<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Emmet Asher-Perrin</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/bridgerton-season-4-gives-class-struggle-a-cinderella-sheen/">https://reactormag.com/bridgerton-season-4-gives-class-struggle-a-cinderella-sheen/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837828">https://reactormag.com/?p=837828</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/movies-tv/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Movies &amp; TV 0"> Movies &amp; TV </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/bridgerton/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Bridgerton 1"> Bridgerton </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>Bridgerton</i> Season 4 Gives Class Struggle a Cinderella Sheen</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">It&#8217;s still Bridgerton, but questions of class division power its fourth season</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/lacy-baugher/" title="Posts by Lacy Baugher Milas" class="author url fn" rel="author">Lacy Baugher Milas</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on January 29, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Image credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix</p> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/bridgerton-season-4-gives-class-struggle-a-cinderella-sheen/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 18 18" aria-label="comment" role="img" aria-hidden="true" aria-labelledby="icon-comment-quick-access-"> <title id="icon-comment-quick-access-">Comment</title> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <path fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" d="M6.3 18a.9.9 0 0 1-.9-.9v-2.7H1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 0 12.6V1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 1.8 0h14.4A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 18 1.8v10.8a1.8 1.8 0 0 1-1.8 1.8h-5.49l-3.33 3.339a.917.917 0 0 1-.63.261H6.3Z" /> <path stroke="#000" d="M5.9 14.4v-.5H1.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 1-1.3-1.3V1.8A1.3 1.3 0 0 1 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0.678713 9.41431V6.41431C2.21205 6.41431 3.64538 6.70197 4.97871 7.27731C6.31205 7.85264 7.47471 8.63597 8.46671 9.62731C9.45805 10.6186 10.2414 11.781 10.8167 13.1143C11.392 14.4476 11.6794 15.881 11.6787 17.4143H8.67871Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </g> <defs> <clippath id="clip0_1051_121783"> <rect width="17" height="17" fill="white" transform="translate(0.678711 0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="493" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-8-740x493.jpeg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Yerin Ha as Sophie Beckett, Luke Thompson as Benedict Bridgerton, Benedict kissing Sophie&#39;s hand in episode 401 of Bridgerton" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-8-740x493.jpeg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-8-1100x733.jpeg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-8-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-8-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-8-2048x1366.jpeg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Image credit: Liam Daniel/Netflix</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>Four seasons in, Netflix’s <em>Bridgerton</em> has a formula that works. Known for its steamy romances, candy-colored costumes, and effortlessly diverse Regency setting that’s anything but traditional, it’s a historical drama with a thoroughly contemporary feel. This isn’t a criticism, by the way—the show is delightfully fun escapism that manages to remain true to the swoony spirit of its source material even as it updates the saga of the sprawling family at its center for a modern audience. And in season four, the show pulls off its greatest trick yet, reimagining one of its most problematic stories in a way that often feels richer and more engaging than the original.&nbsp;</p> <p>Based on the third book in Julia Quinn’s megapopular romance series, season four backtracks to tell the story of Benedict (Luke Thompson), the Bridgerton family’s artistic and free-spirited second son, who has not always fit in with his more marriage and family-minded siblings. Previous seasons of the show have touched on his frequently Bohemian lifestyle, his love of painting, and his hedonistic sexual pursuits with both women and men. Perhaps it was always inevitable that Benedict’s story—and the romance at its center—would not follow a conventional path.&nbsp;</p> <p>Rather than a simple friends-to-lovers romance or a fake relationship that turns real, Benedict’s story takes many of its narrative cues from <em>Cinderella</em>, featuring everything from a glamorous transformation and a hidden identity to a wicked stepmother and a misplaced (and personally identifying) fashion item left behind at a party. The season begins with a masquerade ball, and much of that fairytale feel lingers throughout the four episodes of Volume 1 (all of which were available for review). But underneath the masks and mistaken identities, <em>Bridgerton </em>season four is really a story about class. And it is through the introduction of Benedict’s love interest Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha) that the show is forced to confront, in some small ways at least, some of the most uncomfortable elements of its own premise.&nbsp;</p> <p>Don’t get me wrong, this is still <em>Bridgerton</em>. The housemaids and shopgirls who quietly make the town run don’t suddenly unionize. The upper-class elites aren’t miraculously agitating for a minimum wage or fair housing laws. There are still lines the show won’t cross. And maybe this means the bar is in Hell, but it still feels important that the show is at long last acknowledging the stories of those who live outside the privileged world that the Bridgertons and their friends inhabit. Sophie, you see, is a maid. She’s not genteely impoverished or down on her luck; she’s a servant who performs manual labor, precisely the kind of character who has haunted the edges of <em>Bridgerton</em>’s<em> </em>previous seasons but never really directly taken part. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but Sophie is <em>great</em>.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="733" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-4-1100x733.jpeg" alt="Yerin Ha as Sophie Baek looking at herself in a mirror in episode 403 of Bridgerton" class="wp-image-837201" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-4-1100x733.jpeg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-4-740x493.jpeg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-4-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-4-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-4-2048x1366.jpeg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Liam Daniel/Netflix</figcaption></figure> <p>Resourceful, intelligent, and kind, she never lets her difficult personal situation—an orphan with a stepmother who resents her and no future to speak of—make her cruel, cynical, or incapable of embracing joy. Her unabashed delight at simply being allowed to attend the Bridgerton masquerade is infectious, her honesty and complete lack of guile refreshing in a world where performance and presentation often carry more weight than truth. She’s a heroine whose happiness is easy to root for, so much so that no matter how you may feel about Benedict as a potential life partner, you’ll find yourself hoping these crazy kids can work it out, if only because <em>Sophie</em> wants it to so badly. It’s easy to see why this character has long been such a fan favorite, even if the book in which she is introduced is… <a href="https://reactormag.com/how-bridgerton-season-4-can-improve-on-its-source-material/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">well, let’s just call it problematic at best.</a>&nbsp;</p> <p><em>Bridgerton </em>has always played a bit fast and loose with its source material. The show has both race and genderbent major characters (including Sophie herself). It&#8217;s moved the order of various narrative events around to suit its own purpose. And sometimes, it’s even made them up out of whole cloth. That season two love triangle between Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley), her sister Edwina (Charithra Chandran), and Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey)? Doesn’t happen in the books. The revelation that Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) is actually Lady Whistledown? Happens much earlier in the show than on the page. Your mileage may, and likely will, vary on how well all of these changes, reorderings, replacements, and expansions have played out onscreen. Sometimes it turned out really well. And sometimes… not so much.&nbsp;</p> <p>In the case of Benedict, the show has genuinely put in the work to make the shifts in his character feel earned. The early episodes of season four lean into the idea of Benedict as a rake, highlighting his multiple sexual partners, disdain for the rules of polite society, and resentment toward the man-of-the-family role he’s being forced to assume while Anthony is in India. But he’s also portrayed as someone who is deeply lonely and unsure, convinced that he’ll never find a woman who can accept all the disparate and frequently conflicting identities that make him who he is. He’s been uniquely positioned to both find—and accept—a love that colors outside the boundaries established by aristocratic society and to appreciate Sopie’s particular brand of authenticity. Yes, it helps that their initial meeting essentially occurs <em>Love is Blind</em>-style, when neither really knows who the other is, but the masquerade also gives them both the freedom to be their truest selves—that is, after all, the whole point of a disguise.</p> <p>Thompson and Ha have a warm, genuine chemistry together, and their banter is easy and fun. This first half of the season definitely prioritizes yearning over sexual tension, as Benedict works to track down his mysterious masquerade dance partner and grows closer to Sophie-as-herself after rescuing her from a dangerous situation at a country party without realizing that the two are the same person. But this season largely belongs to Ha, who steals almost every scene she is in from her first moments onscreen—even when we as the audience don’t know who she is. Deftly shifting between determined grit, wistful joy, and desperate yearning, her Sophie is a woman made of many layers, and who has seen more than her fair share of struggle without allowing it to make her cynical or cruel.&nbsp;</p> <p>But Sophie and Benedict are not season four’s only story. Much like last season, this outing has a much more deliberate ensemble feel, with multiple secondary plots and supporting characters getting considerable screentime in ways. Penelope and Eloise are drawn into Benedict’s hunt for the mysterious Lady in Silver, and his purported willingness to (maybe?) finally marry puts him at the center of the ton’s social season (and Queen Charlotte’s interest). We also get to see the early days of John and Francesca’s marriage, witness Hyacinth chomp at the bit for her own debut, and watch as Violet and Lady Danbury take tentative steps into chasing dreams tied to their own futures rather than that of their loved ones. In many ways, though Netflix split the show’s fourth outing into two volumes for some inscrutable reason, it still feels like the series’s most complete and well-balanced. Yes, its primary story is still Benedict’s, but his emotional journey is just one piece of a larger narrative whole. With half the season to go, it’s impossible to tell how <em>Bridgerton’s</em> decision to acknowledge that class exists in their candy-coated fairytale world will ultimately play out. But Sophie’s story offers a perspective we haven’t really seen before, and helps open up a corner of the <em>Bridgerton</em> universe that feels altogether new.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="733" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-6-1100x733.jpeg" alt="Yerin Ha as Sophie Baek, Luke Thompson as Benedict Bridgerton meeting at a masquerade in episode 401 of Bridgerton" class="wp-image-837203" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-6-1100x733.jpeg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-6-740x493.jpeg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-6-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-6-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/bridgerton-s4-6-2048x1366.jpeg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Image: Liam Daniel/Netflix</figcaption></figure> <p>The Mondriches, after all, were business owners before their son inherited a title, and regularly hobnobbed with various members of the aristocratic elite. Sophie, for her part, is threatened with violence, penury, and homelessness over the course of these initial episodes as she loses her job, is forced to sell her belongings to survive, and endures sexual harassment in the name of keeping a roof over her head. While <em>Bridgerton </em>certainly has a… let’s just call it an idealistic view of the camaraderie amongst the downstairs employees of Grosvenor Square, the show doesn’t shy away from acknowledging how hard they work or how central the roles they play are when it comes to facilitating the lives of leisure the Bridgertons and others like them enjoy. It’s a new sort of self-awareness for this show, but one it deserves no small amount of credit for.</p> <p>Perhaps most importantly, the season makes a valiant effort to explore questions of class outside of Sophie’s storyline. We meet more downstairs workers than ever before in the space of these episodes, and a major subplot involves many of the ton’s most popular household servants and ladies’ maids advocating for better working conditions and higher pay. It’s far from perfect—no matter how much we love it, a show like <em>Bridgerton </em>is never going to have the capacity to do the complexities of these issues justice—but the fact that it’s at least taking the issue seriously (something we can’t really say for the book this season is based on) is worth a great deal. Here’s hoping season four can stick the landing in its back half.