Warning: spoilers for Outlander season four, below. It's no secret that the Outlander show writers have had a formidable task in adapting Diana Gabaldon's lengthy books for television. As executive producer Maril Davis told POPSUGAR in a recent interview, "Diana's books are huge and there's no way to get ever nook and cranny from the books onto the show." That being said, the latest episode, titled "The Birds and the Bees," felt even more sped up than most entries into the series. The 50-minute story manages to cover months of time, condensing and omitting key plot points from the book left and right. In case you need a refresher about how exactly it all goes down in the Gabaldon's novel — or if you've never read the books and are curious — here are the biggest differences in the adaptation and what they mean for the show. The Aftermath of Brianna's RapeIn the book, days pass between Brianna (Sophie Skelton) consumating her marriage to Roger (Richard Rankin) and being raped by Stephen Bonnet (Ed Speleers), whereas on the show, less than an hour goes by between when Roger storms off and Brianna meets Bonnet. In fact, readers don't see the rape happening in real time; they hear about it later when Brianna recounts her trauma to Claire (Caitriona Balfe). All of this happens after she has met her father and traveled to Fraser's Ridge. But it makes sense to change the order of things around, especially here. Seeing it on screen — even if the rape actually happens mostly off screen — gives Brianna's attack a greater impact than hearing about it later. Plus, it has always felt a little weird reading the book to think that sometime in the midst of handfasting with Roger and meeting Jamie, Brianna meets Bonnet and is raped. She goes about her business as if nothing has happened, and we only learn about the rape months later, which is quite jarring. Fergus's TrialNon-book readers may be surprised to learn that there's a whole side plot where Fergus (played by Cesar Domboy in the show) is on trial for attacking a Red Coat who was trying to steal his horse. That's what brings Jamie (Sam Heughan) down from the ridge, to testify on Fergus' behalf — and it turns out it was actually Marsali (Lauren Lyle) who kicked the Red Coat in the jaw when he tried to steal the horse. Brianna even attends the trial before heading back to the ridge. This sort of thing definitely adds more intrigue to the agents of the Crown being out to get Jamie — they try to make him come to the trial to testify during harvest, thereby damaging the harvest because Claire can't possibly bring in all the crops herself — but it makes sense why it was cut. The show just doesn't have the same luxury Gabaldon has with her pacing. "I think if you're a book fan, you're like — I want to see every single page in that book translated to the screen," Davis told us. "[But] we have 13 episodes, as opposed to Diana — she's said many times she has so much more time and luxury to spread these things out . . . The best we can do is lay out the story, lay out the major tentpoles, lay out where we need to go and fit in as much as we can. That means, obviously, that a lot of story has to go. But at the end of the day, if we can stay true to the spirit of the book and the spine of the book, we feel we've done our job." Brianna Finds Her ParentsBrianna meeting Jamie happens basically the same way on the show as it does in the book, though interestingly, book Brianna gets to briefly meet her aunt, Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy), at River Run before Fergus' trial. Claire, however, is nowhere to be seen. Brianna isn't reunited with her until they make their way back to Fraser's Ridge — and we don't get to hear Brianna tell her parents about the death notice. It is mentioned in passing and doesn't come up again until much later, plus in the book, they have a definite date for the fire that will kill Jamie and Claire. The Misunderstanding With RogerThe show definitely has the gist of this storyline down, but there's one big difference: on the show, Lizzie (Caitlin O'Ryan) knows for sure that Brianna was raped because she sees the aftermath with her own eyes. Lizzie assumes it was Roger, the man she saw arguing with Brianna in the street. When he appears at Fraser's Ridge, Lizzie tells Jamie and Ian (John Bell) that he's the man who attacked Bree. In the book, when Bree returns from her handfasting and love making with Roger, she hasn't been raped yet. That happens days later. That night, Lizzie infers an awful lot based on Bree's demeanor after her fight with Roger and then later, Lizzie takes it upon herself to tell Jamie that Roger raped Brianna. Lizzie is actually quite meddlesome and presumptuous in the book and it's actually kind of nice that the show changed this a bit. It makes the misunderstanding feel a bit less contrived. Suffice to say, the show writers managed to squeeze a great many events from the book into this episode. But as Davis tells us, they do the best they can with the allotment of screentime they're given and she actually doesn't think this season is whizzing along any faster than previous seasons have. "I'm not sure I've noticed this season more than other seasons that it's going so much faster, but I'm thrilled the way it all worked out. We certainly break the season where we pull out the tentpole moments and want to make sure we hit everything and I'm sure that we did that," says Davis. "At the end of the day, we just have to try to come to a consensus among ourselves and try to do the major moments and stay on the path. If we can stick to the spirit of the book and if Diana is happy, we feel we've done the best job we can. I think there's a very satisfying ending to the season."
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It was the best of years, it was the worst of years, it was the wokest of years, it was the most problematic of years, it was the year of AI, it was the year of scooters, it was the year of Big Tech triumph, it was the year of Big Tech scandals, it was the year of Musk’s disgrace, it was the year of Tesla’s redemption, it was the year of shitcoin justice, it was definitely not the year of AR or VR, it was the dumbest timeline, it was the spring of stanning, it was the winter of wtf. It was, in short, a year tailor-made for The Jons, an annual award celebrating tech’s more dubious achievers, named, in an awe-inspiring fit of humility, after myself. So let’s get to it! With very little further ado, I give you: the fourth annual Jon Awards for Dubious Technical Achievement! (The Jons 2015) (The Jons 2016) (The Jons 2017) THE FEET AND LEGS AND TORSO OF CLAY AWARD FOR SUDDEN REGRESSION TO THE MEAN To Elon Musk, who in the past year went from (in many eyes) “messiah who could do no wrong” to “man who has paid a $20 million fine and stepped down as chairman in order to settle with the SEC regarding allegations of tweeted fraud; been sued for very publicly accusing a stranger of pedophilia with no evidence; feuded with Azealia Banks; been roundly criticized for the conditions in Tesla’s factories; and been pilloried (though also, and to my mind more accurately, tentatively praised) for his new Boring Tunnel.” Don’t have heroes, kids. THE BUT ON THE OTHER HAND THERE ARE ALL THOSE SHINY NEW ELECTRIC CARS AWARD FOR ATTEMPTED DOOMSAYING Surprisingly, despite the previous award, this one goes to the herds of bears who spent much of the year claiming that Tesla’s imminent doom and bankruptcy would become obvious and indisputable any day now. The roars of the bears seem to have grown much quieter of late, probably because the Model 3’s production rate has rocketed from 1,000 per week at the start of the year to 1,000 per day of late. No mean feat on the part of Tesla employees. THE YES BUT THE DIFFERENCE IS THE RUSSIANS KNOW IT’S DISINFORMATION AWARD FOR BAD OPSEC To Donald Trump, who apparently continues to use an insecure iPhone which the Chinese and Russians listen in on. The good news? Officials have “confidence he was not spilling secrets because he rarely digs into the details of the intelligence he is shown and is not well versed in the operational specifics of military or covert activities.” Put less diplomatically, the President of the United States doesn’t pay enough attention to briefings to have any important secrets to share. Nothing to worry about