Category: Swords and Spaceships

We did it, robots and dinosaurs! We made it to Friday! It’s me, your newsletter host Alex, and if you’re reading this, it means I didn’t gnaw off one of my own limbs during either of the debate nights, and I feel like that’s something we can all celebrate with some science fiction news and other silliness.

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This newsletter is sponsored by Tor Books.

The Sol Majestic is a big-hearted, delightful intergalactic adventure for fans of Becky Chambers and The Good Place.

When Kenna, a destitute teen guru, wins a free dinner at The Sol Majestic, the galaxy’s most renowned restaurant, he thinks his luck has finally changed. His dream is jeopardized, however, when he learns his highly-publicized “free meal” risks putting the restaurant into financial ruin. Kenna and a gang of newfound friends—including a teleporting celebrity chef, a trust-fund adrenaline junkie, and a brilliant mistress of disguise—must concoct an extravagant scheme to save everything they cherish, and risk sacrificing their ideals in the process.

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News and Views

Writers Madeline Miller, Max Gladstone, John Rogers, and Kevin Hearne have been matching donations to RAICES. If they’ve hit their match limits by the time you read this, there’s a good chance other awesome SFF writers will have stepped in, too.

Today, let us remember Prince’s Batdance video from 1989.

Daveed Diggs will be narrating River Solomon’s novella of The Deep.

LGBTQ+ cosplayers talk about the queer video game characters they identify with. So many gorgeous pictures!

For more beautiful pictures, here’s 26 of the most gorgeous fantasy book covers from 2019.

If you wondered where the new Harry Potter mobile game falls in the timeline of the Potterverse, here’s how you can figure it out.

There’s going to be even more new Endgame footage, this time for the home release. They’re streaming it from another dimension, I don’t even know. But the legos are pretty cool!

Here’s an interview with Kaytalin Platt, author of
The Living God.

There are now three officially licensed Marvel plays.

Taika Waititi is going to take a “crack” at an animated Flash Gordon movie.

There are going to be more Short Treks for Star Trek: Discovery!

If you want to go down a rabbit hole from which you will never emerge, there’s a website that lets you create fake hybrid pokémon.

I’m a huge Sailor Moon fan from way back, so I have to share this: Sailor Moon and the Queer Art of Questioning Gender and Sexuality.

Myers-Briggs personality types for Lord of the Rings characters.

The full Game of Thrones TV box set is going to be 33 FREAKING DISCS.

The Last of Its Kind – I wish this was fiction, but it’s a beautiful and heartbreaking piece on scientists taking care of endlings during the present sixth great extinction.

Here’s a cool picture of a volcano erupting, taken from the ISS.

One last bit of cool IRL-but-has-definitely-been-in-scifi-or-should news: Scientists are putting sensors on antarctic seals and that’s helping them track water temperatures.

Free Association Friday

Look, I’ll admit right now, I don’t have anything real off the wall for this day in history because between my brother’s wedding this weekend (YAY BRO BRO!) and the first Democratic presidential debates with a bajillion candidates, half of whom look indiscernible, my brain is just non-functional. So instead, I’m just going to list ten science fiction/fantasy books I wish I could make all of the candidates read. Climate change, capitalism, societal decline, unions, healthcare… and a couple more utopian visions to round things out. In no particular order:

Infomocracy by Malka Older

Iraq + 100 edited by Hassan Blasim

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

Docile by K.M. Szpara

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

For the Win by Cory Doctorow

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

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 Tuesday (particularly to all lovers of the fiber arts out there), and let’s take a moment to remember when the Glory Gospel Singers covered Cruel Angel’s Thesis because we can all use a little beauty in our lives. It’s Alex, with your weekly picnic basket of new releases and news (occasionally very snerk-worthy) from the internet!

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This newsletter is sponsored by Doubleday.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world–a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.

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New Releases

Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee – A collection of short stories set in the world of Ninefox Gambit.

The Iron Dragon’s Mother by Michael Swanwick – The half-human pilot of a sentient mechanical dragon is framed for the murder of her brother.

Wicked Fox by Kat Cho – Gu Miyoung is secretly a gumiho, a nine-tailed fox who devours the energy of men, living in modern Seoul. When she violates her own rules to save the life of a human boy named Jihoon, she loses the fox bead that is her soul in the process. Surrounded by dark forces, Miyoung faces a choice between retaining her immortal life and her developing relationship with Jihoon.

The Evil Queen by Gena Showalter – A young woman raised in the human realm discovers that she’s a fairy tale princess when she manifests the magical ability to commune with mirrors. Faced with betrayal after betrayal, she struggles against the dark side that wants her to be the Evil Queen that is Snow White’s greatest enemy.

