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ADVENTURES BEYOND THE EDGE OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE
The truce between Cinnabar and the Alliance is holding without explorers being swept up in great power conflicts. The Far Traveller is probing space to open routes for Cinnabar traders and to survey and catalog life forms on the worlds it touches. But the ship’s Director of Science has her own agenda: to learn more about who roamed the universe tens of thousands of years before. The crew of the Far Traveller is poised to clear away the shadows from the deep past than ever before in human history—if they survive.
Happy Friday, shipmates. We made it through another week, and we should be proud. It’s Alex with some news and some book suggestions for Amistad Books’ Blackout Bestsellers challenge. It’s been hot as all heck so far this week where I live, but there’s a promise of rain coming–I hope the winds where you are blow your way, too.
Extremely cute: sometimes the void screams back.
This is a really cool thread about sleuthing internet folklore.
News and Views
Must read: L.L. McKinney on the role publishing plays in the commodification of Black pain
The love letters of Tove Jansson (creator of the Moomin series)
BBC radio has an interview with Nnedi Okorafor
Alex Brown has a list of must-read speculative short fiction for this month.
The visual narration of joyful queer futurism
Max Brooks’s Devolution is already being developed for feature film.
New short story from Sarah Pinsker: Two Truths and a Lie
Joe Cornish and John Boyega are talking about an Attack the Block sequel!!! (If you have not seen this movie, YOU MUST.)
You had me at “Tessa Thompson and Hot Jaffar”
A super cute tardigrade for you!
There’s a green glow around Mars. 2020 needs to calm the hell down.
On Book Riot
Once upon a time, there were 8 LGBTQ+ fairytales from 2020…
10 LGBTQIA+ fantasy and sci-fi adventures to take you far from here
4 apocalyptically good books like The Last of Us
This week’s SFF Yeah! podcast is about Pride Month, anti-racist SFF, and most-anticipated books of 2020.
Enter before the end of the month and you could win a 1-year subscription to Audible or a $250 Barnes and Noble gift card.
Free Association Friday: Blackout Bestsellers
Amistad Books has issued a challenge for the week of June 14-June 20 (that’s tomorrow): buy any two books by Black writers to try to Blackout the Bestseller Lists.
I bought Lakewood by Megan Giddings (an intense look at medical ethics and race) and The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (living cities, come on!).
If you want to participate, here’s eight more suggestions for what you could purchase. I’m focusing on 2020 releases, since those are likely to be up in the numbers anyway–and pre-orders sadly aren’t going to count toward Amistad Books’ challenge, unless it’s for a book coming out next week. Though you should totally pre-order some books, too. If you want even more suggestions, N.K. Jemisin has a twitter thread.
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi – A Black girl with supernatural powers holds the fate of Los Angeles in her hands when she is devestated by the arrest and incarceration of of her brother.
A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow – A young siren hiding her powers and a human girl who has literal demons in her past form an unbreakable bond of friendship that will help them survive their junior year of high school and the growing danger of the world around them.
Stormsong by C.L. Polk – In the wake of Aeland’s horrible secret being revealed, Grace must try to save her country from a series of ever-increasing storms from the outside, and from rogue mages and a queen uninterested in necessary change from the inside. Oh, and she might be falling in love with a nosy reporter named Avia Jessup.
A Phoenix First Must Burn edited by Patrice Caldwell – An absolutely gorgeous SFF anthology filled with resistance, hope, and stories of Black women and gender non-conforming people.
Black Girl Unlimited by Echo Brown – A young wizard from the west side, a place of poverty and ubiquitous magic, transfers to a wealthy school on the east side. As she travels between those two worlds, she realizes that she leaves a part of herself behind on the east side… and not everything in the west side is as it seems.
Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland – Jane just wants to head west to find her mother, but she ends up in a protected village called Nicodemus instead, and what she finds there has her questioning her life, her survival, and everything she’s learned as a slayer of the restless undead.
A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown – When a vengeful spirit abducts his sister, Malik strikes a deal to secure her return–he must kill the Crown Princess Karina. Meanwhile, Karina has her own ambitious and deadly plans; she will resurrect her mother by marrying the winner of the festival competitions and then cut her husband’s still-beating heart out to fuel the ritual. And then Malik and Karina begin to fall for each other…
The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow – Aliens control the Earth, and emotional expression (and thus art) is outlawed after emotions caused an unfortunate misunderstanding that ended with the aliens killing one third of the Earth’s population. Ellie keeps a secret library of music and books… except one day she’s discovered by an alien commander. But instead of delivering her for execution, he finds he really enjoys music.
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.