January 2026 marked a significant anniversary. It was five years ago last month that Disney and Marvel premiered, with great fanfare and a tremendous marketing push, their inaugural streaming collaboration, WandaVision . A glossy puzzle box of a show, WandaVision enthralled audiences and reviewers alike, inspiring fan theories, thinkpieces, and memes (remember when "what is grief, if not love persevering?" was the most moving line of dialogue ever uttered on screen?). And, because entertainment news in the 2020s is always also business news, WandaVision was a critical component in Disney, Marvel, and the MCU's realignment post- Endgame . It was intended as a proof of concept for a brave new world in which every movie studio in Hollywood had their own streaming platform, in which mega-franchises could stretch across movie and television screens, and in which a franchise like the MCU could continue growing endlessly (and also, in wh...

"Nazgûl" by Juan Bjuan Oliver [Frodo] had indeed privately made up his mind to leave on his fiftieth birthday: Bilbo's one hundred and twenty-eighth. It seemed somehow a proper day on which to set out and follow him. Following Bilbo was uppermost in his mind, and the one thing that made the thought of leaving bearable. He thought as little as possible about the Ring, and where it might lead him in the end. We have our first multi-chapter discussion this week, as we follow Frodo from his (now former) home at Bag End to the edges of the Shire. The first leg of his journey, in a part of the world he knows well and where he is known and respected, ought to be an easy, safe one. Indeed, from the way he and his companions, Pippin and Sam, think and talk about the journey, as a leisurely farewell to their home and a pleasant bit of exercise, one might assume that despite his ever-present fear of the Ring and the danger it poses, Frodo is leaving on a holiday rather than an adven...

"Frodo and Gandalf" by Alan Lee [Gandalf] paused, and then said slowly in a deep voice: 'This is the Master-ring, the One Ring to rule them all. This is the One Ring that he lost many ages ago, to the great weakening of his power. He greatly desires it—but he must not get it.' Frodo sat silent and motionless. Fear seemed to stretch out a vast hand, like a dark cloud rising in the East and looming up to engulf him. 'This ring!' he stammered. 'How, how on earth did it come to me?' Hot on the heels of a chapter spent in the hustle and bustle of objectively trivial pursuits, steeped in the mundane concerns of an extremely silly group of people, comes a chapter that forces us—as well as our unwilling and terrified hero—to pay attention to the concerns of the outside world. After an absence of years, during which Frodo has both settled into life as master of Bag End and felt the repeated urge to follow Bilbo on his adventures, Gandalf returns and reveals to...

I read 183 books in 2025, a little less than last year but still in the same ballpark. Despite—or perhaps because—of this breadth of reading, I find that I'm struggling to sum up my year in books. 2025 was a good reading year, with lots of satisfying reads in a variety of genres. But it has not been a year that cohered around any of one of those genres, around a particular series, or around one or even a handful of books. The books that have lingered with me over the course of the year have been esoteric and even unique, especially when it comes to the fantastic genres. A lot of the books in the list below are what I'd consider science fiction or fantasy, but only one of them is a title I expect to see on awards lists in the coming months. The others are too weird, too experimental, and sometimes just published by the wrong people. All of which is to say, to any of the editors who have queried me over the last month for essays or paragraphs about the state of the genre, or even...

"Eleventy-First Birthday" by Nicole Gustafsson He stepped down and vanished. There was a blinding flash of light, and the guests all blinked. When they opened their eyes Bilbo was nowhere to be seen. One hundred and forty-four flabbergasted hobbits sat back speechless. Old Odo Proudfoot removed his feet from the table and stamped. Then there was a dead silence, until suddenly, after several deep breaths, every Baggins, Boffin, Took, Brandybuck, Grubb, Chubb, Burrows, Bolger, Bracegirdle, Brockhouse, Goodbody, Hornblower, and Proudfoot began to talk at once. We begin the tale of The Lord of the Rings with a chapter that quite deliberately recalls and reverses the opening events of The Hobbit . Instead of an unexpected party, there is a long-expected one. Instead of Bilbo rushing out of his home towards adventure without even a single handkerchief, there is a minutely-planned and carefully-orchestrated plan of disappearance and departure. And instead of the incursion of weirdn...

One of the unexpected curiosities of growing older is watching the train of "rediscovered" books come back around for a second try. In my teens, I read a book called I Who Have Never Known Men , by a Belgian-Jewish author named Jacqueline Harpman. A gender-based dystopia about a young girl who grows up in an underground bunker with a group of women, it was a dark, elliptical novel (one that many critics have tied to Harpman's experience of fleeing the Nazis as a child). I didn't particularly get on with it, but it has lingered with me for decades. Flash forward an undisclosed number of years, and I Who Have Never Known Men has become a BookTok sensation and a runaway bestseller. Naturally the response by publishers is to see if the rest of Harpman's voluminous catalogue might prove a similar hit. They are now testing the waters by reissuing a novel that was already translated into English in the 90s, Orlanda . Pitched at a very different emotional register than I...