Categories
Swords and Spaceships

Swords and Spaceships for July 2

Happy Friday, shipmates! It’s Alex, with some award-nominated books for you to check out (and they’re not all the usual suspects) and some SFF links to click. If you’re in the US, we’re headed into a holiday weekend–please be safe and have fun! (And if you live in the Western US, I beg of you, no fireworks.) May we all be headed into a relatively cooler start to July. See you on Tuesday for new release day, space pirates!

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

When Sword & Sorcery Cast a Spell in the 1980s

The Ghost Work Behind Artificial Intelligence

Queer readings of The Lord of the Rings are not accidents

CW for discussions of transphobia, but this long piece on Isabel Fall’s “Helicopter Story” and the Twitter implosion around it is, in my opinion, worth reading: How Twitter can ruin a life. I will note that yes, I have read the story, and I found it very meaningful to my experience as a trans person; your mileage may vary and that’s all right.

A roundup of indie spec fic for the month of June

Camestros Felapton has collected chapters 1-33 of the Debarkle in one volume, for free

Loving Sally Ride

What Venus has instead of plate tectonics

SFF eBook Deals

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse for $1.99

Tooth and Talon by Alex Hernandez for $0.99

The Stones of Resurrection by Tameri Etherton for $0.99

On Book Riot

This week’s SFF Yeah! is about LGBTQ+ SFF

15 adult fiction books from Bookfest that go straight to the TBR pile

18 of the best trans fantasy and sci-fi books

6 SFF books with genderfluid characters

Free Association Friday

The shortlist for the 2020 Kitschies is out, and I want to shine the spotlight on some of the books they’ve named, which I don’t think we’ve ever had in the newsletter before. (Also on the shortlist are Piranesi, The City We Became, The Ministry of the Future, and Raybearer, all of which we’ve talked about multiple times.) The Kitschies are a juried award that focus on “progressive, intelligent, and entertaining” speculative fiction, and tend to have a pretty eclectic and fun shortlist. (Full disclosure from me: I won a Kitschie for my debut novel in 2017, so I may love them a little extra.)

Cover of A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes

A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes

This is the story of two soulmates who live in Jamaica, starting just four years before the end of colonial rule. Moshe was born without skin; his strange appearance makes it impossible to tell what race he is. Arienne is his soulmate and does her best to protect him from the social and emotional burden of looking like he does.

The Lost Future of Pepperharrow by Natasha Pulley

A translator named Thaniel and a watchmaker who can remember the future named Mori travel to Japan together on separate business. While there, they begin to experience ghostly apparitions together–and then Mori vanishes. As the ghosts begin to haunt more of the country, Thaniel concludes that this has something to do with Mori–and that his friend is in danger.

Cover of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara

Jai is a boy who lives at the end of the Purple metro line in a tin-roofed home, so far removed from the high-rises of the city that they might as well be a different planet. When a classmate goes missing, he decides to put all of the skills he’s learned by watching far too many reality police shows to use in solving the disappearance. It seems like a game at first… until other children start disappearing and rumors of soul-snatching djinn begin circulating around.

The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay

Jean is a foul-mouthed, no-nonsense grandmother who works as a guide in an outback wildlife park. Then a pandemic begins sweeping across the country, with its main symptom that its victims can understand the language of animals until the rising tide of unstoppable voices drives them mad. When Jean’s son, Lee, goes missing in this madness, she sets off to find him, with a dingo named Sue riding shotgun.

Cover of Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn

Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn

As a seven-year-old, Nainoa fell overboard from a cruise ship, only to be rescued and delivered back to his mother by a shark. This miracle marks the beginning of strange powers for Nainoa, ones that eventually drive his family apart and leaves him struggling to understand himself as he works as a paramedic in Portland. More supernatural events push his scattered family back together in Hawai’i, where they must reckon with the cost of survival and what heritage means.

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Okay yes, you got me, I have mentioned this book a zillion times before, so I should have put the link in the opening paragraph. TOO BAD, MY NEWSLETTER, MY RULES. I will take every opportunity to tell you how freaking amazing this book is if you haven’t read it yet. Beautiful prose! A different take on parallel worlds! Complex and conflicted characters! This was my favorite book of 2020, dangit.


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.