Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, with a few more new releases and some essay collections for your edification. I hope that everyone who celebrates it had a great holiday weekend, stayed warm, and ate some excellent food. I played a lot of “telephone pictionary,” in which you pass a pad of paper around a table and people take turns trying to draw a phrase, then guessing the phrase that drawing indicates, then drawing the new phrase and so on. It’s a simple game that’s ridiculously fun–give it a whirl sometime! (Though it’s best with groups of eight or more.) Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Friday!
Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge is in its ninth year, with a set of 24 tasks that invite readers to expand their worldview through books. Read one book per task, or do some multi-tasking by counting one book for multiple tasks. It’s all fine! The point of the challenge is to push yourself to expand your horizons. Thank you to Thriftbooks for sponsoring Read Harder 2023.
To find the tasks and subscribe to our newsletter for tips and recommendations, visit Read Harder 2023.
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process.
Bookish Goods
The Thing Shatterproof Ornament by cyptcultureshop
Come on, The Thing is a Christmas movie, right? It’s very snowy and… festive. So what a great way to decorate a tree… $12
New Releases
Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction edited by Ida Yoshinaga, Sean Guynes, and Gerry Canavan
This book collects essays and thinkpieces from a myriad of science fiction creatives from multiple media that explore what futures science fiction has anticipated and what survival strategies it offers our communities.
The Lost Witch by Paige Crutcher
Evermore is a town just off the coast of Ireland, a place protected by a goddess who wishes the lake of dreams remains untouched. But there are hostile witches who wish to take the lake’s power and release the Damned into our world. One hundred years ago, a woman named Brigid had devoted her life to guarding town and lake… and then she was offered her heart’s desire for a trickster god whose price was betraying Evermore. Now in modern day, the town is under siege, and Brigid’s descendant Ophelia and her fellow witch Finola must keep the monsters that attack it at bay. And then Brigid shows up, with no memory of how she came to be in the future, but knowing the answers she needs lie with the trickster god who once granted her wish and gave her a daughter.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
I have a major fondness for essay collections, so here’s a few more to check out!
Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack
In this book, Ytasha L. Womack traces the roots and history of Afrofuturism, its themes, and the way it isn’t just a part of science fiction, but found in a wide variety of art. Included are interviews with a swathe of artists and academics who can speak to the history and future of the movement.
Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985 edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre
This collection of essays examines the way science fiction and its authors interacted with the cultural and political movements of America and Great Britain from the 1950s through 1980s.
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.