Abigail Nussbaum
@abigailnussbaum.bsky.social
Blogger, critic, 2017 and 2025 best fan writer Hugo winner. Blogs at wrongquestions.blogspot.com and www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com Review collection TRACK CHANGES available at briardenebooks.uk/shop/ Member of the 2026 Otherwise Award jury
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai", our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Uruk-Hai
"Merry and Pippin Captured by Orcs" by Inger Edelfeldt Neither Pippin nor Merry remembered much of the later part of the journey. Evil dream...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
💥 Good news! I’m back at @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org with more of my “smoosh the books together and see what happens” nonsense! Here I am on Palmer/Walton’s Trace Elements and Hachemi/Sanches’s The Mulai - and on why, if a genre is a conversation, we should make it as noisy and unwieldy as we can.
Snap! Criticism: Trace Elements and The Mulai
Dan Hartland What’s a conversation for? It’s an important question for this column, since its whole schtick is putting two things next to each other and listening to what they say. So let’s try and…
ancillaryreviewofbooks.org
Over at @lawgunsmoney.bsky.social, some thoughts on RJ Mitte, Walter White Jr., and child actors. www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/10/no-m...
No More Child Actors - Lawyers, Guns & Money
Breaking Bad would not have worked without Walter White Jr. As played by RJ Mitte, Walter Jr. (or, as he sometimes preferred to be called, Flynn) was not the heart of the show, as innocent characters ...
lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com
I remain pretty skeptical about this project, but Gerwig (or whoever cut the trailer) gets all the points in the world for a) using "Stairway to Heaven", and b) NOT using a slowed-down, orchestral version of "Stairway to Heaven" youtu.be/gDJ-ini7fF0
NARNIA: THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW | Official Trailer | Netflix
YouTube video by Netflix
youtu.be
Interesting discussion of FlyDubai 1073 (hat tip @rohminhon.bsky.social) that gets into the unsung role of the pilots who landed the plane. Apparently this was a very tricky landing and they, as well as the pilot and passengers, played a big role in saving the plane. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiIX...
The FlyDubai Story Just Got Even CRAZIER!
YouTube video by Mentour Now!
youtube.com
The continuing excellence of this LOTR reread.
Abigail Nussbaum@abigailnussbaum.bsky.social · 4d agoThe Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai", our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai", our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Uruk-Hai
"Merry and Pippin Captured by Orcs" by Inger Edelfeldt Neither Pippin nor Merry remembered much of the later part of the journey. Evil dream...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai", our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Uruk-Hai
"Merry and Pippin Captured by Orcs" by Inger Edelfeldt Neither Pippin nor Merry remembered much of the later part of the journey. Evil dream...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
The first of our new series of Vintage SFF Reviews on @strangehorizons.bsky.social !
Dan Hartland@danhartland.bsky.social · 6d agoWe promised you regular new reviews of older SFF - and here’s the first of many! Paul March-Russell on 1956’s Tiger! Tiger! (or The Stars My Destination, depending who you ask) by Alfred Bester: a picaresque, a revenge tragedy, a quest, a romance. Edited, of course, by @kateem.bsky.social.
Far too many people on my feed and in my mentions are debating which Israelis are inherently killable. Guys, the issue isn't whether all Israelis serve in the IDF, or whether you can get out of conscription. It's that anyone who says "all members of group X are guilty" is advocating genocide.
An important corollary to the Surf Dracula tweet that I think should be talked about more, now that we're basically inundated with these types of shows, is that most of them don't get renewed, but even the ones that are don't turn into the weekly adventures of Surf Dracula in the second season.
A lot of things in the last three years have shocked me, but perhaps none quite as much as the complete inability of large swathes of the left to criticize Israel without lapsing into virulent antisemitism. Such a profound failure on both the moral and pragmatic level.
Isaac (proud small hat wearer) Gantwerk Mayer@isaacgantwerkmayer.bsky.social · last wk.If you want to know why Jews are suspicious of you when you're just trying to be a well-meaning antizionist gentile, consider that these two things were written by the same man, Guangtian Ha, a (currently suspended) religion professor at Haverford
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai" today, our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Uruk-Hai
"Merry and Pippin Captured by Orcs" by Inger Edelfeldt Neither Pippin nor Merry remembered much of the later part of the journey. Evil dream...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
This was written, as the first sentence indicates, as the third in a trio of reviews, the other two of which are not online yet. A big and not a little bit confounding novel that in some ways I'm still digesting. locusmag.com/review/the-b...
The Breakup by Kurt Andersen: Review by Niall Harrison
The Breakup, Kurt Andersen (Random House 978-1-98480-137-1, $30.00, 553pp, hc) August 2026. The fall of the United States, a triptych, part three. The early 2030s again, a civil war again, but a di…
locusmag.com
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai", our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Uruk-Hai
"Merry and Pippin Captured by Orcs" by Inger Edelfeldt Neither Pippin nor Merry remembered much of the later part of the journey. Evil dream...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai", our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Uruk-Hai
"Merry and Pippin Captured by Orcs" by Inger Edelfeldt Neither Pippin nor Merry remembered much of the later part of the journey. Evil dream...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Uruk-Hai" today, our first close-up view of Orcs (and our first Merry and Pippin POV chapter). This is an opportunity to talk about how Tolkien humanizes his most problematic invention, and where he stops short. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Uruk-Hai
"Merry and Pippin Captured by Orcs" by Inger Edelfeldt Neither Pippin nor Merry remembered much of the later part of the journey. Evil dream...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
Lots of talk about the many things wrong with the British Green Party's anti-Zionism statement, but I'm really struck by its conviction that a political party has the right to determine how a foreign nation should define itself politically and be comprised. Feels like real British Empire shit.
