Category: Swords and Spaceships

Happy Tuesday, shipmates! I hope you’re ready for a broadside of new releases, because there are some great ones this week. It’s Captain Alex with a barrage of books and some fun news items. Also, I want to share with you what is totally going to be my next crochet project and a video game about a horrible goose that I now need.

New Releases

The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz – A time travel story where Tess, from the future, has dedicated herself to shifting the past to create a safer world in her time, trying to find a way to make her edits stay while she avoids fellow travelers willing to stop her with deadly force. Her life intertwines with that of Beth, on her own path of violence and vengeance after helping her friends hide the body of an abusive boyfriend.

Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger – An unlikely band of four people, ranging from criminals to royalty, unites to hunt down a killer that defies not only earthly laws, but those of magic as well. Expect battle couples, magical animal companions, and snark. (Full disclosure: Paul and I share an agent.)

The Bone Ships by RJ Barker – The people of the Hundred Isles have long built their ships from the bones of dragons, now thought to be extinct. But a new dragon has been spotted in far-off waters, and a race to claim it is on. Whoever takes the dragon will shift not just battles, but the endless war in their favor.

The Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht – A monster that cannot die stalks the ruined, festering, abandoned city of Elendhaven, sent on tasks by his frail master. The monster’s ultimate goal is revenge on all those who have wronged his city, no matter what he will destroy along his path.

A Dream So Dark by L.L. McKinney – Still reeling from the events of A Blade So Black, Alice returns to rescue her friends and stop the Black Knight–and save Wonderland once and for all. But what if Wonderland has actually been trying to save her?

Stormrise by Jillian Boehme – A girl named Rain disguises herself as a boy using dragon magic, so that she can become a warrior. As war threatens her home, she realizes the very magic that has enabled her disguise might be the key to awakening the ancient dragons that slumber–and save her home.

News and Views

There’s some great SFF on the National Book Award longlists. Not gonna lie, I’m most excited about Pet by Akwaeke Emezi.

Aron Eisenberg, who played Nog on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, passed away.

My favorite thing I read all week: Let Liv Tyler go to space

Highlights from Neil Gaiman’s Reddit AMA.

Author Eric Flint has an epic rant about the electoral college.

The BN blog asks: Does science fiction have a moral imperative to address climate change?

If you’ve wanted to read Joe Abercrombie’s First Law series and aren’t sure what order to go in, here you go.

100% this: An ode to Robin Wright from Princess to Queen

A cute list of funny Weasley twins moments from the Harry Potter books.

This truck was obviously playing Shadowrun.

I want to share this amazing Twitter thread about the Four Tigers Sword with everyone.

Architectural photography from megacities to remind us that the future is now.

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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, gentlebeings! We’ve made it through another week; if you’re in the northern hemisphere, it’s hopefully starting to feel a bit like fall (my favorite time of the year). And it’s me, Alex, with some links and a list of sort-of random books. If you need a laugh to take you into the weekend, I cannot recommend the finalists for the 2019 Wildlife Comedy Photography Awards enough.

News and Views

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry on what it means to win a Hugo as a blind person.

On overcoming white bias in literature.

The Archived by V.E. Schwab will be adapted for the CW.

In other adaptation news, Kingkiller Chronicle is looking for a new home after Showtime released the rights.

This week’s SFFYeah! podcast is about books with spooky houses.

Christopher Eccleston (the Ninth Doctor) talks about his battles with depression and disordered eating.

Anathema Magazine, which focuses on stories by Queer/Two-Spirit POC/Indigenous creators, is running its yearly fundraiser.

Michelle Goldberg wrote about The Handmaid’s Tale and the way literary dystopias don’t keep up with reality.

If you’re looking for YA Science Fiction, we’ve got some suggestions for you.

It’s been proposed that an a Shakespeare First Folio has annotations in it from John Milton.

Free Association Friday

You might have heard that some unnamed people (probably wishing to remain nameless because they don’t want the might of the internet to fall on their heads) want to remake The Princess Bride. Cary Elwes responded with a perfect Tweet and also expanded his opinion a bit over at SyFy Wire. And this might get me in trouble with the gods of Book Riot, but here’s my hill I’m going to die on: I like the movie scripted by the inimitable William Goldman orders of magnitude better than I liked his original novel.

So in honor of that movie, let’s talk some other books that strike a chord with The Princess Bride!

