guardian science fiction book reviews

The best science fiction and fantasy – review roundup

The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence; The Book of Koli by MR Carey; Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth; Incendiary by Zoraida Córdova; Looking Glass by Christina Henry

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email

Mark Lawrence has produced more than a dozen novels in a decade, and The Girl and the Stars (Harper Voyager, £14.99) is one of the best. His previous series, The Book of the Ancestor, was set in the lush equatorial region of the planet Abeth. The Girl and the Stars explores that world’s harsh polar region, where the temperature is 40 below zero and the Ictha people eke out a precarious existence on inhospitable ice plains. Life is harsh, and the halt and lame – plus those who don’t conform – are sacrificed so that others might live. Sixteen-year-old Yaz and her younger brother find themselves cast out of the tribe at the Pit of the Missing, literally thrown into a hellish netherworld beneath the polar ice cap. What follows is not only a thrilling fight for survival among the sub-realm’s demons, monsters and lost tribes, but a revelatory coming of age story as Yaz learns the truth about her world and her place in it. The Girl and the Stars is a compelling picaresque that melds fantasy and science fiction to stirring effect.

The Girl With All the Gifts author MR Carey shifts seamlessly from fantasy to science fiction with The Book of Koli (Orbit, £8.99), an apocalyptic dystopia set in a post-climate crisis world very different from our own. The genetic manipulation of nature has led to man-eating trees and monstrous wild animals. Teenager Koli lives in the enclave of Mythen Rood, a village surrounded by inimical nature and governed by a select few known as Ramparts, an elite who can access ancient technology. In a first-person narrative, the barely literate Koli tells the story of how he craves to become one of the elite, and how his life changes when he steals a piece of technology – an AI that rapidly becomes a character in its own right. Thrust out into the wilderness, with the wise-cracking Japanese AI as a companion, Koli embarks on a journey as perilous as it is enlightening. The Book of Koli is the enthralling first volume of a projected trilogy.

In Chosen Ones (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99), the first adult novel by the bestselling young adult author Veronica Roth, she ditches the teenage angst of the Divergent series and tackles some seriously grown-up themes. Ten years before the novel opens, five teenagers known as the Chosen Ones defeated an evil entity called the Dark One, whose malign energy created natural disasters that killed tens of thousands of people worldwide. The Chosen Ones had fame thrust on them, and at a cost. Through her heroine Sloane Andrews, Roth examines the psychological effects: empty celebrity and debilitating flashbacks. Ten years after the Dark One was vanquished, a Chosen One dies and Sloane must face the fact that the evil has returned. A skilled storyteller, Roth examines issues of racism and responsibility in a well-plotted supernatural thriller, the first in a series.

Zoraida Córdova’s Incendiary (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99) is another fantasy epic with a plucky but vulnerable heroine: this time a lush reimagining of the Spanish Inquisition spiced with a fascinating magical system. Renata Convida belongs to the Moria people, who are blessed with occult abilities; Renata can steal the memories of others, leaving her victims as little more than hollow shells. As a child she worked for King Fernando, reading the memories of spies and enemies. Ten years later, after being snatched from the royal court, Renata is on the side of the Whispers, rebels who are working to overthrow the king. After a slow-burn start, the novel picks up pace, and the thrills and reversals of fortune come thick and fast. Incendiary is the first book of a duology.

The four linked novellas in Christina Henry’s Looking Glass (Titan, £7.99) return to the world of her novels Alice and Red Queen , in which she gave Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a macabre modernisation. The stories feature Alice’s younger sister Elizabeth, a now grown-up Alice and her werewolf lover Hatcher, and dramatise their conflicts with characters monstrously transformed from Lewis Carroll’s originals by Henry’s grim-dark and fecund imagination. The best of the four volumes are the Girl in Amber , in which Alice, invested with magical abilities, fights off nightmarish creatures in a phantasmagorical house of horrors; and When I First Came to Town , featuring Hatcher as young man in the Old City, where he is a prizefighter pitched against the monstrous Grinder. For the most part Henry ably captures Carroll’s period tone, aside from the occasional jarring Americanism. However, while the stories work well as metaphor, with Alice as everywoman, the protagonist’s magical ability does tend to undercut tension and jeopardy.

• Eric Brown’s latest novel, The Martian Menace , is published by Titan.

