Author: Alex Acks

Bookachu, I choose you! Yes, that’s right, it’s Tuesday, and I’m Pokeémon Trainer Alex, fresh off of seeing how freaking adorable the bulbasaurs were in Detective Pikachu. Ready your poké balls, we’ve got some new book releases to catch.

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Sponsored by Dynamite Entertainment

Takeshi Kovacs was a member of the Envoy Corps, ultra-lethal adepts in switching bodies across the stars. While he served, he was known by a variety of names–Mamba Lev, One Hand Rending, the Icepick–all testament to his capacity for rapid response and extreme violence in whatever flesh he wore. Now he’s out of the service and trying to live a different life. But the Protectorate hasn’t changed its spots, no matter what world Kovacs drifts to, and with that old combat rage still burning deep inside him, will he ever really be able to walk away?

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New Releases

The Undefeated by Una McCormack – A retired journalist just wants a nice visit back to her home planet, but humanity’s newest enemy has other ideas.

Mythic Journeys: Retold Myths and Legends edited by Paula Guran – A short story collection of retold legends with an absolutely jaw-dropping TOC that includes Neil Gaiman, Aliette de Bodard, Nisi Shawl, Darcie Little Badger, Sofia Samatar, Catherynne M. Valente, and many more.

A Brightness Long Ago by Guy Gavriel Kay – I trust Guy Gavriel Kay to write absolutely gorgeous historical fantasy, and it sounds like he’s done it again, this time in a world based on Renaissance Italy.

Pariah by W. Michael Gear – Third book of the Donovan series, and there’s a “corporate assassin.” I’m intrigued.

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tschaikovsky – Sequel to Children of Time. An ancient terraforming attempt went awry long ago, and is just about to be rediscovered.

The Buying of Lot 37 and Who’s a Good Boy? by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor – Volumes 3 and 4 respectively of Welcome to Nightvale episodes, with added illustrations and commentary.

Department of Bits from Books

Over at Book Riot, we have an exclusive excerpt from Orpheus Girl by Brynne Rebele-Henry.

io9 has an excerpt from Avatar, The Last Airbender: The Rise of Kyoshi by F.C. Yee.

Tor.com wants you to have this deleted scene from Sam J. Miller’s Blackfish City.

News and Views

Modern Library is launching a new series that features classics by women writers, including The Heads of Cerberus by Francis Stevens.

SYFY Wire has some sci-fi/fantasy romances to try out for May.

I am super excited about all the Star Trek: Discovery tie-in fiction we’re going to get. Particularly The Way to the Stars by Una McCormack because Tilly is SUCH A GOOD.

SYFY Wire cast all 151 original pokémon with Hollywood stars.

Bill Nighy now loves Pokémon after acting in Detective Pikachu and it’s basically the purest thing I read all week.

The Game of Thrones Live Concert will be touring through 20 more American cities as the series ends.

EUROVISION IS UPON US. And if just looking at some of the costumes isn’t sci-fi enough for you, read Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente.

There’s a new documentary series on Amazon Prime about the artists who imagined how 1970s space colonies would look.

A new exhibit at the Manhattan-based Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and Kerkrade (Netherlands)-based Cube Design Museum radically re-imagines how humanity can co-exist with nature.

A Minor News-Related Rant

The Russo Brothers are pulling a JK Rowling and want us to know someone is totally already secretly gay in the MCU. Just think, a whole character with an actual name and everything, and we just don’t know it yet. I was already feeling pretty aggravated by the expectation of butt-patting the Russos were broadcasting for the nameless (white, cis) gay man in Endgame, and this has done the opposite of soothing my queer ire. Marvel forced Taika Waititi to cut the scene that confirmed Valkyrie was bi. Florence Kasumba said that the scene where her character flirted with Okoye in Black Panther was cut. But hey everyone, it’s okay, because it still totally counts as representation even when the character has been stuffed so far into the closet by Kevin Feige that they’re doing an accidental crossover event and having tea with Mr. Tumnus. We’re reaching for some Supernatural-esque levels of queerbaiting and I am through being anything but irate in this, the 19th year of the 21st century. Don’t tease the gays, Marvel. We bite.

