As I mentioned last month, one of my favorite TV shows from last year was Pluribus, from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan.
Rhea Seahorn (also of Better Call Saul) stars as Carol, a best-selling but unfulfilled romantacy author who turns out to be one of about a dozen people in the world who can resist an alien virus-type-device that transforms the rest of Earth’s population into a gigantic hive mind. Some people also can’t survive the transformation process, including Carol’s wife.
None of this can constitute spoilers, by the way – it all happens in the first episode. Some of what I talk about below falls into that category, however, if you care about those kinds of things.
So Carol begins the story not just literally cut off from what is now the human experience but in grief. She’s angry about what she’s lost personally and acts on that anger. She’s not, at this point, all that tuned in to what it might mean for humanity to be a big hive mind (good or bad). Carol’s pain and anger is personal, small, and, in some ways, petty.
To her surprise, this puts Carol at odds with the rest of the dozen or so folks who haven’t been absorbed yet. While she’s pushing for fighting back, they’re largely OK with it. Not for nothing do they have connections to this new hive mind, in the form of loved ones or friends who are part of it (or are they?). Carol is all alone and that loneliness is what largely drives her.
This does start to change about midway through the season. She accepts the help that the hivemind can offer (there’s a fabulous scene where a wave of drones show up to restock a Whole Foods just so she can go shopping). She accepts the presence of a companion, a woman sent to her by the hive mind because she resembles the hero from Carol’s books (the version she always wanted to write, anyway). There’s even a kind of romantic connection that develops. None of this suggests that Carol has fundamentally changed who she is or what she thinks about the hivemind, but she’s learning to live with it.
Things come to a head when Manousos, another of the unabsorbed who had locked himself away in Paraguay, makes the long trek to New Mexico to find Carol, whose early radio pleas for help indicate she’s a kindred spirit. Always more radical than Carol, he’s chagrined to learn, when he shows up, that she appears to have lost whatever fighting spirit she once had. When he starts trying various ways to injure hivemind members (and perhaps restore their individuality) she objects.
Yet, that’s not where the end of the first season leaves us. Manousos stays in New Mexico while Carol and her companion jaunt around the world, the kind of bucket-list vacation you’ll never get to take in real life. It’s during that that she learns that the hivemind’s ultimate goal of assimilating her (along with the others) could be done without her consent. This snaps Carol out of it and she returns to the Albuquerque cul-de-sac and Manousos just in time for a crate containing an atomic bomb to be delivered. End season one.
So, in a way, Carol ends the season just where she began – committed to acting against the hivemind and, maybe, saving humanity. I saw a lot of complaints online after the season finale to the effect of “she’s the same she was from the beginning, what was the point?” It made me chuckle, since that seems to miss the entire point of the season.
To a certain extent a season of TV, or a book, is a journey you send characters on. In many instances you’re literally getting them from Point A to Point B, whether those are actual physical locations (a quest from home to a far away land) or something internal (an emotionally wounded person learning to love, etc.). But sometimes, the journey looks like it brings the character back to where they began, only the character has changed.
I hate to fall back on cliche, but sometimes the journey itself is more important than the destination. While end-of-season Carol seems like she’s basically in the same place as start-of-season Carol – s resist the hivemind! – she’s there for a different reason. Earlier Carol was reacting largely from ignorance. She wasn’t interested in listening to the few other people in her situation about whether the hivemind was good and, perhaps, worth joining voluntarily. End-of-season Carol has some perspective one what the hivemind can offer, albeit a limited one.
Carol, as a person, has grown over the course of the season. She went from essentially lashing out from pain and grief to finding a resolve to fight because of what joining the hivemind would mean to her. So while her ultimate goal appears to be the same now as at the beginning, the motivation is different. That matters, at least in fiction.
That will probably not content those who didn’t enjoy the first season of Pluribus. It was definitely a slow burn (probably helped that we binged it at the end of the season), but it was going somewhere and it was important that Carol get there. Does that make for a compelling season of TV? Not for everybody, but I was definitely down for it.
I’m a child of the 1980s. By the time Ronald Reagan took office I was old enough to be aware of the wider world. That included the Cold War and the fact that there was a looming threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads. That’s a lot to handle for a ten-year old.
Thankfully, I had my (decade) older brother, Todd, to put it in perspective. He assured me there was no point in worrying because there was nothing we could do about it, anyway. Beyond that, where I grew up in South Charleston, West Virginia, was a hotbed of the chemical industry and was likely a first-strike target. If the Soviets loosed the dogs of war, my brother said, we’d be vaporized in an instant, with no pain or worry about how to survive.
Once the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union fell apart the specter of superpower-led nuclear annihilation faded in the face of terror attacks and climate change. But the potential for nuclear apocalypse is still with us and fiction (in its various forms) is still trying to deal with it. What’s so utterly fascinating – or depressing – is how similarly the topic has been treated over the years.