{{topLeft}}

{{bottomLeft}}

{{topRight}}

{{bottomRight}}

{{heading}}

• Science fiction roundup
• Fantasy books
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on WhatsApp
• Share on Messenger

{{#isVideo}} {{/isVideo}}{{#isGallery}} {{/isGallery}}{{#isAudio}} {{/isAudio}} {{#isComment}} {{/isComment}} {{headline}}

• {{ title }}
• Sign in / Register

Switch edition

• {{ displayName }}

Locus Online

The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field

The Guardian ‘s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2020

• King of the Rising , Kacen Callender (Orbit)
• The New Wilderness , Diane Cook (Oneworld)
• War of the Maps , Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
• Mordew , Alex Pheby (Galley Beggar)
• The Ministry for the Future , Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

The Guardian also released best-of lists for other genres, which can be found here .

©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

You May Also Like...

García márquez archive online, fantastic stories of the imagination to close.

2020 Ignotus Finalists

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

SHOW THE LOVE!

Over 100,000 people will read these pages this month. If each of you gave $5, it would fund all of projects: the website, the magazine, and the Locus Awards. Donate directly here, OR go check out all the cool rewards we have for donors at our IndieGogo Fund Drive for 2024 .

THANK YOU FOR MAKING IT HAPPEN !

We use essential cookies to make our site work. With your consent, we may also use non-essential cookies to improve user experience, analyze website traffic, and serve ads to our users based on their visit to our sites and to other sites on the internet. By clicking “Accept,“ you agree to our website’s cookie use as described in our Cookie Policy .  Users may opt out of personalized advertising by visiting Ads Settings.

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2022

MAY 3, 2022

by Kelly Barnhill

This novel’s magic goes far beyond the dragons. Full review >

AUG. 9, 2022

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

by Wesley Chu

Dramatic, fun, thoughtful, clever, and (literally) punchy. Full review >

APRIL 12, 2022

by C.S.E. Cooney

Grisly, dark, lovely, funny, heartfelt. Full review >

FEB. 22, 2022

THRILLER & SUSPENSE

by Rob Hart

Funny, thrilling, poignant, and profound. Full review >

FEB. 15, 2022

by Marlon James

The second part of this trilogy is darker and, in many ways, more moving than its predecessor. Full review >

NOV. 1, 2022

by N.K. Jemisin

A ray of hope in a dark time. Full review >

AUG. 30, 2022

by Simon Jimenez

Lyrical, evocative, part poem, part prose—not to be missed by anyone, especially fans of historical fantasy and folktale. Full review >

AUG. 23, 2022

by R.F. Kuang

Dark academia as it should be. Full review >

SEPT. 13, 2022

by Tamsyn Muir

A deceptively quiet beginning rockets to a thrilling finish, preparing us for the next volume’s undoubtedly explosive finale. Full review >

by Alexandra Rowland

An engaging fantasy/romance set in a large, lush, and inclusive world. Full review >

More Book Lists

Recent News & Features

• Perspectives

• Book to Screen

• Seen & Heard

• In the News

• 15 Best April Books for Young Readers
• 20 Best Books To Read in April
• Best Indie Books of March
• 20 Great International Books for Young Readers
• Episode 364: Guest Host Téa Obreht
• Episode 363: Vinson Cunningham
• Episode 362: Tricia Romano
• Episode 361: Breanna J. McDaniel

The Magazine: Kirkus Reviews

Featuring 345 industry-first reviews of fiction, nonfiction, children’s, and YA books; also in this issue: interviews with Bora Chung, Sandra Guzmán, Antony Shugaar, Moa Backe Åstot, and more

The Kirkus Star

One of the most coveted designations in the book industry, the Kirkus Star marks books of exceptional merit.

The Kirkus Prize

The Kirkus Prize is among the richest literary awards in America, awarding $50,000 in three categories annually.

Great Books & News Curated For You

Be the first to read books news and see reviews, news and features in Kirkus Reviews . Get awesome content delivered to your inbox every week.

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

• TV & radio
• Art & design

The Shift review – camp biblical sci-fi is multiverse dystopia based on Book of Job

• Drama films
• Christianity

The Real Issue With Netflix’s 3 Body Problem

In adapting a sweeping and cerebral trilogy for TV, the new show forgets one of the original story’s biggest themes.

This story contains mild spoilers for Netflix’s 3 Body Problem .

In Cixin Liu’s novel The Three-Body Problem , a scientist being manipulated by an extraterrestrial force is told to look up at the sky one night and watch the universe “wink” at him. The effect—akin to stars blinking on and off in unison—won’t be visible to Miao Wang’s naked eye; he has to use special glasses to observe the cosmic microwave background radiation. When the universe does indeed wink, Wang collapses into a near-catatonic daze. There’s no logical explanation he can turn to, and no one he thinks will believe that something—someone?—otherworldly is altering his reality. “The possibilities would torture him cruelly, like demons,” Liu writes of Wang, “until he suffered a complete mental breakdown.”

