Brian Trent

Brian Trent Brian Trent’s speculative fiction appears regularly in the world’s top magazines.

Overwhelmingly, sequels and prequels are terrible. From the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films to The Hobbit, Prometheus to any...
07/09/2025

Overwhelmingly, sequels and prequels are terrible. From the J.J. Abrams Star Trek films to The Hobbit, Prometheus to anything past Terminator 2, they fail spectacularly. But why? And what are the exceptions? How can sequels and prequels be done right?

This is a subject near and dear to my heart (and career) and the subject of the latest episode of Space Station Squid.

A podcast of science fiction and fantasy discussion, from the classics to the hidden gems, hosted by award-winning sci-fi author Brian Trent.

This is what happens when my group of friends decides to get together for drinks and a movie, and someone says at the la...
06/16/2025

This is what happens when my group of friends decides to get together for drinks and a movie, and someone says at the last minute, “How about we pretend it’s the 1920s?”

My new novel PERDITION’S STORM is now available for preorder! Hitting stores everywhere in November, this is a tale of s...
05/12/2025

My new novel PERDITION’S STORM is now available for preorder! Hitting stores everywhere in November, this is a tale of survival in post-apocalyptic Italy, set in the New York Times-bestselling Black Tide Rising series! If you’d like to support a human author, see below. 🙂

Amazon:
https://a.co/d/axtla5F

Barnes and Noble:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/perditions-storm-brian-trent/1147179880?ean=9781668072967

ZOMBIES MEET THE MAFIA IN JOHN RINGO’S BLACK TIDE RISING UNIVERSE, AUTHORED BY A RISING STAR IN SCIENCE FICTION, BRIAN TRENT!Before the world fell, Silvio Cipriano was a contract-killer for the Italian Mafia. When the H7D3 virus came to Italy, Silvio...

Most remakes are bad, but some are spectacularly so and miss the entire point of the original. THE TIME MACHINE (1960) i...
04/29/2025

Most remakes are bad, but some are spectacularly so and miss the entire point of the original. THE TIME MACHINE (1960) is a relatively faithful adaptation of the 1895 novel by H. G. Wells, with a sensitive and thoughtful performance by Rod Taylor. The remake in 2002… not so much (to put it mildly). It actually makes me angry.

Welcome to the subject of this week’s episode, and the question of whether or not the human race can ever learn from its mistakes.

A podcast of science fiction and fantasy discussion, from the classics to the hidden gems, hosted by award-winning sci-fi author Brian Trent.

Going further down the Nile on the way to Aswan, we’re approaching more recent historical sites. After Alexander the Gre...
04/10/2025

Going further down the Nile on the way to Aswan, we’re approaching more recent historical sites. After Alexander the Great dislodged the Persians from Egypt, the Greeks established a centuries-long reign here (ending with Cleopatra).

Alexander insisted that Egyptian customs and religion be respected, and today we see two examples of that: the temples at Edfu and Kom Ombo. The latter is of special significance in that it is dedicated to two gods: Horus, and Sobek the Crocodile God (and hundreds of crocodile mummies have been unearthed in this region). The hieroglyphs tell stories of deities, battles, and even a recipe for making perfume.

Every Egyptologist we spoke to emphasized the sheer amount of to-be-discovered tombs around here; ground-penetrating radar has shown extensive tunnels and chambers, just waiting to be exhumed.

And so our trip winds to a close. Egypt has always had a special place in my heart. From now on—like the timeless obelisks—it will live forever in my mind and soul, too.

Today we visited the West Bank for the Valley of the Kings, the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, and the Colossi of ...
04/09/2025

Today we visited the West Bank for the Valley of the Kings, the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, and the Colossi of Memnon (a misnomer, as these were actually built for the mighty Amenhotep III, who presided over a sublime Golden Age in Egyptian history).

The Valley of the Kings is cut directly into the rock, and contains more than 60 tombs… with plenty yet to unearth. In a perfect world we’d be betting on which archaeology team would make the next major discovery, in the way that we obsess about football teams.

The Temple of Hatshepsut is a wonder to behold, even in its vandalized state. Hatshepsut’s reign was marked by stability and trade, though her legacy was nearly erased by her stepson after her death. The Colossi of Amenhotep III stand to honor one of Egypt’s greatest pharaohs—a patron of the arts and builder of nationwide prosperity. Unfortunately, he was succeeded by a lunatic son whose religious fanaticism brought ruin and destruction to Egypt. Bad leaders bring down great civilizations, imagine that.

The Nile is a sapphire serpent, taking us four hundred miles south of Cairo to the glorious sites of Karnak and Luxor. K...
04/08/2025

The Nile is a sapphire serpent, taking us four hundred miles south of Cairo to the glorious sites of Karnak and Luxor.

Karnak is the largest temple complex in the world. To approach it, you walk the Avenue of Sphinxes… and then you enter a breathtaking wonderland of obelisks, statues, and a forest of gigantic columns reaching 70 feet in height. The original dyes are still visible after more than 3,600 years. Hatshepsut’s obelisk is 97 feet tall and, astoundingly, is carved from a single block of granite.

This ancient place is a fusion of library, art gallery, and religious center. Both Luxor and Karnak were once part of the ancient city of Thebes.

