This week is dedicated to pop-culture, find out about Superman's moustache and MCU next phase plus more.  Check out my ' Series ' on Medium which has attracted a lot of attention this week  reading-science-fiction-is-essential-for-our-modern-times So when you have some time to relax this weekend, grab your favourite beverage and have a read of the following articles.  Enjoy!

A rare treat: a time travel tale that brings something new to the subgenre....A wry social commentary and an uneasy tale of escalating paranoia. Guardian Time travel, conspiracy, thriller, mystery what more could you ask for? I snapped up this book as soon as the promo landed in my inbox. The author Robert Dickinson lives in Brighton, England, and his life to date has been shockingly uneventful. His two previous novels were published by a small press. The Tourist is his third novel published by Hachette.

source If you think about it science fiction is really just fantasy, isn't it? Fantastical ships which travel faster-than-light, are just as impossible as Harry Potter flying on a broomstick, a motorbike or in a Ford Anglia. So what makes science fiction different from a fantasy story? The answer may surprise you .

This week we look at if science fiction is ' real ' literature, and if it's really about the future. Along with if life is possible in the Trappist system plus more. Jamie Savage had an interesting take on Star Trek's utopia which shocked some people but I thought was quite on point. Want to know my view on utopian fiction? Read my article Why I Dislike Utopian Fiction...  Also this week on WolfsBooks  Discover | The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne Valente and keep an eye out on Sunday evening for my latest article the the In Defence of Science Fiction  series called The Reason Why Reading Science Fiction Is Essential. But now sit back with your favourite beverage and have a relaxing read of the following articles.

From the New York Times bestselling author Catherynne Valente comes a series of linked stories from the points of view of the wives and girlfriends of superheroes, female heroes, and anyone who’s ever been fridged , a trope used in many comic book plots involving the deaths, disablement, and disenfranchising of female characters to forward a male superhero protagonist’s story-line, ( follow the link for more information on this trope ). In an entirely new and original superhero universe, Valente subversively explores these ideas and themes in the superhero genre, treating them with the same love, gravity, and humour as her fairy tales. After all, superheroes are our new fairy tales and these six women have their own stories to share.

This week we look at what fiction trends say about us, publishing and piracy along with a discussion about aliens and where they could all be. Before you leave don't forget to check out Science Fiction's Mythical List That Will Make You Rethink How You Recommend Books When it's time to relax this weekend, grab your favourite beverage and enjoy reading the following articles. What Fiction Trends Say About Us The book market is shifting again as it has quite often in the last five years. Let’s face it. It’s desperately trying to keep up with our fast-paced world. How we discover books, how we purchase them, and how we read them have changed completely. Read more... Why Authors Shouldn't Be Worried About Piracy Authors should be more concerned about obscurity than about piracy, as Robert Kroese discusses today. Read more... How a Norwegian publisher built a successful digital subscription model The company has signed up about 130,000 digi...

People who like to read science fiction all know about a mythical list of books, that you must read . This list allows us to share a common experience which we can then use to recommend other books to each other. For example the book Ringworld by Larry Niven would be considered part of this mythical list of science fiction books or canon .

When it's time to relax this weekend, grab your favourite beverage and have a read of the following articles. Start with this one: Discover | Beren and Lúthien by J.R.R. Tolkien Help support this blog by buying a T-Shirt on my TeePublic page here's a look at the latest one. The best number is 73. 73 is the 21st prime number.  Its mirror, 37, is the 12th and its mirror, 21, is the product of multiplying 7 and 3... and in binary 73 is a palindrome, 1001001, which backwards is 1001001. Now on to the articles:

Any book by J.R.R Tolkien is worth a read but this one, Beren and Lúthien , is pretty special. JRR's son, Christopher draws out a key love story from his father's book The Silmarillion . The story is about an immortal elven maiden, Luthien, sacrificing her immortality in order to marry a mortal man, Beren. The earliest version of this tale of Beren and Lúthien was written in 1917, when Beren was an Elf not a Man and the equivalent of Sauron was a large evil cat. The story underwent considerable revision throughout Tolkien’s life, and was reworked in both prose and poetry. This new book will demonstrate this evolution. An interesting fact is that Tolkien related his courtship and marriage of Edith (his wife) to this story. Edith gave up Anglicanism and converted to Catholicism in order to marry JRR, which did take a toll on her. Tolkien self-consciously equated Luthien with Edith and himself with Beren based on a walk they took in a wood while he was recuperating f...