Author: Alex Acks

Happy Friday, shipmates! We did it. We survived another week. Assuming that you haven’t completely transcended the mortal construct that is time at this point. It’s Alex, with a list of books that came out very silly, and some news items to share, many of which involve pre-orders being available so Past You can send Future You a nice present.

I hope you can keep on keeping on, and stay safe out there.

Happy thing for today: The new season of GBBO starts on Netflix TONIGHT. I am going to bake cake ALL WEEKEND.

Also, the Gundam is WALKING

Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? Louisville Community Bail Fund

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News and Views

Cassandra Khaw has written her first full-length novel! You can already pre-order The All-Consuming World.

We’ve also got a cover reveal and excerpt for P. Djèlí Clark’s A Master of Djinn, which sure sounds like it’s in the same delightful universe as The Haunting of Tram Car 015.

Darcia Little Badger talks beautifully about her father, her grief for him, and the influence he had on her as a writer.

Rhianna Pratchett: “Dad would be smiling to see my name on a book”

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki announced the launch of The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction.

You can now pre-order Silk & Steel: A Queer Speculative Fiction Anthology

The last words of every fallen Lord of the Rings villain and hero

Judith Butler ethered both a completely unprepared interviewer and She Who Must Not Be Named with the grace of an ice dancer and the supreme cutting edge and power of a diamond-bladed pathology saw.

I know I’m wandering a little far from books here, but everything I’ve read about the African Fantasy MMO The Wagadu Chronicles is just really cool

The Evolution of Costumes in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Get your avocados to Mars

On Book Riot

9+ Tolkien-inspired recipes to enjoy on Hobbit day

5 great speculative fiction anthologies of 2020

This month, you can enter to win $50 to spend at your favorite indie bookstore and a free 1-year audible subscription.

Free Association Friday: Happy Birthday, Mark Hamill!

On this day in 1951, Mark Hamill entered the world. Presumably he was not yet wielding a lightsaber, as that could have gotten very awkward. So how about some books that touch on his incredibly varied career?

Please note: Since I was looking for very specific books, this list didn’t come out with quite the diverse authorship I normally want. But hopefully it’s still fun and silly, at least.

The Joker: A Visual History of the Clown Prince of Crime by Daniel Wallace – This is the hill I will die on: Mark Hamill is the best Joker there has ever been (though I will also accept Cesar Romero). And Mark Hamill himself wrote the introduction to this book!

The Legends of Luke Skywalker by Ken Liu – Luke is obviously Mark Hamill’s most iconic character, and this book explores the stories that the characters within the Star Wars universe tell about him–which may be true or not.

Or if you want a book that’s very Luke-centric from Legends, I definitely recommend Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly.

Zorro by Isabel Allende – Mark Hamill totally voiced Zorro in an animated version of the tale, 1997-1998. This book is not about those cartoons, but it sounds like a cool book about Zorro nonetheless.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Legacy by Michael Teitelbaum – I had absolutely no idea that Mark Hamill was the voice of Fire Lord Ozai until I started really diving into his work history. So if you didn’t know either, now you know. There’s some cool backstory stuff about the Fire Nation (and Ozai) to be found in this here book.

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell – You see, when DreamWorks made movies from these books, they also made a TV series. Mark Hamill was the voice of Alvin the Treacherous in those, which honestly sounds like a lot of fun.

Wing Commander: Heart of the Tiger by – William R. Forstchen and Andrew Keith – The first time I actually saw Mark Hamill outside of his role as Luke Skywalker was when I played Wing Commander III… which I never finished because our PC at the time couldn’t handle it. But it was cutting edge, it had video of him and everything. He plays Colonel Christopher “Maverick” Blair, the main character.

The Art of Castle in the Sky by Hayao Miyazaki – Yup, Mark Hamill did a voice in the English dub of Laputa: Castle in the Sky (he was Muska.) It’s also still one of my favorite Miyazaki films, which doesn’t actually have anything to do with Mark Hamill, though I’m sure his presence didn’t hurt.

I also learned that there is a cartoon called Biker Mice From Mars (based on comics) and he voiced the character Pierre Fluffbottom, so if I have to know that, so do you.

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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.

Happy Tuesday, shipmates. It’s Alex, here for another round of new releases. To be honest, this last weekend, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg passing away on Friday, felt pretty brutal. I guess I’m just saying that if you’re having a hard time with all the everything, you’re not alone. Stay safe and take a minute to breathe, even if breathe might mean something like, “turn off the internet for 48 hours and cry.” Then we keep sailing, together.

Rest in power, RBG.

If you need something that’ll make you smile, here’s a little boy and his best friend, the plastic skeleton.

Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? blacklivesmatter.card.co and The Okra Project.

New Releases

Miss Meteor by Tehlor Kay Mejia and Anna-Marie McLemore – Ex-best friends Lita and Chicky are both outsiders in their small New Mexico town. Lita wants to enter the Miss Meteor pageant to prove to the world—and herself—that girls who look like her have a place. Chicky decides to help her because it’s a great chance to get revenge on the people who have made them both miserable for most of their lives. (It’s SFF, trust me, but if I tell you how, it’d be a spoiler.)

