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Welcome back to our corner of the nerdverse! Or, if this is your first time here, welcome.

This issue blends two of our great loves: sci-fi and crime. After we've finished our co-written duology Breaching The Wall, we plan to write a cold case thriller with aliens. You heard it here first.

And because Doctor Who is in a weird limbo that feels like 1989 all over again, we've included a Doctor Who-inspired short story about the number 70 vanishing from the universe. If you enjoy this issue, please check out Issue #01.

ABOUT THE GATHERED WORLDS ZINE

This is a quarterly zine by a couple of married authors and film nuts. C.R. Berry wrote the time travel thriller trilogy, Million Eyes, and together we are co-authoring the upcoming space adventure, Breaching The Wall.

Our dual roles mean we experience stories twice: once as an audience, again as writers who can’t stop taking notes.

We made this zine because we love long-form, not 30-second reels.

So, grab a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot. And pull up a chair.

- K Dunford & C.R. Berry

In this issue:

Gathered Worlds News

Catch up on the latest news from within the Gathered Worlds — what we’re watching, writing, and wishing.

Andor is overrated. There. I said it.

Andor is a well-written and sometimes compelling sci-fi thriller, but it’s not great Star Wars.

Any meat left on the Bones?

The forensic crime novel series by Kathy Reichs follows a definite formula. Is it worn out?

A chat with Ira Nayman

Writer, satirist and editor, Ira Nayman, tells us about his methods and experiences.

What Happened to 70?

An extract of a short sci-fi story set in the Million Eyes universe.

Please download the PDF below to view the zine.

The Gathered Worlds Zine Issue 2

23.8MB ∙ PDF file

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Featuring articles on Andor and Bones writer Kathy Reichs, an interview with Ira Nayman, and an extract of a short story set in the Million Eyes universe.

Download

Read an extract from Issue 2 of The Gathered Worlds Zine, coming next week.

Andor is widely considered the best Star Wars TV series. When the trolls and haters complain that Star Wars is dead thanks to Disney or Kathleen Kennedy or both, the more reasonable fans are like, “Erm, what about Andor?” And for five minutes or so, the trolls shut up.

I’ve never been one to follow the crowd. For me, Andor is a well-written and sometimes compelling sci-fi thriller, but it’s not great Star Wars.

Most people think it’s to Andor’s credit that it was created by a non-fan. Showrunner Tony Gilroy didn’t mince words when podcaster Brian Koppelman spoke to him in 2018 about his work on Rogue One: “I’ve never been interested in Star Wars, ever, so I had no reverence for it whatsoever.”

Gilroy later clarified his comments in an interview with Inverse: “What I’m really saying, without stumbling into a Rogue One discussion, [is that] I enjoy speculative pieces. But within the framework, whether it’s pixie dust or mythology, I really like things on a molecular level to be real… Sometimes the problem with [the] speculative genre is that you look at them and they’ll be very sexy, and really imaginative, but the rules of the dystopian future or the dystopian planet don’t make any sense.”

Reading between the lines here, I think Gilroy is saying that he’s not especially fond of Star Wars' mystical elements. As such, he chose to leave them out. So Andor has no Jedi, no Sith, no lightsabers, and no Force.

You’ll notice there’s barely an alien in sight either. Aliens aren’t mystical but I have a feeling Gilroy holds Star Wars' bizarre and occasionally goofy-looking creatures in the same regard: they’re silly.

Fans, critics, and Gilroy defend Andor’s omission of these elemental aspects of Star Wars because he was trying to tell a different, more mature and grounded story about ordinary people rising up against a fascist regime. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. But don’t tell it in the Star Wars universe if you’re not going to include at least some of the things that make Star Wars Star Wars.

I’m not asking for gratuitous cameos or references. The Jedi are mostly dead at this point, so no, we didn’t need to see any of the survivors. But not a single character on Andor even mentions the Jedi. I don’t buy Tony Gilroy’s explanations for this: that the series focuses on normal people who probably haven’t even heard of the Jedi.

Maybe some people won’t have heard of the Jedi, but a whole chunk of the series takes place on Coruscant in the halls of power. The place where the Jedi worked directly with the Galactic Senate as the guardians of peace and justice for thousands of years. Yes, Order 66 killed most of them, but that only happened fifteen years ago at the start of Andor. Fifteen years ago, the Jedi were on the front lines in the Clone Wars.