The book that leaps most immediately to mind is Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner, I’m not even going to be coy with you. It’s got lots of sword fights and intrigue and while there isn’t exactly true love to be had, it’s gay as all hell–all while still having an amused tone. And in that vein, I feel compelled to also mention The Henchmen of Zenda by K.J. Charles, which is more filed under romance than fantasy; it falls more under thought experiments of what the Dread Pirate Roberts’s crew might have been a bit like (many a buckle is swashed), while also being Extremely Gay.

If I think about true love like we get it in The Princess Bride, I immediately jump to The Tiger’s Daughter; it’s tonally a lot more serious, but if you want to talk about a couple whose love rivals Wesley and Buttercup’s, that’s where to find them. Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn is a little bit lighter. Political intrigue, court, a really nasty piece of work as a prince, and true love waiting in the wings.

On the more free association end of things, the first book I actually thought of while coming up with this list was JY Yang’s The Red Threads of Fortune. Why? Well first off, we don’t call this “Alex has an objectively defensible reason for everything backed up by an annotated bibliography Friday.” There are just certain ways my brain works. Anyway, there’s a lot going on in behind the events of this novella; a lot of machinations and politics, and the protagonist is just exasperated. There’s a scene that involved a lot of cussing. You’ll know what I mean when you read it. I also want to throw Steel Crow Saga in here for the adventure factor and the humor that Paul Krueger uses to leaven the definitely-darker-than-The-Princess-Bride subject matter. (Full disclosure: I share an agent with both Paul and JY.)

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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 and such news items as I found interesting. If you’ve got some time and you’re looking for a laugh, the 29th First Annual Ig Nobel Awards were held on September 12th and you can watch the ceremony here. (If you just want the summary, File 770 has a list of the award winners.)

Oh and! Don’t forget to enter our giveaway of the year’s 10 best mystery/thrillers so far!

New Releases

A Hero Born by Jin Yong – A wuxia novel from the master, Jin Yong, available for the first time in the US. After the murder of his father, Guo Jing and his mother flee to join Genghis Khan. Later, under the guidance of the Seven Heroes of the South, Guo Jin returns to China to fulfill his destiny.

Gamechanger by L.X. Beckett – Rubi is a public defender in the Bounceback generation, the first generation to be free of the troubles of the 21st century. But when she’s assigned to help Luce, she has to figure out why he’s been targeted by the governments of the world–and why he seems determined to stop the global recovery.

Chilling Effect by Valeria Valdes – After Captain Eva Innocente’s sister Mira is kidnapped by the Fridge, a shadowy criminal syndicate that holds people in cryostasis, Eva must undertake a series of missions across the galaxy to pay the ransom–including one that includes psychic cats.

Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson – Just what it says on the tin. Mary Shelley is often credited as the writer of the first science fiction novel, but she wasn’t alone in the genre. This book explores the fascinating lives of women who were on the cutting edge of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

News and Views

NBC has made six short episodes for The Good Place set at the end of season 3. You can watch them at NBC’s site or on their app.

The cutest thing I’ve seen all week: A Detroit high school allowing seniors to cosplay for their IDs.

Way Station by Clifford D. Simak is being adapted for Netflix.

We’ve got a great list of Dragon Books for Grown-ups!

Hulu’s Castle Rock has a trailer out for season 2.

HBO is apparently ordering a pilot for a Game of Thrones prequel about the Targaryens.

Carnival Row has an official TTRPG that you can download for free.

The Wheel of Time has started filming in Prague and they took a super cute cast photo.

From the Department of This Is the Stage of Dystopian Capitalism We Are Now In So Writers Keep That In Mind: KFC is making a Colonel Sanders dating sim that looks upsettingly cute. One of the characters is a deep fryer. No, really.

A long but fascinating read: The search for a warning that lasts as long as nuclear waste. Which of course immediately makes me think of The Only Harmless Great Thing.

I’m a geologist, so that means you get cool geology things when I see them. Like this article about the geology of the Chicxulub Crater.

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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.

We did it, space pirates! Survived another week. Happy weekend if you’re a Monday through Friday kind of person, and wishes for strength if you’re rolling up your sleeves for work.

News and Views

BBC America announced the leads for its Discworld-inspired series The Watch and it’s pretty exciting. Just looking at the casting, you can already see where there’s going to be some variance from the books. Personally, I can’t wait to see where they go with it.