there! Trump responded by tweeting a denial, saying he only had a “seldom used government cell phone” … from the iOS Twitter app. THE YOU MUST ADMIT I WAS AT LEAST RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING BEING DIFFERENT NOW AWARD FOR BUBBLY BITCOIN PREDICTIONS It’s too easy and obvious to give this award to John McAfee, who I suspect of actually angling for a Jon year after year. And as a believer that cryptocurrencies have long-term importance, I’m not going to award anyone for their less-outlandish-than-McAfee medium-term beliefs. So this award goes to Bitcoin uberbull Tom Lee, who claimed Bitcoin would end the year at $15,000 … in the second half of November. There’s a point you almost have to admire; the point at which hype becomes delusion. THE SURE BUT IT’S A MORE CONNECTED KIND OF MISERY, EXPLOITATION, AND DISINFORMATION AWARD FOR DESTROYING THE GLOBAL VILLAGE IN ORDER TO SAVE IT Not to Mark Zuckerberg, actually, whose company has, in its zeal for connecting the world, and its belief that this is always and automatically a good thing, amplified genocide, provided a platform for manipulation and disinformation which may have helped tip the Brexit referendum, and 2016 presidential election (both of which were admittedly so close that there were probably dozens of aspects which “helped tip” them) and is increasingly widely viewed as a significant net negative for the world thanks to its business model of incentivizing “engagement” above all else. He’d be a worthy recipient, but this goes to Sheryl Sandberg, for epitomizing Facebook leadership’s thin-skinned tunnel vision wherein they automatically suspect anyone who criticizes Facebook of having a bad-faith ulterior motive, when she “asked Facebook’s communications staff to research George Soros’s financial interests in the wake of his high-profile attacks on tech companies.” THE PICK A HORSE ANY HORSE BUT LOOK JUST ONE HORSE AWARD FOR OXYMORONISM IN THE FACE OF SOCIAL MEDIA To everyone — especially journalists and media executives — who thinks that the big social-media companies are too powerful and that tech companies should exercise more control over the dissemination of public speech, and/or to everyone who says that the big social-media companies shouldn’t ever censor while being perfectly aware that they are already exercising control over the dissemination of public speech via their timeline algorithms. There are many, many copies of this particular award to go around. (Note that there are at least two intellectually consistent approaches here: one is to be explicitly supportive of social media companies moderating speech; another is to favor non-algorithmic, non-amplifying, non-optimized-for-engagement, strict-chronological feeds) THE COMETH THE HOUR, COMETH THE SPECTACULARLY OUT-OF-TOUCH COVEN OF CLUELESS OLD WHITE MEN AWARD FOR REMINDING US THAT SOMETIMES THE CURE IS WORSE THAN THE DISEASE To the members of the United States Congress, both houses, for making Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai seem cuddly, friendly, wise, warm, human, plugged-in, and in-touch with the common man and woman, by comparison with their unbelievably clueless question. Who can forget “Senator, we sell ads,” and/or “Congressman, iPhone is made by a different company”? THE STREET FINDS ITS OWN DISUSES FOR THINGS AWARD FOR BOOTLEG URBAN RENEWAL To Lime, Bird, and the other scooter companies whose products have spent the year being thrown by the dozen into Lake Merritt in the heart of Oakland, presumably with the collective intent of turning that empty water into reclaimed land, just as downtown San Francisco is built on the carcasses of sailing ships from the 49er gold rush. THE OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ TRONC TRONC TRONC AWARD FOR FINALLY GETTING THAT THE JOKE WAS ON THEM To Tribune Publishing, until recently known as Tronc, for reminding us of their unbelievably terrible name when they finally — finally! — decided to abandon it in favor of something not risible. A small silver second-place award goes to Oath, the owner of TechCrunch, for thereby rising to the top of the “Worst Media Company Name” rankings. THE SOMETIMES NOTHING IS A REAL COOL HAND AWARD FOR DOING NOTHING BECAUSE NOTHING WAS NECESSARY To Twitter, who, when noted far-right wacko Laura Loomer handcuffed herself to Twitter’s NYC building after she was permanently banned by them for hate speech, responded by — brilliantly — doing nothing at all. They did not ask the police to remove her. They did not press charges. They ignored her completely. And Loomer went from “she will not remove the handcuffs until CEO Jack Dorsey reinstates her account” to “After several hours of complaining about the cold, Loomer eventually requested to be removed from the door.” THE COME ON NOW DON’T BE EVIL WAS A LONG TIME AGO AWARD FOR REDEFINING GOOGLEY To Google, obviously, for being forced to come to terms with what sure looks from the outside like a culture of pervasive sexual harassment by a massive employee walkout in the same year its plans for a new censorship-friendly China search engine leaked. Look not for the trigram in thy brother’s eye, etc. THE CENTRAL CASTING MAD SCIENTIST AWARD FOR BRINGING US THE DYSTOPIA WE DESERVE To He Jiankui, the self-funded doctor who apparently brought us the world’s first two human babies genetically edited via CRISPR, without letting anything like an ethics review board, a well-considered benefit/risk ratio, the pre-existence of well-established less-dangerous ways to achieve the allegedly desired result, or anything else stand in his way. But then, if he had, that wouldn’t really have captured the 2018zeitgeist, would it? THE WHAT ARE THE NEW RUULES AWARD FOR MAKING NICOTINE MORALLY AMBIGUOUS AGAIN To Juul, which has made a ridiculous boatload of money and more importantly made a lot of people seem very silly as they moral-panic about vaping as if it is the same as smoking, and others seem just as silly as they moral-panic about that moral panic as if vaping has been guaranteed on stone tablets to have no deleterious side effects at all. Where is the nuanced middle? Ah, let’s not kid ourselves, it’s 2018, no one cares about the nuanced middle any more. Bring on the outrage! THE LISTEN UP YOUNG WHIPPERSNAPPER I WAS THE CEO OF A CYBERSECURITY FIRM AND THE PRESIDENT’S CYBERSECURITY ADVISOR I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW AWARD FOR NOT ACTUALLY KNOWING ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT HOW TO CYBER THE CYBER. CYBER! To Rudy Giuliani, who really was the CEO of a cybersecurity firm (Cyber!) and really was the president’s cybersecurity advisor (Cyber! Cyber!) and yet, as shown by his bewildering yet hilarious accusations that one of his tweets was sabotaged by Twitter, does not actually understand the Internet at all. Or, we may presume, the cyber. Cyber! THE LOOK WE’RE ONLY A $30B COMPANY HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO KEEP TRACK OF ALL THESE LITTLE DETAILS AWARD FOR FORCING PEOPLE TO INTERACT WITH OTHERS NEARBY To Ericsson, who accidentally disabled phone service for hours for tens of millions of people around the globe because it failed to renew a (presumably TLS) software certificate used by its switching services ahead of its expiry. You can get those for free and automatically these days, btw. Never mind the cyber (Cyber!) attackers; it’s malingering incompetence that will get us all in the end. Speaking of which … THE WHO COULD POSSIBLY HAVE IMAGINED THAT SUCH A THING WOULD HAPPEN OR IF IT DID THAT WE WOULD RESPOND TO IT IN ALL THE WORST POSSIBLE WAYS AWARD FOR A REPERTOIRE OF PANICKED FLAILING INEPTITUDE WORTHY OF ARTHUR DENT To the authorities at Gatwick university, who first shut down one of the busiest airports in Europe for almost a day and a half during the pre-Christmas rush because there were reports of drones seen over its runways; then said they couldn’t possibly shoot down those drones for fear the stray bullets might harm someone; then conceded the possibility that there were no drones at all (though it seems like there probably were); then arrested a couple who turned out to be completely innocent; then reopened the airport with no resolution but that of the installation of an expensive new anti-drone system and the discovery of a single, untraced, damaged drone. This dithering paralysis raises many terrifying questions. I have two in particular. One: the people in charge of Gatwick — again, one of Europe’s biggest and busiest airports — never done any threat modelling / scenario analysis / contingency planning at all? And two: how many minutes-rather-than-hours would this shutdown have lasted if it had happened at a major airport in, say, Texas, before the bullet-ridden carcasses of the drones in question were dragged off the runway? I guess we’ll never know. But it gives me a certain dubious pleasure to bequeath to Gatwick, an airport I have known and disliked for many years, this year’s Jon of Jons. Congratulations, of a sort, to all the winners of the Jons! All recipients shall receive a bobblehead of myself made up as a Blue Man, as per the image on this post, which will doubtless become coveted and increasingly valuable collectibles. (And needless to say sometime next year they will become redeemable for JonCoin.) And, of course, all winners shall be remembered by posterity forevermore. 