Sweet Harmony by Claire North – Harmony is tired of everything in her life being as average as she is herself. But she decides to pursue self-improvement in the most modern way possible: upgrading her nanos, something that requires just a few swipes on an app. It seems so easy at first, but there are only so many upgrades a body can take…

Tamora Carter: Goblin Queen by Jim C. Hines – Tamora discovers a couple of goblins digging around in a dumpster one night after roller derby practice—and they’re not the only ones who have come through a magical portal into our world. She quickly realizes that they might be the key to what happened to her best friend, Andre—and that there are things out there much more dangerous than goblins.

The Seventh Perfection by Daniel Polansky – Manet became the God-King’s amanuensis by means of the seven perfections, rendering her body to the peak of physical performance and her mind incapable of forgetting anything she has ever seen. This perfection will ultimately drive her mad, but first she has an unsolvable riddle to unravel, which may destroy the God-King she has crafted herself to serve.

The Silvered Serpents by Roshani Chokshi – The consequences of thwarting the Fallen House are still haunting Séverin and his crew. In an attempt to assuage his own guilt, Séverin begins pursuing an artifact that, if the stories are true, will grant its holder the power of God. It’s a quest that takes the crew to Russia and threatens to destroy them before they can complete this one last job.

The Resurrection of Fulgencio Ramirez by Rudy Ruiz – In the border town of La Frontera in the 1950s, tensions are high and cultures continually clash between the white and Mexican-American populations. And in that moment, a son of impoverished immigrants named Fulgencio falls in love with Carolina, the pharmacist’s daughter, a romance that is doomed by forces outside their control. Twenty years later, Fulgencio reads the obituary of Carolina’s husband and sees a second chance—though first he has to break his family’s curse.

Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots – Anna is a temp who does office work for some truly terrible people… until an encounter with a “hero” leaves her terribly injured and jobless. With only her fury, the internet, and her office worker ability to collate data left to her, she quickly realizes that she’s not the only person who’s been injured by a so-called hero, and the “good” versus “evil” story being sold is almost entirely marketing. With some careful social media management, she can start pushing her own narrative. Her acumen lands her a new job, with one of the most evil villains remaining, but this time it might be her turn to save the world.

News and Views

Malka Older: The Only People Panicking Are the People in Charge

Let’s Stop With the Realism Versus Science Fiction and Fantasy Debate

You can watch Samuel R. Delany’s 2020 Windham-Campbell lecture

The first real trailer for WandaVision has been released

The 19 coolest starships from Star Trek

Tatiana Maslany will be She-Hulk

Oh my god, Chuck Tingle has made a “select your own timeline” adventure: Trouble in Tinglewood

There’s going to be a Japanese movie adaptation of Heinlein’s The Door into Summer

Terry Goodkind has died

The 2020 Ig Nobel Awards have been announced. You can watch the award ceremony here. It’s well worth your time even if it was virtual this year.

On Book Riot

Explore indigenous futurisms with these SFF books by indigenous authors

Middle Fantasy: a sub-genre for all fantasy lovers

Quiz: Which book of magic and mystery should you read next?

This month, you can enter to win $50 to spend at your favorite indie bookstore and a free 1-year audible subscription.

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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.

Happy Friday, shipmates! We’re at the midpoint of September now, and hopefully you’re getting to feel the change in the seasons. I’ve gotten to have my AC off for a week and a half now, though all of the wildfire smoke is making having the windows open a little iffy. Yes, it’s Alex, with a few news items and my favorite quarantine reads so far. Stay safe out there, and I’ll see you for new releases on Tuesday!

Excellent thing for today: a new song from Janelle Monáe

Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? blacklivesmatter.card.co and The Okra Project.

News and Views

News about Leviathan Falls, the final book of The Expanse

Margaret Atwood has won the Dayton literary peace prize

Alasdair Stuart writes about Warren Ellis for Sarah Gailey’s personal canons series.

A reflection on gender, joy, and worldbuilding, set off by an observed revision in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness.

Matriarchy and gender magic in the Tamir Triad

Tessa Gratton on reclaiming genderqueer monstrousness

18 years on, the filmmakers look back on Reign of Fire

The second season of The Mandalorian has a trailer

Which Hugo finalists don’t have a Wikipedia page? (The list is actually shorter than I might have guessed.)

Some exciting (or if you’ve read The Expanse, slightly terrifying) news from Venus, though cosmologist Katie Mack would like everyone to calm down and be patient, please.

Argh, apparently it makes no difference to the deluge of robocalls whether you answer them or not.

On Book Riot

9 under-the-radar fairytale and folktale retellings

This week’s SFF Yeah! Podcast is about the multiverse

You can win a copy of Ink and Sigil by Kevin Hearne

This month, you can enter to win $50 to spend at your favorite indie bookstore and a free 1-year audible subscription.