I fell down this rabbit hole last fall, starting when I saw A House of Dynamite, the latest film from Kathryn Bigelow.
It’s about a sudden, unexpected launch of an ICBM from the Pacific which, initially, everyone figures is just another test that will eventually fall into the ocean. It doesn’t take long, however, for the math to show that it’s headed for the Midwest and, more specifically, Chicago. Over the course of three 17-minute loops we see people on various levels trying to deal. An attempted shootdown fails, leaving the president with a decision about retaliation. But against who? And how much?
Watching A House of Dynamite brings out some sickening déjà vu if you’ve consumed almost any nuclear fiction in the past. Inevitably, we hurtle toward the only response that ever seems to be an option – full retaliation, because if we don’t we might not get a chance to do it later (and the American people, what’s left of the, wouldn’t tolerate that).
A House of Dynamite feels like it’s in conversation with some earlier movies, even if only subconsciously. The one that immediately sprang to mine for me, and which I rewatched immediately afterward, was 1983’s WarGames.
The first loop in A House of Dynamite takes place in the White House situation room, which has a wall full of monitors displaying data. The pivotal scene in WarGames takes place deep inside the mountain headquarters of NORAD, which has an even more immense wall of monitors.
Our characters are all locked in there because the computer that controls the United States’ nuclear arsenal (installed after actual humans failed to launch missiles during an exercise) tries to launch a retaliation for a Soviet attack that is, in fact, just a simulation. In order to teach the computer the error of its ways, it’s forced to play Tic-Tac-Toe against itself to discover the concept of futility. Then it switches to running through scenario after scenario for nuclear war, all of which lead to the same end – complete destruction. Disaster is averted when the computer, famously, realizes:
The tie in with A House of Dynamite, for me, is that regardless of which “variant” the computer entertains – from all-out initial attack to “minor” exchanges by smaller countries – the result is the same: everybody throws everything they have at each other. There is, it appears, only one end point to any nuclear exchange.
In that sense, the other movie I immediately thought of, Fail Safe, actually has a happy ending!
I actually read the 1962 book Fail-Safe before rewatching the 1964 movie and, I have to say, this is one of those situations where the movie greatly improves on the book. Fail-Safe, like many of these movies and books, has a great ticking clock creating dramatic tension. The book wastes too much time getting there, while the movie is much more efficient.
“There,” in this case, is a mistake involving “fail-safe points” used by the United States Air Force. American bombers would fly toward those points, waiting for a recall notice that would turn them around. Without the notice, they go on to hit their targets in the Soviet Union. Most importantly, they ignore any attempts to turn them around. Due to some kind of glitch (the book and movie differ on precisely what) one squadron doesn’t get the recall notice and heads for Moscow.
What follows is a very tense unravelling of expected behavior. Trying to stave off starting a nuclear war, the Americans help the Soviets try to shoot down the bombers, but one still makes it through. Meanwhile, a debate rages in the United States about what to make of all this and whether it could be an opportunity to strike the Soviets for real (a theory pushed in the movie by . . . Walter Matthau?!). In the end, the president comes up with a horrible bargain – once the American bombers hit Moscow, another American bomber will drop the same bombs on New York City. An eye for an eye, essentially. The movie ends in pretty chilling fashion.
But, as I said, this is actually a happy ending! Rather than falling into complete catastrophe, the higher ups in the United States and Soviet Union manage to at least limit the damage and prevent an all-out nuclear war. Regardless, the message of the book and movie are clear – we don’t have a good grasp on nuclear weapons and how they might get used by mistake and what that means for the world. I’ll add that the attempt by some to avoid responsibility for all this by blaming the machines sounds very loudly in the modern AI-besotted world.
Compare that to, say, 1964’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which shares a lot of plot scaffolding with Fail Safe (to the point there was litigation about it). Strangelove offers no hope whatsoever – not only is there nothing you, personally, can do to stop a nuclear apocalypse, the people that could do something are venal idiots that are likely to fuck things up in the end. In Strangelove’s world the only thing left to do is laugh (and crank up the Vera Lynn – anybody remember her?).
What all these works share, however, is a focus primarily on those people making the decisions. A House of Dynamite’s three loops work steadily up the chain, from information gatherers to experts to political end decision makers, but these are all still people whose jobs are to deal with the possibility of nuclear war. Given that I’m not sure what it says that, in all of them, the nuclear wars never start (or almost start) on purpose. It’s always an accident or someone else’s fault. As Men At Work sang, it’s a mistake.
That’s not the case when the focus is on regular folks dealing with the impact of a nuclear attack.