1Bobbleheads shall only be distributed if and when available and convenient. The eventual existence of said bobbleheads is not guaranteed or indeed even particularly likely. Not valid on days named after Norse or Roman gods. All rights reserved, especially those rights about which we have reservations. Netflix announced on December 28 that more than 45 million accounts watched its Netflix original horror movie, Bird Box, in seven days, making it a record breaking debut for the streaming service — but considering Netflix rarely specifies what its data means, it was difficult to gauge what that number meant. There are a lot of variables in Netflix’s statement. 45 million accounts doesn’t exactly translate to specific viewer counts, as an account could serve one person or an entire family. It’s also unclear from Netflix’s tweet how many people watched all of Bird Box (starring A-list actors like Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich) or even half of the movie, before switching to something else. Netflix famously doesn’t make its viewership numbers public, making it difficult to determine an accurate viewership number. This is different from Hollywood studios with theatrical releases, whose box office numbers are certified by authoritative box office tracking firms. Some of that information is beginning to come to light, though. A spokesperson for Netflix tells The Verge that the company only counts an account as having watched Bird Box “once a view surpasses 70 percent of the total running time (including credits).” Furthermore, “each ‘account’ may include multiple views and viewers but is only counted once,” the spokesperson added. By this logic, that means at least 45 million people have watched at least 70 percent of Bird Box. Considering that people may have watched Bird Box with friends or family, chances are that the total view count may be even higher than 45 million — especially given that Bird Box was released globally. To put that into context, Netflix boasted just over 137 million subscribers worldwide in October. Approximately 58 million of those subscribers are based in the United States, according to the company’s third quarter earnings report, with an additional 79 million subscribers worldwide. Netflix would not comment on where the majority of Bird Box’s viewers were geographically based. There are still a number of questions Netflix wouldn’t address when asked by The Verge, including how 45 million account views in seven days compares to the last record holder. It’s also unclear if Netflix’s estimates will match Nielsen’s ratings, which are still seen as the golden standard for accurate ratings. Netflix and Nielsen’s numbers have differed in the past — something that industry reports have bemoaned Netflix for in the past. “I’m fairly sure Bird Box is a phenomenon of some sort, but without verifiable data or comparative data for context, a Netflix-affiliated Twitter feed coming down from on-high with suspiciously specific (and yet entirely vague) data is the epitome of nonsense,” Daniel Feinberg, a critic at The Hollywood Reporter, tweeted. Still, Netflix rarely provides insight into how it collects data. Knowing that a view only counts as a view if 70 percent of Bird Box has been watched is a little more information than we had previously. A Netflix spokesperson added that specific data collection method is only applicable to Bird Box, not the rest of its content. Warning: a tidal wave of spoilers for (and bad water-based puns about) Aquaman ahead! Let's get this out of the way right now: yes, there's a postcredits scene in Aquaman. Well, technically it's a midcredits scene, which means, thank Poseidon, that you don't need to sit through the entirety of the credits to feast your eyes on the bonus footage. What's more is that there's just the one extra scene, so unless you truly enjoy watching the credits crawl by, you can be out the door faster than a sea creature screaming racist insults at Jason Momoa can vanish into the ocean floor (yes, a real thing that happens in this movie). If, however, you're wondering what goes on in said midcredits scene, we've got you covered. There are a handful of foes that Momoa's titular aqua-inclined superhero is forced to take on over the course of the film, from Patrick Wilson's King Orm to Dolph Lundgren's King Nereus. But also in the mix is Manta, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, who is mostly memorable due to his, um, shall we say, interesting choice of suit (those giant red bug eyes aren't scaring anyone, my dude). His vendetta against Aquaman, aka Arthur Curry, begins early on in the film when we encounter Manta and his father trying to violently overtake and ransack a Russian submarine. Their plan is foiled by Aquaman, who makes quick work of their crew, but in the ensuing confrontation, a large pipe falls on Manta's father and crushes him to the floor. As the sub fills with water, Manta begs Arthur to lift the pipe and save his dad. Aquaman is basically like, "This is the price you pay for being a pirate. Later." Manta's father drowns, but his grudge against Aquaman bubbles to the surface! (Hey, I warned you about these subpar water puns.) So, back to the midcredits scene. If a future Aquaman sequel ever comes to be, the scene functions as a way to set things up for another potential conflict between Aquaman and Manta. You see, Aquaman defeats Manta in the third act by going head-to-head with the villain during a carnage-filled brawl through Sicily that ends with Aquaman smashing Manta's helmet and throwing him off a cliff. That's the last we see of him until the midcredits scene picks up with Manta floating unconscious on some wood in the middle of the ocean. He's rescued by some men on a boat who don't seem all that important at first . . . until a shot of the boat's interior reveals whoever owns it is clearly interested in learning more about Aquaman's identity (newspaper clippings posted inside have that red "I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist" string hanging all over them). It doesn't take long before said conspiracy theorist is revealed to be Doctor Stephen Shin (Randall Park), who makes a pact with Manta: if Manta can lead Shin to Atlantis, the scientist will not only fix his broken helmet but also help him find out Aquaman's true identity. If Shin does indeed team up with Manta, Aquaman might be in real trouble. After all, the doctor is a renowned scientist with genius-level intellect in the comics, so crazy conspiracies or not, he could certainly help Manta get the revenge he so desires. A sequel has yet to be confirmed, so in the meantime, we'll have to do a little theorizing of our own. Investors and entrepreneurs need to address the mental health crisis in startups TechCrunch12/30/2018
