Lady Business

Sidetracks - September 19, 2024

2024-09-20T01:33:40Z

Posted by: helloladies

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Renay

1. Applications for the inaugural Watermelon Grant for Palestinian Creators are open!

2. Crown of Stars by Kate Elliott has an audio version now. It's all complete! Huge epic fantasy series on audio. A win for audiobook nerds.

3. You can now preorder the Tordotcom edition of Rose/House by Arkady Martine. This was a compact, weird little story of personhood and identity and I liked it a lot.

4. Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plot, a YA romance by Preeti Chhibber, comes out September 24! I've had this pre-ordered since the moment it had an ISBN.

5. If you like queer fantasy and absurdist humor/Terry Pratchett, check out Jenny's guest review of Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland.

6. Journey Planet did an issue on Workers' Rights in SFF. It has a ton of cool essays and is relevant to my interests! Unfortunately, there only seems to be a PDF version right now!

7. Via Alex de Campi on BlueSky, this bound copy of "Gritty Kills Tony Stark" is...incredible.

8. I am admittedly behind on graphic novels, but this review of Army of One made me add it to my TBR with a quickness.

9. In last week's The Full Lid, there was a review of The Apple-Tree Throne by Premee Mohamed (spoilers!), whose backlist I'm about to gorge myself on after loving The Siege of Burning Grass.

10. Rec Center #454!

11. The Narrated Podcast dropped Episode #274, about The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey. It sounds like this is going to be on the popular vote award ballots next year so I might as well read this book sooner rather than later and be ahead of the game.

12. Octothorpe, Episode #118 is out, with more Worldcon adventures.

13. I am so excited about the new USPS trucks? They're so weird-looking but functional and they make me tear up a little that our carriers will now have AC and better working conditions? However, we absolutely do not have to hand it to De Joy on this one. If it had been up to him it would have been a fleet of environmental nightmares. I'm 100% giving credit to the Biden admin, who I think yanked De Joy in after activists and organizers raised the alarm, gave him a stern talking to similar to "Don't embarrass us, you clown", handed him some additional money, and forced him into a green option.

14. Cute sketch of a cat!

15. I want this nightmare unicorn as a print so bad.

16. Look at this autumnal deer. LOOK.

17. L.D. Lewis wrote an essay, I read it, and felt so seen and gut-punched (complimentary) that I cried on my couch for an afternoon and then proceeded to preorder a book I'm excited about and wrote a ton about ducks simply because it made me happy to watch a cultural story unfolding, no matter how niche it was.

18. This song has been on a loop in my head, especially this line: "I inevitably mess up the pancakes / cause my hands shake / when you're close".

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2024 Federal Duck Stamp Contest: The Entries

2024-09-19T00:32:27Z

Posted by: renay

In a recent edition of Sidetracks, I shared my Sincere Excitement about the Federal Duck Stamp Contest (happening around 12 hours after this post goes live), where over two days judges will pick the artist with the best Duck Art and create the next official Duck Stamp. They will have their art on all the duck stamps sold (which also operate as hunting licenses and funds wildlife conservation). Lady Business focuses on books/media, and so, I reasoned: "literally none of the people who follow Lady Business care about an art contest about ducks." Then I went: "But I care deeply about these ducks. I have followed some of these ducks since they were baby sketches!" So, with apologies to those who come here for Only Books/Media, please allow me a slight detour into Duck Art Joy.

Renay's Duck Lore: growing up, I had my own pet duck, Hudson, which was gifted to me by a dear friend who knew I loved ducks but did not realize that although I lived in "the country", it was not the type of country that was suitable for ducks. Hudson would have been eaten in one chomp during his first night outside alone, even in an enclosure. Beasts outside my rural Arkansas home laughed at enclosures. He was a loud, happy beautiful mallard. He rode around on my shoulder until he got too big, then wanted me to carry him everywhere like a baby. I hand fed him lots of snacks, like a spoiled prince (affectionate), and he grazed only in the most quality of wild rural Arkansas yard under close supervision. Eventually, we found a nice (and safe) farm with a family friend. Hudson went to live with the ducks there...who promptly made it clear he was not welcome. Luckily, the chickens were less snobby about the whole "raised by a human" business and let him join their flock, where he got very fat (deserved) and thrived until he reached the ripe old age of nine years old.

I learned about this contest from artist Kira Sabin, who has been entering for a few years. I highly recommend all their videos about the contest. They know so much about the artists and the history of the contest. I discovered them when they entered last year and have been following since. It's always neat to follow an artist as they expand their skills. As a bonus, many other people have decided to start entering the contest and I've gotten to follow them, too. More duck art for everyone.

This is the first year where I'm actively engaged with the contest as it's being judged and I'm very excited. In the first round of the judging, a majority must vote to keep a piece IN. 3-5 INs mean that piece moves on to round two, and so I'm hoping to see some of my favorites get at least 1-2 INs, even if they don't proceed. There are 239 duck paintings this year. I've been browsing through them on a loop since they dropped (and forcing everyone else to browse through them with me) and I have Opinions.

My Favorite 2024 Duck Paintings

It's not surprising that myself and the judges often have divergent taste. The Official Duck Stamp is both a hunting license and a collector's item, so stark realism is prioritized. The stamp itself is very small, so any artwork needs to look good when it's in a reduced size. It's understandable, but a little regrettable that more modern or artistic interpretations don't have a high likelihood of being chosen. People are so creative! I love that artists keep entering with their cool art styles regardless of the outcome. Here are my 15 favorite duck paintings for this year (to be reasonable).

1. Duck #12 — I love the water on this one.

2. Duck #19 — Both the male and female duck are in this one, we get a full body shot (this sounds creepy to say about ducks…), and the water is cool.

3. Duck #32 — I love action scenes like this. I especially love the way the light shifts from left to right.

4. Duck #42 — I love the soft lighting on this piece, all the beautiful shadows, and the feathers!!!

5. Duck #46 — This is a cool action shot from a neat angle that shows off the great feather colors.

6. Duck #62 — These are geese (because geese are eligible for the list of ducks each year)! But they're so beautiful. I love this piece because of the excellent color work on the feathers and the great water movement.

7. Duck #63 — Listen, I never say no to well-done dunking duck butt, and as a bonus the colors and composition here are perfect. That water reflection!

8. Duck #83 — This is paint. Someone rendered this duck, in this water, with these waves, in paint.

9. Duck #95 — I'm in love with this duck. I want to know the artist so I can order a print. I want this on my wall in my home so I can look at it every day.

10. Duck #107 — More geese! The lighting on this is wonderful and the water is looking like not paint (it's paint).

11. Duck #135 — The Aqua Teen Hunger Force reference here is *chef's kiss*. There are some other references I don't know, too. The creativity here is neat. I love people.

12. Duck #130 — I just can't get over this duck's whole "EXCUSE ME?" vibe. It cracks me up. I love it so much.

13. Duck #137 — There's a lot happening in this one (might not shrink well), but regardless, it's so pretty. Really leaning into the "sea duck" vibe with the water.

14. Duck #200 — IT'S PICKAXE. I love him and hope he does well! The colors give the piece a dreamy, foggy morning feel. His feathers are beautiful and that water! The growth between last year and this year…wizard level.

15. Duck #201 — Puffcorn. :) I know Kira has talked a lot about their progress in their videos, but it's been so cool watching them grow as an artist. It's really inspiring. Puffcorn is a handsome gentlemen; I am hoping for at least three IN's for him (OR MORE)! HE DESERVES IT.

2024 Duck Paintings I Expect to Do Well

I have no clue what the judges will do, but based on my Limited, Past Experience, I'm trying to get better at predicting. Here are the paintings I think will do well.

1. Duck #34 — Great colors and incredible detail. The only thing holding this one back might be the fish—it's not going to show up well when the image is small and may take away from the ducks.

2. Duck #52 — The lighting and color work on the duck feathers is so rich. I also love they included both male and female ducks, but worry that the female duck might get lost when the painting is smaller.

3. Duck #62 — Part 1 of me putting GET SOME IN'S vibes out into the world.

4. Duck #81 — Looking at past winners, this duck has a lot going for it between the duck, the simple background that will reduce well but rewards closer glances. The little duck feet in the water really lends a good sense of movement to the water that already had plenty.

5. Duck #83 — Again…this is paint.

6. Duck #94 — Pairs of ducks often do well in this exact composition. What made this stick out for me is the crisp lighting and sense of movement that comes from the water reflections.

7. Duck #95 — Part 2 of me speaking some IN's into existence. I really want this one to be recognized! The vibe is so cool. It's really capturing that icy seascape feeling. You can imagine what the breeze feels like and the chill of the water.

8. Duck #107 — Part 3, of, yes, shout about the IN's you want the judges to hand out and hope they receive your hopes in their sleep. I love the delicateness of these geese and the way the water works to make you hear the sloshing on the shore. Plus, the way the light hits all their feathers to gloss them up…gorgeous.

9. Duck #122 — These ducks have eyes that will not quit, and so it's hard to make them look natural. This painting captures their roundness without so much of the appearance that they've been startled. The lighting on this is great, too, and I love how the water reflection captures both the duck and the light source offscreen.

10. Duck #123 — If you said, "Okay, choose a duck not on your favorites list you think will win" it would be this one. Two ducks, perfect angling to capture the beauty of the feathers, a distinct background that makes the ducks stand out perfectly but doesn't detract from the subject, and lighting that really calls forth the imagery of a wintery sunset. I can see it in my head. This artist gave themselves a huge chance to take bragging rights home, even if they didn't choose the most popular duck this year.

11. Duck #124 — The hooded merganser was the duck with the most paintings, and there are a lot of great ones. This is one my partner and I stopped on for a few minutes to talk about the use of light and water motion. He said it was the one with the best churn in the water from fast paddling and I don't disagree! I also like the way the water interacts with the ducks where they're sitting in it with the bubbles.

12. Duck #128 — He's perky! He's fun! He could be #1! It's obviously a tough field this year. This duck caught my eye not only because the artist captured a duck having an Distinct Emotion, but also because the color work on the feathers is…so good. This is paint.

13. Duck #157 — Detailed ducks: check. Two-duck composition: check. Water that looks like you could dive in: check. Excellent lighting: check. The movement from the water here is so good. I'm running out of ways to say, "Check out this effing WATER. IT'S ACTUALLY PAINT."

14. Duck #172 — Flying compositions get chosen a lot! I'm hoping this one gets some recognition because it's doing The Most. There are so many Brants in this painting and the horizon line is epic, although I don't know if the judges want selections that are so geographically anchored.

15. Duck #177 — When I think "duck stamp that operates as a hunting license and raises money for conservation" this is the image that comes to mind. I love the detail work, from the feathers to the shadows to the little puffs coming from the cattail. This may be a legit winner.

16. Duck #200 — Part 4 of "GIVE ME THE INS, JUDGES!". I'm hoping for at least one IN, but would be pleased with two. Pickaxe deserves the world.

17. Duck #201 — Part 5 of speaking IN's into the universe. Although I know Puffcorn probably won't win due to the lighting choice (sob), I really want this artist to get their flowers for all their improvement and do better this year than they ever have before.

18. Duck #202 — Because the hooded merganser was in so many submissions this year, artists who chose it also chose Duck Stamp: Hard Mode because you've got to be good good to stand out of the pack. This is one I think does that well. The duck detailing is great, water is good, and the positioning of the duck is excellent. The one downside is the lighting, which is cool instead of warm. This artist also manages to get the eyes regular and not in "PANIC!" mode.

19. Duck #215 — This is an extraordinary painting. The colors! The movement! The ruffled feathers. The "Am I the drama?" of it all. The downsides are that the realism is broken up in the bottom of the painting where the brush strokes are more obvious and the colors are cool rather than warm. But gosh, it's so pretty and really demand that the viewer feel the breeze.

20. Duck #220 — I feel like this painting is going to do well because of its detail and the mood the coloring invokes. But it only hints at a body of water, and while paintings like that have won in the past they're in the minority in recent years. Water really helps give a solid mood. That's been replaced here with the clouds, which I love, but who knows what the judges will think. Based on watching the 2022 and 2023 judging, I sometimes have no clue what judges want.

21. Duck #224 — Another pair of hooded mergansers that are hitting all the checkboxes. What caught my eye about this one was the excellent lighting that made those water bubbles stand out.

22. Duck #231 — This is made of paint. A human being made this with paint.

23. Duck #238 — One last hooded merganser that's checking the lighting, composition, and water boxes. When my partner and I were looking at this one, we kept finding little details to look at and consider, like the foam on the water and the reeds that you can see through the waves. Honestly. With paint.

You can browse all the entries via this Flickr gallery, watch the 2024 Federal Duck Stamp Contest on Youtube (tomorrow, September 19! Or NOW if you're reading this on September 19 after 8AM), browse past winners, and get your own 2024-2025 duck stamp at USPS.

(You can also tell me your favorite duck paintings from this year. No pressure.)

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Guest Review: Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland

2024-09-18T01:39:18Z

Posted by: helloladies

Jenny Hamilton writes about spaceships and smooching for outlets including Reactor, Strange Horizons, and Lady Business. She can be found on Bluesky having opinions about 1990s SF TV.

I recently read a book review that bemoaned the tendency of comedic novels to cram in serious stuff at the end to make the reader feel like she’d eaten a full meal. A little taken aback, I performed an informal survey in my personal library of Funny Books I Liked Enough to Buy to determine the amount of serious stuff they contained; which produced the confronting realization that virtually every funny book I liked enough to buy contains, or is premised upon, mass death. This sounds like a weird joke but it isn’t, and I don’t have a punchline. I promise I don’t think mass death is funny. I have laughed about death at Mass a lot, though, and maybe that accounts for it. The literal only exception is Nick Hornby’s Funny Girl, and perhaps not coincidentally, he’s the author of the above-mentioned book review.

Since reading that, I’ve been thinking a lot about humor. It requires so much specificity if it’s going to work, but that same specificity ensures a narrowing of the potential audience. My humor, evidently, is the morbid kind. My favorite and funniest book this year was Ferdia Lennon’s Brave Exploits, which is premised upon the mass deaths of the Peloponnesian War, and contains a fairly brutal and visceral scene in which most everyone we care about is brutally slaughtered. (Uh, spoilers, I guess? For... the Peloponnesian War?) I liked Gideon the Ninth and found it amusing; but I frantically loved Harrow the Ninth and was sobbing with laughter throughout my time reading it. (So much death in those books! Why am I like this! This is Catholicism’s fault somehow!) Turns out mine was not a universal response to those two books!

This has been a longish run-up to saying that while Alexandra Rowland’s newest novel, Running Close to the Wind, wasn’t quite exactly for me, I bet that it will be for some of y’all, and I shall endeavor to describe it such that readers with a preference for less atrocity-forward comedy can get a sense of its strengths and weaknesses. Our hero (?) is the horny, exasperating Avra, who has maybe been blessed (?) with divine luck, and who definitely just managed to steal Araşt’s most closely guarded secret: how not to get chomped by sea serpents when sailing through sea serpent territory at the height of sea serpent breeding season. Lacking a plan—or the executive function to concoct one—to make use of this knowledge on his own, Avra stows away aboard The Running Sun, whose captain Teveri sometimes has sex with Avra if he’s very good. Tev is resourceful and clever, and they could totally find a way to fence a sea serpent–related secret in exchange for more money than anyone on their crew has ever conceived. They find Avra wildly annoying, but that’s okay because everyone finds Avra wildly annoying, except the sex workers and other service professionals in Scuttle Cove, who like him because he’s polite to everyone and pays his tab on time.

Also aboard The Running Sun is an extremely hot cleric, Brother Julian, who is new to the crew and has sworn a vow of celibacy. Avra and Tev are both sad about this. Everyone is sad about this. Brother Julian is extremely hot. He’s also interested in sea serpents (see above wherein) and eliminating income inequality by blowing up the Araşti navy’s unfair monopoly of the seas during sea serpent breeding season.

If this all sounds fairly broad, it is; and I think it’s here that I ran into problems with Running Close to the Wind. Two-thirds of the book had passed before it became clear to me that any of this mattered to anyone in a real way. The sex is a joke. The sea serpents are a joke. Avra’s luck is a joke. All the dialogue is jokes. The crew does earnestly want to find out the secret and sell the secret, because then they’ll have money—but still, I couldn’t wrap my head around what they wanted the money for. What were the stakes of having the money? What was it about the world-as-it-stands that they didn’t like, and wanted to change?

The book answers these questions, but for me, it answered them too late. I had wanted the characters to feel like real people two hundred pages sooner, and to know that something truly mattered in the world of the book. I came of age in the peak era of it being uncool to care about stuff, which was inconvenient for the extremely heartfelt daughter of two social service professionals. When I was a kid, and this isn’t a joke, my family regularly sang songs together after dinner. With guitar. We had little binders where we kept the lyrics for the songs we sang most often, so that guests could join in. That’s a true story. You can see how I would be out of step in the era that produced Election and, like, The Big Lebowski.