Growing up, the most famous version of that story was The Day After a 1983 made-for-TV movie (directed by Nicholas Meyer, fresh off Wrath of Kahn) that depicted a nuclear attack on the United State through the eyes of regular folks in Kansas and Missouri (what’s the hard on for nuking the American Midwest?). I don’t remember the actual movie itself, but I do remember the fallout (so to speak) from its broadcast. It hit pretty hard, even getting to Reagan.
Years later, I heard about the “British version” of that movie, called Threads. It has an epic reputation that’s on par with Magma albums or aggressive art installations. I figured this was a good time to check it out.
Threads stands in Sheffield for the American Midwest, but more importantly it depicts a population that has no plausible connection to their fate. The Americans in The Day After, theoretically, had a say in who ran the country and built up the nuclear arsenal that was unleashed. A strong theme of Threads is that the citizens of Sheffield were likely to be atomized in a conflict in which they had no part to play, aside from radioactive cannon fodder.
For that reason it’s, truthfully, the first third or so of Threads that really worked best for me. The way it portrays society starting to fray at the mere possibility of the bombs dropping (we learn, entirely from news reports, that the Soviets invaded Iran and the United States is pushing back) is entirely too realistic. Police crack down on protestors, some people just don’t want to think about it, others are obsessed. It feels very real and human. The stuff after the bombs drop, by contrast, is horrifying and depressing but also completely one note. There’s no humanity left in the aftermath, which might be realistic but feels too pessimistic even for my cynical heart. That said, had to have a lot of puppy therapy after Threads.
Even worse, maybe, in its own way, was On the Beach.
I read the 1957 book by Nevil Shute, forsaking the movie version starring (among others) Gregory Peck and Fred Astaire, which just doesn’t seem like his kind of movie. Set in Australia, it’s the story of several people – all connected to a US naval officer and his Australian liaison – riding out a nuclear exchange and waiting for the fallout to slide far enough south that it kills them. As in some of the WarGames scenarios that flash on the screen, this war started small but bloomed into a world-engulfing conflagration. But, as with Threads, it had little if anything to do with the Australians who make up most of the cast.
The driving force of On the Beach is fatalism. This is a story of people who are waiting to die, not trying to figure out how to survive what’s coming. Nobody mentions a shelter, nobody works on how to live with fallout. The most you get is a futile submarine voyage that confirms that everybody else on the planet is dead.
And everybody is fairly stoic about it. There are various forms of denial, sure, but nobody decides to go indulge in any horrific or taboo conduct now that the end of days are on the horizon. One character (the one played by Astaire in the movie) manages to get his hands on a Ferrari F1 car and enters it in the most ghoulish motor race ever put to the page (makes 1955 at Le Mans seem tame), but that’s about it. Mostly, everybody kills themselves once the fallout starts to settle in.
So, yeah, not the most uplifting of reads. But I think it definitely captured a feeling of the time, one that people probably didn’t want to think about too much.
To round things up, a shoutout to a recent American Experience documentary, Bombshell.
Not fiction, but about fiction – specifically, the propaganda efforts around the development and deployment of the atomic bombs against Japan. Covering only up to about 1948, it shows how even from the dawn of the nuclear age there have been stories told about it, outright fictions (largely, attempting to cover up the effects of fallout after the bombing of Japan). There’s always a narrative, somewhere, that somebody has to sell.
Where does that leave us in 2026? Fuck if I know. What nuclear fiction has taught me is that we’re likely to blunder into something awful and be unable to contain it. And that for all the decades we’ve lived with these weapons, we still don’t really know what to do with them. Which is terrifying. In which case, we’re right back where I was in the 1980s listening to my brother – ain’t nothing we can really do about it and hope one hits nearby and puts us out of our misery.
You’ve heard me mention Cicada Books & Coffee in Huntington before. I’ve done a couple of events there and the owner is part of my writers’ group, so I was thrilled when she said they were going set up a small press and start doing anthologies. Brood XIV Books was born and, now, it’s published its first anthology!
It’s called Lesser Cryptids of Greater Appalachia and the idea is to tell some stories of local beasties beyond the big names like Mothman or the Flatwoods Monster.
It’s filled with cool stories – and one of mine! It’s called “A Pool of Tears” and it is about a little beast from the Western Pennsylvania woods called a squonk.
I first learned of him thanks to a Genesis song called “Squonk” that had this explanation in the liner notes:
The Squonk is of a very retiring disposition and due to its ugliness, weeps constantly. It is easy prey for hunters who simply follow a tear-stained trail. When cornered it will dissolve itself into tears. True or False?
I’d always wanted to write a story about the little guy and this was a great chance to do it. It’s a Ben Potter story and actually slots in after the next (as of yet unwritten) book in the series, at it involves a new character that will make her appearance in that book. I tried to take a different angle on beast encounters.
Grab Lesser Cryptids in ebook here (or here for Kindle folks) or print here – or, of course, head on down to Cicada and get a copy there!