As a cure for my absolutely desiccating levels of salt, here’s a really beautiful twitter thread by a muslim lady about a plot point that carries from Iron Man all the way through to Endgame.

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 on the (Hugo-nominated!!!) Skiffy and Fanty Podcast or over at my personal site.

It’s Friday, ye salty dogs and sugary cats! (Are sugary cats a thing? They should be a thing.) It’s Alex, here to bring you the news and whatever random thing squeezes out of my brain when I cruise through today in history.

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This newsletter is sponsored by Stranger Things from Dark Horse Comics and Netflix.

See The Other Side of the hit Netflix series Stranger Things in this original comic series, now collected in trade paperback! Find out what happens to young Will Byers after he is trapped in a dark dimension all alone… with a terrifying monster. Will must use his wits, courage, and heart to survive the monster and escape the Upside Down.

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Awards Season Continues Apace

The Aurealis Awards have announced their 2018 winners! I recommend a browse through the shortlist to get your hands on some excellent Australian genre fiction.

The shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award as been announced: Semiosis by Sue Burke, Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee, Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag, Rosewater by Tade Thompson, and The Loosening Skin by Aliya Whiteley. Look, it’s an exciting list.

The Locus Awards Finalists have also been announced!

News and Views

Here’s a really cool post on Tor.com about Terry Pratchett and logic in the Discworld books. (Full confession: I took just enough logic in university to become utterly insufferable.)

In D&D news for the week, there’s a documentary coming up about the art of the game. You can see an exclusive clip at io9.

A look into an older piece of New Zealand fantasy kidlit that’s pretty bananas.

Bethesda might have plagiarized a D&D adventure in Elder Scrolls Elsewyr.

I admit this is only barely in the remit of the newsletter, but I live for genre and comics writer Genevieve Valentine’s red carpet rundowns, and the one she did for the Met Gala was something else.

Seanan McGuire talks about writing Middlegame.

There’s going to be a Nancy Drew series on the CW? I think my brain just cramped.

Book Riot contributor Alison Doherty on how teaching 6th grade made her love Twilight.

On the May 8 episode of the SFF Yeah! podcast, Sharifah and Liberty talk pirates!

You can now watch The Wandering Earth on Netflix; it’s based on Liu Cixin’s novella of the same name. And so far, it’s the third highest-grossing film of 2019.

Free Association Friday

Well, it’s actually John Scalzi’s birthday–happy birthday, Scalzi! My favorites of his lately have been Lock In and Head On. They’re fun detective stories and I wish to draw more attention to the fact that there are two versions of the audiobooks, one narrated by Wil Wheaton and one narrated by Amber Benson.

Don’t worry, I’m not free associating on Scalzi. It’s also worth noting that apparently on this day in 1962, Marvel published its first issue of The Incredible Hulk.

But instead, let’s talk about how in 28 BCE, Chinese astronomers observed a sunspot. It’s one of the earliest dated observations for China, but of course people have been observing sunspots for as long as there have been people who just really wanted to look at the Sun and figured out you could get away with it when there was fog or clouds or the Sun was at the horizon (NOTE: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. IT’S STILL BAD FOR YOUR EYES.) Sunspots are temporary cool (and therefore dark) areas on the surface of the Sun that result from magnetic field flux, which makes them a great way of tracking solar activity.

Rosarium publishing’s put together a two-volume collection of 100 short stories in fantasy, science fiction, and horror from around the world for its fifth anniversary. I mention this because they’re called Sunspot Jungle volume 1 and volume 2.

I also can’t help but think of Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem, not because it’s about sunspots, but because part of the plot is about a world with three suns, viewed through a virtual reality game.

Sunspots are markers of solar activity, which over the last 1,150 years–until 1975, note–tracked pretty well to Earth’s climate so that more activity tended to match higher global temperatures. It does make sense in that more sunspots equals more activity equals a slightly brighter Sun. (But no, we can’t blame the current warming on solar activity no matter how much some people would like to. It’s all us.) And if we’re talking climate, I’ll just say I hope everyone’s read The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin and Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. The last of those really freaked me out with its prescience on multiple axes.