[end-mark]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/bridgerton-season-4-gives-class-struggle-a-cinderella-sheen/">&lt;i&gt;Bridgerton&lt;/i&gt; Season 4 Gives Class Struggle a Cinderella Sheen</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/bridgerton-season-4-gives-class-struggle-a-cinderella-sheen/">https://reactormag.com/bridgerton-season-4-gives-class-struggle-a-cinderella-sheen/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837828">https://reactormag.com/?p=837828</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Christina Orlando</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/cover-reveal-the-eagle-in-the-mountain-by-caskey-russell/">https://reactormag.com/cover-reveal-the-eagle-in-the-mountain-by-caskey-russell/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837480">https://reactormag.com/?p=837480</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/books/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Books 0"> Books </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/cover-reveals/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag cover reveals 1"> cover reveals </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Revealing <i>The Eagle in the Mountain</i> by Caskey Russell</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Now returned from his quest, Elān is changed&#8230;</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/reactor/" title="Posts by Reactor" class="author url fn" rel="author">Reactor</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on January 29, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a 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/> <path fill="#000" d="M6.936 9.577c.322 0 .631.137.859.383.228.245.355.577.355.924 0 .347-.127.68-.355.925a1.172 1.172 0 0 1-.859.383c-.322 0-.63-.138-.858-.383a1.36 1.36 0 0 1-.356-.925c0-.347.129-.679.356-.924.228-.245.536-.383.858-.383Zm6.17-3.837c.323 0 .631.138.86.383.227.245.355.578.355.924 0 .347-.128.68-.356.925a1.172 1.172 0 0 1-.858.383c-.322 0-.631-.138-.859-.383a1.36 1.36 0 0 1-.355-.925c0-.346.128-.678.356-.924.227-.245.536-.383.858-.383Zm0 7.883c.323 0 .631.138.86.383.227.245.355.578.355.925 0 .346-.128.679-.356.924a1.171 1.171 0 0 1-.858.383c-.322 0-.631-.138-.859-.383a1.36 1.36 0 0 1-.355-.925c0-.346.128-.678.356-.923.227-.245.536-.383.858-.384Zm-6.17-.681c.499 0 .978-.21 1.334-.586l3.036 1.888a2.194 2.194 0 0 0 .272 1.93c.385.555 1.003.863 1.645.822.641-.04 1.221-.425 1.544-1.024a2.203 2.203 0 0 0 .059-1.952c-.286-.62-.841-1.044-1.48-1.13-.637-.085-1.272.18-1.69.705l-2.984-1.854c.207-.486.23-1.04.064-1.543l2.92-1.815c.415.522 1.046.784 1.68.7.633-.086 1.184-.507 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17.4143H8.67871Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </g> <defs> <clippath id="clip0_1051_121783"> <rect width="17" height="17" fill="white" transform="translate(0.678711 0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="463" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/eagle-in-the-mountain-cover-reveal-740x463.png" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Photo of author Caskey Russell and the cover of his novel, The Eagle in the Mountain" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/eagle-in-the-mountain-cover-reveal-740x463.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/eagle-in-the-mountain-cover-reveal-1100x688.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/eagle-in-the-mountain-cover-reveal-768x480.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/eagle-in-the-mountain-cover-reveal-1536x960.png 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/eagle-in-the-mountain-cover-reveal.png 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>We’re thrilled to share the cover of <em>The Eagle in the Mountain</em>, the second book in Caskey Russell&#8217;s Raven and Eagle Series—available September 22 2026 from <a href="https://shop.rebellion.com/collections/publishing-solaris?srsltid=AfmBOopR1tIV_4MP0XCuonRz8FFV5Eqi4BaLmbWMjp2PwwPmjewKDOPt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Solaris</a>.</p> <div style="height:5px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Elān’s life changed forever when the loud-mouthed raven chose him to go on a journey to save his people. Now returned from his quest, Elān is changed, withdrawn—and will not touch the weapon he is destined to wield. Raven knows that Elān must take up the weapon for his people, or cast it back into the Koosh world through the Door. But Elān will not budge. The invading Koosh loom ever closer, and Elān’s people have no hero to fight for them.<br><br>So raven turns to Kwa, Elān’s sour yet tough companion.<br><br>Kwa is determined to prove herself, doing whatever it takes to become the warrior leader her people need her to be. With Chetdyl the wolf by her side, she prepares an attack against the Koosh. But she knows that what she really needs is the weapon Elān refuses to use. If he won’t use it, she will. But the weapon will not bow to her—unless she does as raven says and pushes Elān through the Door herself.<br></p></blockquote></figure> <figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="1770" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/9781837867400-Jess-Gofton-1100x1770.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-837484" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/9781837867400-Jess-Gofton-1100x1770.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/9781837867400-Jess-Gofton-740x1190.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/9781837867400-Jess-Gofton-768x1235.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/9781837867400-Jess-Gofton-955x1536.jpg 955w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/9781837867400-Jess-Gofton-1273x2048.jpg 1273w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/9781837867400-Jess-Gofton.jpg 1500w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Cover design by Sam Gretton</figcaption></figure> <div style="height:5px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <p>Caskey Russell is from Seattle Washington, and has lived in Oregon, Iowa, Wyoming, and New Zealand. He is a father, a professor, a musician, and an enrolled member of the Tlingit Nation (Eagle / Kooyu Kwáan) of Alaska.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/cover-reveal-the-eagle-in-the-mountain-by-caskey-russell/">Revealing &lt;i&gt;The Eagle in the Mountain&lt;/i&gt; by Caskey Russell</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/cover-reveal-the-eagle-in-the-mountain-by-caskey-russell/">https://reactormag.com/cover-reveal-the-eagle-in-the-mountain-by-caskey-russell/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837480">https://reactormag.com/?p=837480</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Stefan Raets</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-when-i-was-death-by-alexis-henderson/">https://reactormag.com/excerpts-when-i-was-death-by-alexis-henderson/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837592">https://reactormag.com/?p=837592</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/fictions/excerpts/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Excerpts 0"> Excerpts </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/young-adult/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Young Adult 1"> Young Adult </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Read an Excerpt From <i>When I Was Death</i> by Alexis Henderson</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">A group of girls does Death incarnate&#8217;s bidding in this haunting speculative young adult novel.</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/alexis-henderson/" title="Posts by Alexis Henderson" class="author url fn" rel="author">Alexis Henderson</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on January 28, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-when-i-was-death-by-alexis-henderson/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 18 18" aria-label="comment" role="img" aria-hidden="true" aria-labelledby="icon-comment-quick-access-"> <title id="icon-comment-quick-access-">Comment</title> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <path fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" d="M6.3 18a.9.9 0 0 1-.9-.9v-2.7H1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 0 12.6V1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 1.8 0h14.4A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 18 1.8v10.8a1.8 1.8 0 0 1-1.8 1.8h-5.49l-3.33 3.339a.917.917 0 0 1-.63.261H6.3Z" /> <path stroke="#000" d="M5.9 14.4v-.5H1.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 1-1.3-1.3V1.8A1.3 1.3 0 0 1 1.8.5h14.4a1.3 1.3 0 0 1 1.3 1.3v10.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 1-1.3 1.3h-5.698l-.146.147-3.324 3.333a.417.417 0 0 1-.282.12H6.3a.4.4 0 0 1-.4-.4v-2.7Z" /> </g> </svg> 0 </a> 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6.32524 8.76499C6.32524 9.32367 6.4209 9.7905 6.61223 10.1655L5.47575 14.964C5.34564 15.4997 5.2959 16.177 5.32651 16.9959C3.74997 16.2994 2.47575 15.2242 1.50381 13.7701C0.531863 12.316 0.0458984 10.6974 0.0458984 8.91423C0.0458984 7.31473 0.440027 5.83962 1.2283 4.48884C2.01657 3.13807 3.08607 2.06857 4.43684 1.2803C5.78761 0.492029 7.26273 0.0979004 8.86223 0.0979004C10.4617 0.0979004 11.9368 0.492029 13.2876 1.2803C14.6384 2.06857 15.7079 3.13999 16.4962 4.49458Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </svg> </a> </li> <li class="flex"> <a class="flex items-center hover:text-red" href="https://reactormag.com/feed/" target="_blank" title="RSS Feed"> <svg class="w-[17px] h-[17px]" width="18" height="18" viewbox="0 0 18 18" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-label="rss feed" role="img" aria-hidden="true"> <g clip-path="url(#clip0_1051_121783)"> <path d="M2.67871 17.4143C2.12871 17.4143 1.65771 17.2183 1.26571 16.8263C0.873713 16.4343 0.678046 15.9636 0.678713 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9.41431V6.41431C2.21205 6.41431 3.64538 6.70197 4.97871 7.27731C6.31205 7.85264 7.47471 8.63597 8.46671 9.62731C9.45805 10.6186 10.2414 11.781 10.8167 13.1143C11.392 14.4476 11.6794 15.881 11.6787 17.4143H8.67871Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </g> <defs> <clippath id="clip0_1051_121783"> <rect width="17" height="17" fill="white" transform="translate(0.678711 0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="407" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/When-I-Was-Death-header-740x407.png" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Cover of When I Was Death by Alexis Henderson." srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/When-I-Was-Death-header-740x407.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/When-I-Was-Death-header-1100x605.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/When-I-Was-Death-header-768x422.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/When-I-Was-Death-header.png 1400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>We&#8217;re thrilled to share an excerpt from <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/768144/when-i-was-death-by-alexis-henderson/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><strong>When I Was Death</strong></a></em>, a new speculative young adult novel by Alexis Henderson, out from G.P. Putnam&#8217;s Sons on March 3.</p> <div style="height:5px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Roslyn isn’t herself anymore. It’s been a year since her sister, Adeline, died under mysterious circumstances, and Roslyn is still tormented by her absence. So when the elusive caravan of girls that Adeline spent her last summer with rolls back into town, Roslyn joins them to finally figure out what happened to her sister.<br><br>Strange, beautiful, and intriguing, the girls are closed off from the world. And as it turns out, they’re brought together by a force more sinister than Roslyn’s nightmares could’ve conjured up: Death himself.<br><br>Death has spared the girls from untimely endings, and to pay for their lives, the girls travel the country reaping souls on his behalf. Now Roslyn must decide if finding closure is worth the price of striking the same deal.</p></blockquote></figure> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <div style="height:20px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <p>The girls arrived on a bleak morning in May, eight months after my sister’s death. I first saw them through my bedroom window, three vehicles—a rust-eaten pickup truck, an old station wagon, and an Airstream RV—crawling down the street and around the bend of the cul-de-sac. There were three teenage girls sitting in the bed of the pickup truck, all of them staring at my house as though it were a landmark. I stared back, and I swore one of them—a pale girl with hair like fire—looked up at my window and smiled. But by the time I scrambled downstairs and burst through the front door, they were gone. I might’ve thought I’d dreamed them if not for the smell of diesel hanging like a ghost in the cool morning air.</p> <p>A few hours later, I left my house and walked down the sorry little main street of my hometown in Michigan. But calling it a town at all is generous. Towns are comprised of people, and once emptied of them, they lose their respective designations and become something else. The something else is what I walked through that day. Cracked streets licked with heat waves, a thin trickle of traffic passing by. The dusty storefronts of antique shops and jewelry stores that never had any customers. The remnants of a place that barely existed.</p> <p>I scanned the streets, half hoping to spot the girls who had driven past my house that morning, but they seemed to have disappeared without a trace.</p> <p>Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about them.</p> <p>It was a two-mile walk from my house to Conny’s Coney Dogs, the twenty-four-hour diner where I worked as a waitress. The diner’s owner and namesake, Conny—a tall, grave woman who smelled perpetually of patchouli and pot smoke—had hired me, probably out of pity, because I’d never waited a table in my life. By that time, the whole town knew about my sister and had closed ranks around my family the way small towns are supposed to when something tragic and terrible happens to one of their own.