I’m always a little surprised when I go back through Goodreads and Library Thing at the end of the year and see which books I’d read really jump back out at me. This year, those were mostly non-fiction, for whatever reason.
Chief among those was The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination, by Stuart A. Reid.
It’s almost cliché these days to know that the CIA had a history of overseas skullduggery in which it overthrew (or at least helped overthrow) legitimate governments that weren’t the most friendly to the United States. The Lumumba Plot lays out the first of those, which kind of set the template for others to come. The CIA worked with existing elements within the Congo to undermine and eventually murder Lumumba, then backed a strongman to take his place for the next several decades. Reid does a good job of placing all this in the context of other emerging nationalist movements in Africa, as well as the refusal of the Belgians to leave the area gracefully. Highly recommended.
Another interesting work of semi-modern history I read last year was The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples, by David Gilmour (no, not that one).
On the one hand, this is a good (if brief) overview of the history of the Italian peninsula from the founding of Rome to modern times. More interestingly, though, it’s about the entire idea of “Italy” as a nation, how it came to be, and how it continues to try and define itself and hold itself together. Gilmour’s thesis is largely that there was never an organic nationalist movement in Italy and, as a result, the modern state has certain ongoing issues that are difficult to deal with. Whether he’s right or not (it makes sense to me, but I’m hardly an expert), it’s a fascinating way to think about a place.
A much more ancient read was Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, by Neil Price.
Just as it says, it’s a broad history of the Vikings, written with the intent of getting at what they were really like in human terms, not just the berserker-fueled raiders popular culture lets them be. Make no mistake – they were violent conquerors who are not what modern minds would call “enlightened” – but they’re much more complex (and interesting) than most people know. Good read for writers who are building worlds, as it emphasizes the depth of any culture.
Moving on to fiction, by far my favorite read from last year was City of Last Chances, by Adrian Tchiakovsky.
I discovered Tchaikovsky years ago via Children of Time, probably my favorite modern sci-fi novel. I had less luck with some of his fantasy books, but I took a chance on this one and I’m glad I did (he’s got so much work out there they can’t all be winners, right?). Set in an occupied city full of weird magical areas (and people), it’s huge cast is drawn into service of a moment of resistance that has finally arrived but, perhaps predictably, fizzles because everybody who wants to “resist” wants to do it for their own reasons. It can be a little hard to follow, as characters disappear for chapters only to pop up later, but it all ties together really well in the end. I’m in for the series!
From the favorite read of the year, let’s shift to the most unusual one, The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins.
Honestly, I’m sill not sure entirely what was going on in this book. There’s ancient rites and alternate dimensions and something like a nuclear apocalypse. In spite of that (or maybe because of it!), the book was really compelling and I was really interested in seeing how it turned out. I don’t think all the strands came together effectively in the end, but I’m definitely down for Hawkins’ next book.
Finally, how about the most structurally unusual novel I read last year? That would, without a doubt, be The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, by Janice Hallett.
I was drawn in by that cover, and then the cult angle, but I didn’t actually flip through the book when I found it in the store (as with all the others, I listened to the audiobook version). If I had, I’d learned that this was the literary version of a found-footage movie (that apparently is Hallett’s thing). Had I know that I probably would have passed, as I’m not a huge fan of that style. Few writers actually stick to it enough to reveal problems with it (at one point, Hallett has one of the characters, who transcribes another’s recordings, wonder why she recorded this conversation – because that’s the only way we learn about it!). It’s to Hallett’s credit that I still really liked the book, particularly for how it played with concepts of belief, faith, and falling down conspiratorial rabbit holes. Don’t let the gimmicky structure fool you – it’s great!
Having covered the small screen from 2025, let’s talk about the big one . . .
I had a pretty good 2025 when it came to movies. My wife and I made some effort to get out to the theater to see things on the big screen more than in the past few years, which meant I actually saw some new releases when they were actually new! Of course, the in-theater experience can be a little odd sometimes, so most of what I saw last year was at home.
That included a movie that, while not near my favorite for 2025, has caused me to do a lot of thinking. That’s the latest from Kathryn Bigelow, A House of Dynamite.
Released on Netflix, it’s the story of a sudden, unexpected nuclear missile launch from somewhere (we never learn where) that kicks the United States’ response plans into action. It plays out in real time (three times over) as the missile heads for Chicago and a response is weighed and (maybe) retaliation launched. The time-loop structure drains some of the tension as it goes around, but I like how each time worked further up the chain of command from information gatherers to strategists and decision makers (ultimately, the president). And while the cut-to-black ending didn’t bother me as much as some people, I thought the couple of coda scenes tacked on afterwards were pointless. Regardless, what this movie did was to send me deep down a rabbit hole of fiction of the nuclear apocalypse, of which I’ll have more to say later.
