Sponsored by Tor Books.
Gender-spun Alexander the Great on an interstellar scale!
Princess Sun has finally come of age. Growing up in the shadow of her mother has been no easy task. The legendary queen-marshal did what everyone thought impossible: expel the invaders and build Chaonia into a magnificent republic. But the cutthroat ambassador corps and conniving noble houses have never ceased to scheme—and they have plans that need Sun to be removed as heir, or better yet, dead. To survive, the princess must rely on her wits and companions: her biggest rival, her secret lover, and a dangerous prisoner of war.
Happy Friday, space pirates! We made it through another week that has both felt like a decade and disappeared in an instant, because time is a mortal construct that no longer has any meaning. It’s Alex, with a space-opera-heavy set of book recommendations this week, and an extra helping of news items (to make up for Tuesday’s lack) to take you into the weekend. Stay safe out there!
Thing that made me smile today: The best runway walk I’ve ever seen
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
First glance (and awesome cover reveal) at a North Africa-inspired fantasy debut, C.L. Clark’s The Unbroken
Lavie Tidhar and Silvia Moreno-Garcia on the best SFF of the year so far and the books they’re looking forward to
Through sci-fi and fantasy, Muslim women authors are building new worlds
Science fiction explores the interconnectedness revealed by the coronavirus pandemic
Forbidden desires and locked doors: the origins of “Rapunzel”
The future in Star Trek feels very far away
CW: Harassment Orbit statement on Sam Sykes
Apex Magazine will be returning via Kickstarter.
TOC has been released for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020.
Ann and Jeff Vandermeer preview The Big Book of Modern Fantasy
Every single one of N.K. Jemisin’s novels has had its TV/film rights bought.
CoNZealand will be offering Hugo Finalists passes and partial refunds after a group of Finalists sent in a letter of concern. The programme guide is now available, by the way.
Look, I’m a geologist, so of course I love rocks that look like food
A major challenge for future Mars explorers will be boredom
On Book Riot
10 Great 2020 Adult LGBTQ+ Fantasy Books
Which post-apocalyptic YA book should you read next?
Enter before the end of the month and you could win The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix, a year of free books, or a $250 Barnes and Noble gift card.
Free Association Friday: Lady Pilots
123 years ago today, Amelia Earhart was born. I figure a suitable celebration is to call out some science fiction that has awesome female pilot characters in it. (I’ve certainly written a few in my own work. Why? Because they kick ass!)
Michael R. Underwood’s Annihilation Aria has a super awesome—and extremely grumpy—female pilot named Wheel. She ferries around her team in a rattletrap ship called The Kettle, which she fully inhabits via cybernetic implants. She’s got a colorful past that she can only hope to outfly so long.
Along a similar space opera vein, you have Min, the pilot of La Sirena Negra in Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes. Min pilots the ship by sort of mentally merging with it, which occasionally makes her confuse her meat body and her metal body when it comes to damage reports.
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal has Elma York, who was a service pilot during World War II. Then a meteorite hits the Earth and kicks off a slow-motion but certain climate disaster that means humanity needs to get to Mars, right now. Elma fights for the inclusion of women in the newly-minted space program—you can’t do a sustainable colony without women, after all—and the ranks of the Lady Astronauts are soon filled out by other badass female pilots.
Noemi in Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray definitely qualifies. She’s a total badass fighter pilot serving on the planet Genesis, a colony that resource-starved Earth is starting a war with–and she’s also dealing with an AI that’s becoming self-aware.
Prudence Wu in Rebelwing by Andrea Tang flies the titular character, a sentient mecha shaped like a dragon. Because dragons are cool. And Rebelwing was supposed to bond with a guy, the political heir to power, but decided that Pru was much, much cooler.
Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone has Xiara, another cybernetically-bonds-with-the-ship space opera pilot. But it also has Zanj, who can fly a ship if she wants to, because she’s Zanj the pirate queen, and you do not tell that woman no if you want to live.
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.