Happy Friday, shipmates! It’s Captain Alex with some SFF-related news and views and something random to top it off. Today, I was awestruck by the gorgeous fashion on display at the inaugural Indigenous Fashion Week and its vision of the future. I am also in a different kind of awe that the Japanese title of Hobbs & Shaw is Wild Speed Super Combo because it is clearly going to be the greatest movie ever made.
This newsletter is sponsored by Tor Books.
From Cherie Priest, the author of The Family Plot and Maplecroft, comes The Toll, a tense and scary treat for modern fans of the traditionally strange and macabre.
Titus and Melanie Bell have reservations in the Okefenokee Swamp cabins for a honeymoon canoeing trip. But shortly before they reach their destination, the road narrows into a rickety bridge, with room for only one car.
Much later, Titus wakes up lying in the middle of the road, no bridge in sight. Melanie is missing. When he calls the police, they tell him there is no such bridge on Route 177…
News and Views
There is a new poster for Picard and it’s the most adorable thing ever.
The newest episode of the SFF Yeah! Podcast is about SFF books with non-gloomy futures.
You can read an excerpt from Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Gods of Jade and Shadow, which releases in a little over two weeks.
We’re starting to get some deets on the Game of Thrones prequel.
5 novels inspired by Peter Pan.
In a 20-page opinion, judges on the Ninth Circuit court of appeals cited a plotline “rendered meaningless” in Game of Thrones.
James McAvoy talks about It: Chapter Two.
The artwork for the new edition of Dune is gorgeous.
Spoilers for Stranger Things Season 3: Here’s a dive into the weird actual USSR experiments the show nods at.
Microsoft celebrates Stranger Things with a Windows 1.0 emulator.
In the running to be the greatest title ever given to a science paper: Fantastic yeasts and where to find them: the hidden diversity of dimorphic fungal pathogens
Hey, Virgin Orbit just dropped a rocket from an airplane.
Check out Snowball the dancing cockatoo, who was the subject of a super cute scientific study!
Free Association Friday
I don’t know about you, but I’m still riding a total high from the USWNT World Cup victory, with extra rainbow sprinkles on top thanks to articles like this: Why the USWNT’s open queerness matters. Or (warning for nudity!) Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird being the first gay couple to be on the cover of ESPN’s Body Issue, complete with excellent interview.
I’ve never been that into sports, but this has sure given me the spirit. So you know what, let’s talk about sports in SFF books! The first thing that sprang to mind immediately was Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch, in which the main character Sunny is a great athlete who loves playing soccer… and she really can’t, since she’s also albino and can’t be in the sun that much. (Don’t worry; by Akata Warrior she’s magic enough she can play all the soccer she wants. And there’s a wrestling tournament in the book too.) Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett is also about soccer (football, rather) and is a beautiful, loving send-up of English football culture, complete with hooligans.
S.B. Divya’s Run Time has a marathon challenge where the athletes are augmented in every way you could imagine. There’s a martial arts tournament in Jade City by Fonda Lee. Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay has all the chariot-racing scenes your heart could desire.
Of course, for entirely made-up sports, I don’t want to get pelted by tomatoes, so of course I’ll mention that Harry Potter has quidditch–and if you want to know everything there is to know about it there’s a book for that. Court of Fives by Kate Elliott revolves around an athletic competition called The Fives. My personal favorite is Hilketa, the ultra-violent sport in John Scalzi’s Head On that can only be played by remotely-piloted robot units.
GOOOOOOOOOOAL!!!!!! (Equal pay! Equal pay!)
See you, space pirates. You can find all of the books recommended in this newsletter on a handy Goodreads shelf. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.