Several of my favorite movies of 2025 actually came out in 2024, but I only got around to watching them after the start of the year.
That’s how I wound up seeing Anora just before it won Best Picture last year. Yeah, it was that good.
The story of a stripper/hooker who gets swept into the world of the son of a rich Russian oligarch, it’s funny, bawdy, and really sweet in equal measure. Mike Madison carried the movie as the titular character (deserved her Oscar, she did). I kind of expected to be underwhelmed by this, and maybe that’s why it hit me all the harder. I wrote some more about Anorahere.
I had a better idea of what to expect from A Different Man, but it still hit pretty hard, too.
It has a simple pitch: a miserably aspiring actor with a disfiguring disease undergoes an experimental therapy to cure it, only to wind up cast in a play about a man with that condition – being advised by another man with the same condition who’s getting along quite well in life. This could have gone a very saccharine “after school special” kind of way, but it didn’t, partly due to Sebastian Stan’s amazing performance. It asks questions of identity, of what the world owes us, and how to deal. Highly recommended.
A more difficult watch, definitely, but just as highly recommended is September 5.
The particular September 5 in this case comes in 1972 at the Summer Olympics in Munich when terrorists attacked the Israeli team. This is not a broad overview of the event – for that see the 1999 documentary One Day in September, which is chilling – but focuses narrowly on how ABC Sports, who were covering the games, reacted to the situation and brought the news of it to the world. It’s very technical and, ultimately, it’s about people confronted with an astounding situation and dealing with it as best they can. Has some resonance today, no?
Home is where I normally watch documentaries – new, old, or otherwise – and 2025 was no exception. A couple were pretty disturbing, while another was uplifting in a way that made its “big screen” adaptation abysmal.
Without a doubt, one of the weirdest and saddest things I saw last year was The Contestant.
A 2023 British documentary about a late 1990s Japanese reality show, it covers the fame (infamy?) of a guy known as Nasubi (meaning “eggplant,” due to the shape of his face – and, yes, that might be where the emoji comes from) who went on a show where he lived in a tiny apartment, by himself, and had to subsist entirely on winnings from magazine sweepstakes competitions. Producers threw in a little bit of food, but he was on his own for the most part. Critically, he thought this would all be edited and broadcast later – only it was shown live (some of it streaming on the nascent internet). The whole thing is a wild indictment of just what you can get people to watch on TV and the impact it might have on the people involved.
Just as sad, but for completely different reasons, was another 2025 Netflix release, The Perfect Neighbor.
It’s the story of a Florida neighborhood fully of playing kids (most of color) and the “perfect neighbor” (a racist white woman) who shot and killed their mother one night. The film is told almost entirely through body camera and dash camera footage from cops, which provides an interesting perspective (although not a completely objective one – don’t be fooled). It mostly plays out as slow motion tragedy (we know from the jump she kills somebody), but it’s really well put together and leaves you feeling like you’ve been on the corner in that neighborhood watching as things slowly simmered and then suddenly exploded.
A much happier outcome is portrayed in Next Goal Wins, a 2014 documentary about the improbable struggles of the American Samoan national soccer team.
Having been blown out by Australia 31-0 in 2001 World Cup Qualifying (a result that caused Australia to switch regions in search of more competitive games), the powers that be hired Thomas Rongen – among whose prior stops included a stretch coaching DC United (1999 Supporter’s Shield and MLS Cup winners!) – to turn things around. Which meant, maybe, winning a game during the next cycle. That happens and its as heart swelling as any game could be, but only because by that time you’re fully invested in the amateurs that make up the team (including a transgender player, highlighting Somoa’s history of more diverse views on gender identity) and Rongen himself (fighting through grief at his daughter’s death). It’s just a great story well told.
Which is more than could be said of the 2023 narrative film of the same name, starring Michael Fassbender as Rongen. I watched it by mistake (they have the same title, I rented it first) and it’s just awful, turning Rongen into a needless villain and smoothing down a lot of interesting angles. Do yourself a favor, stay away from the Hollywood version on this one.
Of course, at home is the only place I could have seen a couple of stone cold classics last year.
I didn’t even know Akira Kurosawa made a movie called High & Low until I found out last year that Spike Lee was doing a remake.
It’s the story of a wealthy businessman (who’s having issues, of course) whose son is kidnapped and he agrees to pay a ransom. Only it’s not his kid, it’s his chauffer’s taken by mistake. Will he do the right thing? That’s the first half of the movie, with the back half a tight police procedural tracking down the kidnapper. It’s wild to see Japanese cops work so selflessly, professionally, and with coordination, versus the usual rule-bending cowboys favored in American movies.
I wrote a bit about High & Low and how Lee’s joint, Highest2Lowest compare here. It’s not the masterpiece the original his, but it’s pretty good with some excellent set pieces.