</p> <p>But Conny had offered something others hadn’t: distraction. In the long months that followed my sister’s death, she taught me the rhythms of the diner—how to flirt tips from begrudging patrons who had next to nothing in their pockets, how to anticipate their needs with no more than a passing glance. In the grimy staff bathroom, I gathered my curls into a fat braid, scrubbed at my armpits with hand soap and a soggy wad of paper towels (I’d slept through my alarm and hadn’t had the chance to shower) before changing into my uniform. It was a peach-pink dress—the color of a newborn baby’s flush—with snagged stockings and a paper-pale apron so small it didn’t cover much of anything. Once dressed, I pinned on my name tag just a few inches below my starched collar. It read <em>RoslynVolk </em>in smudged Sharpie, because Conny liked it when her servers introduced themselves by their first and last names. Something about the importance of family, of knowing where a person was from and, in her words, exactly what stuff they were made of. </p> <p>My sneakers squelched on the sticky tile floors as I carried steaming plates of pancakes and scrambled eggs, biscuits half submerged in gravy, and burnt triangles of toast to their respective tables. I refilled coffeepots and chatted with the regulars, trying my best to keep up with the breakfast rush.</p> <p>On a staticky TV screen above the bar, the news was playing, though the sound was partly drowned out by the clamor of the kitchen—pots and pans clattering, slabs of bacon sizzling on the grill, cooks shouting orders above the din. The headline of the day was a string of violent storms that had washed across the Midwest the night before, spawning a series of tornadoes, one of which flattened a small town in Ohio, claiming the lives of more than a dozen people. It was the first bad storm of the year, and the meteorologist predicted more would follow.</p> <p>There was a congressman on TV crying about the devastation when the girls entered the diner, the five of them streaming in single file.</p> <p>One of the girls wore a long fur-collared coat despite the thickening heat. Another swept past in a heavy peasant skirt paired with a cropped and pilled flannel shirt. A third wore heavy boots and ripped men’s jeans that looked like they were fished from the bowels of a Salvation Army bin and attacked with a razor.</p> <section class="wp-block-shop-the-book shop-the-book"> <h2 class="shop-the-book-headline">Buy the Book</h2> <div class="shop-the-book-content"> <figure class="shop-the-book-image-desktop image-cover"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/When-I-Was-Death_Cover.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="Cover of When I Was Death by Alexis Henderson." /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <div class="flex items-center"> <figure class="shop-the-book-image-mobile image-cover"> <!-- <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/When-I-Was-Death_Cover.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="When I Was Death" /> --> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/When-I-Was-Death_Cover.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="Cover of When I Was Death by Alexis Henderson." role="presentation" /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <h3 class="shop-the-book-title text-h3">When I Was Death</h3> <p class="shop-the-book-author">Alexis Henderson</p> </div> </div> <button type="button" class="inline-block px-8 py-4 text-center btn tablet:py-3 text-h6 bg-red text-white shop-the-book-button" id="buy_book" data-trigger="modal" data-target="#modal-1770040570" aria-open="false" aria-label="Buy Book"> <span class="inline-flex items-center button-label btn-label"> Buy Book </span> </button> </div> </div> <div id="modal-1770040570" class="shop-the-book-modal"> <div class="shop-the-book-modal-inner"> <button class="js-modal-close absolute top-5 right-5 z-10" type="button" aria-label="icon-close"> <svg class="w-[19px] h-[19px]" width="18" height="19" viewbox="0 0 18 19" fill="none" 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src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/When-I-Was-Death_Cover.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="When I Was Death" /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <h3 class="shop-the-book-modal-title">When I Was Death</h3> <p class="shop-the-book-modal-author">Alexis Henderson</p> </div> </div> <p class="shop-the-book-modal-label">Buy this book from:</p> <ul class="not-prose ebook-links ebook-links-shortcode"><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0FCRLYP73?tag=tordotcomgeneral-20" data-book-title="When I Was Death" data-book-store="Amazon"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">Amazon</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/7992675/type/dlg/sid/tordotcomgeneral/https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/9780593859476" data-book-title="When I Was Death" data-book-store="Barnes and Noble"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">Barnes and Noble</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780593859483" data-book-title="When I Was Death" data-book-store="iBooks"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">iBooks</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593859476" data-book-title="When I Was Death" data-book-store="IndieBound"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">IndieBound</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="https://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=9780593859476" data-book-title="When I Was Death" data-book-store="Target"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">Target</span></a></li></ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> </section> <p>They were around my age, but they dressed the way sixth graders imagined themselves dressing at twenty, without the smothering supervision of their parents or the pressure of their peers. Their hair was wild, as if none of them owned a brush. And they were all pretty, but in the way that girls find each other pretty. Which is to say, unkempt and decidedly intimidating, like a boy’s idea of a dream girl gone ragged at the edges.</p> <p>I hoped they wouldn’t sit in my section—groups of girls my age made me anxious—but the five of them did just that, occupying a small booth at the back of the diner, sitting crushed together hip-to-hip on the same side as if there wasn’t another empty bench right in front of them.</p> <p>I recognized the redhead immediately. She was the same fire-haired girl who I thought might’ve smiled at me that morning when the caravan drove past the house. Her bony hands were covered in faded stick-and-poke tattoos that looked like doodles drawn with pen, and she had wedding rings on every finger. She wore hoop earrings so large I could’ve slid one halfway up my arm, and she was impeccably dressed in wide-cut patchwork jeans and a lace top that looked like vintage lingerie with its vaguely cone-shaped bra cups.</p> <p>Sitting close beside the redhead was the youngest of the five— maybe thirteen, give or take a year. She fixed her brilliant blue eyes on me and smiled at my approach. She had downy blond hair and wore lipstick, cracked and smeared and bleeding at the edges of her mouth like she’d applied and reapplied it with a heavy hand several days prior. She slipped a vape pen from the pocket of her coat and held it like a cigarette, pinched between two knuckles.</p> <p>One of the older girls—she had dark eyes and hair the color of sand, which hung down her back in long microbraids—leaned across the table, snatched the vape pen from the blonde’s hand, and turned it off despite the younger girl’s protests.</p> <p>None of them were locals, of that much I was certain. My graduating class would be comprised of fewer than a dozen students. I could rattle off their names, first and last, and some of their parents’ too. These girls were newcomers, which was strange for a small town devoid of tourism where things never really changed.</p> <p>The young girl kept smiling at me, mouth wide and bloody from the lipstick. “I like your dress. I’ve been looking for one just like that for ages. Do they sell them here?”</p> <p>“Um… afraid not, b-but thank you?” I fumbled with my pen and notepad and nearly dropped both. “What would you like to drink?”</p> <p>“Pink lemonade,” said the girl. She kicked off her sandals, cork platforms with leather straps as thin as strings, and swapped them with the sneakers of the girl to her left. “They’re a better match. Don’t you think?”</p> <p>“Um, yeah. We don’t have pink lemonade. Is regular lemonade okay? It’s house made.”</p> <p>She bobbed her head. “Sounds good. You can just bring it by the pitcher, and we’d like coffee, or better yet, hot chocolate if you have it. And we’ll order the rest now too. Assuming you’re ready?”</p> <p>I nodded down at my notepad, my pen poised. Together, they ordered what seemed like half the menu—several stacks of pancakes, French toast, hash browns smothered with cheese and onions, six sunny-side up eggs, a plate of bacon, two chili dogs from the lunch menu, a ham and cheese omelet, as well as fresh fruit in a to-go box.</p> <p>“For Shiloh,” said a different, more sullen girl with a shifting gaze and the golden sliver of a nose ring pierced through her left nostril. Her hair was dark and cut in a ragged jaw-length bob, and her eyes were large and gray.</p> <p>Conny, overhearing their lengthy order, got suspicious and made the girls pay for the meal up front. An older girl with blunt black bangs and blue eyeshadow lifted a large purse that looked like a carpetbag and set it on the table with a heavy <em>thud </em>that made the silverware jump and clatter. From it, she produced several fistfuls of wrinkled bills (I put them in the pocket of my apron to count later) and a small mason jar filled with silver change. She slid it to Conny with a smile. “Keep the change.”</p> <p>Whenever I returned to their table, their conversation seemed to die into silence or abruptly change subjects. They were enviably self-contained and entirely unbothered despite the curious gazes of the other diners, particularly the male ones who watched them with rapt, too-sharp interest.</p> <p>The girls weren’t naive or otherwise oblivious to the attention they received. Nor were they distant in the heavy-lidded, theatrical way girls often are when they’re trying to appear pointedly aloof. They were merely… impassive. Perhaps they were too consumed by their own conversation. At times, their discussion grew so intense it appeared they were arguing about something. The same name kept coming up repeatedly; I’d hear it—a hot, hissing whisper—as I passed their table: <em>Shiloh</em>. The one the fruit was for.</p> <p>I watched them eat with furtive glances cast over my shoulder or from across the diner behind the bar. The redhead shoveled large forkfuls of French toast into her mouth as if this were the last meal she’d ever eat and she had only minutes left to finish it.</p> <p>Beside her sat the girl with the braids. I was tempted to call her the pretty one, because even among the girls she stood out as particularly stunning. Her skin was deep and dewy, utterly flawless, though she didn’t look like she was wearing any concealer. She had full lips and high cheekbones that would’ve been the envy of any model. I stared as she popped the yolks of all six eggs on her plate— one after the other—with the tip of a steak knife and watched the yellow bleed into the white with dead eyes before licking the blade clean. The blonde emptied a small ramekin of maple syrup into the dregs of her coffee and drank the sludgy remnants in a single gulp.</p> <p>“Slow down or you’ll choke,” said the older girl, the one with the powdery blue eyeshadow who’d paid for the food. When the youngest did, in fact, begin to choke just minutes later, the older girl patted her back until the coughing fit subsided.</p> <p>It was a strange and intimate gesture, so maternal and natural that I wondered for a moment if the two were family. But they couldn’t have looked any less alike. Different races—one white, the other Asian. Different hair. Different demeanor. All five girls had a distinct way of being. I didn’t know how to describe it exactly, but it was both familiar and distinctly unusual.</p> <p>They had a kind of confidence that came easily to them. The redhead kicked her feet out into the aisle that ran between tables, oblivious to the way she was taking up space. Bold in a way that boys are usually, and even then, only the most self-assured among them. The varsity athletes or that one overeager theater kid who lands all the lead roles in school plays.</p> <p>After the girls finished their feast, I brought them a copy of the receipt. I doubted they’d want it. They’d refused to accept their change and seemed to have no care for cost, but I wanted another excuse to return to their table—curiosity surmounting my initial anxiety—to examine them up close one more time. “Can I interest you in something else? Maybe some dessert?”</p> <p>“I’ll take a hot fudge sundae,” said the girl with the long braids. “No peanuts, with extra whip and maraschino cherries if you have them. And can you box it up so we can take it for the road?”</p> <p>I nodded and was leaving to make it when the youngest of the group, the little blond girl, called me back. “Do you like to swim?”</p> <p>“Sure,” I said. “I guess so.”</p> <p>The young one nodded to the blue-eyeshadow girl, whom I took to be the leader of this strange flock. She reached into the other girl’s carpetbag purse, found a pen, and scrawled an address on the back of the receipt I’d supplied them with, then folded it and put it into the pocket of my apron without asking whether or not I wanted it. </p> <p>“Tonight.” She slipped out of the booth. “Show up anytime after nine.”</p> <p>I made the sundae as the girls wolfed down their final bites of food. When I delivered it to the booth, they were already on their feet, laughing and talking among themselves.