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A new fantasy masterpiece from Garth Nix, bestselling author of the Old Kingdom series. More than a century has passed since Liliath crept into the empty sarcophagus of Saint Marguerite, fleeing the Fall of Ystara. But she emerges from her magical sleep still beautiful, looking no more than nineteen, and once again renews her single-minded quest to be united with her lover, Palleniel, the archangel of Ystara. Fans of Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, and Leigh Bardugo will fall in love with Angel Mage, a feminist fantasy that takes place in an alternate European world ruled by fearsome magic and deadly passions.
Happy Friday, shipmates! We made it through the week, and here comes the weekend. May you get to sleep late if you have regular weekend days off, or may work not be too much of a pain in the butt if you don’t! It’s Alex, with a collection of news and then a random handful of books that involve…farming? There’s a reason, I promise. In things that made me happy today: I have seen Fat Pikachu and Long Meowth. And now that Billy Porter is officially a fairy godmother, my life is complete.
News and Views
The Tiptree Award has been officially renamed to the Otherwise Award.
We’ve got an interview with Charlotte Nicole Davis, author of The Good Luck Girls.
Rebecca Roanhorse has a list of five indigenous speculative fiction authors you should be reading.
I am so excited for Never Surrender, a documentary about Galaxy Quest.
Jedi is now a word in the OED. Scrabble-playing nerds everywhere pump their fists in the air.
A journey through the work of Nina Allan.
If you’re a independent film geek, this is for you. There’s a book out about the making of Moon. It’s called, unsurprisingly, Making Moon: A British Sci-Fi Cult Classic.
Eight queer spec fic podcasts to try out.
Book recommendations based on your favorite Star Trek character.
Lego has dinosaur skeletons!
The new spacesuit will fit men and women. If you’re wondering why this is newsworthy, read this piece by Mary Robinette Kowal.
Free Association Friday
I have a ridiculously busy week thanks to Mile Hi Con being this weekend, so basically I’m dashing off this newsletter and then immediately watching Children of the Corn for a podcast. So with that in mind, how about some genre novels that involve farming?
Straight off, far more horrifying than Children of the Corn could ever hope to be thanks to a basis in the bloody and shameful history of America, I’m just going to lay out two books that involve plantations in the antebellum South. Kindred by Octavia Butler has never stopped haunting me since I read it; it’s about a modern black woman who gets transported back in time on several occasions to save the life of her white ancestor, who is the son of a plantation owner and a terrible, brutal man. Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead is an alternate history about enslaved people escaping plantations on a literal underground railroad, beautifully written and unflinching.
And actually, I’m not done with Octavia Butler, because there is a lot of farming in both Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, plus an entire religion called Earthseed, built around the idea that “God is change.” If I haven’t stuffed these books into your pockets yet, consider me doing so now. They’re magnificent, and wrenching, and terrifyingly prescient about things that are happening right now.
Still to the dark side, there’s Ormeshadow, a dark familly drama that takes place on a farm built over a what local legend states is a sleeping, hate-filled dragon. The Day of the Triffids is an absolute classic by John Wyndham; farmed for their precious oil, triffids are large, carnivorous plants capable of moving around that, despite being more than capable of killing humans. And humanity thinks this will go just fine for them… until a mysterious meteor shower renders most of the population blind. Then it’s lunch time for triffids.
If you want something lighter, all right. Kingdom of Copper has a person with water magic using the skill to help famers grow their crops. I’ve mentioned Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day by Seanan McGuire before, since it has ghosts in it. But more importantly for today’s topic, it’s got corn and the witches that grow it.
John Scalzi’s The Last Colony has soldiers retired and farming on a space colony… until they get drawn back into interstellar politics. Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie takes place mostly on a tea plantation and the space station that floats above it–and tea is very, very important to the interstellar politics. It’s deadly serious. The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal’s got a little bit of light farming going on in space, on a spaceship. As does To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers. Astronauts need to eat their veggies.
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.