The universe also winks in 3 Body Problem , Netflix’s adaptation of Liu’s story, which is the first in the science-fiction trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past —except the message’s intended recipient isn’t alone. The series’s creators—the Game of Thrones duo David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, and The Terror: Infamy showrunner Alexander Woo—have stripped the scene of its hard-science jargon while piling on the theatrics. In the show, the universe winks for everyone on Earth in a climactic sequence that ends the premiere. Characters race onto rooftops, open-mouthed, their necks craned toward the cosmos. The next morning, people breathlessly theorize at work about what may have happened. The BBC broadcasts a special report.

Making what’s internal on the page much more external—and much more dramatic—is a trick the show uses often. Liu’s reams of text explaining the nuances of astrophysics have been distilled into compact conversations and easy-to-follow diagrams. Disturbing plot developments have been transformed into eye-popping spectacles. Many of these alterations are not unwelcome. They make Liu’s speculative scenarios accessible and thrilling without losing the broad strokes of the plot: Around the world, some top scientists have been inexplicably dying after seeing visions of a countdown clock. Others have been lured into playing a virtual-reality game in which they must try to solve the titular orbital-mechanics riddle.

Read: The human fear of total knowledge

The culprit behind these moves is revealed to be an alien race fleeing their doomed home, traveling toward Earth to make the planet theirs, and working during their journey—one that will take roughly 400 years—to stop humanity’s rapid technological advancement. In other words, The Three-Body Problem is a cerebral epic about human ingenuity in the face of an existential crisis.

The books, as a result, feature a wide array of characters, most of them strangers to one another; their ideas, Liu suggests, are more important than their relationships. But the Netflix series has turned many of the trilogy’s various protagonists into a collection of friends, all scientific prodigies in their 30s who studied under the same mentor at Oxford University. They’re dubbed the “ Oxford Five ,” and they include Auggie (played by Eiza González), a nanotech expert and the show’s version of Wang; Jin (Jess Hong), a brilliant theoretical physicist who gets sucked into playing the VR game; Saul (Jovan Adepo), an aimless researcher and Auggie’s on-again, off-again love interest; Will (Alex Sharp), a selfless teacher who has long harbored a crush on Jin; and Jack (John Bradley), a wealthy entrepreneur who left academia to run a snack company. All are rather well-adjusted versions of their written counterparts. (Wang, for instance, is a middle-aged workaholic who neglects his wife and child as he searches for solutions.)

The result is a story that certainly feels more conventionally TV-worthy—but it essentially abandons one of the books’ most interesting themes: that of the loneliness and terror that can come with the pursuit of knowledge and progress. Part of the pleasure of reading Liu’s dense story is in observing how he shuffles characters in and out, discarding protagonists in favor of new ones from one book to the next. Given a conflict that won’t manifest for centuries, the story becomes about which theories last—and how so many of the figures who come up with ingenious plans must learn to share them and convince others of their worldview.

That kind of exchange simply can’t happen with characters who already know one another deeply—and as the first season goes on to adapt material beyond the first novel, the harder it becomes to believe that humanity’s future hinges on five best friends who all live in London. Remembrance of Earth’s Past is a saga of an impending close encounter that affects the globe, eventually taking place far beyond our solar system. Liu anchored that dizzying scale with individual characters whose journeys mirror one another’s—many of them have the heavy burden of accomplishing a mission solo—but the Netflix show establishes an overcrowded web of relationships that leaves several subplots noticeably thin. Take the researcher Saul, for example: He’s a version of a character who’s tremendously important in the second book, but because he’s a member of the Oxford Five, he’s introduced early on and spends most of the season on the show’s margins. With too many characters involved, the story flattens most of them into archetypes: Jack is the comic relief. Will is the martyr. Saul is—well, he’s a blank slate, waiting on the sidelines until he has something to do.

Read: How to write science fiction that isn’t ‘useful’

Liu’s characters have been accused of being flat, too, but I like the detached coolness of his approach. His style suggests that anyone is capable of genius; the real challenge is to not be consumed by the weight of discovery, to wield an idea responsibly. In the show, a character explains that humanity’s greatest weapon is “the solitude of the mind,” but what Liu’s writing underscored was how solitude could also be humanity’s greatest downfall. A lone figure determining whether to push a button can seal a population’s fate. A person given too much power to implement any plan could inadvertently turn against his own species. Many of his protagonists learn to depend on others; they don’t start out with total faith in humanity.

