Happy Friday, shipmates! Well, we all survived one heck of a scorching week. (Almost like there’s some kind of change going on in the climate, huh? Weird. /sarcasm) I hope everyone made it through okay and found ways to keep cool. Stay safe, stay cool, and I will see you again on Tuesday!
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process.
Bookish Goods
Topographically Accurate Moon Model by MoosieShop
This is so cool! It’s a hand-painted resin model of the moon, created using NASA’s moon surface scan data. You can get either hollow or weighted versions. $29/$45
New Releases
The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta
When Sol disappears, their wife Lumi, who was born on Earth, sets out to find them. Through letters and other extracts, Lumi chronicles her journey from the affluent colony of Mars to the environmentally devastated Earth, which takes her deep into Sol’s past among underground environmental groups — and her own.
Half Outlaw by Alex Temblador
Raqi’s parents died when she was just four years old, and she was sent to be raised by her uncle, Dodge, a drug addict who is a member of an all-white, racist motorcycle club call the Lawless. Raqi leaves that world behind as soon as she can and eventually becomes a partner at an LA law firm. Then she gets a call from the leader of the Lawless with the news that Dodge is dead, and she’s expected to come on the Grieving Ride for him — and if she does go, she will finally receive the address of her long-lost Mexican grandfather. But the Grieving Ride is nothing like she expected, a cross-country journey into herself and her family.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Since one of the new releases is an epistolary novel, here’s a couple more bits of epistolary sci fi!
Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
Seventeen years ago, Rose fell through a perfectly square hole in the ground that took her into the palm of a giant metal hand. This has shaped the course of her life as she tries to understand its origins and purpose and has led her to being the physicist in charge of investigating its mysteries.
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
A love story across time and space as two agents on opposite sides of a war between post-human factions fall for each other while meeting out of order. They must find a way to end the war if they want to be free — and save each other.
See you, space pirates. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.