Free Association Friday: Favorite Quarantine Reads (so far)[lolsob]

Today I celebrated my one year anniversary at my job, which is a Big Deal. And then I realized that it’s also the six month anniversary of my job going into lockdown… which is… sure something. Though I’m no longer spending over an hour a day on public transit, my reading time has gone way up. This might also have something to do with the fact that I injured my right hand opening a beer growler (hush, the orthopedic doctor assured me that’s a perfectly valid injury, and I have never felt so seen before), so I can’t play video games right now.

So what’s the best book I’ve read in each month of this super fun and exciting period in all of our lives? It’s a silver lining, at least.

Back Half of March: Lady Hotspur by Tessa Granton – It’s a gender bent Henry V that is also Extremely Queer in all the ways, and a massive meditation about love and duty and the way prophecy (and expectations) can seriously f*** people up. Just call me out by name next time, Tessa. (You don’t need to read The Queens of Innis Lear first—I didn’t—but you might get a bit more out of it that way.)

April: Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling – This might be a little too satirically dystopian for me, six months in, but in April it was still extremely, nastily funny. It helps that it’s definitely making fun of capitalism and politics and there are no pandemics involved, just snitty delivery drones in a horrible world that’s run by Definitely Not Amazon.

May: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone – This book has won about a zillion awards now, and all of them are well-deserved. My favorite thing to come out of this is apparently lesbians are now picking each other up on dating apps by identifying if they’re a red or a blue. This is the best kind of crossover with reality. (Full disclosure: I have the same agent as Amal and Max.)

June: Stealing Thunder by Alina Boyden – Considering I wrote an entire Friday piece about how much I love this book and why, so this should come as no surprise. To sum it up: “There’s a lot of discussion about stories of queer suffering in general. … There definitely needs to be space for us to process our traumas and explore darker themes, and do so when we are our own intended audience. But we so infrequently get a chance to explore our wishful fantasies and our joy, particularly not when major publishers are involved. That’s why Stealing Thunder was a shot of sunlight directly to my heart.”

July: The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson – I literally read this book in two nights because I could not stop reading it, even though it kept me up waaaaaay past my bedtime. It’s tonally like the movie The VVitch, which makes it way more horror than my weenie self can normally handle, but it’s feminist and wrathful and takes blood revenge for the way society is built on the lives and bodies of women. Plus the voice of the book is gorgeous.

August: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson – I am still haunted by this book. Another one with incredibly strong voice, and plot twists that had me whispering “Oh, shit!” at the end of every other chapter. A multiverse novel like I never could have imagined. I want everyone to read this book!

Front Half of September: Savage Legion by Matt Wallace – Honestly, I’m not that much into epic fantasy because it tends to be so stuck in its own world build and convoluted plots that it lacks the emotional meat I crave. This book does not have that problem, and it’s a deep examination of the way outwardly perfect, enlightened societies treat their least powerful citizens and control information. It’s a scream of primal rage at the lionization of men who have to make “necessary” and “difficult” decisions that treat people like things. (Full disclosure: I have the same agent as Matt.)

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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.

Happy Tuesday shipmates! Are you ready for some new books? It’s Alex, with a nice haul of new titles for the week, and some bits of news that you might find interesting. Stay safe out there, and take care of each other.

As I wrote this newsletter, I’d just got done watching The Princess Bride reunion, the table read the surviving original cast (and a bunch of awesome guests) did for the Wisonsin Dems. It was amazing and here’s hoping you can still get a little of how cool it was from checking out the hashtag on Twitter.

Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? blacklivesmatter.card.co and The Okra Project.

New Releases

Piranesi by Susana Clarke – Piranesi lives in a house of infinite rooms, its unending halls filled with statues, each one unique. An ocean is imprisoned in the house as well, but Piranesi knows its tides and how not to be trapped in the rooms it floods. His entire life is exploring the house; and the more he explores, the more he begins to unravel a terrible truth, that there is another occupant of the house.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini – Kira finds an alien relic during a routine mission to map a supposedly uninhabited world. But it’s not a relic, and the world is not uninhabited, and first contact isn’t anything she could have imagined.

Each of Us a Desert by Mark Oshiro – Xochitl is the daughter of a conquered village, a wanderer of the desert who speaks to the winds and finds engimatic lines of poetry in the dunes around her. She wishes only to share her heart with a kindred spirit—and so she finds Emilia, the daughter of the murderous conquerer of Xochitl’s village. Together, they embark on a dangerous and mystical journey across the desert. (Full disclosure: Mark and I have the same agent.)

An Unnatural Life by Erin K. Wagner – 812-3, an artificial life-form, is in prison for murdering a human, though he claims to be innocent of that crime. While his kind have legal rights on Earth, the situation on the militarized moon Europa is far murkier. It’s up to his lawyer, a human who has to battle her own prejudices and interpersonal problems, to secure a fair trial and find the truth of what happened.

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn – Bree tries to escape her grief at the death of her mother by joining a residential program for bright high school students at UNC. On her first night there, she witnesses a demon, the “Legendborn” students of UNC that fight it, and survives the experience with her memory intact, despite the best magical efforts of those students. It’s an experience that unlocks her own powers—and makes her realize that there is more to the “accident” that caused her mother’s death than she first realized.