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Colin Kroll, was the co-founder of Vine and HQ Trivia, both consumer sensations that brought joy to millions; Anthony Bourdain, had been a chef, journalist and philosopher, who brought understanding and connectedness to millions of lives; while Robin Williams built a career as a brilliant comedian and actor. What these three share in common is that they were all people at the pinnacle of their industry and they all died too soon. Their premature loss is a tragedy. The most brilliant and creative amongst us are sometimes the most troubled and nowhere is that clearer than in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. With each passing unnecessary death the importance of mental health comes briefly into focus… but that focus lasts no longer than a news cycle and nothing changes. The time for lip service came and went long ago. We must take these issues seriously and we need to act. The mental health epidemic is real. There are 18.5% Americans that will suffer from mental illness this year, 4% of them will suffer so acutely that it will substantially limit their ability to live their lives. That means it is extremely likely you or someone you know is suffering right now and could use support. Moreover, unlike many of the challenges we face today, the most common expressions of mental health disorder (anxiety, depression, substance abuse and imposter syndrome) are largely addressable through individual action. Not only should we all take action, we all cantake action. While national mental health statistics are troubling, they are downright terrifying for entrepreneurs. According to a study by Michael Freeman, entrepreneurs are 50% more likely to report having a mental health condition with some specific conditions being incredibly prevalent amongst founders. Founders are:
Addressing the ongoing mental health catastrophe in entrepreneurship is a moral imperative, and for wise investors, it should be a function of doing business. Venture capitalists make their living off of the blood, sweat, and tears of founders. It is through their passion and efforts that we succeed or fail. We can either choose to see founders purely as a means to an end (generating returns) or we can see them as the whole people they are. When I make an effort to get to know our founders beyond the most superficial level then I cannot help but be moved by their personal struggles. Seeing founders in our portfolio succeed on a personal level is just as rewarding for me as sharing in their professional success. Luckily, I believe the two are intrinsically linked, which means we don’t have to choose. As Michael Freeman writes:
Depression, anxiety and mood disorders all actively work to undermine founder performance. They often contribute to burnout, co-founder conflict, toxic company culture, increased employee turnover, an inability to hire top talent, an inability to “show up” for important meetings and pitches and poor decision making in general. According to Noam Wasserman at HBS, 65% of failed startups fail for avoidable reasons like co-founder conflict. All of these experiences are exacerbated when founders are in a time of high mental and emotional strain. Let’s assume that in a portfolio of 20 companies 15 of them fail or underperform and that Noam Wasserman’s 65% statistic holds true. That would mean that 10 of the 15 companies (65%) failed for avoidable “human centric” reasons. If a firm were able to help even half of those companies avoid failure caused by burnout and mental strain that would mean an additional five companies would be successful, doubling the number of successful outcomes in the portfolio. Even if you’re a huge pessimist, to help change the trajectory for one out of ten companies, changes the portfolio from five winners to six. In other words, supporting founders before their “people problems” become business problems yields a 20% improvement in performance. Even if one were indifferent to the personal lives of the portfolio founders, they should care about founder health if they care about portfolio returns. It’s great that investors profess to care about founders’ mental health, but words are not enough. We must act to reduce founders’ mental and emotional suffering. It’s the right thing to do and it’s good for business. Why do entrepreneurs suffer so much more acutely? Mental health problems permeate every industry not just the tech industry, but the statistics above would seem to indicate that we have a particular problem. What causes entrepreneurs to suffer at substantially higher than average rates? It’s a hard question to answer, and soon research from progressive labs like that of the Founder Central Initiative will help us to identify these drivers. For now, based on our own observations of founders, we believe there are several explanations which may contribute. Self-Selection: Most founders are smart, driven and skilled people whose resume could almost certainly land them a job with a higher lifetime expected value (the median salary at Facebook is now $240,000) but they still choose the grueling, uncertain and more creative founder journey. Founders are almost certainly pre-disposed towards certain conditions (like ADHD) for example, Garret Loporto, in his book, “The Davinci Method” cites Fortune Magazine as claiming that people with ADHD are 300% more likely to start their own company than others. Poisonous industry tropes: The narratives our industry tells are less real than pictures that grace the front of fashion magazines and are just as destructive. Photoshopped pictures of “perfect people” create an unattainable standard of beauty, the constant stream of stories about “overnight success” and “crushing it” create an unattainable standard for founders. Startups are hard: The magic of a great team is in building a group with complementary skills. When just starting out founders don’t have a complete team and are required to do things they are not well suited to do. Working on projects that do not fit within a leader’s innate skills tends to be emotionally draining. It’s not uncommon in an early startup for introverts in the company to have to pitch and make sales calls while extroverts are forced to sit at a desk and grind away in a CRM. Startups are alienating: The all-encompassing nature of a startup often causes founders to spend less time with family, friends and significant others and many are required to re-locate away from these support networks for funding or strategic reasons. As stress at a company builds, founders are more inclined to double down at work (a natural response to an emergency). This tendency only further burdens the founder by muting their supportive relationships and reduces their ability to cope with company pressures. A founder must be a rock: There’s a lot of pressure put on founders to stay steady in times of company turmoil. As a result, they are often alone when they need others the most. Founders report that they feel that they cannot talk with their co-founders, especially when the problem is with the co-founder, they cannot pass the burden of their worry on to their employees, and feel that their friends and family do not understand or are tired of hearing about the company. The “I am my company” syndrome: Founders blur the line between themselves and their companies in such a way that company failures often are felt as personal failures. Losing a customer contract or receiving a “no” from an investor can feel like a deeply personal rejection. Founders eat last: I have yet to meet a founder who has a budgeted line item for self-care or who takes guilt free vacations. In almost every other skilled industry there is recognition that people have a right to take care of themselves and that a little bit of self-care actually leads to a more productive workforce. Investors, founders and poorly trained middle managers all perpetuate a myth in the startup ecosystem that the only way to be successful is to grind yourself inexorably to the bone. Financial risk: In addition to opportunity cost, founders often go without a pay check and pour a significant portion of their personal capital into their businesses. This creates enormous financial stress and anxiety that sets up a scenario in which a business failure also creates personal financial ruin. A certain amount of “skin in the game” can be positive but founders are often already all-in emotionally with their businesses. A founder with too much skin in the game may live under a Sword of Damocles and be unable to focus on the key tasks, ironically bringing about their own worst fears. Imposter Syndrome: Founders often suffer from the sense that they don’t belong where they are and that eventually they will be exposed as frauds. This leads founders to chalk success up to luck but to take all the blame for any failures. 