The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs by Katherine Howe – Connie Goodwin, an expert on the history of witchcraft in America, has a secret: she’s the direct descendent of one of the women tried for witchcraft in Salem, and her ancestor was much more magical than history is willing to admit. Her research and clues from her mother lead her to discover a centuries-old deadly curse that threatens the life of her partner–and only she can solve the mystery.

News and Views

Time to hit the app store: Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is now available.

If you’re feeling the darker side of science fiction and fantasy short fiction, there are four excellent magazines you should check out.

The Red Sonja adaptation is getting back on track after Bryan Singer got (thankfully) ejected, now with Jill Soloway (who is nonbinary and created Transparent) at the helm.

Netflix promises not to make any more episodes of Amazon’s Good Omens series in response to the unintentionally hilarious petition from a trantrum-y US Christian group.

Slightly related, Michael Sheen (who plays Aziraphale) defended fanfiction on Twitter. What a good.

Looks like The Three-Body Problem is headed for a TV adaptation.

A brief history of Doctor Who’s missing episodes.

Here’s a great list of 8 queer fiction podcasts.

First play demo for Jedi: Fallen Order looks hopeful.

I agree with… most… of these 10 sci-fi-ish music videos that deserve to be remastered.

We’ve got a list of 10 books about AI taking over.

The Vitamin String Quartet covered the Jurassic Park theme and there’s a 16-bit video to go with it.

James Marsden and Amber Heard might be starring in the upcoming CBS All Access miniseries of The Stand.

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 solstice! I hope you’re enjoying your longest day if you’re in the Northern hemisphere, or having a cosy longest night with a good book if you’re in the Southern hemisphere. It’s Alex, with some news for you and some random fun for Friday! May the odds be ever in your favor!

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This newsletter is sponsored by Tor Books.

New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson triumphantly returns to epic fantasy with the Wake the Dragon series. Spine of the Dragon is a politically charged adventure of swords, sorcery, vengeance, and the rise of sleeping giants.

Two continents at war, the Three Kingdoms and Ishara, are divided by past bloodshed. When an outside threat arises—the reawakening of a powerful ancient race that wants to remake the world—the two warring nations must somehow set aside generational hatreds and form an alliance to fight their true enemy.

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News and Views

Rosamund Pike will be joining the Wheel of Time adaptation as Moiraine.

There will be a Hunger Games prequel novel in 2020.

Cover reveal for Realm of Ash I AM SO EXCITED. (Have you read Empire of Sand? It’s super good.)

Some juicy tidbits about Us from the blu-ray release.

Here’s a great list of 6 fantasy books about queer princesses. Also, the 7 most important umbrellas that have ever graced our genre.

Marvel is so desperate to beat Avatar‘s box office numbers that it’s going to do a theatrical re-release Avengers: Endgame with extra footage. Here’s hoping some of that extra footage is an intermission.

Some characters from Japanese folklore who have made an appearance in Studio Ghibli films.

Here’s our interview with Tabitha Bird, author of A Lifetime of Impossible Days.

This nonfiction book sounds interesting: Super Soldiers: A Salute to the Heroes and Villains Who Fought for Their Country

Adam Savage built an Iron Man suit. And it flies.

James D. Nicoll writes an interesting post about space opera that’s confined to a single star system.

There’s a robotic lion fish powered by “blood-like fluid.”

Show me your biggest trilobite.

Free Association Friday

June 21st has some pretty cool history on it, in addition to getting to be the solstice more than its fair share of the time*.

(* – I don’t know if this is actually a fact, but it is in my heart.)

So instead of going on a long thing, I’m going to pick the three coolest On This Day in Histories.

In 533 on June 21-ish, a Byzantine fleet left Constantinople, heading to Africa to attack the Vandals. If you, like me, had never heard of the Vandals, check Wikipedia because this is something World History class let me down on. But of course, if we’re talking Byzantine Empire, is there any other book to name except A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine? Well, of course Guy Gavriel Kay has written some rather Byzantine books, starting with Sailing to Sarantium. Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun definitely has that flavor as well.

Then if you jump forward 1,049 years, we hit the day that Oda Nobunaga was forced to commit seppuku. Sengoku was Japan’s warring states period, and a source of some really good classic literature like The Tale of the Heike. Epic feudal battles and warring clans! Of course there’s some fun fantasy out there. Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn is the first Sengoku-inspired novel I ever read. Then there’s The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson. While less overtly fantastical (and mostly takes place in the Edo rather than Sengoku period), I’d argue Cloud of Sparrows by Takashi Matsuoka still fits the bill. Eiki Yoshikawa’s Taiko is pure historical fiction, but it’s got Nobunaga himself in it and it’s darn good. Last, I want to mention how mad I am that 産霊山秘録 (Musubi no Yama Hiroku) still doesn’t have an official English translation.