James D. Nicoll does an analysis of Hugo finalists by gender. Here’s a companion Twitter thread with a great alternate visualization to his powerful use of typography.

In this week’s SFF Yeah! there’s discussion of The Testaments and renaming awards.

Speaking of, the Tiptree Motherboard has reversed their earlier position after extensive community discussion and are looking in to renaming the award.

You can pre-order Aliette de Bodard’s first short story collection Of Wars, Memories, and Starlight now.

It’s going to be Alexander Skarsgård versus Whoopi Goldberg in the upcoming adaptation of The Stand.

An essay exploring the Chosen One trope.

Scientists have detected water vapor on a “super earth” exoplanet!

Moon’s Haunted

“Tell me,” he says, “have you ever heard of something called a moon?” — FromThe Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. Basically, that’s a line that made me crap my drawers when I read it, though I’m not going to expand on why because that would be a massive spoiler. (But my goodness, if you haven’t read this series yet, why not?)

But in honor of Friday the 13th–which is my favorite day, since I was born on a 13th day (not in September) and get to have the spookiest birthdays possible now and then–and the fact that it’s going to be a Friday the 13th with a full Moon, we’re going full “Moon’s haunted.” And I’m not just talking about the Guardians retruning to the Moon in Destiny.

I’ve got to start with 172 Hours on the Moon by Johan Harstad. NASA runs a contest to select three teenagers to go into space–and to the moon. But little do they know there is a long-forgotten, dark secret waiting there, ready to kill them. In a similar vein there’s oldie-but-goodie Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, where an alien artefact waits on the dark side of the moon. The artefact is actually a maze filled with utter murder.

The moon is literally trying to kill us all at the start of Seveneves. Breaking up, bombarding the Earth with massive chunks of itself. What a jerk. And the Moon is similarly murderous in Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It series, where an asteroid knocks the moon closer to the Earth and basically starts a global geologic apocalypse.

On the “hell is people” front, I have for you Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald, in which the Moon is basically the most cynical version of the Wild West but with the chance of asphyxiating and five powerful families threaten everyone’s existence with their political games and power plays. Dove Arising by Karen Bao, where a teenager has to join the brutal Lunar militia after her mother is arrested.

And for a gentler sort of “haunting” rather than directly haunted, how about When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore? It’s difficult to describe, but there’s strange magic, and witches, and pictures of the moon. I also still have a lot of love in my heart for Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan even if the depictions of women in it were inexcusably dated even when it was published in 1977. Astronauts find a skeleton on the moon, one wearing a strange spacesuit… and it’s 50,000 years old. The mystery only gets deeper and stranger from there.

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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! I hope everyone had a great and hopefully relaxing weekend. It’s Alex, with a selection of new releases and some (at times extremely hilarious) news items. But before we get started, here’s what I’m loving right now, mostly because I never get tired of music videos about Steve Rogers. Bonus: this homecoming assembly Marvel-themed dance routine, holy forking shirtballs.

New Releases

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi – There are no monsters in the city of Lucille. But when a creature made of horns, color, and claws crawls out of a painting in Jam’s house, she’s forced to reconsider this truism. The creature is named Pet, and has come to hunt a monster–one that no on will admit exists.

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker – Look, I think the hook alone on this book is enough: “Public gatherings are illegal, making concerts impossible, except for those willing to break the law for the love of music–and for one chance at human connection.”

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow – January is the ward of a wealthy man and feels little different than the arcane artifcats that he stocks his sprawling mansion with–until she finds a book that promises adventures in other worlds and truths about her own.

The Resurrectionist of Caligo by Wendy Trimboli and Alicia Zaloga – A body thief who makes his living selling cadavers to medical schools is framed for the murder of one of those cadavers. To escape execution, he agrees to bind himself to a former friend forever in a blood magic ritual–and then help her find the real murderer running loose in their city.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir – Space necromancers in a gothic sci-fi universe vie to ascend to immortality. Gideon is a swordswoman dragged into this murderous contest by her childhood nemesis when all she really wants is out.

News and Views

McSweeney’s, killing it as always: I’m just the guy to write your female empowerment series.

Volume 5 of the Long List Anthology (an anthology of stories that didn’t quite make the finalist cut for the Hugos) is crowdfunding now.

Maria Haskins has short fiction recommendations from the month of August.