The Art of Saving the World by Corinne Duyvis – When Hazel was born in a small Pennsylvania town, an interdimensional rift opened up nearby, one somehow linked to her. She’s never been able to leave her town, lest the rift become volatile. But when she turns sixteen, the rift goes completely out of control and starts spitting copies of Hazel into the world. And they’ll have to work together if they want to save the world.

News and Views

Susanna Clarke’s Fantasy World of Interiors

Scalzi and Zachary Quinto talk about Murder by Other Means

Dan Hanks on the power and pitfalls of nostalgia

Langston League is creating syllabi for each episode of Lovecraft Country

Nine East & Southeast Asian Electronic Artists Finding Inspiration in Speculative Fiction

Dune explained from the new trailer, by someone who has never read or seen any version of it.

James D. Nicoll writes about the Amazing Adventures of Space Cat

Syfy Wire has six sci-fi romances to recommend to you for September

You can see the pictures from the 2020 astronomy photographer of the year winners

If you’re wondering about the science behind the oppressive orange skies seen in California, Wired has it explained.

On Book Riot

The best Star Trek books for the final frontier

This month, you can enter to win $50 to spend at your favorite indie bookstore and a free 1-year audible subscription.

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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.

Happy Friday, shipmates. We made it through another week, so take a deep breath—if you can—and let’s talk fiction to get away from reality. It’s Alex, with some book news and some themed book picks. Stay safe out there, space pirates, especially if you’re on the west coast. Please be safe.

A thing that made me smile this week: This snippet of a punk cover of How Far I’ll Go

Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? blacklivesmatter.card.co and The Okra Project.

News and Views

OMG Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas hit the NYT bestseller list!!! Trans book by a trans author on the NYT!!!

Cory Doctorow is running a kickstarter to produce the audiobook verision of Attack Surface, the third Little Brother book.

There is going to be a cat on Star Trek: Discovery. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. HE IS AN ABSOLUTE UNIT. Also, the season 3 trailer has me running in circles and screaming that it’s not October already.

When Speculative Fiction Becomes Reality

Nicky Drayden has put up her short fiction collection for free

Perhaps the best celebration of Star Trek Day. Though the Klingon cooking show pilot is a very close runner-up.

On Book Riot

The new Dune trailer is here!

Two episodes of SFF Yeah! for you: Episode 86.5 is about weird women in SFF! In episode 87, guest Preeti Chhibber chats about Baby Yoda, the Wheel of Time adaptation, and The Witcher.

This month, you can enter to win $50 to spend at your favorite indie bookstore and a free 1-year audible subscription.

Free Association Friday: SFF ♥ NYC

Well, Lin Manuel Miranda called New York City “the greatest city in the world” via the lyrics of Hamilton, and I’m not here to pick fights. It makes a great setting for fantasy—and a little bit of science fiction—and often, the city is a character itself, living and breathing and ugly and beautiful all at once. So here are some SFF books that heart emoji NYC big time:

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin has New York as a literally living city when its born into being. And unlike some other cities, it has six avatars—one for each borough and one for the city as a whole. And unfortunately just like many other cities that didn’t make it past their birth, there is an evil force not of this world trying to strangle it in its cradle…

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson gives us a New York City 120 years in the future when the ice has melted and the coasts have flooded, but New York lives on with its skyscrapers jutting from the sea like glittering islands. New York City did not drown—it rode the wave.

The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty – A travel writer who needs a new start in life takes a job in New York City. Her first assignment is to write a tourist guide to the city itself, a daunting task of itself, but worse, it’s a guide for the undead. And since our writer heroine is very much alive and human, trying to write for an audience of monsters is more difficult than she could have imagined.

Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson gives us New York City on the eve of World War II, the background for a noir tale about a white-passing Black woman who has “saint’s hands” that make her a gifted assassin. She’s given up her past for her life in the city, but her past hasn’t forgotten her.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker – At the turn of the 20th century, a golem whose master has died and left her purposeless and a jinni who has been released but is still definitely not free meet in New York City. First they become friends, and then they become more, figuring out how to complete each other’s stories.

Disappearing Nightly by Laura Resnick – First of the Esther Diamond urban fantasy series, it’s about an actress who just wants to take her shot at stardom and not go back to waiting tables. When she receives a mysterious warning to give up the stage, she goes to her best friend, a 350-year-old mage whose job is protecting the city from capital-E Evil. Shenanigans ensue.

Daniel José Older has the Bone Street Rumba series (start with Half-Resurrection Blues) and the Shadowshaper Cypher series (start with Shadowshaper), both of which take place in a New York City that has weird and wonderful magic seething just below the surface. Half-Resurrection Blues gives us ghosts and necromancers and half-dead agents of the New York Council of the Dead; Shadowshaper gives us a young artist learning to give her work power by infusing it with ancestral spirits. All of it is in absolutely gorgeous, rhythmic prose.