58% of tech workers suffer from Imposter Syndromeand I suspect the number is substantially higher among founders. Moving the goalposts: Founders find it difficult to celebrate the small wins, each victory brings on the next, greater challenge. The second most stressful time for founders is right before they are able to secure a major fundraise, the most stressful time is right afterwards. Substance Abuse: Our industry is awash in alcohol and other substances that founders and tech workers are encouraged to consumer freely for bonding, as a social crutch, and for performance optimization. These substances are both a cause and a symptom of broader problems in the ecosystem. I wager that simply reading the above list left you stressed out and self-identifying with a number of the factors that cause founders stress. Luckily there are some things we can all do to combat mental health strain. What can investors and founders do about founder mental health? Each of us who participates in the startup ecosystem contributes to the problem of poor founder health. This puts each of us in a position to positively impact this experience by acting. Here are a few things we can do: Destigmatize o Investors should make sure that the founders they work with know that they take mental health issues seriously. One way to do this is to take the Investors Pledge developed by Erin Frey and Ti Zhao at Kip. Just taking the pledge sends a powerful signal to founders that it’s OK for them to seek help. Better yet, investors, in their onboarding process with founders should explicitly touch on their support for the founders’ seeking mental health services when they feel compelled to do so. o Drop the act. Being an investor is different from being a founder but it isn’t easy and investors suffer in many of the same ways. If investors want to support their founders, they need to be authentic and vulnerable in front of them. Investors need to show founders its ok to open up and that it’s ok to have doubts or to struggle with mental health. o For founders, don’t spread or buy into the myths. When you’ve been grinding away on your business for years in anonymity and then have a major breakthrough, make sure your PR campaign accurately reflects the journey. You suffered to bring your company to the pinnacle of success and you had to invest heavily in yourself to survive the trip. Make sure when other founders read about your success they understand how you really got there. Provide Resources o It’s easy for people to forget how financially constrained most founders are. Just because they’ve raised $5 million in a recent financing doesn’t mean they necessarily have the personal capital to seek help and support. A portion of financing rounds should be earmarked for the founders themselves and investors should hold founders accountable for investing in their wellbeing and development. o Founders need to include a line item in their P&L for wellness or self-care. Budgets are moral documents and they set the priorities of a company. If there is no line item for supporting the mental/physical/emotional well-being of the founders and employees, then the company will be devoid of the resources to offer this type of support. We, the participants in this ecosystem, need to put our money where our mouths are when we say that we are “founder friendly” and “invest in founders first”. Don’t forget the mind body connection o Mental, emotional and physical wellbeing are all deeply linked to one another. Just as mental health issues often lead to substance abuse, a lack of physical exercise or nutrition can also lead to depressive mood states and a lack of focus. The founder fifteen is as real as the freshman fifteen but it’s much more destructive. Founders need to make sure to incorporate their physical activity of choice into their life, need to watch their nutritional intake and should consider activities such as yoga, meditation and intentional breathing that research shows help boost mood, sharpen focus and enhance emotional resilience. (Short plug, at Atlaswe work on addressing the whole person because we believe effective leaders are those who are both physically and emotionally fit.) Connect, connect, connect o Founders need to remain anchored in a support network. They should join a peer group, engage with old friends, go out on date nights with their significant other and make new friends. Not only is it a fun way to unload some of the pressure they’re under, but it’s a great reminder to founders that they have a separate existence from their company. o Founders should take an intentional vacation away from work, tech, and business. If, like me, a founder can’t voluntarily disconnect even while on vacation, they should consider joining a community like Soulscapeor traveling off the grid so that they are forced to disconnect and recharge. Burnout rarely appears as the primary track in startup postmortems, but a trained ear can usually find its influence. o Set a culture that is supportive of self-care. If everyone from the receptionist to the CEO is willing to seek help and take care of themselves, it creates a company-wide habit that enables everyone to thrive. A healthy culture will pay for itself a thousand times over in recruitment, lower turnover and happier, more productive people who are willing to sacrifice for the company when sacrifice is called for. Set priorities not tasks o Founders and A-type personalities tend to live and die by their calendar and their task lists. Unfortunately, task lists are just reminders that there are countless things to be done. For most of us our task lists are quite literally infinite. This is a recipe for unbearable mental strain and unmanageable cognitive load. The definition of anxiety is when we perceive that our ability to achieve is overwhelmed by the tasks at hand, which is inevitable when our tasks are ill defined, too large or seemingly unending. Instead of a task list, switch to a daily priorities list where only the urgent AND important items are listed. Completing these items may be more difficult but getting them off your plate is infinitely more satisfying. Be vigilant o Learn the warning signs of depression and burnout. People who are drowning don’t wave their hands in the air and shout for help, they slip silently beneath the waves and only trained life guards tend to spot people in trouble. It’s the same way with depression. Depressed people don’t mope around and they aren’t necessarily sad so much as numb. Here are things to look out for:
Building companies is inherently hard mentally, physically and emotionally but our ecosystem is a toxic one with dozens of factors all contributing to make it even more so. We are quite literally killing ourselves and thereby sabotaging our long-term competitiveness. There are tangible actions each one of us can take to start fixing this toxicity but at the end of the day but I believe most of those actions boil down to treating each other and ourselves as human beings. If we recognize and embrace our weaknesses and support one another in our imperfections, we will start seeing a healthier more sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem. Resources: National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255 Depression resources: https://www.everydayhealth.com/depression/guide/resources/ Free/Cheap Peer Groups: https://www.evryman.co; https://www.chairmanmom.com; Atlas Events and Peer Groups (if anyone knows of similar free resources, please share them in the comments) What standard, exactly, am I supposed to be judging virtual and augmented reality against in 2018? Should I measure it against the sci-fi aspirations that VR and AR companies set years ago and have unsurprisingly failed to meet? Should I estimate how far it remains from mainstream adoption? Or should I stick to comparing 2018 with 2017, when I gave VR a middling C grade and didn’t even talk about AR? Since I just went through the trouble of listing those options, my predictable answer is “all of the above.” 