Forward 318 more years, and China formally declares war on the US, Britain, Germany, France, and Japan and the Boxer Rebellion officially starts. R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War doesn’t riff off that period, but it’s got some rhyming notes. (And the sequel, The Dragon Republic, is coming out in August. Squee!) I know I mention Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem trilogy a lot, but the first contact scenario presented in the books definitely carries some notes of the Boxer Rebellion and other clashes with it. In Jade City by Fonda Lee, foreign occupation is successfully repulsed from a fantasy country. (Also, its sequel, Jade War, is coming in July! Double squee!) And I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t mention Aliette de Bodard’s sprawling Xuya Universe, in which the Chinese came to America before the Europeans and Asian countries dominate the future. My favorite from it so far is The Tea Master and the Detective.

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 Tuesday again, that most wonderful time of the week when we get a bolus of new books to add to our teetering TBR stacks. I’m your host, Alex, with some new books and a broadside of SFF-related news.

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This newsletter is sponsored by Quillion, the gaming imprint of Lion Forge.

This collected edition of Rolled & Told contains all the adventures, mini-adventures, comics, and articles from issues zero to six along with extra content you couldn’t get in the single issues! It provides hours of pick-up-and-play modules designed both for players new to tabletop role playing and for those who have played for years. Every page is filled with beautiful illustrations, comics coinciding with adventures, and splash art from your favorite comic artists to inspire your players! You forge the adventure with Rolled & Told Vol. 1 in stores now from the Quillion imprint of Lion Forge!

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New Releases

The Record Keeper by Agnes Gomillion – In a world brought to ruins by a third world war, law reigns, to be obeyed perfectly is the only guarantor of survival. Arika Cobane is about to take her place in enforcing those laws until she meets a new student who forces her to question her most deeply held beliefs: What does peace matter if innocent lives are lost to maintain it?

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone – Vivian Lao is an inventor trying to stay ahead of her thieving rivals; she catapults herself accidentally into the far reaches of time and space, where the known universe is ruled by an all-powerful empress who can destroy planets with a single thought. Rebellion against the empress has been unthinkable… but Vivian is no stranger to radical thought or reckless action.

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh – The woods near Greenhollow are occupied by a Wild Man. Tobias is content enough to live quietly in his cottage at the edge of the woods with his cats–and dryads–until a new owner comes to Greenhollow Hall and disturbs things better left buried.

The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull – Aliens called the Ynaa came to the US Virgin Islands five years ago on an undisclosed research mission. This occupation has been mostly peaceful–unless they’re provoked–until a young boy dies at the hands of the aliens.

Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected by Nnedi Okorafor – Not fiction, but rather a memoir of sorts; Nnedi Okorafor explores her personal setbacks and challenges and addresses limitations as fuel for the creative fire.

News and Views

An unpublished manuscript by Anthony Burgess has been found, which is in part about his experience writing A Clockwork Orange and his reaction to the filming of it.

Stranger Things has its own Coke ad.

Yoshida Naoki (creative director of FFXIV) would like to collaborate with George R.R. Martin… but also wants him to finish the books.

Stephen King would like a more faithful adaptation of Under the Dome.

Pride month continues with news of a lesbian couple in My Little Pony!

Umbrella Academy season 2 has started filming.

A look at 6,000 years of fashion that Good Omens skips through.

Here’s a list of 7 mother figures from SFF to be disappointed with you. (Yep, I can definitely feel Nineteen Adze’s [from A Memory Called Empire] disapproval from here.)

Representation for women isn’t really getting any better in video games.

A Book Riot contributor sends out a heartfelt “Thank you, Dad,” for his love of sci-fi.

If you’re in the mood for zombies and some fourth-wall-breaking, deadpan humor, The Dead Don’t Die is out. (I saw it during the weekend and it was… very Jim Jarmusch with an utterly hilarious moment of peak Tilda Swinton.)

More news about the Stephen Universe movie, including Chance the Rapper.

A new sci-fi short film subverts the ‘missing girl’ trope.

On the use of current idioms in fantasy books.

Captain Georgiou? Michael? Is that you? There’s a Star Fleet emblem on Mars.

From the Departments of Hold Me I’m Scared and This Is Totally Novel Fuel, hackers that already went after some petroleum facilities are probing at power grids.

This is cool: Seals with sensors and ice holes in Antarctica.

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 Aggretsuko Friday, secretary birds and fennec foxes! May your day be filled with your favorite kind of metal and cute food. It’s Alex, with your dose of news and some free association to take you into the weekend.