I don’t want to laugh because nothing matters. I want to laugh because everything matters so much and the scope of what I can control or even affect is so tiny. I am consumed, I am unraveled, I am eaten alive by how much everything matters. But it’s funny, no? It’s funny, and I’m crying? Despite evidence to the contrary, I’m not saying I need a whole lot of people to die before I will consent to find a book funny, but I know that I do need to be able to see, at every moment, its alive and beating heart. I am not going to claw my way through 300 pages of everyone being arch in order to get the one single emotional nugget that lies at the book’s heart. That is not my way. I did not live through the 90s for that.

As is often the case with funny books, you’ll know pretty quickly whether Running Close to the Wind is going to be your thing. If "Terry Pratchett, but horny" sounds appealing to you, give it a try. I’ve never gotten on with Terry Pratchett, unless you count Good Omens, which, oh my God, also contains mass death, what is wrong with me. I have started numerous of his books, instantly found them not to be for me, and given up. I have also pushed through and finished at least two of his books, and still found them not to be for me. Same reason. Takes too long for the people to be people. There’s heart in there, but I always want more of the heart, and sooner. Reaching the acknowledgements section of Running Close to the Wind, and finding the author talking a lot about Pratchett’s influence on their work, made me say, "Ah."

The culture has a weird little mindset that somber art is important, and funny art is trivial, which already legislates against the writing of funny books. Why would you write a funny book when you could write a heartbreaking work of staggering genius? (Harrow the Ninth is both.) On top of that, once you have written a funny book full of weird little guys, it’s not just going to fail to land with readers who believe that Real Art Should Be Dour, and with readers who believe that only white guys can be funny, but also with readers who are Peloponnesian War axe-murder-joke people instead of Terry Pratchett absurdism people. So I hope that if this book sounds good to you, you’ll give it a try! We’re all the poorer for the funny books that don’t get written.

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Sidetracks - September 12, 2024

2024-09-12T05:59:17Z

Posted by: helloladies

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Renay

1. The 2024 Ditmar finalists are out. The Ditmar is a science fiction, fantasy, and horror award for Australian SFF/H. Because these awards (along with the Aurealis) don't get a lot of official promotion in US markets, there's a ton of cool stuff and new writers to discover. If you're eligible to vote, you have until the end of September!

2. Lightspeed has a special offer out for three months of free access to the magazine to tempt people into becoming subscribers. I have no clue how long it will be available for, so if you've wanted to sample one of the big short fiction magazines via ebook, this is a great opportunity.

3. R.S.A. Garcia won the 2024 Sturgeon Award for best short science fiction with "Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200". This is the second win from four nominations so far in 2024. The story was also nominated for the Eugie Award and Nebula Award (Short Story), and has a pending nomination for the Ignyte Award (Short Story). R.S.A. Garcia also has a cool-sounding novel with excellent cover art, The Nightward, coming out in October.

4. Roseanna reviews These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs, and I'm definitely getting to this book this year because of this:

Theoretically, practically, These Burning Stars is a science fiction novel. It’s set in a multi-planetary polity, with space ships and station, mining colonies on moons and hackers and encrypted data, body mods and physical regeneration technology. And, indeed, jump gates. The jump gates are actually pretty important. But for all that, for all that tech and implied space-future-ness… it doesn’t actually feel all that much like an SF novel, I think in large part because absolutely none of those trappings of science fiction are important to the story – they are simply the set-dressing.

I do not need an analysis of the "science" of it all so this sounds GREAT. Let's GO.

5. Ancillary Review of Books has a call for reviews and essays for December 2024. If you have SFF criticism, hit them up! They publish great stuff. It's my dream for my interests and their focus and my ability to complete things to align so I can apply one day.

6. Paul Weimer reviews The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills, which is on my TBR.

7. Womble reviewed The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed, which I read recently. I'm not sure you "like" a book about war and the gory consequences thereof, but I appreciated the examinations of governmental conflict, interpersonal disagreements on strategy, propaganda, disability and ableism, and whether or not violence is ever justified. There's a lot to think about; I'm still mulling over the ending which made me go !?!?! and want a companion book set in this world.

8. The third Mossa and Pleiti book, The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older, is up for pre-order! (Please support your local indie bookstore.)

9. I'm stoked about the October release of The History of the World Begins in Ice: Stories and Essays from the World of Cold Magic by Kate Elliott, a collection of short fiction (well…I assume it's mostly novelettes/novellas because I know Kate Elliott) set in the Spiritwalker universe. Cold Magic and its sequels would have 100% been published/marketed as romantasy if they dropped today (and they wouldn't have garbage whitewashed covers, which should have already been fixed). If you loved these books, don't miss out on this—since it's a smaller publisher the marketing budget is likely tiny and unable to break through the noise of the rest of the Big Book Internet. I have a whole series reread planned around this release. (Again, please support your local indie bookstore.)

10. On top of the news about the Spiritwalker universe, there's also a new fantasy novel from Kate Elliott, The Witch Roads. It looks like it's up for pre-order so run, don't walk!

11. Annalee Newitz has a new book, Automatic Noodle, dropping in 2025. Robot pals? Opening a noodle shop together?! *THROWS MONEY*

12. Martha Wells shared pre-order links to Queen Demon, the sequel to Witch King. I have not yet read Witch King because I'm still busy with my 8th or 9th reread of Murderbot (don't judge me). I really have to make sure I can recite System Collapse from memory like all the others. But I know some people will be interested!

13. A book/author I've had on my radar has a book out now. This World Is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa dropped this week.

14. Another author/book combo that I've heard a lot of good buzz about that just had a release: Countess by Suzan Palumbo.

15. Interstellar Megachef by Lavanya Lakshminarayan came across my timeline on BlueSky and one of the features was "cute robot sidekicks". I'M IN.

16. Sci-Fi Month 2024 is coming! I'm excited because I always discover new-to-me titles I had never heard of before. I'm also pumped because I've already discovered two book blogs I didn't know about before. Are we making a comeback!?

17. It's Yuletide season already!

18. Last Friday's issue of The Full Lid included a look (with spoilers) about Cloudpunk (2020), a cyberpunk game I had never heard of before!

19. The Rec Center #453 dropped last week and included some very funny fanfic recs as well as their usual fan-adjacent news links (this time: NaNoWriMo blowing up their entire brand).

20. From my (still packed) bookmarks, Transfer Orbit had a list of August 2024 SFF titles, then published a follow up list with more. I added a few books to my TBR from these!

21. Rachel from The Shades of Orange did a rec list, If You Like That Sci Fi Book, Try This One!. She reminded me of a few books I could put on my Space Opera Reading Challenge list.

22. I don't use Goodreads anymore (I have moved fully to StoryGraph and will never go back), but I thought Kelsey's video looking at the books she's read that are rated low on Goodreads was interesting. She unpacked why some of the books she liked had low ratings and all her thoughts scanned for me. Awards and book box features can be good, but they can have a downside when it comes to social reading, I guess!

23. The Narrated Podcast discussed Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis, narrated by Braden Wright in Episode #272. This book has been on my TBR for a bit.

24. Hugo, Girl! dropped Episode #72: A Fire Upon the Deep: Scrotum Riders. I want to listen to it just for that title so I'm putting it here so I don't forget and others can find it.

25. I saw a link to the trailer for SCHiM somewhere online and it's so cute. You guide a little creature between shadows. The art is so pretty.

26. My mutual Mark Gerrits designed Mini Rails and it looks both super cute and very fun!? Apparently it uses game mechanics to withhold points from the companies that don't pay their taxes, which I love.

27. Via Hugo Book Club Blog, I learned about two games I'm very interested in: 1000xRESIST and Nine Sols. Both look beautiful and interesting, but very different!

28. Moon Bunny looks so freaking cute. I need an investment account so I can afford all these adorable games.

29. Northwest is another board game that looks very cool and strategic, like something my partner (who is a competitive chess player) would like a lot.

30. I listened to The Talk Board, an episode about the origins of spiritualism and the Ouija Board from The Dollop, as I peruse their archives. I knew a bit about the Capitalism Attack re: the Ouija Board, but the other stuff was new to me.

31. Instead of looking at poll numbers or spiraling into a pit of despair over the fact that the Presidential race feels tied, any time I feel doom start to creep in I adopt some voters and write them nice letters encouraging them to vote or I write some postcards for a local candidate. You may have a local candidate near you with a postcard program, so be sure to check. Every single Democrat/progressive voter we can encourage to the polls is one step closer to ending yet another episode of our long national nightmare.

32. Also, if you are into political events, having an account on Mobilize will help. You can set your account to send you updates on nearby events, online events, and volunteer opportunities.

33. Transgender Lawmaker Wins Democratic Primary for Delaware’s Only House Seat. Go, Sarah McBride, go!

34. Jenny showed me this cool art and I WANT it but I am not in the tax bracket this artist sells to. Instead, I will save an image and look at it and laugh, and randomly quote it to people who will not understand why I find it so funny. CLOCK TICKING.

35. The 2024 Federal Duck Stamp entries are out! I highlighted some favorites over on BlueSky, but I'm following the journey of Pickaxe (artist: Kess) and Puffcorn (artist: Kira). I'm excited to see how they do and to buy merch of their ducks! My partner and I are currently building our lists of our favorite ducks and the ducks we think have a good chance of winning. It's difficult to choose a favorite. They're all so cool. (Please tell me what your favorite is.)

36. Megan Thee Stallion is a huge nerd. I love her so much. I saw a fun joke about this on Twitter which I cannot find again (ugh, I hate the auto refreshing timeline), but it was basically: "Megan, please let RM count the money with his massive math knowledge and take the wheel. He doesn't have his license!" I'm so happy these two giant nerds got to meet and be creative together.

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Sidetracks - September 3, 2024

2024-09-03T18:11:29Z

Posted by: helloladies

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Anna

1. Here’s a cool article about the health issues faced by scribes in ancient Egypt. It’s kind of reassuring to know that even back then people got injured from writing too much.

2. I really enjoyed this dance drama about the life of the Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai. I can’t speak to its historical accuracy but it's very swooshy.

3. kate_nepveu attended the most recent ReaderCon and post excellent panel notes! Of particular interest to LB readers are this panel inspired by my post about cozy SFF, Fantasies of Political Inagency (which I think is very relevant to cozy SFF), The Novels of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, and Fanfic Writers Going Pro: the Most Recent Generation

4. Also on the topic of Cozy SFF geraineon writes about how cozy SFF and grimdark need not be at odds with each other in Cozy SFF and grimdark: They can be friends!

5. Another Cozy related link: S.L. Dove put together A Short And Very Incomplete List of Cosy SFF Titles which is a very helpful list for understanding what books cozy SFF is in conversion with. (Also I just enjoyed seeing some books I love that don’t get talked about on the list. On Red Station Drifting! The Tea Dragon Society!)

Renay

6. The Kickstarter for Tell Them of Us | The Stories We Leave Behind, a "post-apocalyptic graphic novel anthology that explores humanity through memories left for others to remember us by", and sounds extremely cool. There are several affordable tiers!

7. I quietly revived my Space Opera reading challenge this year and did my first recap with the space fiction I've read recently. Currently, I'm reading The Price of the Stars by Debra Doyle and James MacDonald, which is very temporally divorced from the other things I've read. I have my old list of potential reads, and am always collecting recs for space opera/planetary romance!

8. I asked for the don't-miss-this recs of science fiction that came out in 2024 over on BlueSky and people delivered. If you're looking for recs, that's a good place to start.

9. Womble wrote a piece about awards, The Joy(s) of A Shortlist, and echoed a lot of thoughts I share about them.

10. Seattle Worldcon is doing a special Hugo category for Best Poem, which is very cool of them. I learned about this category because poetry fans were like, "Hey, can we get a section for this on the Hugo Rec sheet?" all at once via multiple avenues with their citations for proof. I love their passion! The Hugo Rec Spreadsheet has been properly updated so go list your SFF poems!

11. Here's a very cool visualization of the Hugo categories and how ranked choice works.

12. One of my favorite nonfiction book reviewers, Nathan, did a video on his own Top 10 Nonfiction Books of the 21st Century back when that was part of the Discourse. I've learned a lot and started thinking more deeply about multiple topics because of his recs. He's a worthwhile follow on Youtube or TikTok if you like nonfiction.

13. Gautam Bhatia put together a genre sampler pack back in June, which I bookmarked to read and finally got to recently. I say "sampler pack" and not "starter pack" because I would not recommend Nicefox Gambit or Solaris to an SF newbie. I learned my lesson when I recced "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi" by Pat Cadigan to Jenny.

14. Speaking of Jenny, she did a links round-up of her own and as usual I loved it, because I love her link round-ups and also her. She's so funny. This is also my chance to echo her and say: buy physical media! These companies are on another plane of reality, high off the fumes of untaxed capital gains. Roku is out here trying to patent tech that will allow them to sense when you've paused whatever you're watching via the HDMI cord and play an ad. Buy physical media. (And also never buy a Roku TV.)

15. If you want even more Jenny content (why wouldn't you?), she wrote On Watching Farscape in an Election Year which is so, so good.

"John Crichton is so wildly outmatched by the world he finds himself in that if he waited until he had learned enough stuff to fix the problems he’s having, he and all his friends would be dead a hundred times over. This is why he never wastes a moment arguing with the universe about what’s real."

16. This essay from author Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Against Performance, was so good. If I started quoting parts of it I would end up quoting the whole thing. If you're a creative on the internet, I'm certain parts of this will speak to you.

17. Publishers continue to raise prices on digital materials. Recently, my Friends of the Library chapter gave our public library extra funds to buy more copies of digital books/audiobooks and the prices for these types of books were eye-watering. If you have a Friends of the Library chapter in your community, consider donating to support them, and advocate for your local electeds that you want your library to be well-funded. Publishers are being incredibly greedy toward an institution that actually helps them sell more books. Who hasn't read a book via the library and then gone, "wow, I want to reread/own a copy!"? Shortsighted, capitalism-poisoned thinking from publishers on this.

18. Alex Brown dropped their anticipated SFF YA book lists for July and August. These are a great resource if you plan to nominate for the Lodestar Award in 2025.

19. Charlie Jane Anders published her book review column in WaPo.

20. Dina dropped The State of SFF for July 2024 (which I bookmarked to read and then: ADHD). She's also released the edition for September 2024.

21. Anticipated books from Fantasy Cafe.

22. The latest edition of The WYRMHOLE is out, with Issue #0.3. The reprinted story this month is "Sharp Undoing" by Natasha King. Also: multiple short fiction recs and cool art. I am torn by the poll choices: Premium Wyrmhole, stickers, or a plushie? This is too difficult.

I was informed by my email subscription that I have one referral (thanks, Mystery Person!) and all I need is nine more before I get access to the WYRMHOLE Discord, where it sounds like there might be a lot of puns? If you want to help me live my pun chasing dreams or if you like short fiction recs, sign up with this link!

23. The Rec Center #452 came out as usual last Friday! Loving their article links these past few months.

24. Wow! Signal: August 2024 is out for August and it links to a ton of criticism and interesting posts! (I love this column and hope Jake never stops.)

25. Episode #117 of Octothorpe is out (unedited transcript available).

26. Episode #271 of the Narrated Podcast is also out, and they discussed Loka by S.B. Divya and narrated by Deepa Samuel.

27. Stitch & Bitch did their episode with their Worldcon/Hugo debrief.

28. Critical Friends #11 talks about canon and criticism with Abigail Nussbaum (transcript available).

29. I saw a trailer for the game Arco, a fantasy RPG, which looks very cool. The art is so pretty!

30. The Federal heat safety regulation comment period is open, so U.S. folks, drop by and write a comment! Being noisy and persistent is the best way to create change. There are directions on the page; be sure to customize your comment, as those will count more. Why else did so many of us write fanfic if not to grow up and use those writing skills to tell the government to get its act together! As of writing this, there's only 250 comments.

31. I am VERY INTO the Federal Duck Stamp Competition. I got into it because of kirasabin.art and I'm very invested in their art doing well. I bought a copy of this year's duck stamp (they're $25 at USPS and the proceeds go to wildlife habitat conservation) because their B&W art was on the back of it. Here's a slideshow of Puffcorn, the duck they submitted this year.

32. This has been my favorite song lately.

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Let's Get Literate! Space Opera Reading Challenge, Part I

2024-09-02T04:33:31Z

Posted by: renay

Late last year, I decided to pick up my languishing Space Opera reading challenge. I work in politics on Earth, so what's better than politics in space?

Back in the mists of time when I started this challenge, coffeeandink introduced me to space opera's sister, planetary romance. It's a a distinction I've found extremely useful, but I quickly learned that what's planetary romance for me is space opera for someone else, and vice versa. Sometimes the distinction simply V I B E S.