Fonda Lee (author of Jade War) is writing for Marvel’s Sword Master, starting with issue #4.

A list of fiction’s greatest technopaths.

Supernova Era by Cixin Liu is going to be adapted for film in China.

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders has been optioned for series development by Sony.

Jonathan Igla, who was a writer and the executive story editor for Mad Men has been hired to write the Hawkeye series for Disney+.

Here’s the first look at the final season of The Good Place.

NPR had Margaret Atwood do an exclusive reading from The Testaments.

There’s an actual statue of Iron Man in Italy and reading about it made me tear up.

Joker won the Golden Lion (the highest honor) at the Venice Film Festival.

A personal essay about recognizing fannish toxicity in oneself.

Walter Mosley left the Star Trek: Discovery writers room after being warned by HR to not use the N-word. (For context: Walter Mosley is African-American.)

The TSA has relented on those soda bottles from Galaxy’s Edge.

We have all seen this movie and most recently it was called The Meg.

Pairing solar panels and certain crops can be a win-win.

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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! It’s Captain Alex, with some SFF news and a randomly-generated list of books, so I hope you’re ready. But first, I want to share with you my favorite tweet of the week. I don’t know, I just giggle every time I look at it.

News and Views

A24 is making an Earthsea series that was approved by Ursula K. Le Guin.

This week’s SFF Yeah! is about discovering the backlist of your new favorite authors.

Harley Quinn is so fuckin’ over clowns.

A really great essay about female characters and masculine modes of power.

Amazon broke the embargo on The Testaments and released it a week early. And Hulu’s already developing a series for the new book.

Why hopeful prequels to dark stories matter. (Spoiler warning for The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance)

The Uncanny Magazine team has posted their Hugo acceptance speeches and they’re well worth a read–particularly Elsa Sjunneson-Henry’s.

Rena Barron on how Black (as in of the African diaspora) Magic inspired her new book, Kingdom of Souls.

I have so many feelings about the trailer for the 26th Season box set of Doctor Who. (Ace should totally get to meet the 13th Doctor. WHO’S WITH ME?)

And speaking of Doctor Who, goodbye, Terrance Dicks. You made my childhood immeasurably better with the show you helped write.

Winners of the Dragon Awards were announced.

There’s a couple of days left to back this IndieGogo for translating The Road of Ice and Salt, a vampire novella by Mexican author José Luis Zárate. The campaign is being run by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (author of Gods of Jade and Shadow).

If you’re looking for an anthology to Kickstart, this one looks pretty cool: Glitter + Ashes, an anthology about queer joy and community in the face of disaster.

In the wake of the Campbell Award having its name change, there’s been discussion (started by Natalie Luhrs) driven largely by the disabled community that it’s high time the Tiptree was renamed as well. The Motherboard’s response here.

The history and science behind why we’re afraid of clowns.

Free Association Friday

I took my first shot at commuting home from work on my bicycle. It’s a 21-mile trip, so not something I can do every day, and I’m definitely not up to a round trip at this time. But I survived and I’m feeling pretty good, so I want to have some science fiction with bikes.

The thing is, though, there’s not a whole lot of bicycles prominently placed in SFF, which I think is a travesty. The absolute number one best book though is Witchmark by C.L. Polk, which not only has a bicycle on the cover to let you know what’s coming… but has actual magical bicycle chases! Give it a read, and you’ll instantly know that the writer has some serious cycling experience.

There are some cute, non-central-to-the-action bicycle scenes in both Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (in which Anathema Device actually names her bike!) and Robin McKinley’s Sunshine. Because characters have to get around somehow, even if they don’t have a car.

The bicycle also has a long-time presence in dystopian fiction. It can be a way to generate power, classically seen in Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room!, which also gave us Soylent. S.M. Stirling’s Emberverse series (starts with Dies the Fire) has undead armies on downhill bikes. So, you know. Good stuff.

Stanslav Lem’s The Star Diaries have weird, invented, nonsense bicycles drawn by the author. And in my search for more books that involve bicycles, I came across an entire series of feminist science fiction anthologies that start with Bikes in Space. Check out the whole series on the publisher page.

It’s not SFF, but I think my favorite book with lots of bicycling in it is Mark Oshiro’s Anger is a Gift. Or for something non-book but rainbow-colored and ridiculous, I cannot recommend the movie Turbo Kid strongly enough. Just check out the trailer.

