Enid

It all started with Brambly Hedge and those exquisite drawings of Mrs Apple’s kitchen at Crabtree Cottage: her shelves overflowing with homemade jams, woven baskets heaped with currants and rosehips, drying herbs strung up in bunches along wooden beams. I could only have been four or five when I read Jill Barklem’s books, but I already knew I wanted to sit at Mrs Apple’s table and taste her freshly baked bread and blackberry puddings. I longed to be young Wilfred, off on an adventure, gathering the blackthorn’s golden…

Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)Whatever you believe about the future of AI, there’s probably a cult out there for you. Ideological factions have been drawing lines for years and they each seem to bring pseudoreligious trappings with them. If you believe AI will inevitably kill everyone on the planet you might want to join the MIRI cult. If you believe that AI is dangerous but you and your close personal friends are the only people smart enough to control it, you might fit in with the Effective Altruist cult. And if…

Nicolas Winding Refn, the maverick Danish director known for his dramatically stylish and visceral way with sex and violence, is to adapt Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books for the BBC.Refn, whose films include Drive, Only God Forgives, the Pusher trilogy, a biopic of Charles Bronson and The Neon Demon, a blackly comic look at necrophilia in LA’s fashion world, will act as creator and executive producer on the mini-series, which has begun shooting in the south-west.It is unclear which of Blyton’s 21 books will form the basis…

Illustration: Joeprachatree / Adobe Stockio9 is proud to present fiction from LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE. Once a month, we feature a story from LIGHTSPEED’s current issue. This month’s selection is “Learning Letters” by Carrie Vaughn. You can read the story below or listen to the podcast on LIGHTSPEED’s website. Enjoy!Learning LettersEnid sat on the front porch of Haven’s clinic with a half a dozen books, some paper, and a small chalkboard. Three days a week, when she was in town, she taught reading to Haven’s children who…