I've also come across a lot of books about generation ships, locked room mysteries, detective stories, and more, all set in space. Most are great fun! But they're not space opera. For me space opera has stakes that rely on movement around planets/celestial bodies and/or spaceships, space stations, and/or star systems that is external to the characters. Do the stakes change repeatedly when the characters shift between these locations? If so, space opera. Planetary romance can feel similarly epic, but the action is rooted in a specific planet/celestial body that's relevant to the plot and the focus is more heavily on the characters.

Since I've done enough space adventure reading recently to have a short list, I decided to formalize some thoughts.

The Interdependency series by John Scalzi
I loved the first two books in this series, The Collapsing Empire and The Consuming Fire, but a plot development in the third book, The Last Emperox, led me to DNF it. 100% space opera, though!

The Divide series by J.S. Dewes
This series is military space opera. Also, I love it. It's got the perfect Mass Effect vibes while also doing its own cool world-building and character work. The character relationship writing remind me a lot of Becky Chambers. Science fantasy is a thing I love, yes. Space with technology that doesn't exist and might as well be magic? Yes. Unexplained artifacts that might as well be magic? Yes. Friendship…IN SPACE? Yes. This series is ongoing. Spectacular, give me 14 more.

The Paradox series by Rachel Bach
Now I'm going to contradict myself because while I just ranted about yes to magic in space, sometimes the vibes are off. I reread this series last year during the holidays. I see why past me loved Fortune's Pawn, the first book. But how quickly we can learn and grow! Honor's Knight made me go full side-eye and I couldn't bear to finish Heaven's Queen. This is space opera romance, but the romance is uhhhhhh no longer my cup of tea. Confirming I am not a dark romance girlie: DONE. Also, the "a little eugenics and genocide is okay as a treat" undertone to this series really soured me on the whole thing.

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
I reread this at least once a year (okay, maybe sometimes twice a year). I love Murderbot very much and have very few critiques from the series. All my complaints are publishing complaints, like why haven't we gotten beautiful special edition copies with beautiful cover art and sprayed edges? If you can do it with Gideon you can do it with Murderbot, Tor!

This series is firmly space opera because of the scope of the world, but there's some interesting entries!

All Systems Red – mostly an SF mystery because the space travel is incidental
Artificial Condition – space opera
Rogue Protocol – space opera
Exit Strategy – space opera
Fugitive Telemetry – slightly space opera, but more SF murder mystery because there's one location shift from a space station to a ship and back, very temporarily
Network Effect – space opera
System Collapse – planetary romance

Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden
In theory, this could be a planetary romance because of the location shift/stakes changes between Earth and the Moon. But ultimately, the shifts are more like obstacles to get to the meat of the plot. They're world-building and character revelation tools for Scorn's journey to find out what happened to zem. I also think it's too short to truly embody the expansive nature of what planetary romance or space opera should feel like, anyway, and it's also why I'm ehhhh about applying either label.

The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei
For me this was more literary, character-focused science fiction. They were traveling through space on a ship (not a generation ship in the traditional sense), there's a murder, but the plot flips back and forth in time. The stakes were the interpersonal relationships, solving the mystery of what happened on the ship, and determining which characters were up to some shenanigans. Even though the flashbacks of the novel happen on Earth, I wouldn't call this planetary romance because the consequential action is happening in the future on a spaceship. The mother/daughter and friendship threads in this book are gutting (complimentary).

The Finder series by Suzanne Palmer
Fergus Ferguson, intergalactic repo man and one of my favorite characters of the last few years. This is a space opera, although in Driving the Deep most of the action is taking place on a planetary body. But the locations shift a few times early on, and part of the stakes of the second book revolve around getting back to space. If anyone asks me to recommend them a completed, reasonably long space opera series, this is first on my list these days.

Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho
I would for sure put this in the space opera column because of the location shifts were the stakes shift a lot each time. The locations themselves end up not being as important as the character back stories and interpersonal relationships, though. The stakes, while large, take a back seat to the personal challenges of the characters as they attempt to solve their problems. The world feels expansive, too. Its premise reminded me of de Bodard's Xuya universe with how China discovered North America first. What might the future look like if a unified Korea became the space exploration power and Southeast Asian folks were like, "we'll be the business tech power in space, thanks!"? Onto the list it goes.

I have both a huge lists of books to revisit and new books to read for the first time, but there's where I stand right now in my own personal rankings.

Space Opera! Ranked (So Far)

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
Finder (series) by Suzanne Palmer
The Divide (series) by J.S. Dewes
Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho
The Interdependency (series) by John Scalzi
Paradox (series) by Rachel Bach

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Chinese History Starter Pack

2024-07-28T18:41:41Z

Posted by: forestofglory

I’m occasionally asked to recommend some books about Chinese history to people with very little knowledge of Chinese history. So I thought it would be nice to write up a rec list with a bunch of different places to start.

I’m not an expert on Chinese history and I have no formal training, but I do read a lot of academic history about China for fun. This started about four years ago, after I got very into historical Chinese dramas. Some of what I read is for fic research but a lot of it is just for fun (thought the fun stuff sometimes inspires fic).

I read history in a similar way to how I read SFF, slowly piecing things together as I learn more and more. I like the feeling of building up a picture and deepening my understanding as I go along. This does mean that I just read books about specialized topics that interest me without necessarily reading more broad overviews. (If you do want an overview of Chinese history, I’ve heard that The Open Empire: A History of China Through 1600 by Valerie Hansen is good, though I haven’t read it myself.) I’m sadly monolingual and can only read sources in English.

For this list I wanted to pick books and papers that will make sense to someone with very little background in Chinese history. I also tried to pick things with more accessible, less jargony prose. And of course this list is influenced by my own interests, which are material culture (basically any type of stuff that is useful or meaningful to people), gender and sexuality, Daoism and the Tang Dynasty. I tried to offer a nice variety of topics and time periods to help give you lots of possible starting places and create a sense of the vast amount of history out there.

One of my struggles with finding sources for Chinese history is that there's a lot of orientalism and frequently Chinese nationalism in texts in English. Sometimes both at once! Both Chinese nationalism and orientalism over-emphasize continuity with the past. So I’ve become very wary of anything that talks about “5000 years of Chinese history” —actually it's a lot more complicated than that, and I think it obfuscates the imperialism of various Chinese dynasties by making “reunification” aka conquest seem inevitable and desirable. It certainly wasn’t inevitable and whether it was desirable really depends on your point of view.

I've included both book-length works and academic papers in this rec list. For papers, where possible I’ve linked to the academic database JSTOR. Anyone can make a free account on the site and access (but not download) up to 100 papers a month. For books I’ve tried to keep to the cheaper end of academic publications, but I always recommend checking your library or looking for used copies.

For want of any obvious order these are listed alphabetically by author.

Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History by James A. Benn—This is conveniently first alphabetically and it is also the first academic monograph about Chinese history that I read, so I can say with some confidence that it's a good starting place! There’s lots of books about the history of tea, but most of them devote significant space to tea outside of China while this book focuses on Chinese tea drinking. Benn is a religious studies scholar so one of the things that the book explores is the impact of Buddhism on tea culture. I also liked learning about the way tea was prepared in different time periods!

“On the Very Idea of Religions (In the Modern West and in Early Medieval China)” by Robert Ford Campany —This paper is super helpful for understanding how people in middle period China understood what we would call their religion. (Because “religion” as a thing is made up!) It’s a bit heavy on the jargon, but it’s super interesting, and very useful for understanding historical Daoist practices.

Empire of Style: Silk and Fashion in Tang China by Buyun Chen—I love this book so much! I’m not someone who enjoys history with a lot of names and dates, they don’t tend to stay in my head without a lot of context to hold them in place. And this book is basically all context. This gives such a fuller picture of life in Tang times, with its focus on textiles and economics. When this book started to explain the An Lushan rebellion it clicked right away, even though I’d tried to understand before and gotten confused. I also appreciate that this book talks about the Tang Empire as an empire out there doing imperialism, in a way that's really clear-eyed and straightforward.

Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China by Craig Clunas—This book is about how gardening changed over the course of the Ming Dynasty. I love how the introduction talks about how the idea of an unchanging Chinese garden is actually orientalist.. I also love all the details about gardens, especially about what plants people grew and what they used those plants for.

“How the Residents of Turfan used Textiles as Money, 273-796 CE” by Valerie Hansen and Xinjiang Rong—This is a paper that’s more a collection of interesting incidents than it is an argument, and I often find those frustrating. But in this case the details are so interesting! Also textiles are one of my favorite types of material culture, and I enjoyed learning about how they were used in other contexts than clothing.

The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History by Ruth Mostern—I think this could be a good introductory text because it covers a big sweeping time period, but still has a central focus. Having the Yellow River as focus lets this book discuss agriculture, administration and so much more. This is also one of the more quantitative things on this list with lots of charts and maps, so if you struggle with history because it doesn’t feel concrete enough, this could be a good place to start.

Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors: Culture, Power, and Connections, 580-800 by Jonathan Karam Skaff—I’m always interested in books that deconstruct the idea of China as isolated and self-contained, and this is an important example of that. Skaff discusses the cultural, political, and material contentions of Sui-Tang China and its Turko-Mongol neighbors in extensive detail, while providing enough background information to be accessible. I especially enjoyed the sections of fictive kinship and horse trading.

Forgotten Disease: Illnesses Transformed in Chinese Medicine by Hilary A. Smith—This book is such a tour de force of the history of Chinese medical thought (not calling it traditional chinese medicine (TCM) because as this book points out, that means something very specific). The book focuses on a disease, or set of diseases, known as foot qi, and how the concept of that disease changed over time. It’s really a history of how people understood their bodies and diseases. I found the writing in this book especially accessible, and just raced through the whole thing.

The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road by Xin Wen—You might have seen me raving about this book somewhere else because it's so good and so unique! This book is about the nitty-gritty of diplomatic travel in Central Asia between 850-1000 CE, and it centers the city of Dunhuang, which was during this period sometimes part of various imperial states in the region but mostly an independent city state. This is very cool because historians of China tend to focus on areas within imperial boundaries, and this focus also helps us see that what was and wasn’t considered China has always been shifting.

A significant source of information for this book is the documents found in the library cave at Dunhuang, an important source for this time period in general. Wen provides a whole chapter on these documents, as well as a chapter laying out the regional geopolitics. All that background information makes this a good starting place.

Wen is a meticulous scholar, who reads multiple historical languages, and his fine-grained analysis here is excellent. I especially liked the parts about who traveled and why, and about what diplomatic travelers ate.

“‘What Do Barbarians Know of Gratitude?’ - The Stereotype of Barbarian Perfidy and Its Uses in Tang Foreign Policy Rhetoric” by Shao-yun Yang—The Tang Dynasty is known for being peaceful, cosmopolitan and multicultural, but the Tang court’s use of stereotypes about barbarians complicates that image. I have a personal dislike of the second Tang emperor, Tang Taizong (personal name Li Shimin), who is often held up as a model emperor. So I especially appreciate the way this paper brings into focus Taizong’s hypocrisy and warmongering.

I hope you found something here that sparked your interest! I have loved learning more about Chinese history and I hope you will too!

If you read some of these works and are interested in more, there are a couple of ways to use what you've read to find more that might interest you. You can look for other works by the same authors, you can look at the works cited, or you can use a database like Google Scholar or Web of Science to look for works that cite the work you are interested in. Once you get started it's easy to fall down rabbit holes!

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Sidetracks - July 5, 2025

2024-07-05T08:44:12Z

Posted by: helloladies

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Anna

1. I was excited to see my recent post about Cozy SFF referenced in this thoughtful essay discussing comparing and contrasting different definitions of cozy SFF!

Renay

1. FIYAH just dropped Issue #31, which has a disability theme.

2. Strange Horizons met their Kickstarter goal, but there's still several stretch goals that would be very cool.

3. NewScientist did an interview with Martha Wells about The Murderbot Diaries. "I didn’t know how non-neurotypical I was until Murderbot." Honestly, same.

4. Singing Light has a list of upcoming middle grade SFF!

5. The cover reveal for a book I'm looking forward to, The Relentless Legion by J.S. Dewes, is out. What I would like: one of these subscription book boxes to pick up the space opera books I love and do special editions for those.

6. This thread from Eddie Clark on Blue Sky contains older SFF queer book recs. It's very neat! Bonus: it's finished and you can read all the recs. It's dude heavy, which makes sense given its author, but still valuable! I would read so many of these books and similar threads from people who were reading queer SFF before 2002.

7. Via Ancillary Review of Books, I read It’s Time We Added Full Credit Pages to Books by Maris Kreizman again. It was excellent and I would love this.

8. Speaking of Ancillary Review of Books, they just launched their Pateron.

9. The Wyrmhole is a new magazine/newsletter focused on speculative short fiction. The vibes are immaculate. Here's the first bit from their first soft launch issue: "Hello wyrms, thanks for joining us in the hole for the soft launch of WYRMHOLE MAGAZINE: your friendly newsletter slash magazine slash meme emporium slash wyrm bucket." If you sign up with the above link they'll somehow know I sent you! If you like short fiction it seems like it's going to be a pretty fun ride. Right now I'm in just for the hole puns.

9. Another cool newsletter (you can also subscribe to via RSS if you, like me, refuse to let go of the past) is the one by Charlie Jane Anders. It's wonderful. My favorite recent essay is What It Means To Be Optimistic About the Future.

10. Roseanna is reviewing the Hugo Best Novel finalists and has now reviewed Witch King by Martha Wells, Translation State by Ann Leckie, Starter Villain by John Scalzi, and The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. She reviewed Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh last year over at Nerds of a Feather, so unsure if she's going to have more thoughts! (I would welcome a revisit in the context of the ballot, but I will not be greedy.)

11. Eugie Award finalists were announced. I'm noting this because I'm tracking short fiction as part of my awards project now.

12. One of my pals, Sarah, put up the pre-launch for her Kickstarter. She's making a deck of inspiration cards for romance writing. I've gotten to see some of the work on them as she's grown the project, and they're incredibly gorgeous as art pieces themselves. If you like supporting art projects, give it a pre-save!

13. I did the mid-year book freakout tag and then effectively voluntold Kristen into doing it as well. SORRY NOT SORRY. Lots of great books mentioned, but especially Warchild by Karin Lowachee, and you know, it's time for me to do a reread.

14. Not really sure what to say about The Supreme Court Turns the President Into a King by Holly Brewer. This is one of those decisions that, should we retain federal democracy (which is, to be frank, on life support thanks to all the gerrymandering and voter suppression), this is going to be one of those decisions that we look back on and go, "Wow, things were BAD bad." It's not quite as bad as the decisions that dehumanized people, but it's definitely hanging out with Bush v. Gore and Citizens United v. FEC. More and more, my advice to everyone is to get into hyper local politics and community organizing via mutual aid, community gardening, tool/skill trades, etc. We're going to need our communities more than ever.

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2025 Hugo Recommendations

2024-06-25T00:45:52Z

Posted by: renay

The subject line is not a typo. 2025 Hugo Recommendations are being collected, category placement is (already) being debated, and word counts are being sourced as I write this. We're also halfway through the publishing year and the 2024 Hugo Award voting deadline is coming up in July. Do you know how you're voting in the fan categories yet? Okay, all the categories, of course, but I'm biased.

After the winners are announced, I tend to let the Hugo spreadsheet for the next year take a backseat. I do one or two reminder calls for recs on my social media each month so people can toss in their recent faves. Otherwise, I'm content to wait until December to do any more aggressive promotion. I want current year winners to enjoy their flowers. So I wanted to post about current recs before my ADHD inevitably made me forget the desire until after the 2024 ceremony.

It's hard to talk about the project without simply making long lists of everything currently listed in the spreadsheet. I'm going to highlight things based on a) what I'm reading and b) what I plan to read currently.

Novel

I've read Ghostdrift by Suzanne Palmer, the fourth book in the Finder series. The books that this list introduced me to that I want to read now include Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho (I got this one from the library on my birthday), The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed, and The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton.

Although we're at the halfway point in the year, the novel sheet is still a whole baby. There are many fall releases to come and the many of the books released in April through June are still out there, percolating, waiting to find their readers. Over the last few months, if I look back on the books getting attention on the social medias I'm still on, it would have to be The Book of Love by Kelly Link, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, and Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, which was buzzing even before The Saint of Bright Doors started scooping up award nominations.

Novella

Tordotcom is once again dominating this category as normal this early in the year. The people (Excel heroes) who come in and put on the Tor ratio in that sheet haven't popped up yet, but I can't imagine they'll stay away long! As lovely as the team at Tor is, we all need a reminder now and then that reading a diversity of editorial perspectives is just as important as reading the books released from a diverse array of authors. Especially for smaller presses, who are publishing more niche stories and need to find their audiences, too.

I have read zero things recommended so far, but have The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui (h/t to Roseanna for this one), The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar, and These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein on my TBR.