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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 new release day, me hearties! It’s Alex, with a pile of really interesting essays for you this week–and a bunch of new books. I’m still riding high from the weekend, which brought me two non-SFF joys: First, the first episode of the new season of The Great British Bake Off (they’re releasing the episodes in the US on Netflix every Friday after they air in the UK). Second, we got the news that Alex Trebek is officially a bigger badass than Chuck Norris could ever hope to be, because he whomped pancreatic cancer and will be back to hosting Jeopardy.

New Releases

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers – At the turn of the 22nd century, humanity is able to solve the worst biological limits of space flight, enabling a new age of exploration. But they have not solved relativity, or the challenges of the spacefarers returning to a world that might have forgotten them, a challenge explorer Ariadne chronicles.

Caster by Elsie Chapman – In Aza’s world, magic is a dangerous, illegal thing that killed her sister. But with her sister dead, she must step in to try to save her family’s tea house–by taking part in an underground magical tournament that might take her own life as well.

The Nightjar by Deborah Hewitt – Alice is an “aviarist,” capable of seeing the Nightjars, magical birds that guard human souls. After her best friend is hit by a car, Alice must seek out the Rookery, the hidden and magical alternate London, if she’s to find and save her friend’s nightjar.

Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron – Arrah is the only one in her family of powerful witchdoctors with no magic. In desperation, she considers trading years of her life for a few scraps–and soon she may not have a choice at all, as the powerful Demon King stirs and threatens everything she loves.

The Mythic Dream edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe – An anthology that explores retellings of myth and legend, with stories from JY Yang, Alyssa Wong, Seanan McGuire, Rebecca Roanhorse, John Chu, and more.

Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee – A younger Loki, desperate to prove he’s a hero, descends on 19th-century London to investigate a string of murders that seem to involve Asgardian magic.

News and Views

A little preview from Entertainment Weekly of N.K. Jemisin’s next book. You can now pre-order The City We Became.

The 30th issue of Uncanny magazine will be Disabled People Destroy Fantasy. Take a gander at the TOC here.

One booktuber’s quest to cover a tricky topic: Every Bosom in The Wheel of Time (part 1).

Amal El-Mohtar’s review of Palestine + 100.

An essay about Irish folklore and language getting used as disposible fantasy-fodder:  Do American Writers Think Irish is Public Domain Elvish?

An amazing (long) essay about violent video games and grief: Select Difficulty

Look, it was just a really good week for essays: Fast Color and the Humanizing of Superpowers in Black Women

HBO has revealed who is voicing the Daemons in His Dark Materials.

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is now streaming on Netlix. It’s also about climate change.

Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders on the intersection between writing about science and writing science fiction.

Anna Smith Spark (author of The Court of Broken Knives) dug into what grimdark means in her Reddit AMA.

New Terminator: Dark Fate trailer. CHILLS. I HAVE CHILLS.

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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! You made it! This is Alex to bring in the weekend with some news and desert-related book noodling. Oh, and a strong recommendation that you should watch Missy Elliott’s VMA performance because it’s sci-fi as all heck too.

News and Views

The Campbell Award has been renamed. More context on this over at Book Riot if you’ve missed what’s going on. Related: Was John W. Cambpell A F***ing Fascist, or Merely a Fascist?

Fonda Lee (author of Jade War) wrote us a great list about siblings in fantasy.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture forty years later.

New Wild Cards story over at Tor.com!

The TSA has banned “thermal detonator” soda bottles from Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge in both carry on and checked baggage.

This week’s SFF Yeah! podcast is about the Hugo awards and the Blade trilogy.

S.L. Huang (author of Null Set) on the danger of swords. Somewhat related: a freelance photographer went to a medieval battle reenactment and got some amazing pictures.

I feel required to mention that the final trailer for Joker is out.

Marvel comics no. Marvel comics why.

I am excited about this documentary on Alien.

Here’s a long piece about The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance‘s journey to the screen.

Thanks to some really questionable choices by big tech, the necessity of ethics is coming back into discussion–and science fiction is part of it.

How firenados work. This is some dragon-level stuff.

You had me at “16,000-year-old puma poop.”

And some cool, science-y nail art!