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 on the (Hugo-nominated!!!) Skiffy and Fanty Podcast or over at my personal site.

Avast, ye book-reading rogues! It’s Tuesday, the absolute best day of the week, and I’m not just saying that because it’s my regular pub-quiz-and-pizza night. It’s book release day, and we’ve got some good ones coming down the pike… with a helping of nerdy news.

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Sponsored by Carmilla by Kim Turrisi from KCP Loft

An adaptation of Shaftesbury’s award-winning, groundbreaking queer vampire web series of the same name, Carmilla mixes the camp of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the snark of Veronica Mars, and the mysterious atmosphere of Welcome to Nightvale.

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New Releases

Exhalation by Ted Chiang – I still haven’t emotionally recovered from his last short story collection (Stories of Your Life and Others); this one promises some brand new stories, as well as previously published (but not collected) work.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire – “Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.” Sold.

Snakeskins by Tim Majors – A sci-fi thriller about cloning and shadowy people trying to take over the government.

Westside: A Novel by W.M. Akers – Historical fantasy set in Manhattan in 1921, about a detective named Gilda Carr.

Finale by Stephanie Garber – The final book in the Caraval trilogy

News and Views

Holly Black is writing a middle-grade novel about Maleficent, due to come out in October.

The Aso­ciación de Literatura de Ciencia Ficción y Fantástica has been founded in Chile and is open to members from other countries. Sounds like they’ll be trying to bring Spanish-speaking fans together and bring work by Chilean authors to the attention of the worldwide fandom.

An update from GRRM on the Game of Thrones spin-offs.

Ray Bradbury’s hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, will have a statue of him dedicated in front of its public library on his birthday, August 22. It looks like a pretty fun statue, not gonna lie.

Circe by Madeline Miller made it onto the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist.

We’re starting to get reviews of Tolkien, which comes out on May 10.

There’s a documentary about Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, and I must see it.

SYFY Wire has a behind the scenes look at the forthcoming Game of Thrones storyboard book.

At Book Riot, we’ve got a look at the current 30 top Sci-fi books on Goodreads.

Special Belated May the Fourth Be With You News

There was so much good Star Wars stuff this week, I felt like it needed its own section. My apologies if Star Wars is Not Your Thing (and no judgment here!) but it was formative piece of space fantasy for a lot of us. I’m personally a massive The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi fan, which you could probably use to decently profile my personality if you wanted it. And while I feel like we’ve still got light years to go in a lot of ways (where are my on-screen queer Jedi?) it never fails to get me choked up when I think about the new generation of rebels–Rey, Finn, Rose, and Poe–carrying on for General Leia.

The California state legislature officially recognized May the Fourth as Star Wars Day.

Rebecca Roanhorse is writing a Star Wars novel! Sounds like it’ll bridge the gap between The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker. (And by the way, if you haven’t read her debut novel, Trail of Lightning, I heartily recommend it. The sequel, Storm of Locusts, just came out.)

There’s a bunch of other new Star Wars novels coming at us. Including a middle-grade novel by Justina Ireland, author of Dread Nation.

An academic study has looked at costuming for Leia and Padme to examine the impacts of romance on their power. (Spoiler: the more they were an object of romance, the more objectified they got.)

As an aside, if the traveling exhibit Star Wars and the Power of Costume ever comes to an art museum near you, it is super worth going.

A Physics Analysis of Every Jedi Jump in All of Star Wars.

Tor.com has a list of nine Star Wars books that are there to meet your specific fandom needs.

We said goodbye to Peter Mayhew last week; his family has asked that those who would like to express their grief with gifts or flowers consider donating to his charity foundation. Also oh my heart.

May the Force be with you, always.

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 on the (Hugo-nominated!!!) Skiffy and Fanty Podcast or over at my personal site.