Novelette

I always feel so badly for Novelette because of its awkward word count space between short story and novella. I tend to start championing this category closer to nomination time and soliciting harder for it than I do the other short fiction categories because it's such a niche category when I try to rec novelettes to non-fandom space folks. They're always like, "what's a novelette?".

I have not yet read any novelettes recommended so far. There's only 11 pieces here so have one long list (it'll be the only one, promise):

"All That Glitters..." by Keegan Young
"The Bonfire of the Words" by E. Lily Yu
"The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video" by Thomas Ha
"The Devil You Don't Know" by D.F. Hunt
"The Devout" by Cheyenne Shaffer
"Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka" by Christine Hanolsy
"Light Junkie" by Naomi Daniluk
"The Peregrine Falcon Flies West" by Yang Wanqing
"The Robot" by Lavie Tidhar
"Shadow Films" by Ben Peek
"Why We Eat Each Other" by Yoon Chung

If you've loved any novelettes released this year, especially in pay-walled venues, please list them!

Short Story

I'm honestly shocked that Short Story is sitting at only 40 recs at the half year mark; normally we're closer to 100 at this point. One of my big regrets about the rec sheet is that pay-walled venues tend to get short shrift on the recs front because the people who pay for subscriptions don't know about the spreadsheet, don't have time to contribute (a vibe), or don't care (fair). I'm thinking especially about the smaller pay-walled venues that deliberately publish diverse writers.

I'm surprised to see Clarkesworld and Strange Horizon dominating the rec list, while Uncanny, which publishes lots of big names in the short fiction field, only has one. I figure this will change later, but for now…interesting.

Series

The Series category is up in the air a bit until the winners from this year are announced. The winner can't be nominated again and some of the series are ongoing and indeed may rack up enough words to qualify in the rest of the publishing season.

Right now, I'm sitting solid in favor of the Finder series by Suzanne Palmer, since Ghostdrift makes the series eligible. I encourage everyone to join me in championing fun sci-fi romps. We deserve a fun sci-fi romp on the finalist list next year.

Lodestar

I am hopeful that in 2025 we will get a full slate of all YA books. Actual YA books that are published and marketed as YA, not simply "the YA/YA adjacent books my adult industry colleagues are writing". I can dream, okay? Anyway!

I haven't read anything recommended so far, but I do have several of the books on my TBR, including Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams, Dragonfruit by Makiia Lucier, and Into the Sunken City by Dinesh Thiru. I remember when Blood at the Root was out looking for a publisher and how much the author was excited for it, so I've had it on my TBR since before it had an ISBN. Thrilled for him!

Fan Categories

As aways, my best beloved categories struggle due to participation costs; the seemingly never-ending, self-inflicted reputational damage to the Hugo Awards as an entity; confusing category descriptions that don't map onto current technology; self-rejection; the grind of capitalism, and the fracturing of social media so people and their projects aren't in one place anymore. It's tough out there! I still believe in the power of these categories, though.

Cool thing this year: someone put a fan writing fanwork recs on pinboard as a Fan Writer. This is honestly brilliant and I'm jealous I didn't think of it first, because of course.

Although the finalists for this year are excellent, it was a bit of a gut punch to realize that we've taken a major step back re: diversity of the fan categories, especially re: race. Liz Bourke did a thread on BlueSky about this and how the nature of fan work, often unpaid/not paid a living wage, means that the people who have more time privilege will simply have more space to produce this type of content. I also wonder if the pool of people nominating retracted back to core WSFS members due to the 2023 embarrassment. I have no proof only vibes, but maybe people who participate as a baseline regardless of outside influences have tastes that run more conservative? If such a group exists!

I'm nominating Arturo Serrano solely based on his incredible essay on Scavengers Reign (we were robbed of this as a finalist). Of course, he's been writing for Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together a long time and his archives are deep. He covers more film/TV than I watch, and his post about Poor Things made me reconsider seeing the film, which I had previously opted out of. He made it sound so chewy and interesting. Really looking forward to seeing what else he writes about in 2024.

In Fanzine, I'm back on my soapbox for The Rec Center and Fantasy Café. I appreciate both types of commentary/writing these projects are doing and think they are excellent resources and super fun. I still go ??? over Fantasy Café never being nominated! Not ever?

And although I know it's a huge lift even with Project Texas, I have a few people from BookTok on my list, specifically Toni Morrow and Abby, although Toni does have a YouTube channel, which past Hugo voters tolerated. Both have introduced me to books I would have never found on my own because I'm a misandrist now and extremely filled with judgement about books by Men.

Fan Artist has zero recommendations so far, which is gutting. When I first started the rec sheet it was to help as many people as possible, of course, but also me, specifically, with certain categories like Editor and Semiprozine and Fan Artist. How do I find the speculative fiction/horror art girlies and their portfolios? How do I convince all the incredible fans out there to put themselves forward? As R.B. Lemberg, a genre critic and author I have followed for years and trust so much, said, " Don’t self-reject. Marginalized people, #dontselfreject from writing. We need your voices desperately. We need each other’s voices."

I also hear from people that they're afraid to use the sheet "wrong" or list ineligible items. The literal worst thing that can happen is that recs get moved to a different sheet. Things don't get deleted wholesale, they simply live on elsewhere. There are no call outs or "so and so got a publishing date wrong" or mockery. The Hugo rules can be opaque for certain categories, so the admins are used to moving things around. It's chill. Not a year goes by where stuff I've added hasn't been moved (thanks, novellas that never come with word counts). 😅

Anyone—even professionals—can add recommendations to the 2025 Hugo Rec Spreadsheet, for items released in 2024. Even if you never plan to nominate and vote in the awards, you can add things! These are recommendation sheets, too.

If you're a Hugo participant this year, don't forget to vote for the 2024 Hugo Awards by Saturday 20th July 2024 at 20:17 GMT. Anyone can purchase a WSFS-Only membership to participate in the Hugos for £45, check out the voter's packet, and vote. (I do live in hope that one day this membership fee will be lowered.) If you're voting in the fiction categories and have time, please vote in the fan categories, too, and help us keep them active.

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Let's Get Literate! 2024 Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag

2024-06-18T01:24:19Z

Posted by: renay

How is the year half over? I know part of this for me was because I spent an entire month arguing with a Man about a topic I know more about than he does. I DID turn into Home Depot Ron Swanson in my head multiple times. It was exhausting. It basically ended the reading streak I had. I'm determined that it won't happen again!

I saw this survey on a Youtube vid. This is more of a BookTube thing, but I'm recounting all the reading successes I get this year. If you've done this one or a version of it, let me know in the comments. 😊

Best book you’ve read so far in 2024

The best books I've read this year is a tie for me between How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith and The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera.

I listened to How the Word is Passed in audio from the library and didn't save all my annotations before it got returned. Unfortunately, my library system gets ebooks and audiobooks for a certain number of checkouts and then their license expires. I couldn't check it out again because my library ran out of check outs for the audiobook and they're probably not going to get more after the budget cuts due to fascists defunding them in 2022. Boo, fascists. I'm rereading it in hardcopy, also from my library, so they at least have that copy remaining. I'm ordering my own copy once I decide between hardcover/trade (it depends on how the annotations in the library copy go).

Clint Smith is a poet, and his love of language comes through so well in this book. It's a harrowing book to read, but he guides you through it with such beautiful imagery of the places he visits and thoughtful reflections of the environments he's describing that the journey itself feels gentle. That's good because the topic itself is rough to read about. Half the things I highlighted on my first read-through were gut-wrenching descriptions of an inexcusable past that still resonate even in 2024.

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera was on my TBR after someone tweeted about it in 2023, but of course the hold lines everywhere were massive. ADHD strikes again! Once it made the Hugo ballot, I was like, "It is time". I talked about it recently and the farther I get from the story the more thoughts I have about it. Not necessarily the plot, which is good, but the conversations about change and power and religion and history.

I remember the fandom reaction to Ancillary Justice, The Fifth Season, Gideon the Ninth, and Ninefox Gambit. Those books were engaging in science fiction and fantasy as one thing rather than "this is science fiction" and "this is fantasy". They stretched out the meanings of the genre trappings and challenged reader assumptions. The Saint of Bright Doors does the same thing. It really deserves the buzz it's getting if you like challenging books.

Best sequel you've read so far in 2024

This is easy, because the only new-to-me sequel I've read so far is Ghostdrift by Suzanne Palmer, the fourth book in the Finder series. I loved it so much. I wrote about it recently and plan to reread it again soon for annotations and see if I can still track down hardcover copies of all the books, because the mass market paperbacks are just awful, insulting quality. These books deserved better.

Also, because I'm bad at series reading, I only just realized that the release of Ghostdrift means that the whole series is eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Series in 2025 (indeed, I have already put it on the Hugo Rec sheet. I apologize now for how unbearable I'm about to be about these books, even more so than I was already planning to be.

New release you haven't read yet, but want to

Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase, which looks to be another science fantasy thriller. It's been on my radar since last year before it only had a description and no cover. (And what a cover they gave it.) Another book is Unexploded Remnants by Elaine Gallagher, which comes out next week. I'm including it because we're close enough to its release date!

There's also Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, out this week. Normally I'm very skeptical of reincarnation stories because I find them incredibly depressing with few exceptions, but after The Saint of Bright Doors was so good I'm willing to give one a shot just to see what Chandrasekera does with the trope.

Most anticipated release for the second half of the year

More cheating from me. These questions should really say "releases".

I'm most excited for The Relentless Legion by J.S. Dewes, the third book in her Divide series. It drops in November 2024, but I was given an eARC recently so the only hold on my anticipation is me. I'm trying to save it for next weekend, where I'll have a large chunk of free time. There's also Swordcrossed by Freya Marske, which I've started as an eARC (the annoying men draining all my energy derailed my reading of this one) but haven't finished yet.

There's so many great books I know about coming out, like The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey (August 2024), the start of a new series. I admit I haven't finished The Expanse. I got bogged down after Babylon's Ashes, which is standard for me with long series. I'm still excited to see what new things these dudes cook up.

There's also The Nightward by R.S.A. Garcia (October 2024), which I only found by accident while browsing StoryGraph. The cover is banging, and sounds like it's also going to be a mix of fantasy/science fiction?

And then, A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (December 2024) hits at the end of the year. I am honestly boggled by this date choice. It's at the end of the month? Not even at the beginning so people could pick it up as a gift for Christmas? I guess maybe they're banking on people spending holiday gift cards on it. Truthfully, I'm just big mad I have to wait this long. I loved The Secret Society of Irregular Witches so much and was stoked to see her writing additional stories! But! So long!

This doesn't include the books I don't know about yet. Yet.

Biggest disappointment

Starter Villain by John Scalzi. 😭 Time for a restorative re-read of The Android's Dream?

Biggest surprise

Probably Rose/House by Arkady Martine, because the blurb led me to believe it was going to be some angst-fest between a dude professor and his female student (big yikes) with some AI window dressing. I should have had more confidence in Martine, honestly! It was not that at all and in fact given Rose House itself, I'm not sure it would have been. I talked about it here. It was more a character study, an examination of personhood and humanity, and various types of greed. Also, I liked the nods to a future where it seems like maybe we don’t have to be solidly "ACAB" all the time?

Favorite new author (debut or new to you)

100% Clint Smith, whose How the Word is Passed was my first book by him. It's just so good. It made me want to read poetry. I don't even really like poetry but I sure did bookmark two of his poetry collections to check out.

Newest favorite character

It's Yumi, the robot friend from The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He. Solid pal, 1000/10, no notes. For humans, it's Maritza from Rose/House, for her absolute legend behavior playing mind games with a mean A.I. in the service of finding a murderer.

Book that made you cry

The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei; I didn't end up liking the book as much as I wanted to. However, I did find the mother/daughter relationship very fraught and relatable, so I was a blubbering mess through several sections of the book. Even across cultures, the breakdown of mother/daughter relationship has something of a universal feeling to it.

Book that made you happy

Ghostdrift by Suzanne Palmer. Even though I'm sad that the series has wrapped up, there's something about reading the final book in the series, having a great time, and finishing that last chapter contented about the state of the book's universe and the characters. I will miss space shenanigans with Fergus Ferguson, but this last adventure was exciting, closed a lot of question mark boxes, and left just enough unexplained that it wasn't frustrating. It just felt like, "hey, that's life, and there aren't always easy answers". Very on brand for this series. I can't wait for more people to discover these books and come obsess about them with me. This feels very much like a Yuletide moment even though I would be terrible at Yuletide.

What books do you need to read by the end of the year?

Luckily, I have cut myself free from the restrictions of "need" and "must" and "required". However, I really would like to read Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott and kick off the final bad vibe shackles of books I couldn't finish in 2020 due to 2020 itself. Garbage year.

I also made it a point not to focus too much on 2024 releases, because I often ended up psyching myself out. Instead, I looked toward 2021 releases and made a list of books to read from that year. I'm not doing great (thanks, LIFE), but The Ones We're Meant to Find was on this list. A win is a win. And I've also bought several of those books outright, so they're already on my shelf. I just need to survive Hugo reading season first!

Remember when blogs were cool and we could tag people and they might do it, because we all read each other's blogs? Ah, memories. If you do this over in your space/social media, tag me in or drop a link in the comments. :)

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Let's Get Literate! Award Reading Season Begins

2024-06-14T01:39:16Z

Posted by: renay

Hugo reading season has begun.

The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He | Roaring Brook Press | May 2021
This is my second He novel, after Descendent of the Crane. That book was bananas, and we were robbed of a sequel by publishing shenanigans. I hope the executives responsible always get slightly dirty utensils when they go out to eat. This book doesn't quite reach bananas level, but it didn't go in a direction I expected. I ended up being pleasantly surprised after the first quarter of the book left me a little cold.

The main story is about two young women: Cee, who has been trapped on a remote island for three years. Her only goal is to escape and find her sister, Kay. The other character is Kasey, struggling to cope after the disappearance and assumed death of her older sister, Celia. Kasey lives in an eco-city that operates on a numerical caste structure. The structure, and whether people can get into certain eco-cities, is based on how much someone's family/ancestors contributed to the destruction of the planet in the past. Good luck if your ancestors were oil barons. Kasey is also suffering from trauma from losing access to science after she committed a crime; this is on top of losing her sister. Before her disappearance, Celia hated the eco-city and used whatever excuse she could to get Kasey to buck the rules about going outside. Kasey's goal: find out why Celia left (unspoken on Kasey's part but obvious to the reader: left her).

The connections between Cee's story on the island and Kasey's are not obvious until the nature of Kasey's crime is revealed. As far as climate apocalypse novels go, this one was light on the apocalypse parts except toward the end when hard decisions about how humanity will survive become more pressing. To me it felt more like window dressing for the study of a relationship between family and the nature of personhood. Who, exactly, gets to decide who gets to be a person? Who do we get to hold accountable for the harms done to our bodies and hearts? At what point does it stop being holding people accountable and become just another tool powerful people use to abuse others?

I loved Cee's journey of self-discovery as she learned why she was on the island, her struggles about how to move forward when she found love and care in someone else, and felt gutted at her devastation at the choice she had to make. I found Kasey more complicated. She felt more like the main antagonist, although we meet another character early in in the novel that could fill the same role. I'm still mulling over the end of this novel. It's open-ended, but also like it could have a prescriptive resolution, depending on how you read the choices that both Kasey and Cee make. I am happy to report there is a wonderful robot pal in this book. A+ for robot pals.

I'm excited to try Strike the Zither, the first book in a new duology, and see where it falls on the Banana Scale. At this point I will read whatever Joan He writes.

Rose/House by Arkady Martine | Subterranean Press/Tantor Audio | April 2023 / March 2024
I talked about this on Fangirl Happy Hour. I said:

The first thing that I read was Rose/House by Arkady Martine. This is a book about a sentient house out in the desert built by an architect who died and then in his will said, "Only this one student of mine can have access to Rose House and its archives once a year for seven days." The student he gives access to is estranged from him. The guy is dead and he is still in the house. He interred himself in the house in a very creepy way that I’m not going to spoil.

But then one day the house calls the local police precinct and goes, "There’s a dead body." And the police are like, "Yeah. We know. He’s there." And the house is like, "It’s an additional dead body." Nobody else is supposed to be able to get into this house, but there’s another dead body in the house.

It spools out from there with the detective getting determined to figure out what’s happened, the estranged student being called back, and a mystery to figure out: who the dead person is and why they are 1) dead and 2), made it into the house to begin with.

The blurb of Rose/House talks a lot about Basit Deniau and Selene Gisil, but nothing about their relationship is truly explained. It's all feelings, vague references, and inferences readers can make based on the dead body that's in the house. The true main characters are Rose House itself and Maritza, the detective who picks up the case. It's short, so choices had to be made. It was funny that I read this after The Ones We're Meant to Find, especially given that Rose/House is about personhood once again! Not a bad pairing, honestly.