Dead to Me by Anton Strout – A man with the power of psychometry (learning an object’s history by touching it) gives up his life of petty crime to join the Department of Extraordinary Affairs. And his first case involves the ghost of a beautiful woman who doesn’t actually realize she’s dead.

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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.

Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, with some new releases and bookish news for you. And wow, a lot of good books came out today. I had a tough time narrowing it down to the six I listed. It’s fun times in eastern Colorado right now, where we’re hoping the sudden September snow (woo, 93F on Monday, 26F on Tuesday, I love you Colorado) will maybe put out the wildfires that have had ash raining out of the sky like we’re Silent Hill with ski bums. Take care, stay safe, and I hope your skies are clearer than ours!

Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? blacklivesmatter.card.co and The Okra Project.

New Releases

Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston – The world around the Arkhysian Empire is changing, with poisonous desert encroaching on once-good farmland and deadly storms sweeping sand and sadness across the land. The exiled spymaster of a lord of the empire and a young woman training to be a powerful griot both face the impending death of their world and must try to save it.

The Phlebotomist by Chris Panatier – In a world long torn by war, mandatory blood draws called “the Harvest” have been instated, and that has led to a society segregated by blood type. Willa works as a phlebotomist for the blood contractor Patriot to support herself and her grandson. When Willa tries to resurrect a long-disused blood-drawing technique, she uncovers an awful truth that her employer will happily kill to protect.

Prime Deceptions by Valerie Valdes – Captain Eva Innocente still has some serious trust issues with her sister, for good reason, but when she gets the offer of a job that’ll have a big payday and is nominally a noble cause—finding a missing scientist—she can’t quite bring herself to refuse. The search takes her and her crew from a bot-fighting arena to a never-ending convention to an apparent paradise populated by dangerous psychic animals. But will she be able to complete this mission without the dark deeds of her past coming to light?

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart – For decades, the Emperor has maintained his rule through his mastery of bone shard magic. But with his strength failing, revolution is beginning to threaten his empire, and yet he refuses to recognize his daughter, Lin, as his heir. Lin vows to prove her worth by mastering the same bone shard magic—but with revolution at the gates, she has to decide if the price that it will exact from her is worth paying.

Architects of Memory by Karen Osborne – The war with the aliens known as the Vai cost humanity a lot; for salvage pilot Ash Jackson, it cost her everything. Now terminally ill, she will do anything to escape corporate indenture and find a cure. But when her next salvage mission uncovers a weapon of genocide, she realizes she’s caught in a corporate conspiracy that might turn her into the next weapon.

The Sentient by Nadia Afifi – Amira Valdez is a brilliant scientist doing her best to move forward from a life started in a strict religious compound. She dreams of going to space, but that goal is jeopardized when she’s assigned to a human cloning project that many would kill to stop. Using her ability to read memories, Amira begins to unravel the conspiracy, which leads her toward a confrontration with her own past.

News and Views

Usman Malik has announced his first short story collection!

Jeannette Ng writes a very pointed thread about all the Three Body Problem adaptation hot takes going around.

New short story from Stephen Graham Jones: Wait for Night

The winners for the 2020 Dragon Awards have been announced

Tor.com has summarized all the new Dune news from Empire Magazine

Get a free opinion about science in science fiction

The exhibition A Conversation Larger Than the Universe: Science Fiction and the Literature of the Fantasitc from the collection of Henry Wessells has been mostly reproduced online

The cast of The Princess Bride is coming together for a one-night-only virtual table read to raise funds for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin

An epic book cover WHOOPS

Innocent Chizaram Ilo’s contibution to Sarah Gailey’s Personal Canons series: Personal Canons: Lesley Nneka Arimah

How a former officer changed Russian science fiction

The Evolution of the Ballad of Mulan

On Book Riot

10 books like The Dresden Files

Reconstructing Frankenstein: reviving Shelley’s monster

This month, you can enter to win $50 to spend at your favorite indie bookstore and a free 1-year audible subscription.

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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.

Happy Friday, shipmates! We made it through another week! August has been consigned to the dustbin of history, and good riddance (unless your August didn’t suck, in which case, please do not let me toss it away). It’s Alex, with some news—a LOT happened this week, wow–and a very abbreviated glance at some Afrofuturist books, since that’s a topic way too broad to truly handle in one little newsletter. Take care and stay safe!

Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? blacklivesmatter.card.co and The Okra Project.

News and Views

Octavia Butler finally hit the NYT bestseller list (for the week of August 29). The snip in the tweet is from the Paperback Trade Fiction list, with Parable of the Sower at number 14. For more on her work, there’s a great Book Riot post to get you started.

The Three Body Problem is being adapted for a Netflix series. Here’s a New Yorker profile of Cixin Liu from 2019.

Star Trek: Discovery has announced more of its season 3 cast, which includes a nonbinary actor and a trans man actor.

FIYAHCon invites you to enjoy all of its Friday programming for free.

John Boyega did an excellent and absolutely unflinching interview with GQ Magazine that is a must read. No, really. Go read it. Right now. I’ll wait.