2018 was partly a year of disillusionment. Some prominent AR and VR companies, including Meta, Jaunt, and Starbreeze, either massively downsized or shifted their focus. As the head of CCP Games put it in October, a year after leaving the VR business, “we expected VR to be two to three times as big as it was.” Even the year’s successes sometimes felt underwhelming, like Magic Leap, a ludicrously well-funded AR startup whose pitch was basically “we have recruited the greatest minds in modern culture to literally rewrite reality.” Magic Leap shipped a headset in mid-2018 after years of speculation, and when it turned out to be merely a decent Microsoft HoloLens competitor — which is a genuine achievement! — the disappointment was palpable. Especially since this is the first year I’ve covered augmented reality, I’m also deducting points for the industry’s increasingly convoluted terminology. Is a given product augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, extended reality, a heads-up display, smart glasses, an immersive computing device, or possibly something else? Here. Have a chart. The big VR players coasted through 2018 with minor hardware releases. Oculus released the well-executed but low-stakes Oculus Go mobile headset. HTC released an expensive higher-resolution Vive headset update, and Valve shipped development kits for its new “knuckles” VR controllers. Google and Lenovo released one mediocre VR headset, while Microsoft maintained its Windows Mixed Reality brand with updated partner headsets. But neither platform made a huge splash. And unlike previous years, we don’t know a lot about the 2019 VR hardware lineup. Oculus announced a self-contained headset called the Oculus Quest, but even there, rumors suggest it scrapped a higher-end device — and its former CEO Brendan Iribe left the company for nebulous reasons. Augmented reality hardware is overwhelmingly still focused in areas like industry and medicine, where it’s been used for decades. That’s not a bad thing, since it means companies can iterate on headsets in a market that actually exists, instead of trying to simultaneously solve hardware problems and sell users on a whole new kind of product. But it makes AR sort of abstract for most consumers, unless it’s phone-based AR, which is an extremely different experience. (You might want to go check the chart again at this point.) Hearteningly, though, one of VR’s early long shots may have actually paid off. In 2016, location-based VR entertainment startup The Void seemed like an ambitious but risky project. After getting investment from Disney and launching a Star Wars-themed experience last year, though, it’s opened several new locations and is working with more Disney-owned franchises. It’s just one of many VR arcades and theme parks — although those aren’t all doing great either, since IMAX shut down its VR location-based entertainment experiment in 2018. While Sony may not have released new VR hardware this year, it published a few PlayStation VR titles that got serious mainstream attention. Dark Souls studio From Software published a short adventure game called Déraciné for the platform, and Tetris Effect had a well-reviewed PSVR mode. VR still isn’t remotely mainstream, but this was the first year I found myself consistently playing VR games for their own sake, rather than as experiments or ways to stay abreast of coverage. (Well, it was mostly just Beat Saber — which was incidentally my favorite game of the year in any medium.) And at this point, VR and AR are two of the last major technologies that haven’t faced a huge scandal involving genocide, mass surveillance, election tampering, or the wholesale dissolution of truth. Are there problems? Sure — the VR startup Upload dissolved this year in the wake of a sexual misconduct lawsuit, after apparently losing investment from Oculus Rift inventor Palmer Luckey, who is now busy building controversial “virtual border wall” technology. Microsoft and Magic Leap competed to provide new AR headsets to the military. Meanwhile, the privacy fears around Facebook have raised concerns about how Oculus will surveil its users. But there’s still a potential for optimism that’s hard to find in other parts of the tech world. It worries me that I’m not sure what’s happening next year in VR. I’ll be watching for a second generation of Microsoft HoloLens, the Oculus Quest, and potentially some products from China, which has a huge VR and AR industry. But we’re nearing the end of the first generation of headsets, and companies haven’t been publicly exhibiting many giant technological leaps that could sweep us into a second one. Meanwhile, AR probably won’t be on most people’s radar at all for years. So against the longer arc of history, I’m not sure how the past year will look. But hey — at least we got Beat Saber out of it. Final Grade: C C The Verge 2018 report card: AR / VRGold Stars
Needs Improvement
Lin-Manuel Miranda has had a very good 2018. Not only does he co-star in one of the year's biggest movies, Mary Poppins Returns, but the Hamilton mastermind also was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors and welcomed his second son this year! The multi-hyphenate has been a pop-culture staple for some time now, between his work on Hamilton, his music for Moana, and now Mary Poppins Returns. Even though you've almost definitely heard a few key facts about him, there's plenty more trivia that you probably don't know yet! From his musical inspirations to how he met his wife, here are some of our favorite facts about Miranda! Think you know tech? Square off against TechCrunch editors with 2018’s year in tech quiz. TechCrunch’s 2018 Year In Tech QuizSquare off against TechCrunch’s reporters and editors in this year’s annual quiz, covering the major stories of the past twelve months. Have you got what it takes? Which big tech company didn’t get called to Congress this year?How many rockets did SpaceX launch this year?Which company has never operated a bike-share program?What was the share price that CEO Elon Musk said he’d take Tesla private?Which company raised the largest VC round in the U.S. in 2018?How many data breaches did Facebook reveal this year?In January, the value of bitcoin peaked. What was its price?This year, SoftBank disclosed a record level of debt. How much?What did the first Presidential Alert say ?How many Facebook users had their data scraped by Cambridge Analytica?Which tech giant became the first $1 trillion company?What is Elon Musk’s flamethrower?Which company made the largest tech acquisition this year?How were the lock screens bypassed on some of the newest Android phones?Which Apple product was promised but still hasn’t made it to market?Which Chinese tech company did not go public in Hong Kong this year?Which was the first company in California to be granted a permit to allow driverless vehicles on public roads?Do you even tech, bro?What are you, a wannabe techie? You didn’t keep up with anything in tech this year! You’re as good as net neutrality killer Ajit Pai. For shame! Try again next year.
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You can read more about the year in tech in TechCrunch’s Year In Review. You’re a flounding founderWell, you knew enough to convince your friends, but not enough fool the rest of us. Like former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, you’re done here.
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You can read more about the year in tech in TechCrunch’s Year In Review. Good luck getting your Series BYou’re clued in enough with tech this year to bluff your way through your Series A, but will struggle to get that second round of funding.
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You can read more about the year in tech in TechCrunch’s Year In Review. IPO, here we go!Not bad! You’ve learned a lot this year, kept your ear to the ground, and it seems like you know your tech — and it’s paying off. Looks like you’re ready to IPO.
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You can read more about the year in tech in TechCrunch’s Year In Review. An acqui-hire in the makingYou’ve made it! You’ve put in the hard work and you’ve become a hot acquisition target for Silicon Valley giant. Company-wide bonuses all round!
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You can read more about the year in tech in TechCrunch’s Year In Review. You’re a billion dollar tech bossYou’ve hit the big time! There’s nothing you don’t know from the world of tech this year. You’re the boss of a Silicon Valley empire.
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You can read more about the year in tech in TechCrunch’s Year In Review.
