Digest 07.21.23 - Stone Soup

Welcome to the Stone Soup Weekly Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

Hey friends! Gailey here! I’m on the road for the next couple of weeks, so I’ve invited some amazing guest editors to take over Stone Soup Digest. This week, I’m at San Diego Comic Con (if you’re attending, here’s my schedule!). The wonderful Brian White is stepping in for me. Thank you, Brian!!

Brian J. White is an editor, former journalist, and unrepentant food criminal. He's the founder and executive editor at Fireside Fiction Company, which is publishing its final project this fall: a cyberpunk collection by Malon Edwards, "If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories."  Brian is currently mulling a newsletter called "My Mind is a Beehive of Disaster." You can sign up now to get the first issue when it launches. He's @talkwordy if you're still around Twitter.

Closing the Loop on "Luther"

“Cause everyone knows you do magic, yeah?" So says a man who John Luther recently got into (and out of) deadly trouble in Season 5 of the BBC show "Luther," which came out a few years back. I'm catching up on the series to watch "Luther: The Fallen Sun," the film that caps the series. Thing is, actor Idris Elba really does do magic as Luther. It's too bad it's wrapped up in a police procedural, but this is a show made for Elba to walk into every scene and chew the furniture down to sawdust. And though the show is dark as an Alaskan winter and though a smile barely breaches Luther's perpetual scowl, you can tell Elba is having a blast. And I love that. I was talking to Gailey about this recently, about how so often the art that we connect with most is the stuff that radiates that the writer, the actor, the painter was having fun making it. My wife always gets an extra kick out of anything we watch where the actors are clearly at play. Just because something is dark doesn't mean there isn't pleasure to be had in great, playful art. “I'm not a cynic. That's basically the problem,” Luther says later on in Season 5. Right on.

Rage Against the Machine

In "I’m a Luddite (and So Can You!)," Tom Humberstone uses a comic to connect the Luddite movement during the Industrial Revolution to resistance to modern-day threats of AI, automation, and surveillance capitalism. Luddism wasn't about being afraid of technology. It was about smashing technology when it was used as a tool of oppression.

Everything is Going Great in Hollywood

For my money, Alexandra Petri is America's finest working satirist and justifies the cost of a Washington Post subscription on her own (but this is a gift link). She tackles the Hollywood strike in "It’s fine. We don’t need human actors."

Carnival in July

Issue 27(!!) of Fiyah is out, and the theme is Carnival. Fiyah is consistently excellent, and if you haven't been reading it, well, you have 27 issues of greatness awaiting.

Personal Canons Cookbook Highlight: Josh Storey

Josh Storey, a writer of science fiction and fantasy, shares a recipe for pfeffernusse, a German cookie that—when made wrong—reveals secrets. Read This Is Not About Your Grandmother.

I’m Reading: Cult Classic by Stephen Blackmoore

Eric Carter has a lot on his plate.

He's hunting the Oracle of Las Vegas, a literal talking head that manipulates the future to make its prophecies come true. But it has a new trick. It can change the past, too.

Now Jazz Age Los Angeles is invading the present. Long- gone buildings suddenly restored, decommissioned Red Car trains appearing on paved- over tracks, miles of the city changing back to orange groves.

Throw in a hundred-year-old doomsday cult, time magic, and a terrifyingly powerful spell to raise the dead and it makes for a busy week. Carter knows the Oracle is behind it all but he can't figure out how. Or why.

But he better figure it out soon or he, the city, and everyone he knows might be wiped from existence.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

Featured New Release: Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She’s a talented sound editor, but she’s left out of the boys’ club running the film industry in ’90s Mexico City. And she’s all but invisible to her best friend, Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, though she’s been in love with him since childhood.

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbor is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he can change their lives—even if his tale of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse… but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend.

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristán may find that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

If you’re a paying subscriber, come by the Stone Soup Supper Club for our weekly chat! I can’t wait to find out how you’re doing.

—Gailey