New short story from Tochi Onyebuchi: How to Pay Reparations: A Documentary

Strange Horizons just published its 20th birthday issue.

New Zen Cho novel on the horizon!!

Ryan Coogler writes about Chadwick Boseman. Marvel put together an incredibly touching tribute to him. Letitia Wright wrote a beautiful poem.

As an aside, this is a cool article about the evolution of the Dora Milaje from comics to how they were seen in Black Panther.

Per KJ Charles, you’ve only got a limited time left to snag Samit Basu’s amazing novel Chosen Spirits.

On Book Riot

How The Hunger Games prequel helped me realize I’ve changed

10 of the best urban fantasy series to read

This month, you can enter to win $50 to spend at your favorite indie bookstore and a free 1-year audible subscription.

Free Association Friday: Afrofuturism Spotlight

In honor of Chadwick Boseman’s most famous role (though did you know he was also an award-winning playwright before he broke out as an actor?) I wanted to put the spotlight on Afrofuturism, since Black Panther is arguably what put a much older (though the term itself originated in 1994) literary movement into the broader [white] cultural spotlight.

(Also as a note, Nnedi Okorafor draws a distinction between Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, which is why her books aren’t going to be in this FAF. I’m also not educated enough to go further into the academic discussion.)

Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler – This is a compendium of the entire Xenogenesis trilogy, which was actually my introduction to Butler’s work (and left me actually angy that I hadn’t known to read her earlier). Humanity has been almost destroyed, and their only chance for survival is a strange kind of symbiosis with the alien Oankali.

The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead – The Department of Elevator Inspectors is divided between the good-old-boy Empiricists, who do everything by the book, and the Intuitionists, who are able to understand any defect an elevator has via meditation. Lila Mae is the first Black woman inspector; she’s an Intuitionist, and she is never wrong. When an elevator goes into freefall on her watch, the Empiricists jump at the chance to blame her… so she decides to start her own investigation into the incident, one that will lead her to a secret that will change her life forever.

Blood Colony by Tananarive Due – The blood of immortals is the source of a drug called “Glow,” which can cure almost any illness–including the scourge that is AIDS. But the people who make and distribute Glow are being murdered by a violent, fanatical sect linked to the Vatican… and ultimately, it’s up to one teenaged immortal girl to stop them before they take everything she loves.

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delaney – In a dead city at the center of the United States, only madmen and criminals wander the streets. Into this place arrives a young man known only as the Kid, a poet and wanderer, who will uncover its mysteries.

Mindscape by Andrea Hairston – For 115 years, the world has been divided by the Barrier, created by an extraterrestrial and epi-dimensional entity seemingly intent on dividing humans into warring factions. A treaty has been painstakingly created to end the wars, but the architect is assassinated, much to the glee of the power-hungry politicians and religious fanatics who liked the conflict the way it was. It’s up to her protege, Elleni, to repair the shattered treaty.

Prey of the Gods by Nicky Drayden – A future South Africa rapidly advancing with personal robots and new renewable energy infrastructure is about to get hit with a triple whammy: a new hallucinogenic drug, an AI uprising, and an ancient demigoddess who wants to reclaim her power with a lot of human blood. It’s up to a quirky cast, each of whom has their own serious issues, to keep their bright future—or any future at all—alive.

Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett – I can’t do a punchier summary than this: “A computer program etched into the atmosphere has a story to tell, the story of two people, of a city lost to chaos, of survival and love. The program’s data, however, has been corrupted.”

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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.

Happy Tuesday, space pirates! Wow, there are a LOT of books coming out this week. This is Alex, bringing you just a small selection of all the goodies to be had–and a little bit of book-related news. In not-book news, Bill and Ted Face the Music just came out–and it’s on streaming, which is how I watched it–and to me, it was the movie I needed in this absolute nightmare of a year because it’s just so sincere and kind and just the right amount of silly and weird. Stay safe out there, be most excellent to each other, and I’ll see you on Friday!

Here, have a thread of Tom Hiddleston as macarons.

Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? blacklivesmatter.card.co and The Okra Project.

New Releases

Sanctuary by Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher – In near-future America, every citizen has a chip that tracks all their movements, and undocumented immigrants are hunted by the Deportation Forces. When Vali’s mom’s counterfeit chip malfunctions, the entire family is forced to flee the small Vermont town where they’ve been quietly living. Their only chance is to make it to California, a sanctuary state that’s being walled off from the rest of the country.

Find Layla by Meg Elison – When a school competition calls for exploration of a biome, underprivileged and bullied Layla chooses the hostile environment of her own fungi-filled, decrepit home. The video goes viral and Layla is taken from her family by Child Protective Services. Now she has to face friends and bullies alike on her own, and refuse to back down from the truth she’s shown the world.

Killing Frost by Seanan McGuire – Faerie’s archaic marriage traditions mean that Simon Torquill is legally October’s father, and she has to have him at her wedding whether she likes it or not if she doesn’t want to set off a storm of political turmoil. She has no choice to set off on a quest into her family’s past for the sake of her own future.

