The Lattice Story

This is the story of how Lattice came be, the long-ago start to what will hopefully become a stop on a long journey ahead.

After the Robots Win: I Am Mother

Most robot uprising stories end at the moment of maximum catastrophe. The servers go dark, the missiles fly, the last human falls. _I Am Mother_ opens in the aftermath and asks the question no one else in the genre seems interested in: so now what?

“The Broadway Melody” Sings, Datedly

The men in this movie treat the women like furniture that occasionally talks back. I know that comes with the territory when you’re watching a film from 1929, and I try to meet old movies on their own terms, but The Broadway Melody kept pulling me out of itself.

I’m on a “Project Hail Mary” Island

Why does everybody like this movie more than I do? I mean, I gave it 4 stars. It’s beautiful. But it’s a boring beautiful. I don’t know anything anymore.

“Demon Seed” Bring Me a Tea

This is Siri and Alexa and all the AIs and it clearly means engineers were reading pulp computer house books and watching these movies and taking notes on how to kill us all long before I could turn off the lights with my voice.

In Memory of Lloyd Gilmour Wright

Four years ago today, on December 29, 2021, we lost Lloyd Wright. We never published an obituary at the time—grief has its own timeline. But today feels right to share his story, not just the milestones of his career, but the curiosity, wit, and dedication that defined how he moved through the world. He believed in the power of a good story. This is his.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Ryan Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man is the first Benoit Blanc mystery that doesn’t feel like it’s having any fun—and that’s exactly the point. In a locked church where faith and certainty have been weaponized in equal measure, Johnson uses the playful locked-room structure to examine something deeply uncomfortable: the way we perform certainty in the face of doubt.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Nearly a century on, The Phantom of the Opera feels both monumental and deeply uneven at the same time. It’s the kind of early studio