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This newsletter is sponsored by Tor Books.

Ivy Gamble was born without magic and never wanted it.

Ivy Gamble is perfectly happy with her life – or at least, she’s perfectly fine.

She doesn’t in any way wish she was like Tabitha, her estranged, gifted twin sister.

Ivy Gamble is a liar.

When a gruesome murder is discovered at The Osthorne Academy of Young Mages, where her estranged twin sister teaches Theoretical Magic, reluctant detective Ivy Gamble is pulled into the world of untold power and dangerous secrets. She will have to find a murderer and reclaim her sister—without losing herself.

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News and Views

The 2019 Ditmar Award Winners (for Australian SFF) have been announced.

A discussion well worth reading about the frustrations of disabled fans with the Game of Thrones finale.

A cool interview with artist Justin Gerard, who’s done a lot of fantasy lit art.

If you haven’t gotten a copy of the New Suns anthology yet, perhaps this excellent review will convince you.

Russian Doll will be getting a second season.

A really cool piece on the origins of the Green Man.

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is going to be an animated film!

You can read an excerpt of Cixin Liu’s Supernova Era over at Tor.com.

Dune: The Sisterhood has been greenlit for yet another streaming service. It’s apparently going to be about the Dune universe viewed through the eyes of the Bene Gesserit, not to be confused with the book of the same title. (I love Dune, but I’m feeling pretty unsure-face about a series that’s all Bene Gesserit that doesn’t seem to involve any women in the upper creative roles?)

At E3, we got a reveal on a game that’s a collaboration between George R.R. Martin and Hidetaka Miyazaki (the creator of Dark Souls).

Ooh, we’re getting reviews of Men In Black: International.

US Weather forecasts got a much-needed software upgrade.

Sci-fi novel idea! There’s a conspicuously large spot of extra mass on the Moon. (It’s probably an old asteroid. But technically we don’t know…)

Free Association Friday

Okay, this is a super cool today in history! In 1822 on June 14, Charles Babbage announced his invention of the difference engine to the Royal Astronomical Society via a paper. This was Difference Engine 0, the first and smallest, which he wanted to use to automate the calculation of astronomical tables that were used by sailors. (Creating tables was tedious, time-consuming work, and errors in the calculations could very well kill people who relied on them.) Babbage’s paper got him funding to work on further difference engines; they weren’t simple calculators, but could be used to calculate polynomial equations. (If you want a more complex description of how they work, see here.) Ada Lovelace got involved in a more ambitious spin-off of the project, the Analytical Engine, and built the foundation for the discipline of scientific computing before her untimely death of cancer at the age of 37.

The impetus for Babbage to start work on the difference engine is attributed to him, frustrated at some terrible, error-ridden astronomical tables, exclaiming: “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam!”

So you bet your analytical engines this is going to a steampunk place. Of course I have to start off mentioning its cyberpunky crossover in The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, in which the computer age arrives a century early and is powered by steam. Ada Lovelace also puts in an appearance as a pre-eminent and elderly scientist in Lev A.C. Rosen’s All Men of Genius.

Lady of Devices by Shelley Adina has an inventor heroine who is living a double life as an engineer on both sides of the law. We’ve got Haitian scientists and mysterious weapons in The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark. In Everfair by Nisi Shawl, Africans develop steam technology ahead of Europeans, and the world is set on a new and gorgeous course. The Sea Is Ours: Tales From Steampunk Southeast Asia edited by Jaymee Goh and Joyce Chng is exactly what it says on the tin and well worth reading. Maurice Broaddus’s Buffalo Soldier starts off in a steampunk Jamaica where a former spy has to go on the run with a mysterious boy. (Maurice also brought us Pimp My Airship.) Rings of Anubis by E. Catherine Tobler sets an archaeologist on a fantastical steampunk adventure through Egypt as she searches for the truth behind her mother’s disappearance. And an automaton that can do alchemy gets involved in a proletarian revolution in The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia.

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 Tuesday, werewolves and swearwolves. It’s Alex, ready to howl out some new releases and book-world news for you! (And wow, what a week for new releases!) Around my town we’re solidly into farmers’ market season, and I hope you’ve got something just as nice to wander around in and find wonderful gems like a Turkish-Mexican fusion food truck with döner tacos.

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This newsletter is sponsored by Libro.fm.

Get three audiobooks for the price of one, with code BR19!

 

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New Releases

The Outside by Ada Hoffman: An autistic scientist whose experimental energy drive destroys the space station it was aboard is given a choice by the AI gods that rule the galaxy: be executed or help hunt down her long-vanished mentor.