I would fight a bear for Maritza, my investigative queen.

Rose/House is nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards (so far) in the novella category.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi | Tor Books | September 2023
This is another book I talked about on Fangirl Happy Hour. Alas, as I have drifted away from the book I have become more and more bemused about why it is an award nominee beyond "this is a beloved author who we, the voters, are familiar with, and reading is hard in late stage capitalism". The thing that stuck with me the most was the friendship between Charlie, Hera, and Persephone, very much a love letter to cat companions everywhere. It was my favorite thing, but I'm a cat person!

Scalzi is very good at light commercial fiction, and Starter Villain is no exception. It's meant for you to slide through it like butter, have a fun time, and doesn't need to be particularly memorable. In this time of rising fascism, aggressively hostile capitalism, and the struggle to survive, fiction like this is important. It's important that art be accessible and fun for whoever needs it. Even though it's a popular award, I want my Hugo finalists to have more density instead of feeling, as I said on the pod, like a novel aching to be a screenplay so the actors can give the world weight, emotion, and meaning.

Starter Villain simply wasn't saying much about the privilege that was on display other than going "let's wreck it!!" It felt as if the book tossed out all kinds of hot button topics from broken family connections to the gutting of local journalism to economic privilege to labor organizing, but never engaged with them beyond a surface level in service of shenanigans. I was also very put off by the end of the book. It felt like it was trying to critique power and generational wealth, but in the end most people are pawns to our wealthy oligarchs, the wealthy families will keep on keeping on re: generational wealth and avoiding taxes, and there's nothing to be done about it. Big shrug! At least our cats are cute.

In all honesty, if this hadn't been nominated for a Hugo, I wouldn't have read it. I'm very happy for Scalzi to write whatever he wants, have a good time doing it, and get that bag. I can wait patiently for him to write more space books, or non-space books like Lock In and Head On, which I found chewy and interesting to discuss (although neither of those were nominated for a Hugo, go figure). But reading Starter Villain made me sad, in the way when you realize your preferences as a reader are growing away from a favorite author. It happens! It doesn't mean you won't be able to reconnect with their future work. It's still bittersweet.

Roseanna discussed the choices of the nominating body more eloquently in her review, which I agree with and recommend.

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera | Tordotcom | July 2023
Another Fangirl Happy Hour discussion:

The last book I read, which was another Hugo Awards read, was The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. And this book…when I’ve asked people to describe this book to me they’re like, "I don’t really know how to describe it. You’ve just gotta read it." They are correct. I don’t know how to describe this book.

It’s fantasy! It’s a fantasy dystopia and it’s examining what makes you your own person and maybe the impossibility—or the possibility—of overturning abusive, hegemonic systems. Can small groups of people overturn fascist states? Is it possible?

I would now revise my genre categorization to add magical realism to the mix.

Fantasy novels like The Saint of Bright Doors are very challenging for me, a person who considers herself Bad at Fantasy (unless it's Final Fantasy). What's kept turning over in my head since reading this book is Fetter and the relationship he has with his mother. The novel is jammed full of stories within stories, and Fetter's mother is no different. Her backstory—her mythology—really changed how I looked at Fetter's story, the city he lived in, and the mission his mother gave him to assassinate his father and why.

I also said:

Basically, he gives up an identity and takes on another identity and we see how easy it is for different classes of people to live and work next to a lower class of people and have no fucking clue what’s happening to that other group of people. You can’t imagine it. You can see it, but you can’t imagine it. There’s a lot about class happening in this book, too.

I've thought a lot about these parts of the book given everything going on in the world right now, both in the U.S. and in the Middle East. Even in the U.S. it's hard for those of us who live in privilege to imagine what it's like to not have that privilege unless we have experienced it before. It's almost as if our experiences of the world create multiple, overlapping realities, and we can never truly see and understand what others are experiencing. Our stories are offset from everyone else's.

The Saint of Bright Doors was nominated for the Crawford, Hugo, Lambda, Locus, Nebula, and Subjective Chaos Awards. It's won the Crawford and Nebula Awards. If it picks up the Locus Award for First Novel, I have a feeling the Hugo Award is in the bag.

Anyway: I don’t really know how to describe it. You’ve just gotta read it.

St. Martin's Press Title
I would love to talk about this book because I want to complain about it. It was the fastest 3.5 to 1 star I have experienced in a long time. Alas, I cannot, because I am standing in solidarity with Readers for Accountability's #SpeakUpSMP boycott.

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Let's Get Literate! MacGyver in Space

2024-06-06T18:19:55Z

Posted by: renay

Back in 2023, and in the midst of a terrible life/reading slump, I asked Jenny for some book recommendations. Jenny's reading is wide and vast and I was in the Pit of Despair book-wise. I felt light years away from being able to successfully choose a book I could start, read, and finish.

Jenny recced me Finder by Suzanne Palmer. I had tried to read Finder once before in hardcopy, but couldn't get into because I struggled to get into anything. This time, though, I got the audiobook and was able to rot in bed underneath the covers while listening. +1 for audiobooks.

This time, the book stuck. Then I got the second book, Driving the Deep, and it stuck. With it, I managed to listen while doing care tasks and art projects. Then I reached the third book in the series, The Scavenger Door, and I was fully prepared to follow both Fergus and Palmer into a 13 book series. I also started thinking about maybe going for a walk? In sunlight? Wild.

Alas, this was not meant to be. Ghostdrift is the fourth and final book in this series. But it didn't matter! My slump had ended. I could read again: books, magazines, and online articles. I even started reading all the issues of email newsletters I missed (wow). If you've ever lost reading, the amount of misery cannot be overstated. Did the Finder series cure my ennui? Probably not! It was still exciting enough that my enjoyment of it powered me through previously insurmountable problems, like my pile of laundry.

Since my first read through of the series, I've reread them several times. They're re-readable to me like Murderbot is—an extremely high bar. I was excited to learn that Ghostdrift was coming out this year. Then I was crushed when it was clear it would be the last. Ghostdrift wraps up the story of Fergus Ferguson, a random guy from Earth who can find anything including, it turns out, himself.

It's difficult to talk about Ghostdrift without spoiling so much of what makes the rest of the books in the series so fun. The entire series has madcap adventure space opera while also tackling things like loyalty, trust, found family, actual family, and guilt. There are cool aliens, space travel, and ocean adventures! There are computer intelligences that aren't guzzling up all the groundwater on Earth to function. This particular flavor of space opera is one with a world stuffed full of things and a variety of people. A lot of them Fergus knows personally or he ends up befriending. He's really good at making friends for a guy who isn't sure he believes in friends anymore.

Fergus finds things (a galactic repo man!), but more than that, my favorite thing about him is that he knows a lot; he listens, learns, and remembers (lifelong education wins again!); and uses that knowledge to get creative when solving his problems. To even out his skill-level, sometimes the problems he solves he created through his inability to ask for help or rely on anyone in a way that's not transactional. He's very adamant about not getting too attached and forgoing connections that might come back to hurt the people he cares about. Does it matter if they care about him? Well...

Ghostdrift follows the same pattern as the other books, but this time the story is unpacking all the running he did in the previous installments. He got what he wanted—kind of. But is it truly what he wants or has he finally realized that he's allowed to have feelings and real, adult relationships? Let's examine that via kidnapping, Fergus helping a notorious pirate find his lost sister (there's that family angle again), and what it means if Fergus can never truly go home again.

I rec this by calling it MacGyver in space because Fergus is Scottish (it's definitely a plot point; yay for white male privilege) and uses extreme creativity and whatever tools he can to lie/cheat/steal his way out of the most wild situations. It's a fun romp through the galaxy and various planets. Don't we all deserve a fun little romp now and again? And I'm not making any claims, because the text isn't super explicit about it, but I'm this close to claiming Fergus for the "Space is Gay!" club under the ace banner.

Ghostdrift is a great endcap to this series (sob). Highly recommend picking up Finder, Driving the Deep, The Scavenger Door if you haven't yet, then giving Ghostdrift a try.

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On Cozy SFF

2024-03-25T16:54:04Z

Posted by: forestofglory

Over the last decade or so I've seen the term “cozy” applied to a subset of SFF more and more. I've even used it myself as the theme of a couple of short SFF rec lists. But I also see confusion as to what "cozy SFF" means, and a certain amount of scorn for the concept. I think the concept of cozy SFF has a lot to offer, even if I’m not thrilled with the current direction the subgenre is going.

First let's define what cozy SFF is. Now I'm not a fan of drawing hard and fast genre lines, instead I like to think about genre as conversation. Cozy SFF has been around long enough that we can talk about some key themes in the conversation. Cozy SFF generally has small stakes, focusing on small moments, not the fate of the world. These lower stakes generally go along with much less onscreen violence in these stories. Another key aspect of cozy SFF is that it focuses on community-building. And finally, cozy SFF honors the importance of domestic labor and other undervalued jobs.

Of course some books meet some of these criteria but not others, but are worth discussing as part of the cozy conversation. This isn’t meant to draw hard lines around cozy SFF, but rather to outline the key themes that I want to talk more about.

Often when I talk to people about what makes a book cozy we get caught up in how the book makes the reader feel. However, I find that unhelpful. Different readers can feel very different things about the same book! The same book can be harrowing or comforting to different readers. So instead of focusing on intangibles I want to focus on elements of plot and theme.

Cozy fiction is part of the reaction to grimdark, because unrelenting grimness is not “realism.” The idea of cozy stories gets looked down on for being low conflict and low violence, but the low stakes problems of cozy SFF are closer to most of our day-to-day lives than any fantasy of political agency.

I sometimes see cozy SFF compared to cozy mysteries but I think that they are not closely related and are separate conversations. Romance novels, on the other hand, often deal with similar themes to cozy SFF, and I hope to see more stories that are in conversation with both traditions.

Cozy SFF focuses on community- building. In “Fandom for Robots” a robot learns how to make friends and participate in transformative fandom. In The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet the crew of a spaceship must get along during a long isolated journey. We see community-building appear again and again in cozy fiction. Being in community with other people is harder than it seems and one of the most important things that we do as humans. Stories that showcase this are vital. Looking closely at how communities work or don't on a small scale helps us better understand our own communities.

In "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" Ursula K Le Guin wrote about the difficulty of centering tasks that have to be done again and again in stories. Cozy fiction succeeds at making domestic labor matter to the story. In these stories a correctly-made meal can win someone's heart or change someone's fate. Building relationships of caring matters. Seeing and valuing these everyday acts is powerful.

Now having read all that, you might think that I love all cozy SFF, but in fact there's several popular cozy SFF stories that I dislike or have mixed feelings about. So let's talk about the ways cozy SFF can fail at its goals. The main failure point of cozy SFF is insularity–stories that are so focused on the small that they ignore the wider implications. One way this can happen is that fairly dire social conditions can be normalized. For example, the background eugenics and cultural uniformity are brushed over in Becky Chamber's Wayfarer books. Another way that cozy SFF is too tightly focused is slapdash worldbuilding. I spent most of Legends & Lattes wondering about the broader economy of the world. Cozy SFF is small-scale but that doesn't mean that the larger picture shouldn't matter. When the larger picture is ignored, stories feel ungrounded.

There’s a recent trend in cozy SFF of having the main characters starting a small business, generally something that acts as a gathering place like a coffee shop or a bookstore. These stories overlook how much work and stress running a small business is! I get that the idea of spending all your time in a cozy yarn store is appealing, and these kinds of places are important for building community. But the fantasy of ease to me undermines one of the key points of cozy fantasy: that building community and performing domestic labor are work. Taking away that labor undervalues work that is already undervalued, instead of showing how vital that work really is.

Despite its flaws, cozy SFF is important. Stories at all scales matter. Cozy SFF's focus on community and domestic labor help us to remember the importance of these things and imagine worlds where they are valued.

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Let’s Get Literate! New Year, Old Books

2024-02-28T21:21:26Z

Posted by: renay

I had higher hopes for January reading, but unfortunately I ended up sick and fuzzy-brained enough that reading wasn't high on my list of activities. Then once I felt a little better, there was offline drama which was exhausting enough that it sucked all my energy for new fiction away (please save me from Emotionally Immature Men). I did end the month with an incredible 100000/10 read with the one nonfiction book I picked up, so I decided to cut myself a break, remind myself reading is for fun, and chill out. I was more or less successful!

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells | Tordotcom | August 2018
The third novella in the Murderbot Diaries finds our hero on a revenge quest to make the company that hurt its humans pay dearly for their audacity. My favorite part of this installment is the judgmental interactions that Murderbot has with Miki that culminate in a lot of revelations involving emotions ("Ugh, emotions.", as Murderbot might say). Murderbot's bias against bots is interesting: it's kind to lower level bots (in this installment, Ship) but as soon as the bot has any sort of autonomy over itself Murderbot turns into, frankly, a judgmental asshole. This comes up again in Fugitive Telemetry. In this book it begins to unpack those behaviors a little bit as it examines a team who legitimately cares for Miki. It has to come to terms with the comparisons between how it was treated by the company and those humans versus its own humans from Preservation. Although this story is short and the pacing incredibly fast, the ending is so brutal that it every time I read this it feels like I'm experiencing the ending from underneath water. The narrative, at least in the audiobook, does a great job of communicating the shock. (Also, combat bots are the worst.)

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells | Tordotcom | October 2018
The final battle! And by battle I mean "Murderbot has to face the humans he ran away from for valid reasons". I'm not sure how one finishes this book not a little in love when Dr. Mensah, especially with her wielding a gun and facing down a Very Angry SecUnit. It's hard to discuss this book without spoilers, but what I appreciate most about the adventure here is the way Murderbot uses the environment to its advantage. In Rogue Protocol, it comments about the difficulty of multiple inputs. Here we don't get as much examination of the increased hacking/input ability. Instead, we get to see it in practice, especially at the end, even if it was a little optimistic about its abilities. I enjoy the small ways that previous growth stacks up and simply becomes a part of Murderbot's toolbox. This includes emotions, although it always finds a way to complain about those, even when it likes them…maybe especially when it likes them.

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells | Tordotcom | April 2021
When I first read Fugitive Telemetry I wasn't expecting as much of a straightforward mystery as I got. I was pleasantly surprised! I also, predictably, didn't figure out who the bad guy was because I don't read enough mysteries to know how to puzzle out hints/clues. (Sorry for the mental slander, characters I thought were guilty!) One of my favorite aspects of this entry into the series was Murderbot interacting with other humans in a way that forced it to stop projecting its own issues onto them. Also, the introduction of new bots was great, because the way Murderbot engages with them is less condescending than how it engaged with Miki in Rogue Protocol. Not by much, but it's clear that there's been some growth. Even with that growth, the way that constructs engage with the world is different than both humans and bots and I like all the ways Fugitive Telemetry makes this obvious without making it obvious it's Doing a Metaphor about neurodivergent humans and how we all deserve love. And it does it while also writing a fun "foil plot of corporates" space mystery!

I have to shoutout some of the dialogue work by Wells in this entry when it comes to some secondary characters that don't share the same language. I laugh out loud every time, without fail.

Emergent Properties by Aimee Ogden | Tordotcom | July 2023
What I remember the most about this novella is that the mystery Scorn is chasing in the book had too little space, character-wise, to not become immediately obvious. That may or may not be a dealbreaker for people who like their endings less obvious, but I enjoyed all the ways that Scorn moved through the world, the way ze broke down failures of accessibility for non-humans in a way that highlighted that better accessibility is a net good for everyone, not just those who need it.

This is very much a messy family drama story with a side of Scorn realizing ze have the binary hots for another AI inside a blackbox so they can only communicate when they're together in their little closed system. I loved that section of the story, and the insinuations that maybe Scorn wasn't as grown up as ze assumed. For all its brevity, it's a suckerpunch of a story that moves fast and made me think about the ethics of humans creating machine intelligence and the subsequent ownership issues that immediately arise. This is a problem between humans already, with parents seeing their kids as extensions of themselves. The dedication says, "For everyone who's every had a fraught parental relationship. and I FELT that.

However! I struggled with the pronouns in this story. It's a very interior story even while not being in first person, so while there's interaction with others, it's mostly Scorn trying to solve zir own personal mystery by musing to zirselves. Neooronouns are everywhere and what I learned about myself is that I can handle singular they but I need to do a lot of work using different types of neopronouns so they're not constantly taking me out of the narrative (also, in this review: I have no confidence I'm using these correctly). I had to stop and reread whole sections to make sure I was following what was going on. Not a dealbreaker at all, plus I'm happy to see big publishers putting books with neopronouns out like it's normal. If you're actually looking for books using neopronouns and like SF, this is a short and entertaining read.