</p> <p>“See you tonight,” said the blonde. And then they were gone into the white brilliance of the day.</p> <div style="height:5px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <p class="has-sm-font-size">Excerpted from <em>When I Was Death</em>, copyright © 2026 by Alexis Henderson.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-when-i-was-death-by-alexis-henderson/">Read an Excerpt From &lt;i&gt;When I Was Death&lt;/i&gt; by Alexis Henderson</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/excerpts-when-i-was-death-by-alexis-henderson/">https://reactormag.com/excerpts-when-i-was-death-by-alexis-henderson/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837592">https://reactormag.com/?p=837592</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Sarah</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/robocop-a-glorious-scathing-satire-of-america/">https://reactormag.com/robocop-a-glorious-scathing-satire-of-america/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837808">https://reactormag.com/?p=837808</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/column/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Column 0"> Column </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/science-fiction-film-club/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Science Fiction Film Club 1"> Science Fiction Film Club </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>RoboCop</i>: A Glorious, Scathing Satire of America</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">&#8220;Serve the public trust. Protect the innocent. Uphold the law.&#8221;</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/kali-wallace/" title="Posts by Kali Wallace" class="author url fn" rel="author">Kali Wallace</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on January 28, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Credit: Orion Pictures / MGM Studios</p> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/robocop-a-glorious-scathing-satire-of-america/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] 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0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="423" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/robocop-convenience-store-740x423.jpg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Peter Weller in RoboCop (1987)" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/robocop-convenience-store-740x423.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/robocop-convenience-store-1100x629.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/robocop-convenience-store-768x439.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/robocop-convenience-store.jpg 1400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Credit: Orion Pictures / MGM Studios</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p><em>RoboCop</em> (1987) Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. Starring Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox, Miguel Ferrer, and Kurtwood Smith.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <p>Let me start with my favorite story about the making of <em>RoboCop</em>.</p> <p>In the middle of the 1980s, film producer Jon Davison, then working at Orion Studios, picked up a screenplay by two young screenwriters. Davison is the man who produced the films <em>Airplane! </em>(1980) and <em>Top Secret! </em>(1984), those gleefully over-the-top parodies that people of a certain generation (i.e., me and my siblings) still reference incessantly. Davison liked the satirical nature of this script that was titled <em>RoboCop: The Future of Law Enforcement</em>. At first, he and the studio intended Jonathan Kaplan to direct it. When the director he had in mind left to work on a different movie, Davison had to find another.</p> <p>That proved to be rather difficult. The studio approached David Cronenberg (who, as far as I can tell, was offered every sci fi movie produced in the ’80s) and Alex Cox (director of <a href="https://reactormag.com/repo-man-a-brash-indelible-outrageous-look-at-1980s-america/"><em>Repo Man</em></a><em> </em>[1984]), but they both turned it down, and nobody else the studio considered was able to sign on. They started to think the movie would never get made.</p> <p>Finally, one of the people at Orion, Barbara Boyle, suggested they send the script to Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, with whom the studio had recently worked with on his first English-language film. The grim, gory historical <em>Flesh and Blood </em>(1985) had been a resolute failure, the kind of box-office bomb that makes a movie vanish from theaters almost as soon as it arrives. Screenwriter Michael Miner <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a27322/robocop-oral-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">would later say</a>, “[Edward Neumeier] and I were two of only a handful of people in the theater when we went to see it.” They, and everybody else, were more impressed by Verhoeven’s 1977 war film <em>Soldier of Orange</em>. The studio sent Neumeier and Miner’s screenplay to Verhoeven to see if he was interested.</p> <p>Verhoeven read maybe one page of the script and threw it away. “I thought it was a piece of shit,” <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200930003130/https:/uproxx.com/filmdrunk/robocop-retrospective-30/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">he would later say</a>.</p> <p>It was his wife, Martine Tours, who read through the script and persuaded him to reconsider. He listened to her, but he’s always been very frank about the fact that he didn’t get it at first. He didn’t understand the humor. He didn’t understand the satire. The title was too cheesy. The story was too American.</p> <p>I love this bit of backstory for a couple of reasons. One small reason is that it’s hilarious to imagine Verhoeven chucking the screenplay away in disgust, not knowing that <em>RoboCop</em> would one day become his career-defining magnum opus.</p> <p>The larger reason is about what happened next, which is that Verhoeven actually read the screenplay to figure out what he was missing. He looked for the character hooks his wife had seen. He asked Neumeier and Miner to explain the politics, the satire, the humor. He didn’t understand why they wanted the movie to be darkly funny instead of serious, so <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201112043452/http:/thedissolve.com/features/interview/415-robocop-writer-ed-neumeier-discusses-the-films-ori/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Neumeier gave him a pile of comic books, including <em>Judge Dredd</em></a>; Verhoeven dutifully read through them to understand out what tone the screenwriters were going for.</p> <p>In <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200930003130/https:/uproxx.com/filmdrunk/robocop-retrospective-30/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a 2017 interview</a>, Miner said, “Ed and I were the luckiest screenwriters in the decade of the ’80s.”</p> <p>He’s got a point. It’s more or less taken as fact in the film industry that the screenwriter stops mattering once a director signs on to a project, and the film that gets made will be a reflection of the director’s vision. It’s vanishingly rare to hear about a director putting so much effort into crafting a film that is exactly what the screenwriters want it to be.</p> <p>I also feel like if we surveyed people, just in general, and asked them to name movies that are screenwriter-driven rather than director-driven, most would probably come up with serious, dialogue-heavy dramas. Most would probably not name an ultraviolent ’80s sci fi satire that features a man’s skin gruesomely melting off after he crashes into a giant tank helpfully labeled “TOXIC WASTE.”</p> <p>So let’s go back to the beginning: <em>RoboCop</em> was born because Neumeier and Miner loved robots and really fucking hated Ronald Reagan.</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <site-embed id="18187"/> </div></figure> <p>In the early ’80s Neumeier was a film school graduate <a href="https://www.gamesradar.com/the-making-of-robocop-extended-cut/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">working as a story analyst at Columbia Pictures</a>, reading scripts in a trailer on the lot Columbia shared with Warner Brothers. He was captivated by what was going on outside his window. “&#8230;Next door was this giant street they built, suddenly, which is a lovely thing to behold in and of itself,” he said <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201112043452/http:/thedissolve.com/features/interview/415-robocop-writer-ed-neumeier-discusses-the-films-ori/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">in a 2014 interview</a>. “It was for a big science-fiction movie called <em>Blade Runner</em>, and I never had seen anything like it.”</p> <p>Neumeier marched over to the <a href="https://reactormag.com/blade-runner-a-future-more-human-than-human/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Blade Runner</em></a> set to do some work on the film during the night shift, and it was <em>Blade Runner’s</em> replicants that gave him the idea for a robot policeman. The corporate side of the story came from his experience of working at MCA and watching studio execs interact with legendary media mogul Lew Wasserman; Wasserman was the blueprint for “The Old Man” (Daniel O’Herlihy), the chief executive of Omni Consumer Products in <em>RoboCop</em>. Neumeier wanted to skewer the macho, worshipful culture of corporate America in the ’80s. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200930003130/https:/uproxx.com/filmdrunk/robocop-retrospective-30/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">He later said</a>, “Everybody was walking around in the ’80s talking about ‘corporate raiders’ and ‘killers’ and how business was for tough guys. I just thought that was absurd.”</p> <p>Around the same time, Neumeier made the acquaintance of Miner, who was working as a cinematographer and directing music videos for Bay Area metal bands. They began talking about their projects and discovered that they both loved robot stories as much as they both hated Ronald Reagan. In <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a27322/robocop-oral-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the 2014 oral history published in <em>Esquire</em></a>, Miner makes the film’s political and economic intent about as clear as can be: “Because we were in the midst of the Reagan era, I always characterize <em>RoboCop</em> as comic relief for a cynical time. Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys ransacked the world, enabled by Reagan and the CIA.”</p> <p>Both of them were absolutely determined to keep the movie set in Detroit, because Detroit was the city that best exemplified the politics of the story. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201112043452/http:/thedissolve.com/features/interview/415-robocop-writer-ed-neumeier-discusses-the-films-ori/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Neumeier specifically cites Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam’s 1986 book <em>The Reckoning</em></a>, which details the decline of the American auto industry, as one of his inspirations while writing. The characterization of Detroit as a crime-ridden hellscape is deliberately mocking the so-called “law and order” politics of the era.<em> </em><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200930003130/https:/uproxx.com/filmdrunk/robocop-retrospective-30/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">As Miner explained it</a><em>, </em>“That is a cop trope, right? ‘Crime was out of control, blah, blah, blah.’ It’s a very Republican idea.” (The film might be set in Detroit, but it was mostly filmed in Dallas, with a few scenes serving as notable exceptions. Such are the whims of the movie business.)</p> <p>With that’s ’80s context in mind, <em>RoboCop</em> takes us to a science fictional near future. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201112043452/http:/thedissolve.com/features/interview/415-robocop-writer-ed-neumeier-discusses-the-films-ori/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">According to Neumeier</a>, Verhoeven wanted the future to look more like <em>Blade Runner</em>, but producer Jon Davison basically said, ha, no, we can’t afford that. So it’s an unspecified future in which “Old Detroit” is overrun with crime and drugs, and the city’s police department has been privatized and is now run by a mega-corporation called Omni Consumer Products. As the company’s Senior Vice President Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) observes at one of the most iconic board meetings ever put to film, “You see that we’ve gambled in markets traditionally regarded as non-profit. Hospitals. Prisons. Space exploration.”</p> <p>Jones delivers this line just before introducing his newest innovation: the ED-209, a police robot that he wants to deploy to clean up Old Detroit. Of course, nobody in that boardroom actually cares about crime. They want to empty the city so they can embark on a massive (and massively profitable) real estate development project.</p> <p>The ED-209 was designed by Phil Tippett, the man behind the AT-AT Imperial Walkers in <em>The Empire Strikes Back</em> (1980), and built by Craig Hayes (credited as Craig Davies). <a href="https://archive.org/details/cinefantastique_1970-2002/Cinefantastique%20Vol%2018%20No%201%20%28Dec%201987%29/page/n23/mode/2up" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Due to budget limitations</a>, Tippett went completely old school in animating the robot’s motion; he used Ray Harryhausen’s Dynamation technique and filmed it using the older widescreen <a href="https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-vistavision/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VistaVision</a> film format. That’s why ED-209 has that halting, janky movement that makes it look so unsettling when it’s first introduced.