Free Association Friday

Apparently this August has been one of the top five warmest on record for my city, and I believe it. Colorado has a lot of land that’s near-desert or desert, rainfall-wise, and you can feel it most in the summer when the dry meets the hot. (Which is probably why so much of my writing, like my novels, is set in the desert.) So how about some desert books to capture this August feeling?

There is a lot of desert-based fantasy, and so much of it is really good. Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand is my hands-down favorite because it’s so much about the wild, dangerous magic of the desert. City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty is a close second, though it spends a lot more time in the city of the djinn than out in the sands. That book starts in Cairo, which immediately brings to mind E. Catherine Tobler’s Rings of Anubis if you’re feeling a bit more steampunk to go with the magic, or N.K. Jemisin’s The Killing Moon if you’re looking for something more ancient and deeply mythological. Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed goes fully fantasy adventure–as does Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton, with added gunslingers. Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson combines hacking and magic in a fictional Middle Eastern state.

City of Bones by Martha Wells takes us to an entirely unfamiliar world, still fantasy, where relic hunters sift through bone. The start of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger, has that same sort of combined fantasy and science fiction with blowing dust feel.

The weird thing I noticed as I was making my list of these books is that there’s so much more desert fantasy than there is sci-fi. Because while there might be science fiction that touches on a desert location, it lacks that deep connection to place that has provided so much meat for fantasy. With exceptions, of course. Technically speaking, any book set on Mars that isn’t about a transformed and terraformed version of it is about a desert planet; let’s just take Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars as the prime example of that. And of course, there’s the grandaddy of all desert SFF: Frank Herbert’s Dune. I’d also offer up Iraq + 100 as science fiction much closer to home; it’s short stories by Iraqi authors that imagine their country 100 years in the future.

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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 Captain Alex, with your Tuesday new releases and news as I try to navigate the strange seas of starting a new job. I also saw a bunch of movies over the last few days, and let me recommend Ready or Not if you’re in the mood for some absolutely wicked, gory fun. Lastly, I need to share this D&D-related Twitter thread with you (via the thread reader app) because it’s beautiful and made me cry.

New Releases

Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff – Orphen and her tiny family (her mother and Maeve) have survived on a tiny island off the cost of Ireland in a world overtaken by the flesh-eating skrake. When disaster strikes, Maeve must abandon the safety of the island for the mainland, where the all-female skrake-fighting force called the Banshee may wait–and non-skrake dangers that Orphen can’t even imagine.

Song of the Abyss by Makiia Lucier – Seventeen-year-old Reyna is the granddaughter of a famed navigator and dreams of being an explorer in her own right. When her ship is attacked by mysterious raiders, she barely escapes with her life–and when next she sees the abandoned ship, her entire crew is missing. Reyna sets off on a dangerous journey to find and rescue them–and learn the truth behind these raiders.

Mind Games by Shana Silver – Arden is a hacker who uploads memories for classmates who want experiences they’d never otherwise have. One day, she whites out and finds her own memories have been hacked, removed rather than simply shared. How can she find an enemy that can erase every memory of their presence?

Overthrow by Caleb Crain – A grad student named Matthew falls in love with a skater named Leif and is drawn into his group of friends, people are are experimenting with what might be telepathy–and hope that their radical empathy will change the world. A government security contractor targets the group and brings the might of social and legal scrutiny down on them; will the group and their relationships survive?

The Passengers by John Marrs – Several years after self-driving cars have been mandated in the UK, eight unrelated people are hijacked by what appear to be hackers, with their pleas for help broadcast worldwide. But all is not as it seems, and each person carries a secret that can be the key to their salvation.

Galaxy’s Edge: Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson – General Leia Organa has dispatched her spies in a desperate search for allies and sanctuary for the battered Resistance. Her top spy might have found just the place at Black Spire Outpost–if she can survive the First Order stormtroopers hot on her tail.

News and Views

An interview with Samuel Delaney about capitalism, racism, and science fiction.

Here’s a new trailer for His Dark Materials.

Short fiction alert! John Joseph Adams has released the TOC for the upcoming The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019

SyFy Wire has a good roundup of some of the big news from Disney’s D23 expo. Hollywood Reporter has a guide to the known programming for Disney’s streaming serice thus far.

Also from D23: JJ Abrams talks about Leia’s role in The Rise of Skywalker and basically I just expect to cry through the entire movie.