“Everything fears time. Time fears the pyramids.” — medieval Arab proverb Once these were shellacked in white limestone ...
04/07/2025

“Everything fears time. Time fears the pyramids.” — medieval Arab proverb

Once these were shellacked in white limestone and topped by gold, yet even in these stripped-down states they make your jaw drop. The Giza pyramids were built approximately 4,500 years ago (at least): put another way, these were as ancient to the Roman Empire as the Roman Empire is to us. They are also the only remaining Wonder of the World.

I can’t put into words the emotions these structures inspire. They’re precision-built manmade mountains which have outlasted entire civilizations… and will outlast our own. Look at the picture with people walking on the lower blocks to get a sense of the scale we’re talking about here… and understand that pictures hardly do it justice.

Along with the pyramids, we rode camels, visited the Sphinx, saw the regular Egyptian Museum (to see Tutankhamen firsthand)… and in a very special treat, even though the Grand Egyptian Museum isn’t fully open yet we had a professional Egyptologist take us on a private guided tour.

“Cairo! City of the living!”Our first day in the current capital of Egypt has been joy incarnate. Egyptians are super-fr...
03/31/2025

“Cairo! City of the living!”

Our first day in the current capital of Egypt has been joy incarnate. Egyptians are super-friendly, helpful, good-humored, and are possibly the best drivers on the planet—traffic rules in Cairo are little more than a meager suggestion, with cars and motorcycles and pedestrians mingling in a way that constantly seem on the brink of disaster… and yet we didn’t see one accident. That takes serious skill and a collectively cool temperament.

Our hotel is right on the Nile in Zamalek District. We spent time in the famous Khan El Khalili Bazaar, visited the Citadel of Salah Al-Din, and the mosque of Mohammed Ali.

One thing that’s clear is that Egypt is a country on the verge of significant transformation. Vast areas of desert are being reclaimed for dozens of new cities, solar power (thank Ra) is being adopted in force, and a new capital is about to be unveiled. And that’s to say nothing of the hundreds of new excavations taking place—a major tomb was just discovered last week.

02/21/2025

I just bought my first new computer in a decade, and as I opened up Word to work on a story, a little icon appeared by every paragraph… like a goddam Elder Sign.

It was for Microsoft’s AI named Copilot.

Stephen King once opined that writers should throw their thesaurus into the garbage, because “ Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.”

The same thing applies here. Any word a writer needs to outsource to an electronic homunculus isn’t just the wrong word… it’s a brick in a self-made prison, and the prisoner is your creativity.

Art isn’t something to be procedurally generated, slapped together as an empty pastiche of other people’s stolen work.

In short, art matters.

And artists matter.

A person who launders creativity through AI, using it to write their dialogue, describe their scenes, come up with their story, is only an “artist” when preceded by the word con.

We already have virtual customer service assistants, AI summaries of books and discussions, and AI-driven searches (that hallucinate as much as they succeed). Do we really want AI expressing our thoughts, too? AI actors in AI-produced films? AI painters and writers spitting out soulless stews of other people’s work?

If we’re okay with removing humans from art, what about politics? Do you honestly want to hand over the legal governance of our lives, the Forum of ideas and democracy, to a machine? Want the cold calculus of social credit scores and efficiency algorithms?

How about our social lives? It takes time—sometimes an entire minute—to send a “hello” or “happy birthday” or “how are you doing, friend?” Should AI do that, too? Do we desire a circle of NPCs over real, flesh-and-blood people… each calibrated to never challenge us, never offer a new perspective, never get us thinking in new ways?

And how about AI teachers who will grade our AI-written tests, so we can be free to watch movies no one made starring people who don’t exist with our friends who never were? I mean, the one thing we definitely need more of is further social detachment and depersonalization, right?

Creativity (and democracy and social life) are NOT an optimization problem. Tools are great. Tools can make things easier. But when tools replace humanity in all things, that’s extinguishment. And sorry, but that’s not okay. If we stop believing that artists matter, that thinking and reading and deciding for ourselves matter, then we really have stepped into the Matrix. If we’re okay with our paintings and books and films and games and music being cranked out by the cold equations of automation, then we’ve committed a type of human sacrifice. If we sit back and accept that creativity can or should be replaced, then this really is the last invention of the Krell.

I’ve sent my Copilot to the garbage. I’d encourage others to do the same.

This week’s episode of Space Station Squid is about 1985’s film LEGEND, starring Tim Curry, Tom Cruise, and Mia Sara. Ev...
02/06/2025

This week’s episode of Space Station Squid is about 1985’s film LEGEND, starring Tim Curry, Tom Cruise, and Mia Sara. Evil Minotaurs, terrifying sprites, and an inexplicable amount of feathers flying through the air. “Mortal world turned to ice—here be goblin paradise!”

A podcast of science fiction and fantasy discussion, from the classics to the hidden gems, hosted by award-winning sci-fi author Brian Trent.

I’m delighted to announce that my newest novel, PERDITION’S STORM, will hit bookstores in November! Published by Baen Bo...
02/03/2025

I’m delighted to announce that my newest novel, PERDITION’S STORM, will hit bookstores in November! Published by Baen Books, and set in Italy in the bestselling Black Tide Rising universe. I’m really excited about this one. More to come soon!

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