Link Tank: Death of the Author Is Nnedi Okorafor’s Best Novel in an Already Stellar Body of Sci-Fi
The latest meta novel from Nnedi Okorafor, the ascension of Dreamworks, a Star Wars mystery solved, and more in the Link Tank!
Nnedi Okorafor has earned her status as a trailblazer in modern science fiction, but her latest work, Death of the Author, is on another level.
“Death of the Author is a masterwork of modern speculative fiction, and arguably Nnedi Okorafor’s best book yet. It’s an unusual novel that defies easy definition, combining Africanfuturism, speculative fiction, and literary fiction; the result is magnificent, weaving multiple narratives into an incredibly unique and powerful rumination on family, storytelling, and life.”
Flight Risk, the Mel Gibson film starring Mark Wahlberg, presents a promising premise, but the execution is lacking.
“Flight Risk, the new Mel Gibson directorial outing, [follows] characters trapped in a dangerously small plane with even more of a dangerous man. Some elements and moments are effective, but they’re layered with subplot details, character performances, and related choices that don’t work as well as intended, firmly grounding an otherwise promising concept.”
Move aside, Pixar! Dreamworks is slowly taking over the 3D animation space.
“Long considered Pixar’s lesser cousin, Dreamworks didn’t do itself many favors when it doubled down on the winking meta-commentary of its mega-hit Shrek. For years, that’s what you could expect from Dreamworks movies: the smirking ‘Dreamworks face’ and desperately ‘hip’ pop culture references that aged like milk. Ironically, it was a Shrek spinoff that signaled a turning point for Dreamworks, and a recent critically acclaimed sci-fi fable cemented the studio as the major U.S. studio making hybrid 3D/2D the standard.”
Between Robert De Niro’s Zero Day and Captain America: Brave New World, it seems February will be the month of ‘America has a problem’ storytelling.
“Following last week’s debut of The Alto Knights trailer – which featured two De Niros for the price of one – we now have a fresh teaser for his upcoming Netflix limited series, Zero Day… He plays George Mullen, a former POTUS who – after a devastating cyber attack on US soil known as ‘Zero Day’ – is forced with hunting down the perpetrators. That’s because the attackers have promised more violence, a ticking clock element as Mullen looks for the truth.”
An upcoming Star Wars comic may very well answer a long held question for many fans: whatever happened to Watto?
“As revealed in a trio of teasing previews from Legacy of Vader‘s second issue, due out in March, by Marvel Star Wars editor Mark Paniccia on social media today, Kylo—apparently joined by Vader’s former attendant Vaneé, who has lopped his head off and put it in a droid body, b’omarr monk-style—will venture to Tatooine in some capacity to explore Vader’s history with his home planet… and realize that at some point he showed back up just to pay Watto a violent visit.”
Written by
Michael Ahr is a writer and multimedia producer at Den of Geek with a focus on science fiction television. Elsewhere, he teaches video production to high…