The other old movie I finally got around to seeing last year was The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin’s satire of Hitler and fascism.
Can’t imagine why that felt sadly relevant in 2025 (or 2026).
All that said, I wanted to highlight a couple of great movies I’m very glad I got to see on the big screen.
The first was Sinners, the long-simmering passion project from Ryan Coogler.
This was my favorite new movie I saw in 2025. I was a little suspicious (at one point someone said it was a musical, which, no thanks?) when I first read about it and the effusive praise it got upon release just upped my natural anti-hype reflex. It lived up to it, big time. The world building was completely immersive. The scene where the song in the juke joint turns into a rhapsody across time and culture was amazing. And Michael B. Jordan brought more reality to the one-guy-playing-two-dudes thing than most.
The other great new movie I saw in theaters was Weapons.
It starts with a fabulous premise – what if, one night, all the kids in a particular elementary school class just disappear (technically they run away, but still). The movie does a good job of showing how unsettled the town gets, where blame gets put initially, and the like. The fractured timeline works pretty effectively, so much so that when it lock in for the home stretch it’s kind of disappointing (shockingly hilarious violence excepted). Still, a pretty awesome telling, for the most part.
But, at the end of the year, it was back to the small screen to see what appears to be the current Best Picture front-runner, One Battle After Another.
This was another one that where my hype reflex kicked in, but it met the challenge, for the most part. I love Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood so I didn’t find that it reached those heights, but it’s very good. Love the way Di Caprio’s character fails his way through the movie (although he does wind up in the right place when needed), but the supporting cast is just as good (including Chase Infinity, who plays his daughter). Johnny Greenwood’s score is, of course, great. All in all if this kind of “not his best work” Paul Thomas Anderson can make that’s really saying something.
So much for sights and sounds – next week we wind things up with words.
Back with the second installment of my review of 2025 in media. This time, it’s all about sounds, in various forms . . .
Music
Unlike TV, my year in new music in 2025 was pretty limited. That’s probably not the fault of the music world in general (I’ve got several titles scoured from other “Best of” lists waiting for listens) so much as it was me not being into a lot of artists that produced new material last year.
That said, at least there was one gem that came my way, Steven Wilson’s sprawling The Overview.
After a couple of albums exploring more electro-pop territory (not a bad thing, for the most part!), Wilson returned to his widescreen “conceptual rock” roots with this one. Over two side-long hunks of music, Wilson grapples with the “overview effect,” a condition that sometimes hits astronauts when they see the Earth from space and are hit with the insignificance of it all. If that sounds depressing it’s not, particularly if like me you’re not really a spiritual person. There’s some comfort in being galactically insignificant.
This album really came alive for me when I saw him play it live (having dragged my wife along – love you!). Although there was a certain reliance on some backing tracks to get the whole thing out that bug me a little, the playing was all great and the various stylistic sections – from drifty electronics to prog rock workouts and a “day in the life” section with lyrics from Andy Partridge – really flow together. It’s not my favorite album of his, but the more I listen to it the closer it gets.
As for “new to me” stuff for 2025, as it happens the albums that stuck with me most all came out within five years of each other. Let’s work through them chronologically.
The first was Songs from the Wood by Jethro Tull, from 1977.
My Tull collection was pretty much limited to Aqualung and Thick As a Brick, but on the way back from that Steven Wilson concert, in a Half-Price Books, I found a collection of five Tull albums in their own slipcases for about $10 and had to jump on it. Songs from the Wood was the first of those album and my favorite. It reorients Tull toward more of a folky sound, but there’s still some rock and proggy flourishes here and there. That it starts with some great acapella harmonies is a nice hook.
Next up, from 1979, is Supertramp’s Breakfast in America.
Supertramp is frequently referenced as a prog band, but I don’t see it. They’re definitely making arty pop/rock music that was influenced by the fact that bears the influence of prog’s early 70s popularity, but it doesn’t go further than that, for me. Maybe that’s why I like this album better than Crime of the Century, as this one is just full of tightly constructed gems and don’t seem to be trying too hard to be something else. There’s some good snark in the lyrics, too!
Of course, compared to Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, from 1982, Supertramp sounds like a prepacked boy band.
Amazingly, this album, drawn from an eight-hour (!) performance art piece produced a hit (#2 in the UK!), “O, Superman,” which gives you a pretty good indication of what the whole thing is like:
It’s odd, minimalist, electronic in a primitive way. It’s also pretty compelling and an interesting document of the era. Honestly, if the plane’s going down I’d rather have Laurie’s “From the Air” monologue in my ears than the usual platitudes!
Podcasts
My regular collection of podcasts continued to expand in 2025 (for good or for ill), but I wanted to highlighted a few that jumped out at me last year.