Also, do you like Roseanna Pendlebury? Do you like Roseanna Pendlebury on podcasts? Do you like Roseanna Pendlebury on podcasts talking about award shortlists? Do you like Roseanna Pendlebury on podcasts talking about award shortlists that skew literary? Do ya? Man, is it Christmas for you today.
A Meal of Thorns 60- 2026 UKLG List with Roseanna Pendlebury
Only in its 5th year of operation, the Le Guin Fiction prize has already become something of a critical darling, with very interesting shortlists and winners that rarely overlap with other genre aw…
ancillaryreviewofbooks.org
I rolled credits on Zero Parades today, and watched the season (series?) finale of Lanterns, so that's two things I was generally enjoying, with some caveats, that served up unsatisfying, underwhelming endings, and now I feel like I deserve a do-over for the whole day.
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Riders of Rohan". Specifically, Éomer, the first of several characters who seem to have been designed to echo Boromir, and to reflect on his strengths and weaknesses. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Riders of Rohan
Illustration by jorahh , 2025 'What do you know of these horsemen, Aragorn?' [Gimli] said. 'Do we sit here waiting for sudden death?' 'I hav...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
The Strangers is a fantastic novel (memoir? something else?) and reviewing it was both a challenge and a pleasure.
Naomi Alderman@naomialderman.bsky.social · last wk.reviewed by the brilliant @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social in Locus Magazine this month and look, it's terribly wrong to say something like "oh *thank goodness*, this very experienced SF reviewer has understood what I was going for on the SF side of the story" but this is 100% what I was going for.
I've got some thoughts on Ted Lasso S4, and how a show that is nominally about feminism seems to have no interest in the day-to-day lives of women, over at @lawgunsmoney.bsky.social. www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/10/what...
What Does Ted Lasso Know About Women? - Lawyers, Guns & Money
The first season of Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso was something special. Beyond managing to stretch a one-line joke, about an American football coach who is hired to coach the other kind of football in Englan...
lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Riders of Rohan". Specifically, Éomer, the first of several characters who seem to have been designed to echo Boromir, and to reflect on his strengths and weaknesses. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Riders of Rohan
Illustration by jorahh , 2025 'What do you know of these horsemen, Aragorn?' [Gimli] said. 'Do we sit here waiting for sudden death?' 'I hav...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
I've got some thoughts on Ted Lasso S4, and how a show that is nominally about feminism seems to have no interest in the day-to-day lives of women, over at @lawgunsmoney.bsky.social. www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/10/what...
What Does Ted Lasso Know About Women? - Lawyers, Guns & Money
The first season of Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso was something special. Beyond managing to stretch a one-line joke, about an American football coach who is hired to coach the other kind of football in Englan...
lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com
For a show that is nominally about feminism, there sure seem to be a lot of storylines in Ted Lasso S4 that require an absolute ignorance of the day-to-day reality of life as a woman.
Felicia Davin@feliciadavin.com · 2w agoPSA for romance authors and also the Ted Lasso writers room apparently, but if your "accidental/surprise pregnancy" storyline relies on a grown woman never thinking about her own risk of pregnancy while she's regularly having PIV sex, I'm out
The Great Tolkien Reread meets "The Riders of Rohan". Specifically, Éomer, the first of several characters who seem to have been designed to echo Boromir, and to reflect on his strengths and weaknesses. wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-...
The Great Tolkien Reread: The Riders of Rohan
Illustration by jorahh , 2025 'What do you know of these horsemen, Aragorn?' [Gimli] said. 'Do we sit here waiting for sudden death?' 'I hav...
wrongquestions.blogspot.com
I'm not sure it has sunk in for people just how close we came to a hundred-plus Israelis crashing into the Jordanian desert in a giant fireball. Which, aside from being horrible in itself, would most likely have meant a very bad time for a lot of other people in the Middle East.
As a follow-up to this, it was quite instructive to watch Gregg Araki's I Want Your Sex the night after watching The Love Hypothesis. Not a romance, and the main relationship is anything but an OTP. But still the sex scenes are funny, sexy, and deeply rooted in character. (Also, just a fun movie.)
Abigail Nussbaum@abigailnussbaum.bsky.social · 3w agoOne negative effect of the success of Heated Rivalry is that it has convinced creators of romance film/TV that they *must* have explicit sex scenes, regardless of whether the actors have that kind of chemistry, or if the script/director can make those scenes feel sexy.
My review of Frances Hardinge's Traitor's Nest is up at @locusmag.bsky.social. We had a lot of fun mocking Andy Serkis's "what if Animal Farm, but cuddly" concept a few months back, but Hardinge offers an example of how that concept might actually work. locusmag.com/review/trait...
Traitors’ Nest by Frances Hardinge: Review by Abigail Nussbaum - Locus
Traitors' Nest, Frances Hardinge (First Ink UK 978-1-52909-064-2, £16.99, 448pp, hc) August 2026. (Amulet 978-1-4197-9414-8, $19.99, 400pp, hc) September 2026. For the villagers who farm the valley where Frances Hardinge's Traitors' Nest begins, their world is arranged in a straightforward hierarchy. The lord in the castle sends commands through his bailiff, who talks to local leaders like the game warden Joett, who organizes the farmers accordingly, and sends their complaints …Read More
locusmag.com