With 2018 in the rear-view mirror, 2019 lies ahead, bringing with it a ton of new science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels that will bring us to new worlds and introduce us to our next favorite characters. 2019 is shaping up to be a really exciting year for readers. There are books coming from authors that we’re huge fans of, and debuts from up-and-coming novelists that we can’t wait to delve into. With that in mind, we’ve rounded up some of the upcoming books that we’re really excited to see on our bookshelves this year. And before you ask — yes, this could be the year that George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss get around to releasing their long awaited The Winds of Winter and The Doors of Stone, but they don’t have a release date just yet. We’ll let you know if and when that happens. But in the meantime, there are tons of other, excellent looking novels hitting stores this year. Here’s what we’re the most excited for. WinterThe Winter of the Witch by Katherine ArdenKatherine Arden made out extremely well with her debut novel The Bear and the Nightingale and its followup, The Girl in the Tower, the first two installments in a fantasy trilogy loosely inspired by Russian folklore. Now, the final installment, The Winter of the Witch is about to come out, bringing the story to a close — Moscow has been hit by a disaster, with demons bringing ruin to the country. Vasya finds herself in the midst of the chaos, and discovers some new truths about herself as she fights to save herself and her country. (January 8th) Kingdom of Copper by S.A. ChakrabortyS.A. Chakraborty’s novel The City of Brass was one of our top picks of 2017, an epic fantasy set in the Middle East, following a woman named Nahri who discovers she has fantastical powers. In its followup, she has to embrace her heritage as she faces a new battle. She marries the heir to the king, Prince Ali, and is exiled and pursued by assassins. Years later, she finds herself trapped by a ruthless king in the city of Daevabad, while Ali agitates a civil war that could bring destruction to their home. (January 22nd) Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon JamesNovelist Marlon James is best known for winning the 2015 Man Booker Prize for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. His followup was unexpected: an epic fantasy inspired by African folklore — “I realized how sick and tired I was of arguing about whether there should be a black hobbit in Lord of the Rings. African folklore is just as rich, and just as perverse as that shit.” The result is Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the first installment of a trilogy about a man named Tracker as he crosses the fantastical land looking for a missing boy, aided by a group of mysterious hunters, including a shape-shifter known as Leopard. (February 5th) The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Andersio9 co-founder Charlie Jane Anders earned considerable acclaim for her debut novel All The Birds in the Sky, a mashup of fantasy and science fiction. Her next novel is straight-up science fiction, set on a tidally-locked planet known as January, where humanity has established a pair of cities on the light side. A student named Sophie is exiled to the night side, and as she forms a bond with its inhabitants, her resulting journey will change the fate of the world. (February 12th) Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation edited by Ken LiuChinese science fiction has long been out of reach for most English-speaking fans, but that’s begun to change in recent years. Books like Cixin Liu’s Three-Body Problem helped and efforts from publications like Clarkesworld Magazine have opened the door to new translations, and the latest anthology comes from Ken Liu, who brings together 16 stories from authors like Xia Jia, Han Song, Baoshu, Hao Jingfang, Chen Quifan, and others, as well as a trio of essays about the state of China’s science fiction. (February 19th) The Raven Tower by Ann LeckieAnn Leckie burst onto the science fiction scene with her excellent debut novel Ancillary Justice a couple of years ago. She’s since finished out that trilogy, and is trying her hand at fantasy next with her upcoming novel, The Raven Tower. A land known as Iraden has been protected for centuries by a god known as Raven, who chooses a human ruler to carry out his will, known as the Raven’s Lease. But the throne has been overtaken, the borders of Iraden are under attack, and Raven’s rule is weakening. A warrior named Eolo, aide to the legitimate Raven’s Lease, works to help restore the throne to the rightful ruler, only to discover a deep-seated secret that could shake the kingdom to its core. (February 26th) Ancestral Night by Elizabeth BearElizabeth Bear kicks off a new space opera series set in the distant future with Ancestral Night. Halmey Dz and her partner Connla Kurucz are salvagers barely making a living, pushed only by the possibility that they might strike it fantastically rich on their next job. When they make a surprise discovery that a long-extinct alien species might be very much alive, it’ll send ripples through human space that pushes everyone into outright warfare. (March 5th) Famous Men Who Never Lived by K. ChessFollowing the outbreak of a nuclear war, Hel is one of thousands of people who fled from New York City into an alternate timeline — our own. While her partner Vikram and others try to assimilate into their new home, Hel refuses, and works to establish a museum dedicated to their lost home. When a beloved artifact — a science fiction novel called The Pyronauts — goes missing, she has to come to terms with what she’s really lost. (March 5th) The Bird King by G. Willow WilsonG. Willow Wilson recently stepped down from her role as writer on the comic Ms. Marvel, and her next project is her novel The Bird King. The story is about a concubine of Grenada’s royal court, Fatima, and her friend Hassan, the court’s cartographer. He has a secret ability: he can create maps that bend reality. When the new Spanish monarchy sends an emissary, it soon becomes clear that their new rules will see Hassan’s abilities as a threat to their order, prompting Fatima to help him find safety. (March 12th) The Light Brigade by Kameron HurleyKameron Hurley has impressed us before with books like The Stars Are Legion, gritty, raw science fiction that is excitingly original. Her next is being compared to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, The Light Brigade (which seems to be based off of a short story published in Lightspeed Magazine in 2015.) During a war against Mars, soldiers are transformed into light to get to the front lines quickly, and everyone comes back from the battlefields changed. Dietz is one new recruit who begins to experience the war differently from his fellow soldiers. (March 19th) Luna: Moon Rising by Ian McDonaldThis one was actually on our most anticipated list of 2018, but the book ended up getting delayed to this year. The final installment of Ian McDonald’s Luna trilogy follows Luna: New Moon and Luna: Wolf Moon, which saw the dramatic fall of the Cortas family, which was edged out by its rivals for control of the Moon, and their subsequent plot to seek revenge. In Moon Rising, Lucas has seized control, and the only person who can stop him is his sister, Ariel. (March 19th) Tiamat’s Wrath by James S.A. CoreyJames S.A. Corey’s next installment of The Expanse series was another book that we were really looking forward to last year, but it was bumped back March. Picking up after the events of Persepolis Rising, the militant colony Laconia has retaken the solar system and established the first human interstellar empire. Against this backdrop, a scientist works to uncover why the gate-builders vanished, while the crew of the Rocinante take up the fight against Emperor Duarte’s rule. (March 26th) A Memory Called Empire by Arkady MartineArkady Martine’s debut novel is one that I’ve already been hearing quite a bit about. The start to a new space opera follows ambassador Mahit Dzmare as she’s summoned to the Teixcalaanli Empire after the death of her home’s previous ambassador. She has to navigate imperial politics as she works to find out who was behind the murder, and to protect her tiny, independent mining station from annexation. (March 26th) SpringMotherland by Lauren BeukesLauren Beukes next book is set in a near-future America that has dealt with an epidemic that wiped out most of the male population. A woman named Cole flees across the country with her teenage son, Miles — she’s guilty of harboring and murdering a healthy man. As she works to keep her son’s identity a secret, they have to contend with the powerful man pursuing them, as well as the transformed landscape of the US to escape to a new life. (April 1st) Agency by William GibsonWe revealed the cover for this back in 2017, and it’s a book that’s set in the same world as his 2014 novel, The Peripheral. This novel is set in an alternate timeline construct used in that prior book which Gibson says was “created by 22nd century intervention,” and features a world where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 Presidential Election. With that as the background, the book follows a talented developer is brought on to test a new product, only to be endangered by her versatile (and apparently combat-ready) digital assistant. (April 2nd) Storm of Locusts by Rebecca RoanhorseRebecca Roanhorse’s debut novel Trail of Lightning introduced readers to the incredible world of Dinétah, the traditional Navajo homeland, cut off by a chaotic world by magical walls. In its sequel, monster hunter Maggie Hoskie’s latest bounty has gone bad, she’s