</p> <p>Jones instructs doomed junior executive Kinney (Kevin Page) to take a gun and threaten ED-209. We know the demonstration is going to go badly, and it does, in an outrageously over-the-top way. The scene is pure, bloody, pitch-black comedy, with the culminating moment being somebody shouting for a paramedic and the ambitious Bob Morton (played by the wonderful Miguel Ferrer) seizing the moment to pitch his own pet project to the company head.</p> <p>Morton’s project is RoboCop: an experimental cyborg police officer. First, Morton needs a dead human cop, however—so he has helpfully transferred some officers from less dangerous parts of the city into the worst neighborhood in hopes of getting a fresh donor body. One of those unlucky transfers is Officer Murphy (Peter Weller), an ordinary cop with a wife and kid who just wants to do his job. Murphy and his new partner, Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen), are out on patrol when they get a call about an armed robbery. They chase a group of criminals led by Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) to an abandoned steel mill. The criminal gang captures Murphy and tortures him to death in a scene so gruesome <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-07-18-ca-660-story.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the MPAA gave the first several cuts of the film an X rating</a><em>.</em></p> <p><em>(</em>Those parts, and the climactic scene, were filmed in a<em> </em>defunct Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel mill in Monessen, Pennsylvania, which has since been demolished. I’ve never watched <em>RoboCop</em> with my dad, who worked for Wheeling Steel at a different mill when he was young, but if I ever do, I’m sure he’ll helpfully identify every part of the mill that he can.)</p> <p>But Omni Consumer Products isn’t done with Murphy, so he’s brought back to life with his memory wiped and his body replaced by a machine. We see this resurrection from his point of view, with confusing glimpses of memories for which he has no context. There’s a grimly funny moment when the scientists and doctors say they can save his remaining arm, but Morton berates them for caring about preserving the human when they can replace every part with machines.</p> <p>The RoboCop suit was built by special effects artist Rob Bottin. We’ve talked about his work before in this column; he’s the one who got his start working on the cantina clientele in <em>Star Wars</em> (1977), then went on to craft The Thing in <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-thing-have-a-shot-of-whisky-with-your-existential-terror/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Thing</em></a><em> </em>(1982) and the mutant make-up in <a href="https://reactormag.com/total-recall-extreme-escapism-for-fun-and-profit/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Total Recall</em></a><em> </em>(1990). That suit was apparently something of a problem for everybody. <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a27322/robocop-oral-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Verhoeven and Neumeier wanted something more “sensational,”</a><em> </em>Bottin had to try to make their impossible ideas work, and <a href="https://www.gamesradar.com/the-making-of-robocop-extended-cut/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Weller was miserable the whole time he was wearing the contraption</a>, because it took six and a half hours to put on the face and head prosthetic, and another hour and a half to put on the suit. By all accounts, including their own, Verhoeven and Weller came very close to strangling each other on set, but they also say they made up before it was over.</p> <p>(Note: There is a lot of information out there about the making of RoboCop, because it was a film that attracted industry interest even while it was in production. The <a href="https://archive.org/details/cinefantastique_1970-2002/Cinefantastique%20Vol%2018%20No%201%20%28Dec%201987%29/mode/2up" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Cinefantastique</em> article from December 1987</a><em> </em>is a very detailed contemporary account. As a bonus, that same issue contains a piece wondering if the brand-new show <em>Star Trek: The Next Generation</em> could possibly be any good.)</p> <p>When Omni Consumer Products debuts its cyborg cop, RoboCop is at first a success for the company, as he struts around the city stopping assaults and robberies. This sequence is punctuated by one of the film’s amazing interludes of evening news clips; news broadcaster Mario Machado and <em>Entertainment Tonight</em> host Leeza Gibbons play the anchors. The news is a litany of apocalyptic horrors, delivered in chipper evening news style, complete with a commercial that shows a family playing the fun new boardgame “Nukem,” in which they try to defeat each other in nuclear warfare.</p> <p>But RoboCop’s successful patrols don’t last. One of Boddicker’s henchmen (played by Paul McCrane) and Officer Lewis both recognize Murphy, and their recognition triggers confusing memories that send him looking for who he used to be. That leads him to the old Murphy home, now unoccupied and up for sale. He remembers a little about his wife and son as he’s walking around the detritus of their life together, but it’s a distant recognition, the kind of disconnected memories that frustrate him and provide no catharsis.</p> <p><site-embed id="18188"/></p> <p>That’s the scene that convinced Verhoeven to make the movie, even when he was skeptical about the rest of it. It’s <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a27322/robocop-oral-history/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the scene he paid attention to</a> when his wife told him he was focusing too much on the outward trappings of the film and not enough on the soul.</p> <p>I can see why that would draw him in, but I think what’s really interesting about that scene is that it does not lead to Murphy regaining his memories or reuniting with his family or reconciling his past life with his current existence. It doesn’t fix anything. There’s no catharsis. When he talks to Lewis about it later, he says that he can feel the loss of his family, but he can’t actually remember them.</p> <p>The rest of the movie is a flurry of action: RoboCop discovers that Boddicker is working for Jones, because of course he is; Jones has Boddicker blow up Morton as part of their corporate dick-measuring contest. RoboCop apprehends Boddicker, but he can’t do the same with Jones because he is programmed to keep his hands off the company executives. (That is a very on-the-nose metaphor for law enforcement working to protect wealthy criminals at the expense of everybody else, but it’s one that has only become more relevant over time.)</p> <p>Jones sends ED-209 and a bunch of cops to kill RoboCop, but he escapes with the help of Officer Lewis. Boddicker and his henchmen track Murphy and Lewis to the abandoned steel mill and there is a big, messy fight. None of the criminals survive that encounter.</p> <p>And, yes, Rob Bottin also did the toxic waste/melting face special effects on actor Paul McCrane—do you even need to ask? If we all take nothing else away from this film club, let us all cherish our hard-earned ability to recognize Rob Bottin’s special effects when they explode all over the front of cars in a gory mess of fake blood and chicken soup.</p> <p>From that point onward, it’s relatively straightforward to dispatch Jones. Murphy’s final act in the film is to reclaim his name. Does that make it a happy ending? Not exactly. The world hasn’t changed. The corporation is still in control. The city is still in chaos, violence is still the norm, and rich men are still profiting from it. The company still owns RoboCop. His family is still gone. His tragedy is not undone.</p> <p>Much like<em> Total Recall</em>, it’s only a happy ending if you don’t think about it. Once you start thinking about it, all the <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeHorror" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fridge horror</a> returns and you can’t escape how incredibly bleak it is.</p> <p>Only onscreen, though. Off screen, for the people who made the movie, it was very much a happy ending, because the movie was a wild success. It made a ton of money at the American box office and even more money when it was released internationally on VHS. The character of RoboCop became an indelible part of American pop culture. There are sequels and remakes (I’ve never seen them) and video games (never played them) and comic book appearances (never read them). RoboCop has never gone away.</p> <p>As for the screenwriters: Neumeier went on to make <em>Starship Troopers</em> (1997) with Verhoeven. Miner also did more screenwriting after <em>RoboCop</em>, but he is now a <a href="https://michaelminerphotography.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">landscape photographer</a><em> </em>and writing teacher.</p> <p>We can’t separate <em>RoboCop</em> from its politics, although people have certainly tried, many in ways that will make you admire their mental gymnastics. A fun and edifying thing to do is to search for what self-proclaimed <em>RoboCop</em> fans say about the movie on Reddit. You may encounter some of the wildest media interpretation known to humankind!</p> <p>It’s not quite the same situation as <em>They Live </em>(1988), where there is a critical effort to repurpose the film for politics completely counter to the movie itself. It’s more that a great many people who still love <em>RoboCop</em> today saw it when they were quite young, and naturally didn’t pick up on the satire, and aren’t quite sure what to make of the film now.</p> <p>It’s been thirty-nine years and we live in a world in which all the things <em>RoboCop</em> is commenting on are now depressingly normalized: The militarization of police and justification of extrajudicial police violence. The privatization of public services into for-profit industries. The idea that any public-serving part of society should ever be run by people who want to be rich. The fundamental sociopathy of corporate America. The histrionic fear regularly drummed up about crime-ridden urban centers. Rich old men ranting about sending armies into cities to clean them up. None of that ever went anywhere. We don’t need movies to show us government agents shooting people in the streets. It’s on the news right now.</p> <p>I don’t have a pithy conclusion to this article. I read it over, trying to think of a way to end it, then went up to change the headline. It used to specify “1980s America.” But that’s letting us off the hook too easily.</p> <p><em>RoboCop</em> is a great movie. It’s smart and vicious and funny in the darkest, bleakest way. I love it. I’m glad I’ve rewatched it and researched its origins as an adult, with a lot more knowledge and perspective than I ever had as a kid.</p> <p>But I also wish it hadn’t remained so relevant.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots" /> <p>What do you think of <em>RoboCop</em> and its place among the great sci fi political satires to come out of the ’80s? What about the sequels and the more recent remake? There is so more lore about this film… it could fill an entire book, and there is no way I could write about all of it, so I’m sure I’ve left out some interesting tidbits.[end-mark]</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <div style="height:10px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <h3 class="wp-block-heading has-text-align-center"><strong>You’re Not From Around Here, Are You?</strong></h3> <p>We’ve <a href="https://reactormag.com/columns/science-fiction-film-club/science-fiction-film-club-april-2024/">watched a number</a> of <a href="https://reactormag.com/columns/science-fiction-film-club/science-fiction-film-club-november-december-2024/">movies about alien invasions</a>, both successful and failed, but what happens when it’s not an invasion? What happens when it’s just an individual or a small group who finds themselves on Earth and now must figure out how to survive? That’s the theme of the films we’re watching in February.</p> <div style="height:25px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile is-vertically-aligned-top" style="grid-template-columns:28% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="600" height="400" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/man-facing-southeast-thumbnail.jpg" alt="A scene from Man Facing Southeast (1987)" class="wp-image-837822 size-full" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content"> <p class="has-h-5-font-size"><strong>February 4&nbsp;—&nbsp;<em>Man Facing Southeast </em>(1987), directed by Eliseo Subiela</strong></p> <p>A man appears in a psychiatric hospital and claims to be from outer space.</p> <p>Watch: This one isn’t online in many places, but you can watch it for free with English subtitles on <a href="https://fawesome.tv/movies/10419316/man-facing-southeast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Fawesome.tv</a>, and if you do a good old fashioned “full movie” search you’ll find complete uploads around the internet.</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc7ENNlaDwQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the trailer</a>.</p> </div></div> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile is-vertically-aligned-top" style="grid-template-columns:28% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="600" height="400" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/the-man-who-fell-to-earth-thumbnail.png" alt="David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)" class="wp-image-837819 size-full" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content"> <p class="has-h-5-font-size"><strong>February 11&nbsp;—&nbsp;<em>The Man Who Fell to Earth </em>(1976), directed by Nicolas Roeg</strong></p> <p>In which an alien played by David Bowie comes to Earth looking for help for his home planet.</p> <p>Watch: Find links <a href="https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-man-who-fell-to-earth">here</a>, including free versions through public libraries on Kanopy and Hoopla.</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KarWCgIw3Wk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the trailer</a>.