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Swords and Spaceships

Swords and Spaceships for April 16: Hugo Finalists

Happy Friday, shipmates! It’s Alex with some news and a trip through two categories of Hugo finalists. Wow, this week went by quickly for me… hopefully that’s a good thing. My squee for an otherwise cold and cloudy April week–I’m a Hugo finalist again, thanks to the podcast I contribute to making it to the short list! I promise I won’t let the phenomenal cosmic power go to my head. Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Tuesday.

Thing that made my day: The F9 trailer is out, and of course I lost my brain over it. My favorite ridiculous action franchise!

Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/ and anti-asianviolenceresources.carrd.co


News and Views

A new SFF magazine is kickstarting: The Deadlands. It’s all about death.

The Tolkien Society has announced the winners of its 2021 Awards

A Q&A with Tamsyn Muir

Interview with Sheree Renée Thomas

SFF writer Matt Wallace tells a tale of a terrible, awful, no good, very bad day in this amazing Twitter thread.

Charlie Jane Anders: We should celebrate trans kids, not crack down on them

Stitch: What The Falcon and the Winter Soldier teaches us about fandom misogynoir

Astronaut breaks Guinness record for longest time between spacewalks

On Book Riot

This week’s SFF Yeah! is the stuff of nightmares

11 great middle grade science fiction comics set in space

Brian Jacues’s Redwall and the damaging tropes of epic fantasy

5 audiobooks to take you into whole new worlds

2020 Aurealis Awards Finalists

You have until 4/20 to register to win a copy of The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni. Also, this month you can enter to win your own library cart, a year of free books, and $100 to spend on comics.

Free Association Friday: Hugo Finalists

The Hugo Award finalists got announced on Tuesday (big congratulations to everyone!) so let’s take a look at who got the nod for Novel and Novella! You can check out the finalists in the other book categories over at Book Riot, or the full list at Locus.

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Novel finalist. As the city of New York awakens, it embodies itself in six people instead of the more traditional one–one for each borough and one for the city itself. If the city is to survive its metaphysical birth, these people must find each other and defend the city itself from the otherworldly force that would destroy it.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Novel finalist. Piranesi lives in an infinite house filled with thousands of statues, which imprisons an ocean that sometimes floods up through rooms. The Other visits Piranesi twice a week and asks him to help him with his research, but soon Piranesi realizes there might be another person in there with him.

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Novel finalist. At the eave of a solstice that coincides with a solar eclipse, the reincarnation of a god travels to the holy city in order to usurp power from the Sun priest.

Harrow the Ninth by Ramsyn Muir

Novel finalist. Harrow has been drafted by the Emperor to fight an unwinnable war–and as if that’s not bad enough, she has to cooperate with her most detested rival while her own health is failing and her mind threatens to unravel.

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

Novel finalist. While Elma York is on her way to Mars to begin that step of the plan, her fellow Lady Astronaut Nicole Wargin is hard at work trying to establish humanity’s first and perhaps most important colony on the Moon. The last thing Nicole needs on top of that difficult task is her husband deciding to run for president.

Network Effect by Martha Wells

Novel finalist. Murderbot’s human associates have been captured. When someone else who is totally-not-a-friend desperately calls for assistance, Murderbot swings into action. Of course things get shot and blown up.

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Novella finalist. With the release of Birth of a Nation in 1915, demons rose, fueled by the darkest thoughts of white people, and swelled the ranks of the KKK across the nation. Only resistance fighters are willing to take them down, with bullet, blade, and bomb, sending the demons of the Klan back to Hell.

Finna by Nino Cipri

Novella finalist. A customer goes missing in a Swedish big box store and it’s up to two minimum wage retail employees to find her in the depths of the infinite retail universe where all stores across all realities are interconnected. (Full disclosure: Nino and I have the same agent.)

riot baby

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

Novella finalist. A Black girl with psychic abilities so powerful that she could level a city watches as her younger brother is incarcerated–and must decide what she will and won’t do about it as she watches him suffer through their connection.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Novella finalist. Esther escapes an arranged marriage by hiding in a librarian’s book wagon–a marriage to a man who was engaged to Esther’s best friend, who she was in love with, who just got executed for possession of propaganda. (Full disclosure: Sarah and I have the same agent.)

the empress of salt and fprtune

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

Novella finalist. In-yo, a young woman of royal birth from a defeated people is sent to make a political marriage with the emperor; she must choose her allies carefully if her people–and she–are to survive. Rabbit is a handmaiden sold into the emperor’s court, who befriends this lonely young woman… and gets far more than she bargained for.

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

Novella finalist. Jack has taken the body of her sister to the Moors, a place where death definitely isn’t permanent or necessarily a problem. When she returns to the School for Wayward Children, it’s clear something has gone disturbingly wrong in a way only a mad scientist can manage–and she desperately needs her friends’ help.


See you, space pirates. 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.