The first two serve related purposes of keeping me up to date on my two soccer teams in the UK, Leeds United in England and Hearts of Midlothian in Scotland. The Square Ball covers Leeds, with Hearts Standard covering (you guessed it) Hearts.
I rely on both primarily for post-match commentary. For Leeds it’s much easier these days to watch every game since they’re back in the Premier League, but I enjoy the level of analysis and sarcasm that the guys on The Square Ball bring. The Hearts Standard episodes are more critical, as Hearts are only rarely on TV in the United States (but are becoming more so now they’re top of the table!). Both shows also do episodes about transfer rumors and such that help flesh things out.
My other new favorite listen is, no surprise, another podcast about music, Prog & Progeny.
In this case the “prog” is Marillion keyboard player Mark Kelly and the “progeny” is his daughter, and documentarian in training, Tallulah. Kelly wrote a book about his career a few years ago and that’s been the structure for the podcast, working forward through his life as a musician. So far the reading of things from his book has been broken up by interviews with various folks from his past, including an engineer and (most recently) a roadie, so it’s getting some different perspectives on the band.
That’s it for sounds – a return to visuals next week with my year in movies.
It’s January once again, which means it’s time for me to take a quick look back at my favorite things from the year before. A reminder that these posts include both truly new stuff and stuff that was “new to me” from last year. And, as always, I’m talking about personal favorites and don’t argue that any of these are the “best” of their kind. Still, I’d recommend everybody check them out.
With that said, let’s kick things off with the small(er) screen . . .
2025 was a hell of a year for television. Either that or I just did a better job of keeping on top of new series that it really seemed like a hell of a year. In fact, going back over my notes, just about everything that caught my attention in 2025 was actually new.
The Pitt, for example, was just as good as everybody said it was.
We came to it late – in fact, for months all I really knew about it was the legal wrangling over its status as an unauthorized ER sequel. I’m not the hugest fan of medical dramas, but it was hard to ignore all the buzz. We binged it over a weekend once all the eps were dropped and, needless to say, that was a pretty intense couple of days. The series is really good, though, as provided some moments of light and dark humor so it doesn’t feel like crushing dread all the time.
By the time we got to it The Pitt wasn’t a surprise, but Adolescence sure was.
I was sold on the format before I read any real reviews – the story of a teenaged girl’s murder and the hand of similarly-aged boy, told in four single-shot episodes – that I was in. That it touched on crime and the mechanics of the (British) criminal justice system was even better. Each episode was great, with the third episode – a suspect and interrogator (in this situation, a forensic psychologist) bottle episode that reminded me of the classic episode of Homicide – a true standout.
I’ve written previously about how the formats of The Pitt and Adolescence impacted their stories here.
Less formally inventive, but visually dazzling, was Common Side Effects.
Created by (among others) one of the minds behind the equally excellent Scavenger’s Reign, it’s the story of a schlub who discovers a mushroom in South American that has amazing healing properties – but also causes those to take to start seriously tripping balls. The show takes full advantage of the limitless possibilities of animation to demonstrate these freakouts and show a story of corporate corruption and deep paranoia. Can I say, as a public defender, how much I loved the lead pair of cops?
My pleasant surprise for 2025 was Chief of War, the Hawaiian historical drama from (yes) Jason Mamoa.
It was, honestly, a little bit of “what if Shogun, but Hawaii?,” but it looked amazing and it was very cool to have another story like this that centered the indigenous people and culture. It doesn’t quite live up to Shogun in terms of the script or acting, but it’s a solid historical adventure with some big bloody set pieces, not to mention lots of Mamoa running around without a shirt on (if you’re into that kind of thing – my wife is!).
Last of the new stuff that I really enjoyed was Pluribus.
This was another one I was down for the moment I heard that it was from Vince Gilligan, he crafted it for the criminally un-Emmied Rhea Seehorn, and he was returning to sci fi (he wrote for The X-Files, remember). I will admit that I admire Pluribus more than I loved it. Seehorn’s character is hard to take at times (hitting a little too close to home sometimes, too) and, having binged it, I can grasp why people think it’s slow. Still, I think folks who are looking to solve mysteries on the show are doing it wrong – it’s about Carol and her changes (or maybe lack of changes), of which I’ll write more later.
As for “older” stuff (for a certain definition of “older”), the one that really jumped out, from the unusual locale of being a Peacock original, was Hysteria!
From 2024, but set in the suburban 1980s, it’s the tale of a shitty heavy metal power trio trying to get off the ground just around the time of the Satanic Panic. They, naturally, rebrand themselves as Satanic and start to draw a following. I thought the show was really funny and well done (the music was spot on), but ultimately the show didn’t quite know whether it was about the panic or actually something demonic happening. Would have gladly watched more, but it was cancelled after one season.
Other than that, the notable departure for the year was Andor, which wrapped up its second and final season.
