Future Movies of the Past—and More SFF Links 

Read an Excerpt from Pedro the Vast by Simón Lopez Trujillo

There’s a fungus among us… In Simón Lopez Trujillo’s creepy post-apocalyptic debut, Pedro is a worker on a eucalyptus farm who survives a fungal infection that kills everyone else around him. As a mycologist studies him to find the baffling reason for his survival, and the local priest wonders if it’s a miracle, his own world shifts and changes, along with the worlds of those around him.

You can start reading it on on Reactor now, and take a teeny peek below!

“The mushroom Ganoderma lucidum is a naturally wood-degrading saprotrophic basidiomycete, but it demonstrates a series of highly useful pharmacological effects. This, given the scarcity of the species in natural environments, has fostered the artificial cultivation of its fruiting bodies in specialized greenhouses by means of trunks or sawdust in bags and plastic bottles. The mushroom is characterized by its reddish, generally kidney-shaped cap, supported by a svelte foot in a slightly tortuous position. Its mycelium feeds on the dead wood of broad-leafed trees and contains a high concentration of triterpenes and polysaccharides, both prized pharmacological components. Useful properties against hepatitis and hypertension in triterpenes have been documented; so have anti-tumoral effects in polysaccharides. The latter have sparked considerable research interest in the Ganoderma genus among contemporary medical mycologists, as well as in the commercialization of its derivations in the alternative oncological therapy market.”

Giovanna spoke with the steady cadence of an experienced lecturer. The fifty-seat auditorium was full, and the slide sequence marked the pulse of her presentation. This was one of the keynote addresses Giovanna would deliver throughout the year at universities across the country, a means of compensating the state for the fellowship she’d received to study abroad. She hated these activities: They reactivated her fear of standing at the blackboard in elementary school. Her adult academic work had forced her to get used to it, but it still felt clumsy and tedious, and she operated on autopilot, just fulfilling her duty.”

Pedro the Vast by Simón Lopez Trujillo is out now from Algonquin Books.

The Future Is Gone: 10 Sci-Fi Movies That Take Place In A Future That Has Already Passed

Once upon a time, science fiction writers conceived of fantastical future worlds and events that seemed impossibly far off. Welp, here we are. Looper has a list of 10 sci-fi movies that used to have events in the future, but have now gone past. Like 1975’s Rollerball, which is set in 2019, and 1992’s Freejack, which is in 2009. (Did we think 17 years seemed like a long time away then? It doesn’t now. Also, Freejack is a wonderful terrible movie.) I have only seen three of these, but I think I will add Daybreakers to my TBW list. (Is that acronym a thing?)

Which of these movies have you seen? Which do you think aged the best, or is the closest to reality now?

I Build Worlds: An Interview with Nicola Griffith

Clarkesworld has a new interview up with multi-award-wining author and recent SFF Hall of Fame inductee Nicola Griffith. Griffith is best known for her novels Hild, Spear, Menewood, and Slow River. On the eve of the release of She is Here, a collection of works for the Outspoken Author series, she spoke to Arley Sorg about writing beginnings, influences, and more.

“I build worlds—past, present, future; here and elsewhere—where people like me not only survive but thrive, not only belong among the ordinary folk but can be the heroes.

Everything I’ve written (except a single work-for-hire short story for Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy universe in the late eighties) is from the point of view of a queer woman. And that woman acts, sometimes reacts, but she doesn’t dither, doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t agonize and second-guess herself.

That woman (like her creator) is very physical, embedded in her environment, alert to nature and the joys of the body. And she fights, literally and figuratively, to make the world—whether her own, her immediate environs, and/or wider society—a better place. And she changes: the woman we meet at the beginning of the story is never the same as the one at the end.

My work is peopled by queer and disabled folk, people of color, women and the gender nonconforming, poor people, older people, as well as the more usual suspects. My protagonists are not victims. They never suffer because of who they are, for being queer or crips or Black or broke, or whatever; their problems (and solutions) and conflicts (and triumphs) arise from what they do or don’t do, the decisions and mistakes they make. They are subjects, not objects. And, oh, while they might find themselves in hard places, might sometimes hurt, they always—always!—find joy, quiet comfort, and strong satisfactions along the way. They almost always win.”

You can read the whole interview at Clarkesworld. She is Here (Outspoken Authors Book 34) by Nicola Griffith is out February 10, 2026 from PM Press.

Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the BR podcast All the Books! and on Bluesky and Instagram.

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