</p> </div></div> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile is-vertically-aligned-top" style="grid-template-columns:28% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="600" height="400" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/dead-mountaineers-hotel-thumbnail.jpg" alt="A scene from Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (1979)" class="wp-image-837821 size-full" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content"> <p class="has-h-5-font-size"><strong>February 18&nbsp;—&nbsp;<em>Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel </em>(1979), directed by Grigori Kromanov</strong></p> <p>A Soviet-era Estonian film about a police inspector encountering some strange guests at a remote hotel.</p> <p>Watch: You can find it on <a href="https://www.cultpix.com/movie/hukkunud-alpinisti-hotell/1416">Cultpix</a>, <a href="https://films.klassiki.online/dead-mountaineers-hotel">Klassiki</a> (which offers a free trial), and once again I encourage a “full movie” search of the usual upload sites.</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlQCVh_HSzM" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the trailer</a>.</p> </div></div> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <div class="wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile is-vertically-aligned-top" style="grid-template-columns:28% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="600" height="400" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/under-the-skin-thumbnail.jpg" alt="Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin" class="wp-image-837820 size-full" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content"> <p class="has-h-5-font-size"><strong>February 25&nbsp;—&nbsp;<em>Under the Skin </em>(2013), directed by Jonathan Glazer</strong></p> <p>Either a beautiful alien is hunting men or that’s just what Glasgow nightlife is like sometimes.</p> <p>Watch: <a href="https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/under-the-skin" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">This one is available in a few places online</a>.</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7bAZCOk0Sc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">View the trailer</a>.</p> </div></div> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity" /> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/robocop-a-glorious-scathing-satire-of-america/">&lt;i&gt;RoboCop&lt;/i&gt;: A Glorious, Scathing Satire of America</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/robocop-a-glorious-scathing-satire-of-america/">https://reactormag.com/robocop-a-glorious-scathing-satire-of-america/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837808">https://reactormag.com/?p=837808</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Christina Orlando</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/book-announcement-the-tarot-trials-by-katee-robert/">https://reactormag.com/book-announcement-the-tarot-trials-by-katee-robert/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837497">https://reactormag.com/?p=837497</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/books/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Books 0"> Books </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/publishing-news/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag publishing news 1"> publishing news </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Tor Books to Publish Brand New Fantasy Series <i>The Tarot Trials</i> by Katee Robert</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">The Tarot Trials is set for publication in Fall 2026</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/reactor/" title="Posts by Reactor" class="author url fn" rel="author">Reactor</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on January 28, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-vertical [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Photo credit: Chandra Wicke</p> 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11.7513C4.78371 10.1926 2.89605 9.41364 0.678713 9.41431V6.41431C2.21205 6.41431 3.64538 6.70197 4.97871 7.27731C6.31205 7.85264 7.47471 8.63597 8.46671 9.62731C9.45805 10.6186 10.2414 11.781 10.8167 13.1143C11.392 14.4476 11.6794 15.881 11.6787 17.4143H8.67871Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </g> <defs> <clippath id="clip0_1051_121783"> <rect width="17" height="17" fill="white" transform="translate(0.678711 0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="493" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/katee-robert-the-tarot-trials-announcement-740x493.png" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Photo of author Katee Robert and text announcing her novel The Tarot Trials, publishing Fall 2026 with Tor Books" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/katee-robert-the-tarot-trials-announcement-740x493.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/katee-robert-the-tarot-trials-announcement-1100x733.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/katee-robert-the-tarot-trials-announcement-768x512.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/katee-robert-the-tarot-trials-announcement.png 1500w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Photo credit: Chandra Wicke</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>Tor Publishing Group is thrilled to announce the acquisition of <em>The Tarot Trials</em> by Katee Robert, an explosive new fantasy novel of tarot magic and deadly competition from the iconic New York Times bestselling author of the Dark Olympus series. Tor Books senior editor Stephanie Stein and Tor UK publisher Gillian Green have acquired <em>The Tarot Trials</em> and two more books from Laura Bradford of Bradford Literary Agency, to publish beginning in Fall 2026.</p> <div style="height:5px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p><strong>The deck has always been stacked against her.</strong><br><br>Kestrel has trained her whole life to compete in the Tarot Trials. Her mother won once, earning a place among the five ruling Cinque—then paid for it with her life, executed for alleged treason against the Minor Court.<br><br><strong>But fortune favors the bold.</strong><br><br>Now it falls to Kestrel to take up her mother’s mantle as Champion of the Moon, enter the Trials, and face her fate. If she can master her new powers of shadow and illusion, navigate the poisonous game of alliances and lies, and corner the fellow Champion who dealt the killing blow to her mother years ago, she may uncover the truth she’s seeking without losing her head… or her heart. But in the Trials, betrayal is a question of when, not if. And winning the game isn’t about what she must do to win, but who she needs to survive.<br><br>Perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab and Carissa Broadbent, this high-octane, fast-paced epic fantasy launches an explosive new saga from a legend in fantasy and romance.</p></blockquote></figure> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots" /> <p>From author Katee Robert: “<em>The Tarot Trials</em> is my love song to the genre I first fell in love with as a reader. It&#8217;s got all of my favorite things: a determined heroine, life-and-death games, and complicated political dynamics, all deeply influenced by Tarot. I hope you love it!”</p> <p>From editor Stephanie Stein: “I would have entered any gladiatorial contest to fight for the chance to publish this book—but I’m glad I didn’t have to face Kestrel, her cutthroat enemies, or her even more intimidating (and intriguing) allies. <em>The Tarot Trials</em> is a truly riveting page-turner from a master of their craft, and I cannot wait for everyone to discover what the cards have in store.”</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/book-announcement-the-tarot-trials-by-katee-robert/">Tor Books to Publish Brand New Fantasy Series &lt;i&gt;The Tarot Trials&lt;/i&gt; by Katee Robert</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/book-announcement-the-tarot-trials-by-katee-robert/">https://reactormag.com/book-announcement-the-tarot-trials-by-katee-robert/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837497">https://reactormag.com/?p=837497</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Sarah</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/the-omnipotent-eye-versus-the-neighborhood-james-c-scotts-seeing-like-a-state/">https://reactormag.com/the-omnipotent-eye-versus-the-neighborhood-james-c-scotts-seeing-like-a-state/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837852">https://reactormag.com/?p=837852</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/books/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Books 0"> Books </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/seeds-of-story/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Seeds of Story 1"> Seeds of Story </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">The Omnipotent Eye Versus the Neighborhood: James C. Scott’s <i>Seeing Like a State</i></h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">On the tricky science of improving (or failing to improve) the human condition&#8230;</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/ruthanna-emrys/" title="Posts by Ruthanna Emrys" class="author url fn" rel="author">Ruthanna Emrys</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on January 27, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="quick-access post-hero-quick-access mt-[17px] tablet:hidden"> <div class="flex gap-[30px] tablet:gap-6"> <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-omnipotent-eye-versus-the-neighborhood-james-c-scotts-seeing-like-a-state/#comments" class="flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase translate-x-[1px] translate-y-[1px]"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 18 18" aria-label="comment" role="img" aria-hidden="true" aria-labelledby="icon-comment-quick-access-"> <title id="icon-comment-quick-access-">Comment</title> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <path fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" d="M6.3 18a.9.9 0 0 1-.9-.9v-2.7H1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 0 12.6V1.8A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 1.8 0h14.4A1.8 1.8 0 0 1 18 1.8v10.8a1.8 1.8 0 0 1-1.8 1.8h-5.49l-3.33 3.339a.917.917 0 0 1-.63.261H6.3Z" /> <path stroke="#000" d="M5.9 14.4v-.5H1.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 1-1.3-1.3V1.8A1.3 1.3 0 0 1 1.8.5h14.4a1.3 1.3 0 0 1 1.3 1.3v10.8a1.3 1.3 0 0 1-1.3 1.3h-5.698l-.146.147-3.324 3.333a.417.417 0 0 1-.282.12H6.3a.4.4 0 0 1-.4-.4v-2.7Z" /> </g> </svg> 4 </a> <details class="relative quick-access-details"> <summary class="quick-access-share flex items-center text-sm font-aktiv tracking-[0.6px] font-semibold uppercase"> <svg class="w-[22px] h-[22px] mr-[7px] icon-hover" viewbox="0 0 22 22" aria-label="share" role="img" aria-hidden="true" aria-labelledby="icon-share-new-quick-access-"> <title id="icon-share-new-quick-access-">Share New</title> <g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"> <circle cx="11" cy="11" r="11" fill="#FFF" fill-rule="nonzero" /> <circle cx="11" cy="11" r="10.5" stroke="#000" /> <path fill="#FFF" d="M5.993 13.464c.675 0 1.323-.266 1.806-.743l4.11 2.396a2.639 2.639 0 0 0 .368 2.451 2.583 2.583 0 0 0 2.227 1.043 2.59 2.59 0 0 0 2.09-1.3 2.64 2.64 0 0 0 .08-2.477 2.58 2.58 0 0 0-4.292-.54L8.344 11.94c.28-.616.31-1.319.086-1.958l3.952-2.303a2.564 2.564 0 0 0 4.263-.537 2.623 2.623 0 0 0-.078-2.46 2.573 2.573 0 0 0-2.075-1.293 2.566 2.566 0 0 0-2.213 1.033 2.622 2.622 0 0 0-.37 2.433L7.96 9.158a2.573 2.573 0 0 0-4.316.603 2.632 2.632 0 0 0 .172 2.501 2.58 2.58 0 0 0 2.178 1.202Z" /> <path fill="#000" d="M6.936 9.577c.322 0 .631.137.859.383.228.245.355.577.355.924 0 .347-.127.68-.355.925a1.172 1.172 0 0 1-.859.383c-.322 0-.63-.138-.858-.383a1.36 1.36 0 0 1-.356-.925c0-.347.129-.679.356-.924.228-.245.536-.383.858-.383Zm6.17-3.837c.323 0 .631.138.86.383.227.245.355.578.355.924 0 .347-.128.68-.356.925a1.172 1.172 0 0 1-.858.383c-.322 0-.631-.138-.859-.383a1.36 1.36 0 0 1-.355-.925c0-.346.128-.678.356-.924.227-.245.536-.383.858-.383Zm0 7.883c.323 0 .631.138.86.383.227.245.355.578.355.925 0 .346-.128.679-.356.924a1.171 1.171 0 0 1-.858.383c-.322 0-.631-.138-.859-.383a1.36 1.36 0 0 1-.355-.925c0-.346.128-.678.356-.923.227-.245.536-.383.858-.384Zm-6.17-.681c.499 0 .978-.21 1.334-.586l3.036 1.888a2.194 2.194 0 0 0 .272 1.93c.385.555 1.003.863 1.645.822.641-.04 1.221-.425 1.544-1.024a2.203 2.203 0 0 0 .059-1.952c-.286-.62-.841-1.044-1.48-1.13-.637-.085-1.272.18-1.69.705l-2.984-1.854c.207-.486.23-1.04.064-1.543l2.92-1.815c.415.522 1.046.784 1.68.7.633-.086 1.184-.507 1.468-1.123a2.188 2.188 0 0 0-.058-1.938c-.32-.595-.895-.977-1.532-1.018-.638-.041-1.251.264-1.635.813a2.179 2.179 0 0 0-.273 1.917L8.389 9.55c-.423-.534-1.07-.798-1.715-.702-.645.096-1.2.54-1.472 1.177a2.194 2.194 0 0 0 .126 1.97c.352.59.958.948 1.61.947Z" /> </g> </svg> Share </summary> <div class="quick-access-bubble"> <ul class="flex gap-6 text-black list-none"> <li class="flex"> <a class="flex items-center hover:text-red" href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=The Omnipotent Eye Versus the Neighborhood: James C. 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15.881 11.6787 17.4143H8.67871Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </g> <defs> <clippath id="clip0_1051_121783"> <rect width="17" height="17" fill="white" transform="translate(0.678711 0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="407" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state-header-740x407.png" class="w-full object-cover" alt="cover of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C Scott" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state-header-740x407.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state-header-1100x605.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state-header-768x422.