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas – Yadriel is determined to prove that he’s a real brujo after his very traditional family refuses to accept his gender. So he decides to summon the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. Only he accidentally summons the ghost of Julian Diaz, former bad boy, who isn’t going to go quietly into death until he’s tied up some loose ends first. Yadriel agrees to help him to get the ghost to leave… but the longer they work together, the less Yadriel wants Julian to go.

Wayward Witch by Zoraida Córdova – Rose Mortiz is a fixer who’s had her course in life muddied by new powers she doesn’t understand–and the return of her father, who has amnesia. Only she discovers that he’s been faking his memory loss, and when she’s about to confront him, they’re sucked into the Caribbean fairy realm of Adas. If she wants to return home and try to put her family back together, she’ll have to fix Adas–and learn the true breadth of her own magic.

The Four Profound Weaves by R. Lemberg – In this queer fairytale, the city of Iyar lives in the shadow of an evil ruler. Two elder changers, people who have taken on different gender roles, must learn to weave from Death if they are to save their city and find their places in life.

In the Shadows of Men by Robert Jackson Bennet – In west Texas during the new oil boom brought about by fracking, two brothers start renovating an old motel, planning to cater to the workers coming in. The two men are after money, but they’re also running from their own histories. But the motel has its own dark history, and as strange things begin to happen, the two brothers discover that the building had saw other uses in the past…

News and Views

How about N.K. Jemisin reading a story by Amal El-Mohtar: And Their Lips Range With the Sun

All Is Fair in Love and Go: Strategy Gaming in This Is How You Lose the Time War

The Folio Society has done a new edition of Octavia Butler’s Kindred, and here’s an interview with the illustrator.

Rest in power, Chadwick Boseman.

Amazon is going to adapt Eoin Colfer’s novel Highfire, and Nic Cage is executive producing–and voicing Vern. OMG.

A Q&A with Garth Nix.

Artist Kip Rasmussen on Depicting Tolkien’s Silmarillion

Check out this Lord of the Rings fountain pen. (just don’t look at the price.)

The life of library cats during the pandemic

On Book Riot

Everything we know so far about Diana Gabaldon’s new Outlander book: Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

8 of the best adult dragon books around

You could win a copy of Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds. TRUST ME YOU WANT THIS ONE.

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.

This has been another incredibly difficult week, shipmates. It’s Alex, and I wish I could write a cheery intro for you right now, but I can’t. I spent every spare minute of my day doomscrolling Twitter, looking at the news out of Kenosha. I promise the end of the newsletter gets much sillier, and I did find some fun links if you need the distraction. Take care of yourselves, be safe, and solidarity with protestors and strikers.

If you’re as angry and upset as I am right now, here’s a place you can help: Milwaukee Freedom Fund

New Releases That I Cannot Believe I Missed on Tuesday

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger – Elatsoe is a Lipan Apache girl who lives in an America a little different from our own, one that has been shaped by magic, monsters, and legends. After her beloved cousin is murdered, she has to venture into a town that very much does not want her to pry beneath its picture-perfect facade and unearth its horrifying secrets. But she has magic of her own: the ability to raise the ghosts of dead animals, a gift passed down through her family. And she will use every skill, every trick, all of her wits, and help from her friends to protect her family.

Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley – Honestly, I’m not that much of a Beowulf stan (or that much into epic poetry) but the more I hear about this translation, the more I feel like I must read it (like translating “Hwæt!” as “Bro!”).

News and Views

Worlds Without End has reproduced (with permission) Nisi Shawl’s Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction

Nisi Shawl on music, spirituality, and the creative process

You can stream PBS’s documentary about Ursula K LeGuin for free until August 30.

Arkham Board of Health Feedback on Miskatonic University’s Draft Plan for a Safe Campus Reopening

You can explore the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Klingon

Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers is getting closer to being on TV.

An online exhibit celebrating Ray Bradbury

A new short story from Malka Older: Tear Tracks

Look, Idris Elba has been in enough science fiction films that he totally counts as SFF news even if he’s launching a boxing school.

On Book Riot

10 books that explore the multiverse

5 eco-dystopian novels that explore environmental worst-case scenarios

8 writers discuss how fairy tales can disrupt the status quo

This week’s SFF Yeah! podcast is about diving into fanfiction

This month you can enter to win $50 at your favorite indie bookstore and a 1-year Kindle Unlimited subscription.

Free Association Friday: Gothic Archetype Edition

I mentioned on Tuesday that I finished Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, but I didn’t really have the space to expound upon my love for it. Which is to say, I read that book in less than 24 hours. Just shotgunned it. I haven’t mainlined a book that fast since Catching Fire. And it’s even more impressive when you consider I’m a giant weenie and there’s a non-zero amount of spooky stuff in this book, and I was finishing it up at approximately 2 in the morning, right before bed.