This month’s Slate Future Tense short story is out: What the Dead Man Said. The response essay is also worth reading.

io9 has a great video from Flame Con, showing the intersection of scifi/fantasy fandom and drag and burlesque.

This might be the first crime committed in space. Yay?

A cooling vest invented by a Furry is now in use by soldiers in the US military.

Climate change has caused warm-weather-loving cycads to bloom on the Isle of Wight.

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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.

Hello, shipmates, from the black depths of my post-WorldCon concrash. It’s Alex, back in Denver with a mountain of laundry to do and two extremely clingy cats to fend off while they get this newsletter put together!

News and Views

A really cool look at how fashion embraces our genre.

In this week’s SFF Yeah! Sharifah discusses favorite animal characters.

Tor.com has a great interview with Lauren Shippen about her upcoming podcast-turned-book The Infinite Noise.

And io9 has an interesting interview with the creators of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

I’d say about 95% of current, non-political social media drama in our circles is about Sony taking Spider-Man back.

There’s going to be a Matrix 4, with both Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, though solo directed by Lana Wachowski.

Here’s 12 YA books if you’re a fan of the Marauders in Harry Potter. Related: Which Ravenclaw character are you?

Tom Felton and Emma Thompson have a cute reunion.

George R.R. Martin gave out a couple of Alfie Awards at the Hugo Losers’ Party this year.

I am definitely curious about Kirsten Stewart’s upcoming movie, Underwater.

The last time Earth’s magnetic poles flipped, it might have taken 22,000 years to complete.

I found this surprisingly relevant from a writing/worldbuilding perspective: Altruism Still Fuels the Web. Businesses Love to Exploit It.

Free Association Friday

The Hugos are still very much on my mind, so hopefully you’ll forgive me if we noodle on them a bit more. On Tuesday, I gave you the quick rundown of winners for the most relevant categories to us. But I want to dive a little deeper because this was another year where the Hugos were absolutely dominated by women–and a lot of them had extremely relevant things to say.

I already mentioned Jeannette Ng’s acceptance speech, which you can read here, or hear in part on this tweet–including the loud cheering she received for her opinion about John W. Campbell. Due to the tut-tutting and pearl-clutching now being aimed at her because of her speech, here’s another barn burner of a thread from Jeannette–with a reminder that one thing Campbell did was defend the Kent State shooting. (Jeannette wrote Under the Pendulum Sun and has a short story in Not So Stories.)

Carrie Cuin also has a great Twitter thread regarding Campbell apologists. Justine Larbalestier also has a good chunk about Campbell in her excellent historical work The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction, and unsurprisingly she is in total agreement with Jeannette.

Ada Palmer (Too Like the Lightning) was the presenter for the Campbell and has posted the text of her speech in full so we can enjoy it without the text-to-speech captioning SNAFU that had a lot of us inappropriately laughing. (Honestly, at first it was impossible to tell if the captions were borked or if this was some sort of intentional joke.)

Rivers Solomon (author of An Unkindness of Ghosts) did not win the Campbell, but she shared the text of the speech she would have given, and it’s well worth reading.

I want everyone in the world to see this adorable photo of award-winners Zen Cho and Jeannette Ng. If you want to see pure joy, she’s gathered a thread of her fellow Malaysians reacting to her Hugo win. (Zen Cho also wrote Sorcerer to the Crown.)

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry became the first deaf-blind woman to win a Hugo as part of the editorial team for Uncanny Magazine; she was on the special Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction issue. She hasn’t had a chance to release the text of her speech yet due to travel, but here’s a twitter thread of hers you should read.

Mary Robinette Kowal’s Hugo acceptance speech for The Calculating Stars is also well worth your time. She focuses on women who have too long been made invisible and it made me want to stand up and cheer.

You should also read Likhain’s speech. She won the Hugo for Best Fan Artist and gave a speech that had me in tears–and also became the first person to speak Tagalog on the Hugo stage.

I’m still having a ton of feelings about Archive of Our Own winning the Hugo for Best Related Work. The Mary Sue has a good round-up post about reactions. Naomi Novik, who has never been shy about writing fanfiction, gave the speech when the award was accepted, and you can read it here. (In addition to fanfic, Naomi Novik most recently wrote Spinning Silver.)

Tor.com has a great “what’s next for the winners” roundup that you might want to check out.

And last, for pure fun, here’s a Hugos “red carpet” Twitter thread.

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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.