Happy Friday, me hearties! I’m the new captain of this marauding ship-masquerading-as-a-humble-newsletter, the Dread Pirate Alex. If you frequent the main Book Riot site much, you may remember me for my obsession with local beer and my (admittedly at times overly-long) looks at book world controversies. I also write steampunk about rail pirates under my own name, and science fiction about space witch biker mercenaries under the pen name Alex Wells.

Ready for some pillaging and general skullduggery? Er, I mean… let me check my notes… news! And books!

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Sponsored by Doubleday

What happens when your dream house becomes a nightmare? Find out in The Invited, a chilling ghost story by Jennifer McMahon, bestselling author of The Winter People. Helen and Nate take up residence on forty-four acres of land in the Vermont woods, with ambitious plans to build a house. When they discover that the property has a dark past, Helen becomes consumed by a century-old local legend. As the house takes shape, it becomes a place of menace: a new home that beckons its owners and their neighbors toward unimaginable danger.

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News and Views

The 2018 Shirley Jackson Award nominees have been announced, and it’s a heck of a good list.

Goodbye, Peter Mayhew. He will be missed as the Wookie of our hearts and, more importantly, an all-around nice human being.

An interview with Samuel R. Delany over at io9. (What’s your favorite of Delany’s books, though? Mine’s Dhalgren.)

How did I not know before now that there’s going to be a YA novel about Marvel’s Loki by Mackenzi Lee and it’s apparently going to be super queer? Prepare to smash the pre-order button.

You can get the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set for a cool $8-ish right now.

Sarah Gailey’s Upright Women Wanted has a cover and it’s pretty cool looking. (Fully disclosure: Sarah and I have the same agent.)

SYFY Wire has a list of 11 sci-fi and fantasy romances.

Captain America clips edited to Old Town Road. Or how about the women of Marvel to Wicked Ones. Or maybe a Twitter thread of Brie Larson as each of the Sailor Senshi. You’re welcome.

Once again we have to have the same old talk about Mary Sues because a lady character was good at something. (This time it was Arya in Game of Thrones)

If you, like me, love profanity, then you need to read this list of all the best profanity from Black Leopard, Red Wolf.

The other dynamic duo, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, will be adapting Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London for TV.

Spoiler warning for Avengers: Endgame, but if you’ve watched the movie, I really want you to go read this piece on Tor.com about Thor in that film.

Spoiler warning for this week’s Game of Thrones episode, but the Angry Staff Officer wrote a tactical analysis of the Battle of Winterfell at Wired. I am a bad nerd who doesn’t even go here and I still found it fascinating.

Throwback Thursday

Or not quite… that’s just easier to say than “free association combining books and some weird thing that happened on this day in history.”

Long before the internet as we know it could have ever been imagined, there was ARPANET; ARPA stood for the (US) Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPANET was first conceptualized in 1967, then came to life in 1969 when four university computers were interconnected. More computers were added to the network so (mostly) scientists could share resources and information more easily.

On May 3, 1978, a marketing executive from the company Digital Equipment Corporation (doesn’t that sound like something from a comic book already?) sent unsolicited commercial email to every US west coast address on ARPANET. And thus, the spam email was born. Curse you, unnamed marketing executive!

Another bulk email that wasn’t quite spam went out on ARPANET the next year, asking a bunch of recipients who their favorite science fiction writers were. In those fledgling pre-internet days, no one screamed in horror at the thought of replying to all. Those emails eventually morphed into a sort of proto-forum, and the ARPANET users started seeing the social possibilities of this kind of network, particularly when it came to talking about nerdy stuff. Read the full story over at Slate.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Society restructured the internet, and now the internet is in the process of restructuring society–in both good and really scary ways. Which leads me to Malka Older’s Hugo-nominated Centenal Cycle, which explores how powerful information and the networked exchange thereof is. Start with Infomocracy.

Or, for true throwback goodness, you can currently get The Pride of Chanur by Science Fiction Writers of America Grandmaster C.J. Cherryh for $2.99 on Kindle.

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 on the (Hugo-nominated!!!) Skiffy and Fanty Podcast or over at my personal site.