Bunny by Mona Awad: Twee college rich girls who call each other “Bunny” have a ritualistic off-campus “workshop” where they magically summon monstrous things.

The Sol Majestic by Ferrett Steinmetz: A teen guru who wants to advise the galaxy’s one percenters wins a fabulous free dinner at the Sol Majestic… and learns it might financially ruin the restaurant in pursuit of his dream.

A History of Soul 2065 by Barbara Krasnoff: A mosaic novel about two young Jewish girls who magically meet on the eve of World War I, and how their promise to meet again echoes through their lives and those of their descendants.

Stronger Than a Bronze Dragon by Mary Fan: Anlei is a warrior who protects her village from shadow spirits; it’s for that protection that she sacrifices her freedom and agrees to get married. The day before her wedding, she encounters a young thief and embarks on a journey to the Courts of Hell, searching for the source of the shadow spirits.

The Book of Disappearance: A Novel by Ibtisam Azem Timberlake, translated by Sinan Antoon: A novel that imagines life in Tel Aviv if all Palestinians suddenly disappeared one day.

The Last Supper Before Ragnarok by Cassandra Khaw: The fifth Rupert Wong novel, which asks an important and really worrying question: “Where did the father gods go?”

News and Views

Huge, if kind of inside baseball: Barnes and Noble has been acquired by the same hedge fund that owns Waterstones. My automatic reaction to the words “hedge fund” is to recoil, but with the Waterstones CEO being in charge, I’m cautiously optimistic?

Three super cute animated Star Wars shorts here.

A list of the ten most stylish hats from genre film. As a person with a deep love of hats, this is the kind of content I am here for.

The Good Place will end with its fourth season. While I’ll sure miss the show, I’m glad they’re doing their planned ending and finishing it how they wanted instead of trying to stretch it out endlessly.

Gwyneth Paltrow apparently forgot she was in Spider-man: Homecoming and her being reminded of it is actually really cute. Jon Favreau’s The Chef Show has also provided us with this adorable clip of Tom Holland and Robert Downey Jr. eating oysters.

As someone who was in high school during the reinvention of emo in the mid-90s, I am highly entertained by this list of 8 books for those still emo in their hearts.

In a Vogue interview, Margot Robbie says Harley Quinn’s outfits in Birds of Prey are going to be less ‘male-gazey’ probably thanks to the female producer, writer, director, and costume designer.

The IAU is is running a campaign in which each participating country will get to name its own star and the exoplanets in that system. Over 100 countries have signed on.

These cannonballs might have been used by Vlad the Impaler.

NASA is opening the ISS to for-profit and marketing activities.

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 to everyone but the jerkface editor of The Atlantic who thinks that only white dudes can write 10K-word cover stories and–sorry, rage-fainted for a second there. Have an equally not-genre-related antidote: a clip of Sutton Foster, Hilary Duff, and Miriam Shor singing a bit of 9 to 5! Anyway, it’s Alex, with some news and general silliness for you, my favorite space unicorns.

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This newsletter is sponsored by Tor Books.

Firstname Lastname is a nobody with nowhere to go. Her name is the result of an unfortunate clerical error, and her destiny to be one of the only humans on an alien space station. That is until she sneaks aboard a ship and joins a band of repomen. Now she’s traveling the galaxy “recovering” ships. What could go wrong?

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News and Views

Congratulations to the winners of the 31st Lambda Literary Awards! The winner for the SFF/horror category was The Breath of the Sun by Isaac R. Fellman (published under Rachel Fellman).

Winners for the 2019 Neukom Awards have also been announced!

io9 has a short story from this month’s Lightspeed for your perusal: Between the Dark and the Dark by Deji Bryce Olukotun

For Pride Month, I’d like to direct your attention to Bogi Takác’s regular QUILTBAG+ Speculative Classics column at Tor.com.

Also for Pride–the LGBT+ Fantasy Storybundle is live. (Full disclosure: There’s a book by me in this one.)

My favorite pride month Twitter joke so far.

A look at the 1972 film The Blood-Splattered Bride and basically you had me at “lesbian vampire.”

A look at a classic sci-fi novel: Frederik Pohl’s Gateway. This is one of the few classics I read as a kid that I still revisit; I feel like it really holds up.

If Ken Loach directed Star Wars.

Bill and Ted will be going on an excellent adventure with their daughters, Thea and Billie (respectively).

Wonder Woman 1984 has an AWESOME poster.

Writer dropped from a Doctor Who anthology because of his transphobic remarks.

The Halo series wants to have a similar scope and scale to Game of Thrones. I mean, if you’ve played Halo: Reach, they can plainly achieve the body count, too.

George R.R. Martin has joined Meow Wolf as its Chief World Builder.