What about the fact that Mon Mothma is a main character? She had direct contact with the Jedi on numerous occasions and was allied with Bail Organa and Padme Amidala, both senators who collaborated closely with the Jedi (very closely in Padme’s case). Bail Organa himself is a supporting character in Andor later on, and he doesn’t mention the Jedi either.

To be honest, I can just about live with zero references to the Jedi since they’re considered traitors to the Empire and are all dead or in hiding. But much more egregious and obvious is the omission of the Sith: Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader.

Darth Vader isn’t seen or mentioned even though there is heavy focus on the machinations of the Empire and he's the Emperor’s four-star general. I’m not saying he should’ve been shoehorned in with a bunch of lightsaber-wielding action scenes. But it would’ve made a lot of sense for Vader to have been present during a couple of those Imperial Security Bureau meetings, or at Orson Krennic’s secret conference to plan the ravaging of Ghorman for the Emperor’s “energy programme”.

It’s a massive missed opportunity that we don’t get to see Vader through Andor’s darker lens. Or find out what Imperials like Dedra Meero or Syril Karn would have thought of him. Or see the relationship between Vader and Krennic at an earlier point.

Tony Gilroy was asked why he omitted Vader and, honestly, I hate his response. It fundamentally misunderstands the character of Darth Vader and Star Wars as a whole: “That was never on my agenda. Writing for Darth Vader is really limiting. I’ve done it. He doesn’t have a lot to say.”

Gilroy’s referring to his work on Rogue One, where Vader appeared twice and only had a bit of dialogue in one scene. I assumed that was a deliberate creative choice, not because Gilroy thought Vader uninteresting or lacking in depth. Frankly, his brief appearances in Rogue One worked brilliantly to recapture his menace. But it appears that Gilroy portrayed him this way because he didn’t know what to do with him.

I don’t think a person who doesn’t know how to write for the most important character in the Star Wars universe should be writing a show that’s set in it. Of course, though omitting Vader from Andor didn’t make much sense given the setting and chronology, omitting Emperor Palpatine made even less.

Let me admit some bias off the bat. Return of the Jedi is my favourite Star Wars film not because of the Ewoks or Jabba the Hutt, but because of Emperor Palpatine and all his cackling badassery. The scene where he electrocutes Luke before getting chucked down the reactor shaft by Vader is the best moment in the history of cinema.

So yes, I love to see Palps in anything, but that’s not the reason I’m annoyed he didn’t appear in Andor. It’s that he should’ve. He was the series' principal villain.

To read the rest of this article, please subscribe to our free zine. This issue will be released 1st August 26.

Subscribe now

We just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has subscribed to The Gathered Worlds Zine so far.

And an extra special thank you to those who have paid to support us—even though you didn’t need to! We found that very touching.

Our nerdy quarterly zine is now up and running. We released Issue #1 in April and are currently working on Issue #2, which will be released on August 1st 2026.

We just interviewed an Elsewhen Press author for Issue #2, Ira Nayman, who has his fingers in lots of fictional pies. He’s had eight comedy sci-fi novels (the Transdimensional Authority series) published by Elsewhen. For three years he was also the editor for Amazing Stories, the first magazine ever devoted solely to science fiction, which actually just had its 100th birthday in April this year!

Issue #2 will also feature articles on the Star Wars series Andor and author Kathy Reichs, and will feature an extract of a short story set in the Million Eyes universe (the trilogy from C.R. Berry, published by Elsewhen between 2020 and 2023).

In advance of Issue #2’s publication, we’ll release an extract of the Andor article, like we did for the Stranger Things article in Issue #1.

Again, thank you everyone who has supported us so far, and we hope you enjoy the next issue!

Incoming transmission

Welcome to our little corner of the nerdverse. The download below is a quarterly zine by a couple of married sci-fi/fantasy/crime enthusiasts, who care deeply about stories, how they work, and why they matter. Each issue we brain-dump about the things that inspire and annoy us in what we’re watching, reading, and writing, informed by our work as practising authors.

C.R. Berry wrote the sci-fi conspiracy thriller trilogy, Million Eyes, and together we are co-authoring the upcoming space adventure, Breaching The Wall, coming soon from Elsewhen Press. Our dual roles mean we experience stories twice: once as an audience, again as writers who can’t stop taking notes.

We made this zine (named after the intergalactic organisation in Breaching the Wall) because we were struggling with short-form social media, “where-the-hell-should-we-post-this” platform sprawl, and the obsession with 30-second videos. We’re writers, we live and breathe long-form.