The Deep Sky by Yume Kitasei | Flatrion Books | July 2023
I really wanted to wholeheartedly love this locked room mystery about of a group of trained astronauts on a ship as they set off to inhabit another world because of climate change on Earth. Ship isolated from Earth! AI that may or may not be good! An explosion! Alas, I only found it okay. I was all in for the first half, but the second half broke my suspension of disbelief too much when it comes to the fancy virtual reality all the people have in their heads. I thought that the pacing was good, though, and the whole book very readable. I gobbled it up in two days between the audiobook and the ebook. It's definitely Emotional Damage science fiction rather than Space Adventures science fiction!

There are flashbacks between the time on the ship and the training portion as it's decided on who gets to go, with various countries getting a selected number of seats. The main thrust of the story is Asuka's struggle on the ship of being the last selected, being half-Japanese but disconnected from her culture, being estranged from her mother, dealing with childhood trauma, and her complicated relationships with the people on the ship due to their interactions during training. I thought the cultural aspects of the book were best; they're the most emotionally resonant and tie most firmly back to Asuka's lack of confidence in her place on the ship. That creates a great tension. Between the AI borking and Asuka's whole vibe it raises a lot of questions that kept me puzzling out the motivations and answers to who would try to blow up the ship.

The friendships that Asuka builds in both the flashbacks and current time on the ship also made me ache. It's so easy to remember how fraught friendships can be when you're a kid, much less a kid in a high intensity situation where you're competing with some of those friends for limited resources. And obviously the mother/daughter relationship, which is threaded thematically through the novel, was gutting and beautiful. I would read the content warnings on this one, though. Storygraph has them if you scroll to the bottom.

It's not a sequel, but it is a space heist, so I'm excited to read The Stardust Grail which comes out in June 2024 and see what Yume Kitasei does with that trope.

Network Effect & System Collapse by Martha Wells | Tordotcom | May 2020/November 2023
I'm writing about these together because System Collapse feels like an epilogue to Network Effect. Its storyline is so deeply linked to Network Effect that when I first read an ARC of System Collapse, I felt lost initially. This doesn't last very long, because these books have a way of sliding you into their narratives with enough context clues to get by, but it was disconcerting because it's the first time with this series that I've felt like a separate volume doesn't quite fit the pattern of the rest of the books.

There's a creeping sense of unease around the edges in the first part, both externally as Murderbot and team end up exploring spooky dark tunnels in a race against unethical corporates, and externally, as Murderbot skirts around something that has unsettled it so much that it can't deal with it directly, thereby leaving us in the dark as well. My absolute favorite part of the whole novel is something depressing but excessively charming that I don't want to spoil. Once I realized what Murderbot was about to do to undermine the corporates I was gleeful. Now that it's happened once, I want it to happen again somehow. I also think this book serves as a great bridge between Murderbot working with its humans and Murderbot working with ART's humans in a way that lends itself to Murderbot going off with ART on dramatic space adventures with people who are used to dramatic space adventures. Murderbot's humans are not pushovers and are great under pressure, but they don't deliberately go looking for trouble like ART's seem to do with their mission to undermine corporates and free colonies. This explains a lot about ART's personality, now that I think about it. I also happen to think Murderbot would be great at helping to free colonies.

We're now seven entries deep into the series, and although I will continue to support Murderbot forever I wonder where the series goes from here. I'm impressed over how many potential avenues Wells has left herself to explore. There are old characters we could revisit, at least one company who is interested in hiring Murderbot as a contractor, and the company is still out there, as well. Whatever it is, I'm exciting to read it. But Tor, I'm begging y'all to give me a nice, hardcover omnibus copy of the first five novellas with beautiful art and end pages and maybe some red/gray sprayed edges in binary code? I'm not a book designer so I don't know how possible that is but I would buy the crap out of it.

Other Books
I also read How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith, which I'm still mulling over so I'm not ready to write about it yet until I go through my many annotations. I also gobbled up an ARC of Ghostdrift by Suzanne Palmer, the last book (sob) in the Finder series. I'm going to read it again before having thoughts about it because I 100% rammed the whole thing into my face in fewer than 24 hours. Second read will be slower!

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Sidetracks - February 22, 2024

2024-02-23T05:37:15Z

Posted by: helloladies

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Renay

1. Hugo nominations are open! Those fan categories need your support (more Fan Artist recs, please). These days the rec sheet is hopping and next year I'm going to have to figure out how to handle moderation, because I am only one person! I am tired of debating with dudes about which URL to use, like pasting their Amazon link to their indie book is going to help with their sales somehow, so in the sheet for media released this year anyone can use whatever link they want. :D I love executive decisions.

2. The latest State of SFF from SFF Book Review!

3. I missed this when it first dropped, but Alex Brown shared Most Anticipated Young Adult SFF/H for January & February 2024.

4. How To Seek Comfort: Getting Through the Tough Parts Together in Lish McBride’s Uncanny Romances is great. This part!!!

It doesn’t matter how intellectually compelling an argument I make for the comfortingness of this book or that book. If there’s something in there that bounces you out—something as major as the characters’ core traumas or as minor as the fact that you hate it when friend groups make secret bets on when their two friends are going to hook up—no amount of reasoned justification will create that feeling of comfort as you read.

5. I caught this interesting and in-depth essay, We’re on Our Side: Aziraphale and Crowley’s Thoroughly Queer Relationship in Good Omens somewhere, saved it to read "later", and then an hour later read the whole thing.

6. Over on TikTok, my FYP suddenly became House of Leaves themed. Unsure why the book came up, but I collected several recs from this video by greekchoir and the comments.

"Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" by Sarah Pinsker
The Northern Caves by nostalgebraist (this is on AO3 but it's part of the Original Fiction movement)
Mystery Flesh Pit National Park
MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod
Basilisk 2000
Mary Tyler MooreHawk by Dave Baker

I watched MyHouse.WAD and was like...good job, Doom modders. "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" was great even though the twist reveals itself pretty early, but it is only 6,000 words. Haven't looked into the rest of these yet. Always chasing that The Black Tapes Season 1 high...

7. The Full Lid for February 16!

8. Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried Over and Over Again. It Works Every Time. It's unfortunate the capitalists in various governments will never accept it.

9. The West Virginia House passed a bill that would allow for libraries to be prosecuted for distributing obscene literature. The thing about this is: none of these lawsuits would hold up, because we have the Miller Test. What this amounts to is a chilling effect; they'll count on people self-censoring and simply removing any material that could cause problems. If this passes the WV Senate and gets signed, there will be immediate challenges, and maybe the courts will bar this from being implemented while litigation proceeds. Anyway, if you're in the U.S., you probably have state legislature races this year! Check to see if you have a non-Republican candidate to vote for instead. The slate of state reps we have now lack any curiosity about the world. It's just authoritarianism all the way down.

10. I read That Essay, the one about the woman who got scammed out of $50,000. What caught my attention wasn't the response to the article (predictable), but the response to the response. There were so many people shocked that the internet isn't going to automatically have empathy for someone who has the ability to yoink $50,000 out of a bank account. I guess to be fair, the comments got pretty mean. I'm just sad they deleted the comment by Mr. Piss before I could read any of the replies to it.

We're brain rotted by authoritarianism in the US. The fear of the criminal system and the financial precarity it can cause for people who run afoul of it is real! Scammers have easy pickings. Anyway, I have hammered home to my mom and now pass this advice on: if someone tries to get money from you over the phone and threatens any type of legal action, ask for a call back number. Most of the time they'll refuse, outing themselves, and you can cackle wildly like a deranged deep forest witch and hang up. Sometimes they're organized enough to have one. Get it, the number they called from, hang up, and call your city/state police or county sheriff (who depends on what the scammers are saying you're in for) and go, "Hey, here are the haps!". I've had a great time ruining these people's conversion numbers by being a pedantic little shit. You could also never answer your phone for unknown numbers. Another solid decision.

11. Maryland Introduces Freedom to Read Act, which seems really promising. I hope they get it passed.

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Let’s Get Literate! What's an Award Worth?

2024-02-20T06:57:12Z

Posted by: renay

I've been thinking about awards, their value, and what they add, both to the literary landscape and the experience of reading. When I was new to SFF, I used awards to guide my reading and as a discovery engine. As I became more embedded in fandom, instead they became a type of historical record. I didn't engage with awards from a "tell me who the winner is!" position. Instead, I wanted to know the winner, the short list, the long list (if available), and also the history of what the award honorees. It's the historian in me. We can learn a lot—but not everything—from what's come before.

Every SFF award is different and decided by a different slice of SFF fandom year to year. Sometimes those slices overlap and others, they don't, often deliberately. The Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy short lists will have crossover, but the Dragon and The Kitschies (most often) won't. In 2023, the Ignytes put Babel, a novel with massive acclaim, on their short list. It shares that short list with The Blood Trials. From the awards I tracked, the Ignytes were the only one to short list it and it would go on to win. The PKD award is off doing its own niche thing adjacent to the Clarke, but they're honoring different aspects of stories so they're both interesting in their own ways. There's a ton of compare and contrast opportunities when looking at these awards.

What novels show up multiple times across different short lists? What novels stay in their own, niche pocket? What novels in their niche pocket also win? Which author names are familiar, and which are new? Is an award honoring the same authors over and over? How diverse are the short lists? A list of winners of popular SFF awards tells one story. A list of all the award short lists tells another. That's the story I appreciate the most once an award season for a publishing year wraps up.

Award lists can also be examined by looking at what's not on them. People in the book community who follow awards will immediately see what's missing. I've done this in years where I was more aware of new releases and excited about what was coming down the publishing pipeline. I can't do it with this specific list because the I missed the 2021 hype train and didn't read much new fiction in 2022. Is there value in a community not finding a book on a short list? Maybe so! I've found some incredibly interesting books from discussions around short list releases where people were heated over the absence of something they loved. They reacted with a full social media recommendation tour for no reward other than maybe using their passion to convince another reader to pick up a book. (To these people: it works!)

To address the elephant looming in the background: awards begin to fail in their utility when the conversations are about the award, rather than the books, present and not, their merits, what's rising to the top and what hasn't broken through. That's why some of the controversy around the 2023 Hugo Award administration and structure of the WSFS is so toxic and damaging to the integrity of the award. Instead of discussing the material, we're caught in constant churn about procedural problems and unethical behavior. We're not talking about our favorites that made the short/long list and those that didn't, we're not building rec lists and putting books we've never heard of before on hold at the library, and we're not ordering them from our local indie. The problem compounds the deeper we go into niche categories. People will have discussions about things they care for, of course! I have certainly engaged in this behavior (and I probably will again), so I don't think it's bad to react. The fault lies with those who shepherd and care for the award institution. It means that an award is taking up too much oxygen in a detrimental way both to itself and to the field. By being the topic of conversation, the award is robbing the art of its time in the spotlight instead of being the spotlight for the art.

Getting too attached to one award will inevitably lead to disappointment. I care a lot about one award (lolsob), but I don't have to care only about it going forward. After a chat with Roseanna and Bridget, I wanted to return to my old ways when I was a baby fan discovering the wide world of SFF awards. I theorized it would make me feel more optimistic about the field. Using the Science Fiction Awards Database for 2023 awards (books mostly published in 2022, although some awards have wider inclusion rules), I compiled the awards I follow. I defined following as: if I see an article talking about their short lists, am I likely to click on it?

This isn't all the awards tracked by the SFADB. I left out a few, notably the horror ones that didn't mix their genres in the same categories as SFF (sorry, horror fans; I'm a coward). The data is there on the database website if people want to look up horror, short fiction, or whatever books the Libertarians are awarding. I also included an award I follow that's not tracked by SFADB, the Subjective Chaos, which is a group of fans doing their own thing. I know the SFADB likely can't catch everything, especially hyper-local awards. If you know of a SFF award not on their website, let me know about it!

One award, however important, will never capture the full picture of our genre year to year. I'm not sure all the awards combined can do that, much less a curated list of awards. But I was right: looking at the wide variety of all the short lists did make me feel a lot better about where we've been as a field and where we might go next, no matter what happens to any individual award.

Enjoy, and maybe discover a new-to-you author. I certainly did.

Books with One Nomination

All the Seas of the World by Guy Gavriel Kay (Aurora)
The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier, translated by Adriana Hunter (Clarke)
The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake (Dragon)
Appliance by J. O. Morgan (Sidewise)
The Unbalancing by R.B. Lemberg (Subjective Chaos)
Be the Serpent by Seanan McGuire (Endeavor)
Beat the Devils by Josh Weiss (Sidewise)
Begin the World Over by King Li Sun (Sidewise)
Beyond the Burn Line by Paul McAuley (The Kitschies)
Blitz by Daniel O'Malley (Aurealis)
The Blood Trials by N. E. Davenport (Ignyte*)
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean (Subjective Chaos)
Bootstrap by Georgina Young (Aurealis)
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd (Mythopoeic)
Cast Long Shadows by Cat Hellisen (British Fantasy)
Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Dragon)
City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky (BSFA*)
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan (Compton Crook)
Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak by Charlie Janes Anders (Subjective Chaos)
Drinking from Graveyard Wells by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu (Le Guin Prize)
The Embroidered Book by Kate Heartfield (Aurora*)
The Extractionist by Kimberly Unger* (Philip K. Dick)
Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse (Locus)
Geometries of Belonging by R. B. Lemberg (Le Guin Prize)
Glitterati by Oliver K. Langmead (British Fantasy)
The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (Locus)
The Green Man of Eshwood Hall by Jacob Kerr (Crawford)
The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison (Locus)
Halcyon by Elliot Ackerman (Dragon)
Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz (Aurealis)
Hidden Voices by Dan Willis (Dragon)
Honour Among Ghosts by Sean Williams (Aurealis)
Hovering by Rhett Davis (Aurealis)
The Icarus Plot by Timothy Zahn (Dragon*)
The Immortal King Rao by Vauhini Vara (The Kitschies)
Into the Vortex by Charles E. Gannon (Dragon)
January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky (Philip K. Dick)
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel (Ignyte)
The Last Blade Priest by W. P. Wiles (The Kitschies*)
Leech by Hiron Ennes (Endeavor)
The Legacy of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson (Philip K. Dick)
Lost in Time by A. G. Riddle (Dragon*)
Mage of Fools by Eugen Bacon (Subjective Chaos)
Meet Us By the Roaring Sea by Akil Kumarasamy (Le Guin Prize)
Metronome by Tom Watson (Clarke)
The Mother by B. L. Blanchard (Dragon)
The Not So Chosen One by Kate Emery (Aurealis)
Obsidian by Sarah J. Daley (Compton Crook)
The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri (British Fantasy)
Ordinary Monsters by J M Miro (Subjective Chaos)
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell (The Kitschies)
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (The Kitschies*)
Path of Thorns by Angela Slatter (Aurealis*)
Path of War by David Green (British Fantasy)
The Peacekeeper by B. L. Blanchard (Sidewise*)
Plutoshine by Lucy Kissick (Clarke)
A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (Aurealis)
The Revolutionary War by Christopher G. Nuttall (Dragon)
Saint Death's Daughter by C. S. E. Cooney (World Fantasy*)
Sallow Bend by Alan Baxter (Ditmar)
Scavengers by Robert Hood (Ditmar)
Spelunking Through Hell by Seanan McGuire (Endeavor)
Stars and Bones by Gareth L. Powell (BSFA)
The Stranger by Kathryn Hore (Aurealis)
Sweep of Stars by Maurice Broaddus (Locus)
Swallow by Ayọ̀délé Ọlọ́fintúàdé (Subjective Chaos)
Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin (Subjective Chaos)
Ten Planets by Yuri Herrera, translated by Lisa Dillman (Le Guin Prize)
Things They Lost by Okwiri Oduor (Subjective Chaos)
The This by Adam Roberts (BSFA)
Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott (Mythopoeic)
Three Miles Down by Harry Turtledove (Sidewise)
Tower of Silence by Larry Correia (Dragon)
Translation State by Ann Leckie (Dragon)
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson (Dragon)
Twelve Percent Dread by Emily McGovern (The Kitschies)
Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman (Clarke*)
The Void Ascendant by Premee Mohamed (Aurora)
The Way The Light Bends by Lorraine Wilson (Subjective Chaos*)
When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb (Mythopoeic*)
When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (The Kitschies)
Widowland by C. J. Carey (Philip K. Dick)
The Wild Hunt by Emma Seckel (Endeavor)
The Witch King by Martha Wells (Dragon*)
Wolfish by Christiane M. Andrews (Le Guin Prize)
The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin (Locus)
Wrath Goddess Sing by Maya Deane (Crawford)
X-Dimensional Assassin Zai Through the Unfolded Earth by Jason Franks (Ditmar)
Ymir by Rich Larson (Philip K. Dick)

Books with Two Nominations

36 Streets by T. R. Napper (Aurealis*, Ditmar*)
Arboreality by Rebecca Campbell (Le Guin Prize*, Philip K. Dick)
Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot (Compton Crook, Subjective Chaos)
Brother Alive by Zain Khalid (Le Guin Prize, The Kitschies)
The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia (Crawford, Subjective Chaos)
Eversion by Alastair Reynolds (Locus, Dragon)
Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Locus, Subjective Chaos)
The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang (Compton Crook, Subjective Chaos)
Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi (Locus, Subjective Chaos)
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree (Nebula, Hugo)
Neom by Lavie Tidhar (Locus, Dragon)
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (Aurora, Locus)
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (Locus*, Hugo)
The Stone Road by Trent Jamieson (Aurealis, Ditmar)
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (Locus, Mythopoeic)

Books with Three Nominations

Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Hugo, Locus, Nebula)
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo (Ignyte, Locus)
The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (Nebula, The Kitschies, Subjective Chaos*)
The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard (BSFA, Clarke, Locus)
The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal (Dragon, Hugo, Locus)

Books with Four Nominations

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings (Compton Crook*, Crawford, Mythopoeic, World Fantasy)
The Bone Orchard by Sara A. Mueller (Compton Crook, British Fantasy, Endeavor*, Subjective Chaos)
The Coral Bones by E. J. Swift (BSFA, Clarke, The Kitschies, Subjective Chaos)
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Aurora, Dragon, Hugo, Locus)
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher (Hugo*, Locus, Nebula, Subjective Chaos)

Books with Five Nominations

Spear by Nicola Griffith (Le Guin Prize, Locus, Nebula, Subjective Chaos, World Fantasy)
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez (Crawford*, British Fantasy*, Ignyte, Le Guin Prize, Subjective Chaos*)

Books with Six Nominations

Babel by R. F. Kuang (Dragon, Ignyte, Locus*, Nebula*, Sidewise, World Fantasy)

All winners are marked with an asterisk next to the award that they won. I've divided them into categories based on number of nominations in the awards I've examined, but they may also be nominated for SFF awards I'm not aware of at this time.