The show’s use of a tight-knit ensemble undercuts this idea. When Auggie starts seeing the countdown, she leans on Jin for help. When she’s told to look for the universe’s wink, she takes Saul with her as a fellow witness. The countdown does not seem so terrifying with such a support system in place—and having a network of friends doesn’t help delineate what separates humans from the aliens. The invading species, both the books and the show make clear, operates via groupthink; they cannot lie, because they communicate thoughts instantaneously. Humans can lie, of course, yet the show’s characters have such deep bonds that they begin from a place of trust, leaving little room to illustrate deception. It’s as if the majority of the show is made of members of House Stark, the honorable family at the heart of Game of Thrones .

To be clear, there is much about the adaptation I enjoy. I get a kick out of realizing which portions of the trilogy the show’s creators have chopped up and rearranged, delighted to be shown parallels among characters I had not previously noticed, and still find Benioff and Weiss to be great at writing memorable, economical dialogue. The visuals are also cool, the aliens appropriately enigmatic, and the performances excellent. Hong is a standout as Jin, as are Zine Tseng and Rosalind Chao, the actors playing, at different ages, Wenjie Ye, the woman who establishes first contact after losing faith in humanity amid China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.

Ye serves as the show’s antagonist, having built a following of zealots convinced that the aliens will save humanity from itself and therefore aiding them in shutting down Earth’s scientific progress. Yet the show fast-forwards through so much plot, it ends up treating Ye and her cohort as little more than a nuisance, presenting humanity as a fairly united front instead. Through the Oxford Five, the show emphasizes how humans deserve to endure because they have built deep bonds. That’s a sweet, sentimental conclusion, but it’s not one the books ever cared to reach. What made the trilogy so stunning and atypical as a sci-fi story was the fact that Liu wasn’t interested in interrogating whether humans deserved to survive. Instead, the novels explored the danger of connection, of the way a thought, once shared, can expand into an unstoppable force—a radical, terrifying ideology or a shrewd solution to a seemingly insurmountable crisis. Knowing we are not alone in the universe shouldn’t inspire comfort, his writing posits. It should instill fear.

​​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic .

Advertisement

Supported by

Review: ‘3 Body Problem’ Is a Galaxy-Brained Spectacle

The Netflix sci-fi adaptation has done its physics homework, even if it sometimes falls short on the humanities.

• Share full article

By James Poniewozik

The aliens who menace humankind in Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” believe in doing a lot with a little. Specifically, they can unfold a single proton into multiple higher dimensions, enabling them to print computer circuits with the surface area of a planet onto a particle smaller than a pinprick.

“3 Body Problem,” the audacious adaptation of a hard-sci-fi trilogy by Liu Cixin, is a comparable feat of engineering and compression. Its first season, arriving Thursday, wrestles Liu’s inventions and physics explainers onto the screen with visual grandeur, thrills and wow moments. If one thing holds it back from greatness, it’s the characters, who could have used some alien technology to lend them an extra dimension or two. But the series’s scale and mind-bending turns may leave you too starry-eyed to notice.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, partnering here with Alexander Woo ( “The Terror: Infamy” ), are best known for translating George R.R. Martin’s incomplete “A Song of Ice and Fire” fantasy saga into “Game of Thrones.” Whatever your opinions of that series — and there are plenty — it laid out the duo’s strengths as adapters and their weaknesses as creators of original material.

Beginning with Martin’s finished novels, Benioff and Weiss converted the sprawling tomes into heady popcorn TV with epic battles and intimate conversations. Toward the end, working from outlines or less, they rushed to a finish and let visual spectacle overshadow the once-vivid characters.

In “3 Body,” however, they and Woo have a complete story to work with, and it’s a doozy. It announces its sweep up front, opening with a Chinese scientist’s public execution during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, then jumping to the present day, when a wave of notable physicists are inexplicably dying by suicide.

The deaths may be related to several strange phenomena. Experiments in particle accelerators around the world suddenly find that the last several decades’ worth of research is wrong. Brilliant scientific minds are being sent futuristic headsets of unknown provenance that invite them to join an uncannily realistic virtual-reality game. Oh, also, one night all the stars in the sky start blinking on and off.

It all suggests the working of an advanced power, not of the cuddly E.T. variety. What starts as a detective mystery, pursued by the rumpled intelligence investigator Clarence Da Shi (Benedict Wong), escalates to a looming war of the worlds. What the aliens want and what they might do to get it is unclear at first, but as Clarence intuits, “Usually when people with more advanced technology encounter people with more primitive technology, doesn’t work out well for the primitives.”

