The Best Fantasy Screenplays, Historic (Fake) Alien Invasions, Enormous Organisms, and More!
Hello, my little animatrons! In today’s round-up of recent sci-fi and fantasy links, we’re going to talk about the world’s largest organism, the best fantasy screenplays, a UFO hoax, and more!
The 10 Best Fantasy Screenplays of All Time
You know how I love a list! Collider recently suggested the 10 best fantasy screenplays of all time, of which I have seen eight of the finished products. Of those, I can certainly say that I agree with a couple, like The Princess Bride (which I saw in the theater opening weekend because I am old.) I was delighted by the inclusion of one, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I have probably seen more than any other movie. I would take the gold cup (see what I did there?) in the Holy Grail-quoting Olympics. And no surprise, The Wizard of Oz is on the list, which I completely understand, but if you listened to All the Books! recently, you know I am not a big fan. Which is a shame, because with the release of Wicked this week, there is sure to be an Oz renaissance. What fantasy movie screenplays would you include?
UF-Ohhh, Wait, Never Mind: The British Hoax of 1967
Smithsonian Magazine shared an article about the time British engineering students faked a UFO invasion to draw attention to a charity. (Things were much easier before the internet.) “So I was in bed having a bit of a lie-in. And then Dad came shouting up the stairs: ‘Mary, get up! Get up, quick! Bring your camera! There’s a flying saucer in the field!’”
Puntis went downstairs and found her father, Dick Jennings, speaking on the phone with the police. “I think you better get up here,” he was saying. “There’s something in the field. I don’t know what it is. It looks like a flying saucer.”
“Oh yes, Mr. Jennings?” Puntis recalls the police dispatcher replying sarcastically. “Are there any little green men?”
“Well, I haven’t seen any, but you better get up here,” Dick said. Then he drove back to the field in his tractor.”
(Of course there were no green men! If The X-Files taught us anything, it’s that aliens are grey.)
This Just In: Nature is Freaky and Old
In real science: If you haven’t heard of the Pando aspen clone, you should definitely Google it because it’s pretty wild. And maybe older than scientists originally thought. From Gizmodo: “Though it consists of over 40,000 individual trees, Pando is a single organism that originated from a single seed. Exactly when that seed sprouted, though, remains up in the air. According to a team that recently estimated the organism’s age, Pando is between 16,000 to 80,000 years old. In other words, sometime between the glaciers receding from Manhattan and the last time the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet passed through Earth’s skies, a seedling in what would become Utah began to form Pando.” I, for one, welcome my aspen clone overlords.
10 Underrated Sci-Fi Anime That Are Flawless From Beginning to End
I would love to tell you that this list is accurate, but unlike the fantasy screenplays, I have seen exactly zero of these sci-fi anime shows. But CBR seems to have it all worked out, so I am going to trust them. And if I was to pick one of them to watch, I think I’d go with Outlaw Star, because I am a sucker for a Western in space. (Give me Firefly all day, every day.)
And Kalyn Josephson’s Adult Fantasy Debut
Give us all the fantasy books set in libraries right now! Erewhon Books has signed a two-book deal with Kayln Josephson and will publish her adult fantasy debut, The Library of Amorlin, in spring 2026. You may be familiar with Josephson, who has written several books for young readers, including This Dark Descent and Ravenfall. Reactor has more on the deal and an exclusive excerpt of The Library of Amorlin. “Former con artist Kasira expected to spend the next several years as a soldier, miserably working off her prison sentence by hunting down magical creatures for the fanatical kingdom of Kalthos. But when the Kalish ambassador arrives with a non-negotiable assignment, Kasira finds herself swept into the biggest con of her life: infiltrating the Library of Amorlin.”
Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the BR podcast All the Books! and on Instagram.
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