Robert Downey Jr. continues to be Tony Stark, but this time IRL.

NASA’s deep space habitat prototype has completed ground testing.

Dinosaur bones! In Australia!! That were turned to opal!!! And are from a new species!!!!

Free Association Friday

Today in history, the city of New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. 122 years later, in a completely unrelated event, the Great Natchez Tornado hit Natchez, Mississippi and killed 317 people. That makes it the second deadliest tornado in US History (the deadliest was the Tri-State Tornado that hit on March 18, 1925 and tore across Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana). Weather is scary (and cool, when it’s not coming after your city), which has me thinking about New Orleans again and the way it got hit so hard by Hurricane Katrina. Which takes me to climate change, and one of the predicted effects being more extreme weather.

When it comes to climate change fiction that looks at extreme weather, there’s plenty to choose from. Carrie Vaughn’s Bannerless imagines what society will be like after everything has been wrecked by super storms. Apparently there’s a dystopian twist coming later in the series, though I (weirdly?) didn’t find the first book blatantly dystopian; it’s more a nice sci-fi murder mystery. American War by Omar El Akkad is more post-apocalyptic, imagining an America flattened by extreme climate and plagues–and a second civil war. Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning is an urban fantasy take on that sort of after-apocalypse… with the twist being that it’s a new beginning for a people who already had their apocalypse well before the collapse of the US.

In my (admittedly limited because I am a human being who must sleep and hasn’t read everything) experience, science fiction tends to more focus on the aftermath of the extreme weather, the climate destruction. With fantasy, you get a little bit more of the discrete events themselves, storms as portents and inciting incidents. (Need we mention The Wizard of Oz?) The power of storms gets magically siphoned into orbs in Maria V. Snyder’s Storm Glass. In Ill Wind by Rachel Caine, weather mages keep unsuspecting non-magical people safe from devastating storms… with the help of captive djinn. There’s a plot-related extreme weather event in Charlie Jane Anders’s All the Birds in the Sky, which shall not be spoiled here. N.K. Jemisin has a great story about storms in How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? (Cloud Dragon Skies)–also a story I love about alternate history steampunk New Orleans that has nothing to do with inclement weather (The Effluent Engine).

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 the most wonderful day of the weeeeeek: Tuesday! That’s right, it’s new book day! Can you smell the fresh paper on the wind? Hear the pages rustling as they wing their way toward us. Get out your nets, me hearties, and let’s see what we can catch. It’s Alex, with new book releases and nerdy news!

[Editor’s note: This newsletter contains a major spoiler for Game of Thrones, so if you haven’t watched it, skip today’s News & Views section!]

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This newsletter is brought to you by Tor Books, proud publisher of An Illusion of Thieves by Cate Glass.

In Cantagna, being a sorcerer is a death sentence. When a plot to overthrow the Shadow Lord and incite civil war is uncovered, only Romy knows how to stop it. To do so, she’ll have to rely on newfound allies—a swordmaster, a silversmith, and her own thieving brother—to pull off an elaborate heist. And they’ll need the very thing that could condemn them all: magic.

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New Releases

Unraveling by Karen Lord – A serial killer chasing a myth that might lead them to immortality haunts the City. A forensic therapist named Dr. Miranda Ecouvo is put on the track to find this killer by Chance and Trickster, brothers she meets during a near-death experience.

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams – An anthology of variably created wastelands, with new stories by Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Tobias S. Buckell, Veronica Roth, and others.

Five Midnights Ann Dávila Cardinal – This tagline is amazing: “Five friends cursed. Five deadly fates. Five nights of retribución.” A thriller based on the legend of el Cuco.

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey – Reluctant detective Ivy Gamble, who was born without magic and definitely doesn’t mind that fact, has to solve a murder at a school for mages and reclaim her gifted sister in the process. (Full disclosure: I have the same agent as Sarah Gailey.)

Fire Opal Mechanism by Fran Wilde – Sequel to the gorgeous and heart-breaking The Jewel and Her Lapidary.

The Soul of Power by Callie Bates – A girl who was never supposed to rule finds the crown upon her head and must navigate a political maze she should never have been dropped into.

News and Views

Tor.com has collected livetweets from two really cool panels at BookCon, in case we weren’t envious enough about not being there: Worldbuilding and Rebecca Roanhorse and N.K. Jemisin talk about writing themselves in speculative fiction.

Since Aladdin is upon us, here’s a list of 7 books about djinn! (And while it involves daiva rather than djinn, I’d add that Empire of Sand might hit an adjacent sweet spot.)

First trailer for The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is out and it looks utterly gorgeous. Puppets and trauma for everyone!

