Hello and happy Friday, monsters and magicians! Today I give you authors in conversation, the business of predicting the future, fantasy with monsters, a review of The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya, and more.
This newsletter is sponsored by Tor Books.
From Charlie Jane Anders, bestselling author of All the Birds in the Sky, comes a brilliant new novel set in a haunting future. January is a dying planet—divided between frozen darkness on one side and blazing sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life in two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk. Sophie should be dead after being exiled into the night. Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the beasts who roam the ice, she vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping to heal. But fate has other plans—and Sophie’s odyssey will change the world.
A bunch of great SF/F writers including Victor LaValle and N.K. Jemisin were in conversation at the NYPL recently, and this recap includes some great tidbits (I definitely needed the section about hope).
If you like monsters, have we got a list for you — of monsters and magic in YA fantasy!
If you like interviews, S.A. Chakraborty (The Daevabad Trilogy) talked with us about her inspirations, Jersey, her writing process, and more.
And on the younger side of the reading spectrum, here are 50 must-read fantasies for kids organized by grade level (and also obviously, all fair game for adult readers)!
Authors + authors = magic: Nicky Drayden (author of The Prey of Gods) decided to cosplay the cover of N.K. Jemisin’s How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? and live-tweeted the process and it was AWESOME.
Which magician are you? Our quiz will help you find out! I am Zacharias Wythe apparently and I’m 100% fine with that.
And I found this deep-dive into the business of predicting the future — which is literally employing sci-fi writers these days — to be totally fascinating.
And now, for the weirdest book I read last year that I can’t stop thinking about.
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda
Trigger warning: body horror, physical violence
If you’re a regular listener of the SFF Yeah! podcast, you heard me talk about this book on our Weird SFF show. If not, buckle up, because it’s a doozy.
A short story collection that takes reality and warps it every which way, The Lonesome Bodybuilder plays with your expectations at every turn. A noted advice columnist’s final piece goes increasingly off the rails; a newlywed woman notices that her husband’s face has started to rearrange itself; a dating couple end up in a literal battle of the sexes; a little boy discovers the secret to flight while waiting at a bus stop. The title story, “The Lonesome Bodybuilder,” follows a neglected housewife who finds a new passion and completely remakes her body — but her husband never notices.
Perhaps my favorite, and one of the funniest and creepiest stories in the collection, follows a young retail worker waiting on a customer who refuses to come out of the dressing room — and as the story goes on, we start to question whether the customer is even human. It reminds me a great deal of my favorite story from another collection I loved by Marie-Helene Bertino, Safe as Houses; apparently I have a thing for possibly-aliens interacting with humans in the most mundane of circumstances!
There is, as stated in the warnings, a great deal of body horror, creepiness, and both implicit and explicit violence; there’s also a great deal of wit, insight, and dark humor. If you’re feeling the need to dip in and out of a collection, and would like a regular influx of “What the heck did I just read?!”, treat yourself.
And that’s a wrap! You can find all of the books recommended in this newsletter on a handy Goodreads shelf. If you’re interested in more science fiction and fantasy talk, you can catch me and my co-host Sharifah on the SFF Yeah! podcast. For many many more book recommendations you can find me on the Get Booked podcast with the inimitable Amanda, or on Twitter as jennIRL.
Your fellow booknerd,
Jenn