My favorite part, though? The book is tonally perfect for a gothic novel, and it’s set in the 1950s. I will cop to not being the most widely read in the gothic genre (it is a place of prose that crosses over from lush and into impenetrable, in my opinion), but it’s one that normally lends itself to being a bit further back in history, perhaps to aide the requisite “lady in a very large dress running from a spooky house.” And of course the required decaying mansion often feels displaced in time, a moldering corpse that died several decades back and hasn’t yet gotten the memo. Mexican Gothic is pitch-perfect in all these senses, and it’s got eminently readable prose, and it’s got all sort of crunchy issues in it that I can’t get into without spoiling it.

But I can tell you what gothic archetypes you will meet, in a non-spoilery way—and the fact that these all exist in pitch-perfect harmony in this book is a delight that tells me Silvia Moreno-Garcia knows her genre inside and out and loves it enough to just have fun with it by playing with the tropes. In this book, you will meet:

• • The plucky, beautiful heroine who is in over her head.
  • The woman of the house who is fanatically strict about extremely arcane rules for no apparent reason.
  • The Faceless Lady Ghost.
  • The hot but extremely creepy guy who thinks manipulating women makes him even hotter.
  • The rotting patriarch who stands as a god over his moldering domain and reminisces over his alcohol of choice about how great Empire was.

• The female invalid who everyone is trying to keep hidden and no one will actually admit why.
• Eerie servants.
• The regretful sad sack destined to be played by Tom Hiddleston in the movie version.

I cannot wait for the television show of this. In the meantime, maybe I’ll just rewatch Crimson Peak or give We Have Always Lived in the Castle another read.

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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.

Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex with some new releases for you to check out this week, and a few bits and bobs from the news front. I’ve been dealing with some problems with one of my hands lately, which means I haven’t been able to play video games for over a month at this point… but on the positive side it’s done amazing things for the amount of reading I’ve gotten done.

I just finished reading Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which I shotgunned in less than 24 hours (it’s very good, highly recommend). Hope you’re finding lots of reading time—though for less painful reasons than me—and stay safe out there, space pirates!

Looking for non-book things you can do to help in the quest for justice? blacklivesmatter.card.co and The Okra Project.

New Releases

Where Dreams Descend by Janella Angeles – The Conquering Circus rests in a ruined, frozen city. Becoming the headline act promises fame for some and freedom for others. Magicians compete to take that spotlight, but this time, competitors start going missing and the stakes are life, death, and dark secrets revealed.

The Black Sky by Timothy D. Minneci – Bishop and his wife Tessa live separated by the Manhattan Island Seawall, both working desperately to be reunited. Bishop is given the chance to bring his wife into the corporate-controlled “safe” zone and clear his debts immediately by simply driving to Bangor, Maine… and kidnapping a doctor who knows how to save the life of the CEO. But no job is as simple as it seems in a world of extreme surveillance and deadly corporate backstabbing.

The Mother Code by Carole Stivers – In 2049, a bioweapon spreads out of control and threatens to wipe out humanity entirely. The best solution the beleagured survivors can come up with is to create large scale robots, each one given a unique personality by its Mother Code, and place in their care genetically engineered children who will be able to survive. Even as the children grow in the care of machines, these Mothers grow and change, too, in ways that frighten the surviving government. It’s up to the children to protect their Mothers from the fear of the old guard–or abandon them forever.

Bright Raven Skies by Kristina Perez – Branwen had to embrace the darkest parts of her magic in order to save the kingdom. But in the aftermath, the Queen and her Champion are missing, and she must find them if she’s to keep the peace she secured alive—and be able to keep living with herself. But friends and enemies alike are getting closer to her secret quest, and she can’t hide the truth forever.

Ironspark by C.M. McGuire – Bryn has run afoul of the fae before; a crew of evil Tinkerbells kidnapped her mom, cursed her dad, and forced the rest of her family into hiding. She’s been studying ever since, readying herself to seek justice—or revenge. But when the Court Fae show up, she realizes she’s in over her head, and she’s going to need all the help her friends—a water witch, a foster kid, and a school friend with his own anti-fae grudge—can give her.

 

News and Views

Bookstr: In convesation with Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Celebrating the humorous SF of Latinx authors

Mike Chen on writing inclusive superhero stories

Gollancz has announced the winners of the inaugural Rivers of London BAME SFF Award

The winners of the 2020 Seiun Awards have been announced

Among other things, do not ask N.K. Jemisin for a free novel. (I have other Feelings about this whole thing as a trans person that need not be aired out here. But you can probably guess what they are if you ever read my thoughts on the Dr. James Barry.)

John Scalzi writes about Ray Bradbury’s 100th birthday

Also Colleen Abel on growing up with Ray Bradbury’s ghost in Waukegan, Illinois

Native American artist Jeffrey Veregge did some amazing variant covers for Marvel’s Indigenous Voices #1 (Darcie Little Badger has work in this and I’m so excited for her!!)

The theme for The X-Files now has lyrics and it’s pretty amazing

NASA is going to reexamine some problematic nicknames that certain celestial objects have

On Book Riot

Soft science fiction: 15 classic and must read books

15 must-read new fantasy books

This week’s SFF Yeah! podcast is about evil queens

This month you can enter to win $50 at your favorite indie bookstore and a 1-year Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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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.