Next time I’m in Tokyo, I have to go to this sci-fi themed bar.

Four “nonfiction” ebooks about the world of Harry Potter are coming.

Ikea recreated some famous living rooms with their own furniture, including the one from Stranger Things.

New Steven Universe storybook is coming our way: The Tale of Steven.

Ready for another Hidden Figures moment? Here’s an awesome Twitter thread about the only woman who was inside the control room during the Apollo 11 launch.

Robert Pattinson will be the next Batman. This has got to be my favorite tweet about it.

Whether you did or didn’t like the King Bran thing, it’s apparently GRRM’s fault?

The 2019 Eugie Award Finalists have been announced; check it out for a list of some good short fiction to try.

Yeah, we regret you didn’t make The Dark Tower movie horror, too, Ron Howard.

Good Omens easter eggs according to the cast and crew.

Baskin Robbins has some Stranger Things-themed treats.

This Feels Like it Should Be in a Science Fiction Novel Corner

This fascinating review of Underland is here to remind us that our planet can be more fantastic than fiction.

The title: Sonic black holes produce “Hawking radiation,” may confirm famous theory. It just gets cooler from there.

NASA picks three commercial companies to attempt moon landings.

From the department of “I smelled the sour milk so now I’m going to make you smell it too so we can all suffer together, plus holy wow is this some dystopian stuff so silly I don’t think anyone’s ever put it in a novel”: The Department of Energy did a press release that called natural gas “freedom gas” and “molecules of U.S. freedom.”

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.

We made it to space port, me hearties–happy Friday! The rainbow nebula that is Pride Month is just on the horizon and coming in fast, so prepare the glitter canons. (And if you want something heartwarming, there’s this ad about a dad showing his trans son how to shave.) It’s Captain Alex, with at-least-peripherally-book-related news and whatever random thing from Wikipedia makes me feel like going off on a science fantasy tangent.

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This newsletter is sponsored by Tor Books, publisher of A Chain Across the Dawn by Drew Williams.

Esa and her fellow agent Jane Kamali have been travelling across the known universe, searching for children who share Esa’s supernatural gifts, but they are not alone. A mysterious being with impossible powers will stop at nothing to get his hands on the very children Esa and Jane are trying to save.

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News and Views

There’s a Good Omens-themed escape room? And David Tennant and Michael Sheen showed up?

SYFY Wire also has a super cute post with pictures of tattered copies of Good Omens and fans talking about how they met their beloved book.

For your heart punch of the day, Terry Pratchett’s hat and scarf had their own seat at the show’s world premiere.

A cover reveal and an excerpt from The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis.

Tor.com has an excerpt fromThe Iron Dragon’s Mother, which is the sequel to this gritty, diesel-punky with fairies book called The Iron Dragon’s Daughter. I mostly mention this because it is a blast from my person past. The Iron Dragon’s Daughter was originally published in 1997, the year before I graduated high school. So… wow.

Ever wonder what Myers-Briggs type various Star Wars characters might be? We’ve got you covered.

Okay, I normally leave comic book news to one of our other newsletters but Dynamite is going to have a miniseries where Bettie Page fights chthonic elder beings.

Tor.com has a round up of genre short fiction from May for you to read.

For the next 20 days or so, you can get the Science Fiction and Fantasy Satire Bundle (curated by Nick Mamatas) and the Afrofuturism Bundle (curated by Tenea D. Johnson) has a bit less than a week left. You can choose to donate 10% of your purchase to charities selected by the curators.

A gentle look at fans being overly possessive of media properties: “Not my Batman” is no way to go through life.

First reviews are in for the third season of The Handmaid’s Tale. 

On the sisterhood of Arya and Sansa Stark.

Fans built a full-sized Atlantis Stargate.

The crowd-funded Star Trek: Deep Space Nine documentary is coming to US and Canadian theaters soon.

Astronomical fun: The merger of two white dwarf stars that might turn into a neutron star. And neutron stars might give us some clues about quarks.

Free Association Friday

May 31, 1223 was the Battle of Kalka River, during the Mongolian invasion of the Cumans. And 70 years later, Kublai Khan headed out to invade Java because King Kertanegara refused to pay tribute.

I’m sorry to say that my Google skills have failed mightily and I haven’t dug up any science fiction or fantasy by Mongolian authors for you. I actually haven’t even had much luck finding any literature or poetry in translation, other than this newsletter that’s got a little bit of poetry in it. In penance, I offer this badass music video by Mongolian metal band The Hu, which is guaranteed to make you want to get on a horse and go tearing across the nearest picturesque, steppe-like piece of land you can find. (Or on a motorcycle.)