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state-header.png 1400w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>Welcome to <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/seeds-of-story/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Seeds of Story</a>, where I explore the non-fiction that inspires—or should inspire—speculative fiction. Every couple weeks, we&#8217;ll dive into a book, article, or other source of ideas that are sparking current stories, or that have untapped potential to do so. Each article will include an overview of the source(s), a review of its readability and plausibility, and highlights of the best two or three “seeds” found there.</p> <p>This week, I cover James C. Scott’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/seeing-like-a-state-how-certain-schemes-to-improve-the-human-condition-have-failed-james-c-scott/65403c6d4976ca3a?ean=9780300246759&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed</em></a>. It’s about what we lose when we try to make things measurable, regulatable, and optimizable—and why we try to do those things in the first place. It’s probably fair to call this book a foundational text for 21^st-century social science fiction; it’s also full of ideas for making social scientists very nervous.</p> <div style="height:10px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>What It’s About</strong></h3> <p>The history of the state is, in part, a centuries-long quest to be able to see—and therefore control—the activities that take place in their domains. Taxation, law, regulation, provision of services, maintenance and repair, can only happen where the state can measure and understand the resources to be taxed, the activities to be forbidden or required, the needs to be met, and the status of that water main. Scott calls this <em>legibility</em>. While the initial motivations were for the benefit of rulers, modern states also provide value to citizens—or at least, I <em>personally</em> like regular garbage pickup and sewage treatment.</p> <p>However, the quest for legibility comes with serious tradeoffs. Measurement requires quantification and simplification of systems that are, in many cases, healthier in their natural complex forms. It also requires glossing over the reality of complexity that <em>can’t</em> be reduced.</p> <p>This tradeoff was particularly unclear to 20^th-century high modernists, drunk on the low-hanging fruit of early 20^th-century technocratic organization. New forms of power generation were (and still are) resisted by industrialists profiting off the old; medical advances were (and still are) resisted by popular prejudices and purveyors of snake oil.</p> <p>High modernist overreach quickly led to failures, but was slow to acknowledge them. Le Corbusier demanded well-organized cities. He created the first building standards, but was also convinced that modern, legible communities required absolute separation of functions—pedestrian versus motorized travel, work versus home, all the foundations of modern zoning woes. If your neighborhood isn’t walkable, or your downtown is a desert of parking garages, you can probably blame him. “Many new capitals,” Scott says of Corbusier-planned cities, “seem intended as completed and self-contained objects. No subtraction, addition, or modification is contemplated—only admiration.” Imagine the Jetsons’ towers, and ask yourself what life would be like if flying cars were the <em>only</em> way to leave your house.</p> <p>High modernism gets worse the less room there is for pushback from those who have to live with it. Lenin argued for authoritarian imposition of organization and legibility, which he put into practice as soon as he could. Forced collectivization in the Soviet Union, and similar pushes for easily countable and measurable production (e.g., forced permanent settlement in Tanzania in the ’70s) all aim for standardization at the cost of long-term sustainability and resilience. This kind of centralization is the foundation for any sort of extractive imperialism or authoritarianism; it makes it easier to take resources from those who need them, but also reduces local ability to <em>produce</em> resources tailored to local needs.</p> <p>Long-term, this push for legibility leads to many of the environmental problems we face now. Scott describes how “the systematic, cyclopean shortsightedness of high-modernist agriculture that courts certain forms of failure… casts into relative obscurity all the outcomes lying outside the immediate relationship between farm inputs and yields.” Soil structure, water quality, land-tenure relations—all the things that <a href="https://reactormag.com/asking-permission-for-the-harvest-robin-wall-kimmerers-braiding-sweetgrass/">Kimmerer</a> celebrates about a working ecology are undermined by neat monocropped rows. The rows are easy to count, predict, and harvest with modern machinery. They also demand making all the land’s topography and geography as close to identical as possible, and lose all the advantages of a diverse, thriving ecosystem.</p> <p>It’s not only land and buildings that get simplified in the quest for legibility, but people. So many skills—farming, firefighting, medicine, artistic creation—require the “metis” practical knowledge that involves constant adaptation to situational variability. High modernism values transferability of skills over dependence on individual expertise (except where the expert <em>serves </em>the modernist organizational effort). Standardization allows for scaling and automation, and predictable factory outputs. It also reduces not only the advantages of metis, but recognition and appreciation of that kind of positive variability.</p> <p>Ultimately, what Scott recommends is humility. There are advantages of legibility that most of us would prefer not to give up—but top-down comprehensibility is not the ultimate societal good. It’s also not <em>possible</em> to the degree that 20^th-century high modernists imagined. We need compromise systems that <em>begin</em> “from a premise of incomplete knowledge,” and that treat that uncertainty as something beyond a problem to be solved.</p> <section class="wp-block-shop-the-book shop-the-book"> <h2 class="shop-the-book-headline">Buy the Book</h2> <div class="shop-the-book-content"> <figure class="shop-the-book-image-desktop image-cover"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="cover of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C Scott" /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <div class="flex items-center"> <figure class="shop-the-book-image-mobile image-cover"> <!-- <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" /> --> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="cover of Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C Scott" role="presentation" /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <h3 class="shop-the-book-title text-h3">Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed</h3> <p class="shop-the-book-author">James C. Scott</p> </div> </div> <button type="button" class="inline-block px-8 py-4 text-center btn tablet:py-3 text-h6 bg-red text-white shop-the-book-button" id="buy_book" data-trigger="modal" data-target="#modal-1770040570" aria-open="false" aria-label="Buy Book"> <span class="inline-flex items-center button-label btn-label"> Buy Book </span> </button> </div> </div> <div id="modal-1770040570" class="shop-the-book-modal"> <div class="shop-the-book-modal-inner"> <button class="js-modal-close absolute top-5 right-5 z-10" type="button" aria-label="icon-close"> <svg class="w-[19px] h-[19px]" width="18" height="19" viewbox="0 0 18 19" fill="none" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" aria-label="close" role="img" aria-hidden="true"> <path d="M1 17L17 1" stroke="black" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" /> <path d="M1 17L17 1" stroke="black" stroke-opacity="0.2" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" /> <path d="M17 17.0809L1 1.08093" stroke="black" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" /> <path d="M17 17.0809L1 1.08093" stroke="black" stroke-opacity="0.2" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" /> </svg> </button> <div class="shop-the-book-modal-content"> <figure class="shop-the-book-modal-image-desktop image-cover"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <div class="flex items-center"> <figure class="shop-the-book-modal-image-mobile image-cover"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="450" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/seeing-like-a-state.jpg" class="attachment-full size-full" alt="Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" /> </figure> <div class="grow shrink basis-0"> <h3 class="shop-the-book-modal-title">Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed</h3> <p class="shop-the-book-modal-author">James C. Scott</p> </div> </div> <p class="shop-the-book-modal-label">Buy this book from:</p> <ul class="not-prose ebook-links ebook-links-shortcode"><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B085CMNS8P?tag=tordotcomgeneral-20" data-book-title="Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" data-book-store="Amazon"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">Amazon</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="https://www.anrdoezrs.net/links/7992675/type/dlg/sid/tordotcomgeneral/https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/9780300246759" data-book-title="Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" data-book-store="Barnes and Noble"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">Barnes and Noble</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780300252989" data-book-title="Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" data-book-store="iBooks"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">iBooks</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780300246759" data-book-title="Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" data-book-store="IndieBound"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">IndieBound</span></a></li><li><a class="btn" target="_blank" href="https://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=9780300246759" data-book-title="Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed" data-book-store="Target"><span class="inline-flex items-center button-label text-h6 text-white font-aktiv">Target</span></a></li></ul> </div> </div> </div> </div> </section> <p>I first heard of <em>Seeing Like a State</em> from Max Gladstone, who I’m pretty sure is the Patient Zero for its spread among modern SFF authors. Like <a href="https://reactormag.com/seeds-of-story-how-charles-c-mann-1491-rewrote-my-brain/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>1491</em></a>, it immediately reshaped my brain, giving me new tools for thinking about worldbuilding, local activism, and scientific research.</p> <p>As a cognitive psychologist, I was trained to design controlled lab studies with quantifiable outcomes, and make generalizable inferences about human behavior from them. Sometimes this works, but sometimes the lab turns out to be a poor substitute for the complexities of everyday interaction. This particularly becomes an issue when we’re trying to solve a real-world problem. Suddenly I found myself asking what we were simplifying out while trying to make thoughts and relationships legible—a frustrating but provoking question for me, and probably for my colleagues too. “How do we measure this?” is a hard enough question, even before you add in “Why do we measure this?” and “What aren’t we measuring?”</p> <p>It’s also an incredibly productive question for worldbuilding. What is this society trying to see? What do people want or need to do that’s in conflict with legibility efforts? <em>Who</em> gets to do the measurement and interpretation? When we make space for illegible activities, how do we handle the tradeoffs?</p> <p>The whole concept of legibility, ironically, falls into the “can’t unsee it” category, and makes many confusing problems make so much more sense. Most of the non-fiction books I’ve read since encountering Scott—and a good few of the novels—contain marginal notes on the topic. Data harvesting, privacy, labor rights, assholes freaking out about diversity… there are connections to everything. If you’re trying to decide whether a proposed new law is a good idea, legibility is a good place to start—what knowledge does it assume, what simplifications will be required, and what kinds of data will need to be collected by whom to make it work…all are important questions that often get glossed. Online age verification, for example, becomes more problematic when you realize that it only works by submitting your kids’ personal information to social media companies.</p> <p>But I also think that Scott understates the value of legibility, and the tradeoffs that we face when we dismiss that value. The overreaches of high modernism explain the overreaches of the more recent backlashes. If you think all regulation eventually leads to five-year plans with standardized Soviet collectives, then vaccine mandates must be a tool of tyranny. Limiting arsenic in drinking water puts you on the slippery slope to state-forced famine.</p> <p>There’s a point toward the end of the book where Scott celebrates the value of local, adaptive knowledge with Thomas Jefferson’s ideal “yeoman farmer.” My margins overflow with the extremity of my side-eye. Centralized tyrants are bad—but local ones are no better. The yeoman “farmer,” utterly dependent on slavery, is far worse than Le Corbusier. But Scott, like so many, gives more attention to state-level authoritarian failures than to all the other levels and types of institution that can demand conformity and destroy freedom.</p> <p>Scott’s concepts, though, apply just as well to these institutions. On this read, I suddenly realized that the “thin simplification” of metis expertise explains why AI companies try so hard to replace the most variable, rewarding types of human effort. AI art is more predictable than human artists in much the same way that a monocropped tree plantation is more predictable than a healthy forest. It would be very convenient to a lot of people, especially those who judge art by audience size, if our work could be easily directed and systematized. Legibility strikes again!