So, grab a cup of tea, Earl Grey, hot. And pull up a chair.

- K Dunford & C.R. Berry

In this issue:

How Stranger Things failed Joyce Byers

Joyce may have had the best moment in the finale, but it was her only one. Why?

Still the king of horror?

Is Stephen King’s honorary title still valid or have his newer works lost their impact?

A chat with Alex Storer

Science fiction artist, electronic musician and writer, Alex Storer, tells us about his work and inspirations.

Spirit Rush

A short sci-fi story set in the Gathered Worlds universe.

Gathered Worlds News

Catch up on the latest news from within the Gathered Worlds — what we’re watching, writing, and wishing.

Please download the PDF below to view the zine.

The Gathered Worlds Zine Issue 1

24.9MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Featuring articles on Stranger Things and Stephen King, an interview with Alex Storer, and an exclusive short story.

Download

Read an extract from Issue 1 of The Gathered Worlds Zine, coming next week.

I enjoyed Stranger Things overall. It told a compelling sci-fi story that mixed horror, humour, conspiracy and action with very relatable characters.

Season 5 was decent, too. I preferred Season 4 for its mystery and investigative aspects, but Season 5 had some good reveals, like the Upside Down being a wormhole to a desolate planet, and the Mind Flayer being an alien rather than some mystical demon. The stage show, Stranger Things: The First Shadow, heavily implied that a darkness from the Upside Down had corrupted Henry Creel. So it was cool to find out that the Mind Flayer was the one pulling the strings the entire time.

And although the finale over-egged its 45-minute-long, Return of the King-style epilogue, it was a mostly well crafted and satisfactory conclusion to the series.

Well, apart from the almost complete absence of Joyce Byers.

What? I hear you say. Joyce had the best moment in the episode! She dropped the series' first scripted F-bomb and hacked off Vecna’s head with an axe!

Yes, she did. And it was a truly punch-the-air moment. But it was her only real scene and she said one line. I don’t count the scene in Enzo’s as a good Joyce scene, for reasons I'll explain later.

I know that Stranger Things has been completely centred on the kids in its last few seasons. But let's think about the show as a whole. When Stranger Things came out, it was "that sci-fi show with Winona Ryder". She was its biggest star, an 80s icon in an 80s-set series, and the Duffer Brothers have admitted that they needed Winona to make Stranger Things a success.

Since all the other cast members were unknowns, Winona was used to sell the series in much the same way Sean Bean was used to sell Game of Thrones. It’s why she was the top-billed actor in Season 1, just like Bean. Unlike Bean, she retained that position until the end of the series.

Yes, I know an actor being billed first doesn’t necessarily reflect their character's prominence. Jack Nicholson was listed ahead of the title character in 1989's Batman because Michael Keaton wasn't as famous. Sometimes there are other reasons. In the Scream films, David Arquette was listed before Neve Campbell, who played the main character, because all the cast were listed alphabetically. (It was just luck that Scream's main trio, which included Courtney Cox, were all alphabetically ahead of the rest.)

Still, you generally expect the top-billed star to have a leading role. And Joyce did. To many fans she was the heart and soul of Stranger Things Season 1, the one who drove its mystery plot because of her desperation to find her son and refusal to accept the government cover-up used to explain his disappearance. In Season 2, she had a scaled-back but still major role as she battled to save Will from the Mind Flayer and was given a love interest in the form of Bob Newby (RIP Bob!).

After Season 2, Joyce started to lose her agency. Yes, it was her who decided to investigate why the magnets were falling off her fridge in Season 3, and it was her who decided to go after Hopper in Russia in Season 4. Beyond that, she was just along for the ride, reacting to the action, rarely instigating it herself.

And none of the material she was a part of was about her. Can you remember a scene in those seasons where Joyce talked about her own desires, fears, regrets? Ever hear her talk about her past, her experiences? Her trauma over Bob's death was a notable exception but even that was barely touched on. Her introspective moments have been few and far between.

We don’t actually know a lot about Joyce. She had a deadbeat ex, Lonnie, and his negligence as a father and husband was explored a bit in Season 1, but never again afterwards. That’s about it.

To read the rest of this article, please download the full zine below.

The Gathered Worlds Zine Issue 1

24.9MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Featuring articles on Stranger Things and Stephen King, an interview with Alex Storer, and an exclusive short story.

Download