lost her friend Kai, and she’s now minding a young girl with strange clan powers. When she learns that Kai and a friend have fallen into a cult, she works to track him down, venturing outside of Dinétah’s walls to save him. (April 23rd) The Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan (translated by Ken Liu)While Cixin Liu has captured considerable attention when Tor translated his Three-Body trilogy into English, he’s far from the only Chinese sci-fi writer out there. Chen Qiufan’s novel The Waste Tide is on its way, following a girl named Mimi who lives on Silicon Isle, home of the world’s largest electronic waste recycling center. She’s caught in the middle of competing interests the wealthy exploit the workers who toil in the center, trying to make a living. (April 30th) Exhalation: Stories by Ted ChiangTed Chiang is one of the best science fiction writers in the field today, having written the story behind 2016’s Arrival. He released his first collection of short stories in 2002, Stories of Your Life and Others, and now, his second collection, Exhalation, is due out this year, containing brilliant stories such as “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” and “Exhalation.” (May 7th) Children of Ruin by Adrian TchaikovskyI recently picked up Adrian Tchaikovsky’s 2015 novel Children of Time, and it’s a fantastic tale that follows humanity in the distant future. The final survivors escape from a destroyed Earth, and stumble on a terraformed planet that could be an ideal home — only that it’s home to a civilization of uplifted spiders. In this sequel, humanity and their new friends detect faint radio signals from a distant planet that was also terraformed, overwriting the planet’s original inhabitants, who might be awake once more. (May 14th) SummerEmpress of Forever by Max GladstoneWe’ve been huge fans of Max Gladstone’s Craft novels — urban fantasy with a unique take on magic. Now, he’s trying his hand at space opera, following inventor Vivian Liao who is catapulted into the distant future, where the world is ruled under the iron fist of an ancient and powerful Empress. Revolution is impossible, until Vivian arrives and begins gathering a motley group of allies. (June 18th) The Lesson by Cadwell TurnbullIn Cadwell Turnbull’s debut novel, Earth experiences first contact when an alien ship comes down to hover over the US Virgin Islands. It’s crewed by alien researchers known as the Ynaa, and the novel follows Mera, a Ynaa ambassador, and her human assistant, Derrick. While the Ynaa come in peace, tensions arise as an islander is murdered, and as his brother responds in kind. (June 18th) Wanderers by Chuck WendigIn the near future, a strange plague sweeps over the world. It’s victims can’t be woken up, and they begin to walk. Wendig follows several characters — a rock star, a religious talk radio host, a scientist, and a teenager girl as the US falls into chaos. One girl, Shana, follows her younger sister as they begin to walk across America, contending with militias, while scientists work to figure out what’s behind the malady. (July 2nd) Dark Age by Pierce BrownPierce Brown returns to his Red Rising saga for his fifth installment, Dark Age. After a decade of leading a revolution, he’s been banished by the Republic that he founded, and turns to a conflict against Mercury as a possible salvation. Meanwhile, heir-in-exile Lysander au Lune, has returned, determined to bring peace back to humanity by resting control from the Gold families and facing down Darrow over Mercury. (July 9th) The Redemption of Time by Baoshu (Translated by Ken Liu)Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body trilogy has gained a considerable fanbase around the world, enough so that they’ve inspired numerous writers to write their own fan fiction. One of those fan-written works comes from author Baoshu, who penned The Redemption of Time, which eventually became an authorized tie-in to the main trilogy. This story picks up the story of several side characters from the trilogy, and helps to explain how he became such a crucial part of the final installment of the trilogy, Death’s End. (July 16th) The Dragon Republic by R.F. KuangR.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War was one of our favorite books of 2018, and this sequel will pick up after that book’s devastating final act, in which Rin has watched a devastating invasion of her homeland — and committed horrific atrocities to try and save her people. Now, addicted to opium and at the mercy of a brutal god, she promises take down the Empress who betrayed her home, and joins forces with a warlord who seeks to overthrow the empire. (August 6th) Hierophant by Robert Jackson BennettRobert Jackson Bennett’s novel Foundryside was one of my favorite reads of 2018. Its finale unleashed a powerful ancient force into the world, while augmented thief Sancia now has more control over her abilities to sense magical objects. In this novel, the firm she and her allies are now part of, Foundryside, are making incredible advances in magical scriving, and has attracted the interest of the reawakened presence. (August 22nd) Fall and BeyondThe Testaments by Margaret AtwoodInterest in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has surged in recent years, thanks to the Hulu adaptation and the election of President Donald Trump. It’s not a huge surprise then that she’s returning to the world of Gilead with a new book, The Testaments. This story will be set 15 years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, and will follow three female characters. (September 10th) The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee NewitzOne of my favorite books of 2017 was io9 founder Annalee Newitz’s debut novel, Autonomous, about pharmaceutical pirates named Jack and the robot and government agent pair who pursue her. Her next looks to be just as exciting: The Future of Another Timeline about a world in which time travel exists, and it’s impossible to change the future. But one geology professor named Eliza thinks that it is possible to effect change through collective action. She jumps back in time to the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, hoping to change an injustice to change the future. (September 24th) American Science Fiction: Eight Classic Novels of the 1960s edited by Gary K. Wolfe.In 2012, prominent science fiction scholar Gary K. Wolfe put together a magnificent pair of novel collections for Library of America: American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s. The two-volume set contained some of the best works of the decade, and this year, he’s releasing the long-awaited followup: American Science Fiction: Eight Classic Novels of the 1960s, which will contain Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade, Clifford D. Simak’s Way Station, Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon, Roger Zelazny’s . . . And Call Me Conrad [This Immortal], R. A. Lafferty’ Past Master, Joanna Russ’ Picnic on Paradise, Samuel R. Delany’s Nova, and Jack Vance’s Emphyrio, which should provide a great survey of a critical year in the genre’s history. (September 2019) The City We Became by N.K. JemisinThere isn’t a firm date for this just yet (Amazon lists September 5th, but that’s not entirely reliable), but N.K. Jemisin’s next novel is set for this fall. In a profile last fall, GQ noted that the book is “of a kind with ‘The City Born Great’” a short story that she published on Tor.com back in 2016. The story is fantastic — about a young man who becomes the living manifestation of New York City, fighting against an otherworldly horror. If that short story and her Broken Earth trilogy is anything to go by, this is going to be a book to look out for (Fall 2019) If you haven't gotten tired of all the reboots and revivals popping up this year, we have another one for you! This time, we're going back to our favorite California zip code — that's right, a reboot of Beverly Hills, 90210 is currently being pitched to networks, according to Deadline. Unlike other reboots that cast an entirely new group of actors, several original cast members are on board to feature in the new series, including Jennie Garth, Tori Spelling, Jason Priestley, Ian Ziering, Brian Austin Green, and Gabrielle Carteris. There's no word on whether Shannen Doherty or Luke Perry will reprise their roles as Brenda Walsh and Dylan McKay, but we can only hope! The iconic West Beverly Hills High School posse is not the same without the whole crew, though Perry might be a little busy with his role as Fred Andrews on Riverdale to return as a regular. CBS TV Studios is handling the project with writers/executive producers Mike Chessler and Chris Alberghini, the same duo that worked on The CW's rebooted 90210 series and Spelling's series So Notorious. As of right now, the project is in early development and described as an "untraditional reboot," which means the actors "are not reprising their original characters" and has us wondering exactly how this reboot will play out. Does this mean that their original characters will be featured at all? Will the original cast be playing the parents of their own characters? Will they play completely new original characters? Whew, the amount of questions we have is dizzying! Stay tuned as we learn more about what we can expect. |
AuthorAt the moment I'm exporting jigsaw puzzles in Prescott, AZ. Once had a dream of getting my feet wet with crayon art in Orlando, FL. Spent a year training wooden trains in Salisbury, MD. Spent childhood selling salsa for the underprivileged. Had moderate success building Virgin Mary figurines on the black market. Archives
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