Was it a great series in its own right? Yes. Was it the best bit of Star Wars to come down the pike for a long long time? Also yes. Did it suffer from a need to tie into Rogue One and the rest of the established cannon? Unfortunately. Not enough to ruin it or drag it down too much, but it was particularly noticeable as the series came in for landing. Still, the build up was excellent. More like this, please.
That’s it for the small screen – next week, let’s talk tunes.
So, I said I’d be back in the start of December, and, well, I sort of am? But only to say that this is it for the year.
I did get the short story finished up for the new Henlo Press anthology. It’s called “OOPS Is In Effect” and is, as they say in Hollywood, very loosely inspired by real events. It’s a fun one and I’ll let y’all know when and where you can read it.
As for books, I decided that rather than start another project I would double back up on The Fall. I’ve gotten some very useful feedback on it which has made me rethink an important part of it. Essentially, I’m retooling the first several chapters to setup the conflict better and deepen the main character’s connection to the titular event.
As a result, I’ve decided to keep my nose to that grindstone for the rest of the year. So, Happy Holidays and all that jazz and I’ll see you in January (seriously!) with my annual favorites of the year posts.
It’s that time of the year again. Even though National Novel Writing Month is officially dead, I still think of November as a month to lay other things aside and focus on writing, so that’s what I’m going to do. Things will be silent for a while around here as I, hopefully, make some progress on a couple of projects.
First will be a short story for the third volume of Old Bones, the journal of the Henlo Press. The inspiration is worms. I think I’ve got a fun angle on it.
Then I’m planning to dive into my next novel (The Fall is still percolating through the editing process, don’t worry!). At this point it will probably be the sequel to The Triplets of Tennerton, as the prep work for it is largely done. That said, who knows if something else might catch my fancy in the next couple of weeks before November starts?
Tune back in around the start of December to find out!
Last weekend, at the Writer’s Block event hosted by Henlo Press, I had a discussion with a potential customer that threw me for a loop. Surveying my books, she asked, “which one is your favorite?” It’s a harder question than you’d think and one I’d never put any real thought into.
The cliched answer for an artist is to say that their newest project (either the just-released one they’re promoting or the one that’s about to come out) is their favorite, which I suppose makes some sense. The latest work is the one into which you’ve most recently poured your heart and soul. It’s very front of mind. And, of course, it’s new and shiny and you want people to buy it?
But, in my experience at least, the latest project is often your least favorite, at least in some ways. It’s also the one you’ve just sweated over and bled for, the one you’ve wrestled into a final form that is “done” but you think could probably be better if you just spent another week/month/year/decade working on it. Once I’m done with a book I’m sort of “and good riddance!”, at least for a little while.
A year on from the release of The Triplets of Tennerton that feeling has pretty much gone away. I’m quite proud of it and think of it as my “best” work, given that it’s the culmination of everything I’ve learned and practiced over the past 15 years or so of writing fiction. But is that the same thing as being my “favorite”? It’s a hard question.
Without doubt, Moore Hollow would be an easy choice for favorite, since it was my first novel (I love The Last Ereph for being its gawky, awkwardness and it being the real first book, but it’s not in consideration for “favorite”). It was, after all, the proof that I could do this and got me out there talking to people about stories I was telling, which is awesome! That said, Moore Hollow (and Triplets) are both more or less set in the “real” world.
It wasn’t until The Water Road (and its sequels) that I dove head first into the kind of ground-up world building that’s been a part of so many stories I’ve loved over the years. If Moore Hollow was proof I could write a novel, The Water Road was proof I could create a world and bring readers into a place that only existed in my mind. I was able to tell a full, compelling story of a world that doesn’t exist, filled with “people” who aren’t even human, and that doesn’t include typical fantasy magic. How could that not be my favorite?
But then again, the Gods of the Empire and its sequels showed I could do it all again! I can’t speak for other creators, but I kind of always feel, in the back of my head, that when I finish one book that I might never finish another. So being able to put The Water Road trilogy to bed and turning to a completely different world and build it up from scratch made me feel pretty good. It was a different experience doing it with what I’d learned from The Water Road in my head. So that trilogy is maybe tighter and more put together than the first?
All this goes to show that I can’t actually name a favorite book and, in fact, it’s not a great question to ask a creative person. Would you ask me to choose a favorite between these two?
Of course you wouldn’t!
The better question, if you’re ever in the same position as my potential reader this weekend, is “which would you recommend?” That turns the focus from what I think to what you, the reader, is looking for. You like semi-mysteries with a dash of the paranormal and a smart-ass protaganist? I’ve got that. Epic fantasy, with deep political and social world building, but not worried about the absence of magic or human beings? That, too. Something steampunky? Lemme show you these.
Because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter what I think or feel about my own work. It’s about how best I can match you up with a new book you’re going to love.
JD Byrne 