Most of the first season’s plot comes straight from Liu’s work. The biggest changes are in story structure and location. Liu’s trilogy, while wide-ranging, focused largely on Chinese characters and had specifically Chinese historical and political overtones. Benioff, Weiss and Woo have globalized the story, shifting much of the action to London, with a multiethnic cast. (Viewers interested in a more literal rendition of Liu’s story can watch last year’s stiff but thorough Chinese adaptation on Peacock.)

They’ve also given Liu’s heavy science a dose of the humanities. Liu is a brilliant novelist of speculative ideas, but his characters can read like figures from story problems. In the series, a little playful dialogue goes a long way toward leavening all the Physics 101.

So does casting. Wong puffs life into his generically hard-boiled gumshoe. Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth in “Thrones”) stands out as Thomas Wade, a sharp-tongued spymaster, as does Rosalind Chao as Ye Wenjie, an astrophysicist whose brutal experience in the Cultural Revolution makes her question her allegiance to humanity. Zine Tseng is also excellent as the young Ye.

More curious, if understandable, is the decision to shuffle and reconfigure characters from throughout Liu’s trilogy into a clique of five attractive Oxford-grad prodigies who carry much of the narrative: Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), a dogged physicist with personal ties to the dead-scientists case; Auggie Salazar (Eiza González), an idealistic nanofibers researcher; Saul Durand (Jovan Adepo), a gifted but jaded research assistant; Will Downing (Alex Sharp), a sweet-natured teacher with a crush on Jin; and Jack Rooney (John Bradley of “Thrones”), a scientist turned snack-food entrepreneur and the principal source of comic relief.

The writers manage to bump up Liu’s one-dimensional characterizations to two-ish, but the “Oxford Five,” with the exception of Jin, don’t feel entirely rounded. This is no small thing; in a fantastical series like “Thrones” or “Lost,” it is the memorable individuals — your Arya Starks and your Ben Linuses — who hold you through the ups and downs of the story.

The plot, however, is dizzying and the world-building immersive, and the reportedly galactic budget looks well and creatively spent on the screen. Take the virtual-reality scenes, through which “3 Body” gradually reveals its stakes and the aliens’ motives. Each character who dons the headset finds themselves in an otherworldly version of an ancient kingdom — China for Jin, England for Jack — which they are challenged to save from repeating cataclysms caused by the presence of three suns (hence the series’s title).

“3 Body” has a streak of techno-optimism even at its bleakest moments, the belief that the physical universe is explicable even when cruel. The universe’s inhabitants are another matter. Alongside the race to save humanity is the question of whether humanity is worth saving — a group of alien sympathizers, led by a billionaire environmentalist (Jonathan Pryce), decides that Earth would benefit from a good cosmic intervention.

All this attaches the show’s brainiac spectacle to big humanistic ideas. The threat in “3 Body” is looming rather than imminent — these are not the kind of aliens who pull up quick and vaporize the White House — which makes for a parallel to the existential but gradual threat of climate change. Like “Thrones,” with its White Walkers lurking beyond the Wall, “3 Body” is in part a collective-action problem.

It is also morally provocative. Liu’s novels make an argument that in a cold, indifferent universe, survival can require a hard heart; basing decisions on personal conscience can be a kind of selfishness and folly. The series is a bit more sentimental, emphasizing relationships and individual agency over game theory and determinism. But it’s willing to go dark: In a striking midseason episode, the heroes make a morally gray decision in the name of planetary security, and the consequences are depicted in horrifying detail.

Viewers new to the story should find it exciting on its own. (You do not need to have read the books first; you should never need to read the books to watch a TV series.) But the book trilogy does go to some weird, grim — and presumably challenging to film — places, and it will be interesting to see if and how future seasons follow.

For now, there’s flair, ambition and galaxy-brain twists aplenty. Sure, this kind of story is tough to pull off beginning to end (see, again, “Game of Thrones”). But what’s the thrill in creating a headily expanding universe if there’s no risk of it collapsing?

James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics. More about James Poniewozik

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

“3 Body Problem,” a science fiction epic from the creators of “Game of Thrones,” has arrived on Netflix. We spoke with them about their latest project .

For the past two decades, female presidential candidates on TV have been made in Hillary Clinton’s image. With “The Girls on the Bus,” that’s beginning to change .

“Freaknik,” a new Hulu documentary, delves into the rowdy ’80s and ’90s-era spring festival  that drew hundreds of thousands of Black college students to Atlanta.

Currently in two series, “The Regime” and “Alice & Jack,” the versatile actress Andrea Riseborough has played dozens of characters. What connects them? Not even she knows .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

Sign up for our Watching newsletter  to get recommendations on the best films and TV shows to stream and watch, delivered to your inbox.