I can say there’s been a lot of really great Asian-inspired fantasy lately that definitely has not forgotten the Mongolians–and goes beyond the simple and problematic “barbarian horde” trope. The Tiger’s Daughter (and its sequel The Phoenix Empress) by K. Arsenault Rivera’s got to be one of my favorites; the world feels real and lived-in and like it has a history, and the beating heart of the story are lesbian soulmates. Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings is more concerned by civil war, but by the time we get to Wall of Storms, there’s someone knocking at Dara’s door. Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky trilogy starts with the grandson of the Great Khan walking off a battlefield where he was left for dead in Range of Ghosts and proceeds apace. Kate Elliot’s Jaran is set in a sci-fi world with some very Steppe-like features, while her Crown of Stars series is fantasy with a rather Mongolian-esque culture.

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.

Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday! In this corner, we have new releases, facing off with our every-newsletter feature of news and views! Whose cuisine will reign supreme? It’s Alex, with some horribly muddled pop culture references, books, and news–so much news!

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This newsletter is sponsored by Alfred A. Knopf, publisher of Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

From the acclaimed author of Stories of Your Life and Others—the basis for the film Arrival—comes a groundbreaking short fiction collection, tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only Ted Chiang could imagine.

A portal through time forces a fabric seller in Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. An alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with universal ramifications. The ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radical examination of choice and free will. Including all-new stories as well as classic uncollected works, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, and revelatory.

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New Releases

Five Unicorn Flush by TJ Berry – Sequel to Space Unicorn Blues, where interstellar travel is powered by unicorn horns; as you can imagine, it sucks to be a unicorn.

The Red-Stained Wings by Elizabeth Bear – sequel to The Stone in the Skull.

Longer by Michael Blumlein – In a universe where the wealthy can reboot themselves to a younger age twice–but not three times–married research scientists Gunjita and Cav have a problem. One of them is on their second and final reboot; one of them is not.

Lent by Jo Walton – Girolamo Savanarola seems to always be miraculously at the right place at the right time to change the course of history.

Walking to Aldebaran by Adrian Tchaikovsky – An astronaut has been separated from his expedition in a freak accident, and is now lost and alone in an alien artifact.

The Gameshouse by Claire North – The Gameshouse is a place where any game can be played… at any stakes. Including at the scale of empires.

The Quanderhorn Xperimentations by Rob Grand and Andrew Marshall – I think this bit of the back cover copy says it all: “England, 1952. A time of peace, regeneration and hope. A Golden Age. Unfortunately, it’s been 1952 for the past 65 years.”

The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg – The Kingdom is an immersive fantasy theme park created by bioengineering and technology; Ana is one the park’s creations, a perfect princess. She falls in love with a park employee… and then is accused of his murder.

News and Views

Happy belated Towel Day! Ever wondered what Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy character you’re most like? We’ve got a quiz for that.

Stranger Things has an absolutely gorgeous new art book coming out, and io9 has some images.

On the dubious origins of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.” And on the topic of fairy tales, an argument that Ever After is one of the best adaptations out there.

More Hidden Figures: Two women programmers and the birth of chaos theory.

Scientists think they may have found extraterrestrial organic matter from carbon-rich meteorites mixed with spinels in a 3.3 billion-year-old sedimentary layer.

Also in cool science news: An Iron-age shield made out of bark has been found.

Speaking of wood, this chemically-altered wood may have some exciting applications for fighting climate change.

A deeper look at what star ratings on Amazon actually mean.

Taika Waititi is going to be directing the live-action Akira movie? (On one hand, he has earned my trust. On the other hand, that’s… real different from all of his other work I’ve seen.)

Tor.com collected a list of 13 optimistic fantasy novels.

James D. Nicoll writes about the inevitable trend of older SF books being forgotten.

An fascinating examination of Game of Thrones and the real historical conflicts that it mirrors.

Oh, and George R.R. Martin has at least jokingly indicated a timeline for The Winds of Winter.

Some scientists have attempted to model the tectonic history of Westeros and Essos.

One more Game of Thrones thing because this made me laugh. During filming, Jon Snow was the subject of some hilarious script directions.

Celebrating Alien‘s 40th anniversary with a Lego sculpture.

Inspector Gadget as a refutation of transhumanism.

Director Xavier Dolan called out the film industry for marking films as “gay” like it’s a distinct genre, and not heterosexual. Applies to book world too, I feel like.

On the hotness of beards.

Book Riot roundup of fashion at the Nebula Awards.

Rotten Tomatoes is making it harder for whiny manbabies to manipulate movie ratings.

If you feel like being punched in the heart, here’s a bit about the incorporation of Carrie Fisher into The Rise of Skywalker.

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.