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Sidetracks - February 15, 2024

2024-02-16T04:49:33Z

Posted by: helloladies

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Anna

1. Happy Year of the Dragon! I’ve been enjoying watching clips from Chinese NYE galas. Here are a couple of dances that I especially enjoyed:

Renay

2. The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion is damning and depressing. As I hoped would happen upon finishing my readthrough of the whole report, the 2024 Hugo Administrator who was also involved in building political dossiers on potential 2023 finalists has resigned. I continue to feel deeply sad for the Chinese fans and professionals hurt by this, for the Glasgow team members who will have to clean up the mess left by their predecessors, and for all of us who invested so much time and care into this award.

More people need to read On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder (which I recommend because it's short and accessible), and then apply the lessons learned to: community service boards, commissions, book clubs, neighborhood associations, gaming guild groups, chess clubs, beekeeper clubs, political groups, and yes, any convention organizing team from the very top to the smallest, "why would anyone try shenanigans here?" committee of 1-3 people. Where there are people building any type of participatory infrastructure around a shared interest there is a risk for corruption unless people watch for it in themselves and their colleagues.

3. Even with everything happening, some of us are continuing with the 2024 Hugo Awards where nominations are currently open and there are passionate fans behind the scenes working hard to make them successful. I will cling to any scrap of excitement still available because lots of us worked really hard to build some solid rec lists of material that dropped in 2023. I'm pleased to say that the rec sheet got a boost from people interested in the new games/interactive media category. I appreciate the people who helped with including some board games, since the category is for them, too. As always, although the sheet is geared toward the Hugo Awards, for me it's always ended up being a lovely snapshot of all the niche things we love that often don't have a chance of making any award long list, much less a short list.

I don't know how many people will take part in the awards this year given the drama (I hope a record number, so the volunteers who run the Hugo Award process know we're behind them and giving them a chance to return a sense of normalcy to the awards). For those who participate, there's a resource to see if your 2023 favorites are eligible, a great discovery engine, and a place to leave things you loved for as long as the spreadsheets last. All the past spreadsheets can be found here.

4. Let's talk about Goodreads was a fascinating look into the problems the book site has had in the last few years.

I can list a thousand ways Goodreads could improve, but at the end of the day, it just won’t. I’m not debating the benefits of a website that allows you to catalog your library and rate books you like. I agree with Kreizman that, were Goodreads similar in design and behavior to the movie review platform Letterboxd, it would be a great resource for readers. But Amazon owns Goodreads, and Amazon has no interest in changing it.

You can’t put out a fire from inside the house, especially not when Jeff Bezos likes it warm.

So let’s step outside the house.

5. Happy Galentine’s Day: 10 Great Female Friendships in SFF by Jenny was a very nice hug-as-essay I really needed given *gestures to everything*

6. Sorry, appliance makers, I don't want to connect my stove to my Wi-Fi, even if it means I can use your handy app to control it. They act like connecting is beneficial to the consumer when it's literally about sucking up our data, selling it to a third party, and then using what they know to incessantly market to us. Part of me would love a SmartFridge that uses barcodes to tell me what's inside it on a little screen for grocery lists, but I don't need that with a side of surveillance. I'll continue to open the fridge doors for a few minutes if it means I can do so in relative privacy.

7. I've had this song on repeat for several weeks now. The vocals are pretty but it's the interesting mix in the background that scratches my brain.

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Adventures Elsewhere — January 2024

2024-02-15T09:59:35Z

Posted by: helloladies

Adventures Elsewhere collects our reviews, guest posts, articles, and other content we've spread across the Internet recently! See what we've been up in our other projects. :D

Anna

I posted a ficlet as part of the fandomtrees gift giving festival:

A Letter to Sizhui (419 words) by Forestofglory
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Lán Jǐngyí
Additional Tags: Artifact fic, Epistolary, Post-Canon
Summary:

Lan Jingyi writes Lan Sizhui a letter

Susan

My friend splend and I are back on our horror game nonsense! We're playing The Quarry, and it's Certainly A Game where no one is capable of making good choices! ... I had a lot of questions about the prologue.

My BG3 yelling continues! Had a lovely visit with Auntie Ethel, figured out What Was Going On In the Grove, and... Met a fish god?

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Our Favourite Media of January 2024

2024-02-15T09:56:20Z

Posted by: helloladies

Each month, we look back over the media we loved in the previous month, from books to film to video games and more.

Jodie

Friday I'm In Love by Camryn Garrett — I looooved Camryn Garrett's debut novel, Full Disclosure, & was super excited for her bi YA romance. Was my excitement justified? Yeah, it was pretty good! So good I stayed up until midnight because I wanted to know what happened (but then had to stop with 30 pages to go because I'm an old now).

At the centre of the novel is Mahalia's dream of having a big coming out party to replace the Sweet 16 party she missed. The story follows her as she saves up to pay for the party & there's a little money tracking headline at the top of every chapter.

Garrett is really great at creating lots of layered, real life world-building so spinning off from that main goal is tons of stuff about family, Mahalia's relationship with her best friend, the cute new girl in town, church, and Mahalia's mothers struggles with money. Garrett also puts in all these background things (like the attitudes of teachers at school, issues at her grocery store job, Mahalia's love of music) that add to the plot, character & world, and make Mahalia's life feel rounded & fully alive.

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner — I definitely thought Godkiller looked too grimdark for me when it came out, but I decided to test Godkiller out by borrowing it from the library, and I ended up enjoying it much more than I thought I would.

Lucky for me, it turns out Godkiller isn't grimdark. Don't get me wrong, some really bad things happen to some of the characters. But the book never treats physical suffering like a banquet to be salivated over descriptively & it never includes a close, intense focus on torture or pain. Don't come for me if you love grimdark - it's just not for me.

Kissen - the main character - is great. She's a woman who has been hardened by life, doing a murderous job, but she also has a strict code, an open heart & a desire to help; especially when someone's struggle reminds her of her own tough journey as a young girl. Sure, she disguises all of that with a gruff exterior & a cynical understanding of how the world works but these parts of her personality are just designed so she never gets taken advantage of again. There is a lot of nice found family stuff that surrounds Kissen. And, as a part of that, the book includes a sign language (only the second fantasy book I've read that includes signing) & thinks really hard about why hearing characters use it to communicate around a deaf character.

I also thought it was really special that this dark fantasy world was packed with LGBTQ+ relationships. I think every romantic relationship mentioned includes a bi, gay or lesbian character & no one ever queries the existence of these relationships - Godkiller sets them up as everyday relationships in a world without homophobia.

The only thing I found a bit dull were the fight scenes (again a me thing). And I'm not sure I'm sold on the reveal at the end, but I will for sure read the next book.

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Let’s Get Literate! Love Your Library

2024-02-13T17:33:42Z

Posted by: renay

One of my bookish mutuals on IG, bookishbethanyerin, did a recap of how much money she saved via her library in 2023. I loved this idea and wanted to do it for myself. I was busy in 2023 but I read more than I have in years thanks to digital access. I wasn't alone in using digital access, either! At my library, digital checkouts surpassed physical checkouts, maybe for the first time?

Building this list was a little complicated because figuring out the cost of digital audiobooks without sales or promotions is a trial and I compiled all the data before wychwood clued me into Libro.fm (thanks to them! My wallet is crying!). I used B&N instead because I try my best to never buy anything book-related from Amazon. The prices are higher, but I'm generally paying higher prices when I buy physical material because I shop mostly from indie bookstores (both my local bookstore and my comic shop are small businesses). Things may repeat because I reread a few items in different formats.

The All New Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate by George Lakoff: $19.99
The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings: $27.99
Finder by Suzanne Palmer: $22.95
Driving the Deep by Suzanne Palmer: $22.95
The Scavenger Door by Suzanne Palmer: $22.95
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske: $26.99
A Restless Truth by Freya Marske: $26.99
Chef's Kiss by Jarrett Melendez, Danica Brine (Illustrator), Hank Jones (Colorist), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (Letterer): $14.99
All Systems Red by Martha Wells: $10.99
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older: $14.95
Soulless by Gail Carriger: $24.98
Changeless by Gail Carriger: $24.98
Blameless by Gail Carriger: $24.98
Heartless by Gail Carriger: $24.98
Timeless by Gail Carriger: $24.98
Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai: $24.99
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler: $24.99
Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado by Nancy Mathis: $12.99
I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy: $17.99
The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi: $19.99
Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett: $22.99
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord: $28.00
A Fashionable Indulgence by KJ Charles: $7.99
A Seditious Affair by KJ Charles: $7.99
A Gentleman's Position by KJ Charles: $7.99
The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles: $9.99
A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel by KJ Charles: $9.99
The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles: $16.99
The Last Watch by J.S. Dewes: $32.99
The Exiled Fleet by J.S. Dewes: $32.99
Liberty's Daughter by Naomi Kritzer: $5.99
All Systems Red by Martha Wells: $10.99
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells: $10.99
Doctor Who Series 1: $31.77
Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Bach: $9.99
Honor's Knight by Rachel Bach: $9.99
Heaven's Queen by Rachel Bach: $9.99

In 2023, I saved $477.58 on audiobooks (my preferred mode of reading right now), $102.96 on physical books, $92.90 on ebooks, and $31.77 on DVDs. That's a total savings of $705.21.

For this list I only counted books I read, which means the physical books category is much lower than what it could be. For every book I check out and read, there's at least five others I check out and don't get to. I've changed my behavior here: I used to only take out what I thought I could read, but now I deliberately take out anything that looks interesting so I have options should my reading mood change. I also take out extra to help with circulation numbers. If I think it looks interesting and check it out, then the library knows that people in the community are interested in that topic. I don't keep any record of my physical checkouts, but I imagine if I did it would be over $1000. Very few of us have $1000-per-year book budgets (if you do, congrats, but please don't alert me to your bookishly blessed state lest I expire from envy), making libraries critical for readers like me. I might track that next year, just to see what the potential savings would be.

Another data point: several of these resulted in me buying my own copies. I ordered a copy of Finder and plan to pick up the rest of the series. I also grabbed a copy of The Secret Lives of Country Gentleman because I enjoyed it so much and know I'll reread it in the future. Last year I bought physical copies of The Last Watch and The Exiled Fleet. I counted it as a 2022 read, since I finished the audiobook on December 31, but that meant a 2023 sale of Dark Money by Jane Mayer.

Much of the bookish content I push into the world via this blog and my social media comes from libraries. I don't imagine I'm alone in that as a U.S. reader, especially as someone who fell out of formal reviewing and doesn't get or request many ARCs anymore (I got two last year; thanks Tor!). That means that library services still foster bookish discussion in online spaces.

Our libraries, both public and in school systems, are under attack. Mine had its budget slashed in half in 2022. It's very easy to believe that this can't happen to your library, but it can if the opposition is organized and persistent enough. Yes, even in "safe" Democratic cities/states—just look at what's happening in New York City. Make it a priority to get to know your library, its services, its staff, and the ways you can help boost its numbers and protect it from bad actors.

Public libraries are worth saving.

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Sidetracks - February 9, 2024

2024-02-09T06:27:57Z

Posted by: helloladies

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Renay

1. Do you like the Ignyte Awards? They're pretty neat. They cost about $3000 a year to run and can always use help supporting the people they honor.

2. I've been going back through all my bookmarked author event videos and rewatching them. This interview with Martha Wells was great. It's about a year old so it won't reference newer material/books. I've started a tag for them, but have to dig up the rest to add. Dear libraries and bookstores, please do more virtual events and then let the video live forever, please and thank you!

3. Tor Publishing Group, via their Bramble imprint, has used AI art on a cover once again. I looked at the cover and yep, yep, at least certain sections of these are generated. Pretty disappointing to watch a publisher as big as Tor go this route. Given the popularity of dark romance and romantasy, it's wild to know this whole endeavor is probably a cash grab instead of a legit attempt to build a strong brand identity and publish interesting books that value the entire team that makes a traditionally published book successful. Capitalism is hell. That video also has 27,000 likes, so good job marketing your brand, Tor Publishing Group!

4. Hugo Awards commentary coming across my FYP is normally pretty interesting except...when it's about WSFS leadership kicking the reputation of the awards in the ribs. On plus side, at least some people are still hopeful about this year?

5. The 2023 Locus Recommended Reading List is out.

6. Favorite Books/Media of 2023 from Kristen at Fantasy Cafe!

7. Wow! Signal is a new feature over at Ancillary Review of Books that looks like it'll be a roundup of interesting academic/academic adjacent SFF criticism/commentary. I know a lot of people who miss this type of writing/criticism in SFF spaces so it's exciting to see this! I hope it does well.

8. The Full Lid had new issues on January 24 with a summary of what the newsletter strives to do each week and February 2, with an essay about Badlands Hunter and all their usual fun content.

9. There's been an anti-book ban bill proposed in the Colorado State Senate. My state will never pass one of these with our current GOP supermajority, so I have to live vicariously through others.

10. In better Worldcon news, the third Progress Report from Glasgow dropped recently. Most interesting to me in the demographic data.

11. All the Big Horror, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy Films We're Excited for in 2024 from Gizmodo, reminding me of how out of touch I've become with TV/film. The last thing I love loved was Captain America: The Winter Soldier so...yeah. Anyway, some of these sound dubious, although I'm curious about just how bad Twisters is going to be.

12. This collection of all the garbage on Substack is...a lot. I found this link in the update from Aidan Moher from Astrolabe about moving his newsletter off Substack.

13. Last year I rediscovered Tessa Violet's music and I've been obsessed ever since. This is one of her songs that's like a warm hug, and I kept it on my daily playlist for months.

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Let's Get Literate! 2024 Hugo Noms and Associated Trashfires

2024-01-30T19:48:49Z

Posted by: renay

Just one year I would like for the Hugo nominations to open without controversy. Is that so much to ask? (Apparently, yes.)

Nominations for the 2024 Hugo Awards are open, although to nominate you need to be a member of the WSFS, either as a Chengdu member or a Glasgow member, by January 31. On BlueSky, the concom wrote:

Glasgow 2024 is delighted to announce that nominations are now open for the 2024 Hugo Awards, Lodestar Award and Astounding Award. The nomination period will close at 4.00 p.m. (GMT) on Saturday, March 9th, 2024. More info about the Hugo Awards, including full instructions on how to complete and submit a nominating ballot can be found on glasgow2024.org.

We also have a PDF version of the paper ballot which can be downloaded by members who prefer to submit by post.

All ballots, whether submitted electronically or by postal mail, must be received by the deadline of 4.00 p.m. (GMT) on Saturday, March 9th, 2024.

Instructions have been sent to all eligible WSFS Members by email. We encourage members to check their junk/spam/promo folders for this email. Worldcon members uncertain of their status or experiencing problems with the online form should email hugo-help@glasgow2024.org.

The Hugo Awards are fan-run, fan-given, and fan-supported. The works and creators with sufficient nominations will move onto the final ballot for the 2024 Hugo Awards, which will be announced later this year after the close of nominations.

At the time of announcing the final Hugo ballot, we will also publish the reasons for any disqualifications of potential finalists, and any withdrawals of potential finalists from the ballot.