</p> <p>I suspect that the best alternatives are found, not in Jefferson’s slaveholders, but in Kimmerer’s very human appreciation of the systems we work with, not as problems to be solved but as partners to collaborate with. She manages to combine modern botanical studies with asking permission for the harvest; it’s a model for seeing more without seeking impossible, destructive levels of quantified control.</p> <div style="height:10px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>The Best Seeds for Speculative Stories</strong></h3> <p><strong><em>Seeing Like a Surveillance State.</em></strong> Surveillance is a core part of most dystopias, and even of some sorta-positive futures. There’s a long inheritance from <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/1984-75th-anniversary-george-orwell/aef4adf3bb37311b?ean=9780451524935&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>1984</em></a>, but I increasingly see stories imagining “transparent” societies where privacy is traded off for safety and social services. In real life, Orwell’s deliberately salient watchers are mirrored by institutions like China’s social credit system. In other places, we face instead pervasive corporate data collection, masked as convenience and the promise of more interesting ads. All of this opens questions for stories: what new kinds of surveillance might be developed in the future, by whom, and for what purpose? What types of control will they try to exert, with what tradeoffs? And is it possible to get luxury space communism without luxury space panopticons?</p> <p><strong><em>New Kinds of Science.</em></strong> The history of the modern world—as <a href="https://reactormag.com/infernal-gravity-and-the-logic-of-death-scenes-ada-palmers-inventing-the-renaissance/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ada Palmer</a> points out—is a history of changing methods for gathering and understanding knowledge. And yet, science fiction about new kinds of science is surprisingly rare. Current research wrestles with the dichotomy between quantitative data—legible, standardizable, analyzable via statistics and algorithms—and qualitative data. Qualitative studies capture nuance and local complexity—but then what? Perhaps in the future we’ll develop more systematic methods for handling qualitative information, or perhaps we’ll learn how to glean more and better applications <em>without</em> systematizing everything. Either way, there’s drama to be found amid both the development of those methods, and the researchers trying to navigate them.</p> <p><strong><em>Invisible Revolutions</em>.</strong> The flip side of surveillance is the resistance to that surveillance, and to the control that it enables. As attempts at legibility become more sophisticated, how do we find—or make—cracks to hide in? More subtly, how do we preserve and exercise metis in a world trying to automate it away? The artists’ collectives, guerrilla gardens, and makerspaces of the present will have descendants in every century. These cracks aren’t only the seeds of revolution during dystopia, but of questioning and change in better times.</p> <div style="height:10px" aria-hidden="true" class="wp-block-spacer"></div> <h3 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>New Growth: What Else to Read</strong></h3> <p>Max Gladstone’s <a href="https://maxgladstone.com/series/the-craft-sequence/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Craft Sequence</a> is fundamentally an exploration of the tension between pre-modern and high modern societal structures, with the tradeoffs and legibility problems made plain in the form of old gods demanding sacrifice versus necromantic lawyers demanding… mostly different forms of sacrifice. Other books exploring the tension between legibility and privacy/flexibility include Vajra Chandrasekera’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-saint-of-bright-doors-vajra-chandrasekera/611240a979ae400d?ean=9781250847409&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Saint of Bright Doors</em></a> and Benjamin Rosenbaum’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-unraveling-benjamin-rosenbaum/2d13d1b8bd222470?ean=9781645660309&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Unraveling</em></a>.</p> <p>Cory Doctorow’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/little-brother-cory-doctorow/3ddcdf6e667f5b6d?ean=9780765323118&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">entire</a> <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/attack-surface-cory-doctorow/b68029077ff0eac0?ean=9781250757517&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">oeuvre</a> plays with near-future hackers finding ways around surveillance and control. The recent <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/we-will-rise-again-speculative-stories-and-essays-on-protest-resistance-and-hope-annalee-newitz/d52e1cea32724df2?ean=9781668095959&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>We Will Rise Again</em></a> anthology (edited by Annalee Newitz, Karen Lord, and Malka Older) is full of excellent answers to the questions raised above under the <em>Invisible Revolutions</em> seed—if you’ve been wanting more stories with hackers <em>and</em> gardeners and new ideas for resistance, you want to read this one.</p> <p>Most of golden age science fiction reflects the optimistic assumptions of high modernism, but <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/foundation-isaac-asimov/6ed489c68e59d9dc?ean=9780553293357&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Foundation</em></a> is particularly illustrative. I don’t actually recommend the book for people who enjoy things like character development; I do recommend the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804484/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TV adaptation</a> for a modern take.</p> <p>On the non-fiction side, Dan Davies’ <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-unaccountability-machine-why-big-systems-make-terrible-decisions-and-how-the-world-lost-its-mind-dan-davies/0949fd041ef23828?ean=9780226843087&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Unaccountability Machine</em></a> looks at how institutions handle complex problems, and asks both how they can do a better job while hitting fewer of Scott’s failure modes, and why said handling is so often designed to avoid blame rather than find real solutions. Ursula Franklin’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-real-world-of-technology-ursula-franklin/7ee10478259fb3c7?ean=9780887846366&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Real World of Technology</em></a> comes at legibility from a different direction, contrasting tools designed for legibility and standardization with those designed for artisan expertise. And I’ve just started reading C. Thi Nguyen’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-score-how-to-stop-playing-somebody-else-s-game-c-thi-nguyen/10cacf42dab73bd5?ean=9780593655658&amp;next=t" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game</em></a>. Nguyen asks why the effect of scoring in games is so different from the effect of quantified metrics in the larger society, and whether and how metrics can ever be made more functional than destructive. It all comes around again to the tradeoffs of legibility, and my margins are once again full of connections to Scott’s work.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots" /> <p>What are your favorite stories about surveillance, privacy, quantification, and resistance? Share in the comments![end-mark]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/the-omnipotent-eye-versus-the-neighborhood-james-c-scotts-seeing-like-a-state/">The Omnipotent Eye Versus the Neighborhood: James C. Scott’s &lt;i&gt;Seeing Like a State&lt;/i&gt;</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/the-omnipotent-eye-versus-the-neighborhood-james-c-scotts-seeing-like-a-state/">https://reactormag.com/the-omnipotent-eye-versus-the-neighborhood-james-c-scotts-seeing-like-a-state/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837852">https://reactormag.com/?p=837852</a></p>

<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Molly Templeton</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/daredevil-born-again-season-2-teaser/">https://reactormag.com/daredevil-born-again-season-2-teaser/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837846">https://reactormag.com/?p=837846</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal"> <div class="container container-desktop"> <div class="flex flex-col mx-auto post-hero-container"> <div class="post-hero-content"> <div class="post-hero-tags font-aktiv text-xs tracking-[0.5px] font-medium uppercase"> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/articles/news/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag News 0"> News </a> </span> <span class="mr-3"> <i class="inline-block w-2 h-2 rounded-full mr-[5px] bg-blue"></i> <a href="https://reactormag.com/tag/daredevil-born-again/" class="inline-block link-no-animation" aria-label="Link to term or tag Daredevil: Born Again 1"> Daredevil: Born Again </a> </span> </div> <h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">The Important Thing About This <i>Daredevil: Born Again</i> Season 2 Teaser Is That It Features Jessica Jones</h2> <div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">And she&#8217;s not carrying Matty anywhere</div> <div class="post-hero-wrapper"> <div class="post-hero-inner"> <p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&amp;_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/molly-templeton/" title="Posts by Molly Templeton" class="author url fn" rel="author">Molly Templeton</a></p> <span class="post-hero-symbol relative top-[-2px] hidden tablet:block">|</span> <p class="text-xs uppercase post-hero-publish font-aktiv"> Published on January 27, 2026 </p> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-caption 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11.7513C4.78371 10.1926 2.89605 9.41364 0.678713 9.41431V6.41431C2.21205 6.41431 3.64538 6.70197 4.97871 7.27731C6.31205 7.85264 7.47471 8.63597 8.46671 9.62731C9.45805 10.6186 10.2414 11.781 10.8167 13.1143C11.392 14.4476 11.6794 15.881 11.6787 17.4143H8.67871Z" fill="currentColor" fill-opacity="0.2" /> </g> <defs> <clippath id="clip0_1051_121783"> <rect width="17" height="17" fill="white" transform="translate(0.678711 0.414307)" /> </clippath> </defs> </svg> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </details> </div> </div> </div> <div class="post-hero-media "> <figure class="w-full h-auto post-hero-image"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="740" height="457" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Jessica-740x457.jpg" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Jessica Jones in Daredevil Born Again Season 2 Trailer" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Jessica-740x457.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Jessica-1100x680.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Jessica-768x475.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Jessica-1536x949.jpg 1536w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Jessica.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure> <div class="post-hero-caption post-hero-caption-horizontal [&amp;_a]:link"><p>Photo: Marvel Television</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </post-hero> <div class="wp-block-more-from-category"> <div> </div> </div> <p>Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) is back, and her outfits haven&#8217;t changed (much). <em>Daredevil: Born Again</em> is also finally back, though a little later than expected: the second season of the Disney+ series now premieres on March 24. (Unless they move it again, as they are frequently wont to do.)</p> <p>And how are things in Hell&#8217;s Kitchen? Well. You know. Bloody, violent, sometimes confusing, scattered with brief scenes of all the characters you know and love or loathe. Also, Matthew Lillard is here as Mr. Charles, a character <a href="https://movieweb.com/matthew-lillard-daredevil-born-again-season-2-character-details/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">he&#8217;s said</a> is &#8220;completely new to Hell&#8217;s Kitchen&#8221; who doesn&#8217;t wear &#8220;any lycra of any kind.&#8221; </p> <p>The teaser is set to Donald Glover&#8217;s song &#8220;Lithonia,&#8221; and there&#8217;s so little dialogue that it winds up feeling like one of those awkward music videos for a movie&#8217;s theme song. I hadn&#8217;t thought about Babylon A.D.&#8217;s <em>RoboCop 2</em> tie-in song &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo_n0kxWhng" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Kid Goes Wild</a>&#8221; for a hundred years, but this teaser made me think of it. And the video.</p> <p>Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) and Matt (Charlie Cox) are either continuing their on-again, off-again dance, or he&#8217;s hallucinating about it; Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) appears for a brief moment, presumably in flashback; Kingpin (Vincent D&#8217;Onofrio) is in a boxing ring; his Anti-Vigilante Task Force is still in action; and Foggy&#8217;s murderer Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) is smirking. The Punisher is not here at the moment, being otherwise occupied.</p> <p>The first season of <em>Born Again</em>, as Joe George wrote, <a href="https://reactormag.com/daredevil-born-again-offers-a-much-needed-corrective-to-relentless-copaganda/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">was a much-needed correction to relentless copaganda</a>. Will this season continue that theme, or crumple into something lesser? We&#8217;ll find out in two months. [end-mark]</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <site-embed id="18106"/> </div></figure> <p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/daredevil-born-again-season-2-teaser/">The Important Thing About This &lt;i&gt;Daredevil: Born Again&lt;/i&gt; Season 2 Teaser Is That It Features Jessica Jones</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/daredevil-born-again-season-2-teaser/">https://reactormag.com/daredevil-born-again-season-2-teaser/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=837846">https://reactormag.com/?p=837846</a></p>