The winners will be announced at a formal ceremony to be held in Glasgow on the evening of Sunday, August 11, 2024. Full voting results will be published at that time.

While members of both the 2023 and 2024 Worldcons can nominate for the 2024 Awards, only members of the 2024 Worldcon are eligible to vote on the final ballot.

If you are not yet a member of Glasgow 2024, see our Membership Page for information about joining the convention: https://glasgow2024.org/get-involved/memberships-and-tickets/

I've seen some commentary about how easily we "caved" once nominations opened (these opinions sure made me feel awesome). The problem for me is that I start investing in each award about 9-11 months before that Worldcon opens its nomination cycle due to the Hugo Rec spreadsheet I and other fans build each year. That's gotten earlier and earlier each cycle, as more people who use review copy get involved in the project and want a place to record media.

Because of this, my investment in this year's nominations is already locked in. I've been managing rec lists for almost a year. I could throw that away, but I'm not sure what that would accomplish. Of course I folded like a wet rag; the work is already done, I'm tired, and want to wring a tiny amount of joy out of the whole cursed situation. But because of all of that, this statement from Glasgow is not strong enough for me. What I want to see:

An explicit statement that any disqualifications will come paired with the citation of the section of the WSFS Constitution the Hugo Admin believes makes that work ineligible. They almost hit this, but I want them to own it in concrete terms.
A formal release introducing the current Hugo Admin team members, their experience with Worldcon and conrunning, and which of them have experience with our voting system.
A formal statement on what they will do if the current Hugo Admin team members with experience in our voting system are unable to perform their duties. Who will we call on and what are their names/experience?

I don't think it's reasonable to ask Glasgow to release statements lambasting individuals by name even if it would feel great, for me, personally. It could create lots of bad feelings for the current concom and it's more productive for them to move forward and make this year's Hugo process run as smoothly as possible. I can tell the Chengdu Hugo Admin they're a bunch of ethically hollow weirdos and that I will be haunting their future Hugo concom life like an angry poltergeist in perpetuity just fine myself.

Glasgow can release statements introducing their current team members and discussing their experience, like any concom might introduce their important department heads. Since I'm no one I doubt the Glasgow leadership would do this, but…I have been doing free advertising for their con since I set the 2024 spreadsheet to live. I have walked tons of people through how to get memberships. Given these things, it would be nice if leadership could find it within themselves to tackle these very small asks.

Classism and Ableism? In My Fandom? It's More Likely Than You Think!

Elsewhere on the Internet, there's been rumblings of how to "fix" the award by simply disallowing people who have never attended a Worldcon in person from participating in the Hugo Awards as Supporting members. I know this is a niche suggestion that very few people are ever going to take seriously. However, every time something goes wrong with the award, this suggestion is trotted out by one or two people. I've been participating in this award for decades and did so before the idea of being able to attend the host convention was ever a twinkle of an idea. In fact, when I first started taking part more publicly, I was resigned to never being able to attend. I lived in poverty. I didn't see a way out of that poverty for the foreseeable future. But even back then during controversy that was a suggestion pulled from the closet of terrible ideas and waved around as if it could solve problems. I guess it sounds better than, "I don't want these undesirables with their IDEAS and OPINIONS to participate in the administration of MY AWARD."

Now that we live in a world where SARS-CoV-2 spikes set the terms for when disabled people can travel or be in spaces where the temporarily abled are fine rawdogging rebreathed air, the fact this suggestion is still being presented as a legitimate recourse to problems is not only weird, but actively bigoted. Instead of making it harder to participate in the process, maybe these folks could join us in the 21st Century and instead advocate for making the con more inclusive for Supporting members.

The Game/Interactive Fiction Category

After years of work by a committed group of fans who followed all the extremely particular rules/customs around Worldcon Business Meetings and changes to the WSFS Constitution, the Hugo Award for Game/Interactive Fiction will be given as a full award in 2024. This is another reason I'm gutted about *gestures to everything*. This should have been a celebratory moment where we got to welcome new SFF fans who primary engage via gaming to the award. That's been made much harder now that the award has been given a legitimacy body blow, so thanks, Dave McCarty + Chengdu Hugo Admin!

The Hugo Rec spreadsheet has a sheet with a lot of big video games on it, but very few board games. The category was specifically built to accommodate a wide variety of game mediums. Regardless of whether folks plan to nominate/vote in the Hugo Awards (now or ever), I hope everyone goes and adds their favorite eligible board games and indie video games to the list. These sheets live on as general rec list and according to my stats they remain very popular.

This is one of the reasons I don't want to give The Hugo Awards up as if other awards could replace it. Very few other awards allow fans to change/add award categories. The process is unbelievably difficult, but it is possible. I'm also not sure what other multi-medium SFF awards beyond the Nebula are recognizing games?

This Too Shall Pass

Any large scale change takes time. Will the WSFS survive? Who knows?! It's going to be decided by the people with the money, time, energy, and health capacity who can attend in-person Business Meetings. Fans like me who care about the Hugo Award (I know, but I can't just turn it off) but can't attend Worldcon two years in a row are at the mercy of Business Meeting attendees. Frankly, some of the talk I've seen from people that say they attend those meetings does not make me hopeful for the future of the WSFS. Until the Business Meetings are more inclusive of both con attendees with conflicting schedules and virtual attendees, no amount of bleating about Robert's Rules of Order will make them truly democratic.

For now, I've chosen to give the benefit of the doubt to Glasgow on the front end, with hopes for clarification as we ask for additional accountability. I've been in their position with huge projects full of moving parts that don't stop going because someone on another team decided to blow a hole in their credibility without consideration of the ripple effects. Maybe I'll regret it in 2025.

Luckily, that's a problem for future me. 🤪

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Let's Get Literate! Hugo Award Shenanigans

2024-01-23T19:35:43Z

Posted by: renay

Wow, those Sad Puppy years look different from our perspective in 2024, huh?

If you follow SFF awards at all, you've heard about the release of much delayed longlist statistics for the 2023 Hugo Awards. These statistics are coveted because it gives an idea of what just missed the ballot. It's not a Hugo Award, but it's still nice to look and see work you loved honored by your fellow fans. It's also nice to see yourself there! As someone who was gobsmacked the first time one of my projects showed up on the long list, I know that feeling well. It's also to see what media was just shy of the long list and see what directions the field may be going as well as up and coming writers. I've moved plenty of stuff up my TBR once I saw it was on the long list. In the early days of following the long list, I would discover media new to me completely, but that's harder to do these days.

Many people who write faster have weighed in; I don't have much to add except worries.

I'm afraid this will hurt the effort of fans currently building Glasgow 2024. In local Democratic politics, we often do a ton of work on a project. Then a national leader steps on a rake, denies stepping on the rake or that the rake existed, and gets testy with everyone asking about the rake. After being a jerk, they finally admit that the whole rake-stepping happened but it's not a big deal! In fact, it's XYZ that's the problem for even mentioning the rake to begin with. Our work, under the same general banner, is overshadowed by their flub and their denials. Their treatment of people adjacent or distanced enough from our work only see us as extensions of the flub owner and go, "Yeah, I don't want any part of their mess." I have lived through this many times. It is exhausting.

I'm worried every non-American Worldcon bid will struggle under increased suspicion, especially if bid leadership isn't white. When one group hurts an institution, anyone who comes after has to take on that mistrust. Sometimes it's fair and sometimes it's not, and any visible marginalization only compounds the unfairness. But many of us have been pushing for more international Worldcons for decades. To have this happen in the midst of all the other shenanigans with this con around toxic guests of honor, communication standards, accessibility, etc. means that the core constituency of the WSFS (which changes year to year since anyone can buy a membership) may decide to go, "Okay, let's bring it back to the US for a decade or two." It's even more of an insult, then, that the person making this worse for everyone is a white man who has never been told "no" or "STFU" in his life.

I'm worried that members of the Hugo Admin team will be able to administer this award again as part of a future bid. This includes Dave McCarty, Ben Yalow, Ann Marie Rudolph, Diane Lacey, Shi Chen, Joe Yao, Tina Wang, Dongsheng Guo, Bo Pang. To be clear, I don't know how much any of them were involved; why they made these choices, why they didn't resign when asked to make unethical decisions, and why they're allowing Dave "Old Man Yells at Sky" McCarty to be their team representative without speaking up for themselves or their involvement. There could be safety concerns. We simply don't know; the lack of transparency is another big issue. But especially for the white folks on the Hugo Admin, allowing this to happen to the award, finalists, long list members, and voters, I don't believe any future bid should let them anywhere near the Hugo Award administration going forward. If there can be no other accountability due to lack of mechanisms to create it, this would be the bare minimum.

I'm sad for all the finalists and winners this year who will inevitably feel bad about these revelations. Yeah….yeah.

There are a lot of potential fixes out there (I link to some below). My issue with fixes is that I participate in the Hugo Award as a fan without the financial ability to go to two Business Meetings in a row and support proposals, even when the convention is in the United States. It's difficult financially and sometimes unfeasible. That seems to be a trend; the people most interested in making positive, inclusive, transparent changes don't have the resources to be involved when it matters the most. I don't know how to solve this problem. An unrelated thing I wish would change along with whatever changes come out of this: keeping the award infrastructure at the same place online year to year. Instead, change who admins/accesses that site, whether it be a team from each Worldcon or another body that the future WSFS society members decide to implement. There is simply no reason anymore for it to go from site to site to site when it can just be parked somewhere, and people plugged into its home. Related to this: keep anonymized voting records that can be audited by anyone of all data on that server.

Less importantly to everything else, I'm sad for myself. When you invest a lot of your personal time for free, it hurts to be shown it was probably wasted. This is pretty on brand for me, though. Find a broken system and go, "this could be good!" Only to discover it probably could be, but it won't, because too many people with power believe it shouldn't change. Until the Business Meetings include Supporting WSFS members and give them a way to participate virtually, we'll likely just shift from crisis to crisis, never fixing the underlying issues. SHRUG EMOJI

Other people better at math/data than me have done great work talking about this issue. Here's a collection of what I've been reading/watching/ mostly in the order I found it. This is not comprehensive, simply what I've come across in my doom scrolling over this topic as I question my life choices/dedication in free labor to this award. I may update it here and there going forward as this is an active discussion.

BlueSky thread from Jason Sanford
Hugo Award final Data--and my Ineligiblity(?!?!)
Didi's short recap on TikTok
My priority questions about the Hugo Stats
Outrage Season
Elections Have Consequences
Stitch & Bitch livestream
The 2023 Hugo nomination statistics have finally been released – and we have questions
This legal thread about trademarks (which I only partly understood and have no clue about, but I did read the whole thing, so...)
This BlueSky thread by Abigail Nussbaum on award admin integrity
Genre Grapevine on the Hugo Awards’ “not eligible” problem
A Comparison of Hugo Nomination Distribution Statistics
Hugo 2023 Noms: Mind the Gap
Decoupling the Hugos
What’s Up With Babel and the Hugos?
Twitter thread from Arthur Liu
Well, I sure don’t like this (I’m talking about the Hugo stats) (this is from someone I really trust re: Business Meeting politics)
The 2023 Hugo Awards: Now With an Asterisk
BlueSky thread from Nibedita Sen about Dave McCarty
this entire trashfire where McCarty has Neil Gaiman is his comments asking for clarification. If Gaiman spoke to me like this on the public internet I would simply turn to crystal and shatter into a billion pieces.
R.F. Kuang's statement
Hugo Nominating Stats Rascality and a Brief History of Where it All Started
Numbers thread from the guy who helped create/pass the voting system the Hugos use
The Hugo Awards Are Facing Yet Another Controversy
Instagram post from Xiran Jay Zhao, which has 50K likes. I guess it's fine for white dudes to treat the Hugo trademark like a particularly hated soccer ball? Good luck if you're a marginalized AO3 writer joking about being a Hugo winner, though.

eta: more of my recent reading

Burning Down the Hugo Awards: A Look at the Irregularities in the 2023 Nominating Statistics, What We Know, and What It Means
I’m coming around to the Unified Stuff-Up theory
China--to be avoided? (Whereupon I engage with Dave McCarty)
Thoughts from Yudhanjaya Wijeratne on the Hugo Awards; this is a Twitter post with images that don't have alt text, so I dug up the original text on reddit.
Science fiction awards held in China under fire for excluding authors
Worldcon does it again: this is a Metafilter commentary thread, so a bunch of different folks with opinions.

eta redux 1/25: more reading, and now I'm seeing it break containment and I mostly want to crawl into a hole

This thread goes into reaction from Chinese fans with some screencaps, and a volunteer steps up to provide a translation of at least part of them because otherwise it was being done by machine translation, which is...a problem. The main takeaway from the one human-translated post seems to be: Chinese SFF fans are also (rightly) angry.
Controversy over 'inexplicable' exclusion of R F Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao from Hugo Awards 2023
Nothing About the Hugo Awards’ Inexplicable Exclusion of R. F. Kuang’s ‘Babel’ Makes Sense
Statement on Irregularities and Disqualifications within the 2023 Hugo Awards
What is Going On With the 2023 Hugo Awards?
Hugo Awards under fire over censorship accusations, and SFF writers want answers

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Let’s Get Literate! Holiday Reading Recap

2024-01-16T06:12:45Z

Posted by: renay

The holidays were great for my reading, which was a nice change. It was mostly rereads, to various levels of success, and a book I will be nominating for the Hugo Award, probably, unless something else I finish before nominations challenges how much I love one (1) monkey bot.

The Exiled Fleet by J.S. Dewes | Tor Books | August 2021
It's easy for me to forget that these books are not short. The pace of the story is like a bullet train straight to Emotional Damage. The first book in the series, The Last Watch, felt like traditional military science fiction and then careened with wild, joyful abandon into Robust Space Opera, complete with space magic. The follow up goes, "Ready for more space magic? Let's fucking go." I love space magic, strong friendships, surprise allies, dramatic third act revelations, gloriously uncomplicated villains, and call backs to everything from Mass Effect to Star Wars. There's probably more I missed as my brain made happy shrieking noises every time something else dramatic was revealed. The relationships between Adequin Rake and Cavalon Mercer goes from a mentor/student vibe to something else that could have dramatic consequences in later books (because there WILL be more than three books, RIGHT? RIGHT, TOR???). There's also the introduction of a character I didn't expect on my first read through. I loved this revelation even more this time.

There's a lot of themes in this book around morality and ethics, the dangers of power, and what makes a someone a person. Another aspect is the human costs of waging a war: the feeding and care of a rebel army, how to navigate building coalitions in disparate groups, and leadership struggles along delegation/trust lines. My love of this story is wrapped up in the realization of the characters that they deserve better than the people charged with their well-being gave them; the additional realization of "it's punching time" is just a bonus. The compassion they have for each other, even when they disagree, is wonderful. I fully expect the theme of leaning too heavily on allies to come up again. This book raised it a few times, but I suspect it will feature in future books (books, plural, right Tor? RIGHT?).

All Systems Red by Martha Wells | Tordotcom | May 2017
If it's getting cold and dark early, there's a good chance I'm under a blanket somewhere ready to begin Yet Another Reread of the many adventures of Murderbot. My thoughts from my very first read-through haven't changed much at all. Even with the additions of the sequels, the core of what made me love the first entry persists. I've got to find where I can buy these audiobooks either digitally in a way I can download them without DRM, or via audio CD. I will go old school so I can listen to these books any time. Predictably, using the library for the audiobooks is hard because Murderbot is so beloved. Every library I have access to has a hold list.

Storm Over Paradise by Robyn Donald | Harlequin Presents | September 1992
One summer, I found a box of romance novels in our guest bedroom. I was too young to read these on my own without at least an adult to ask questions. Did that stop me? Absolutely not. My other options were: several encyclopedia sets/reference books; nursing manuals; books about how aliens built our society, actually; religious and spirituality texts; SF tie-in novels; and self-help by white dudes. The nursing manuals had interesting photos/diagrams and might have set me on an early path to a medical career, but they were beyond my reading level at the time. The SF tie-in novels were about movies I hadn't seen yet (wooo rural life). I was already a baby agnostic so the religious stuff and the stuff about aliens made me dubious. Therefore, faced with the romance novels or the encyclopedia (again), I read every single romance novel in the box that summer multiple times. Last year I became obsessed with finding them all again. This book was my first success!

It is terrible.

There's sexual assault of a minor, sexism, misogyny, ableism, and then of course the dude who does the sexual assault is super kind and well respected, truly! He's also the reason our heroine, Fen, didn't have sex with anyone else: she was his from their first kiss/grope (IT WAS ASSAULT). The family tree in the book is confusing enough that the main character explains it to the reader under the guise of explaining it to a teenager. The love interest is a half-brother to Fen's own half-brother, but they are not related. Which makes the banging that comes later fine, I guess, if we ignore the verbal abuse aimed at Fen from recipient of banging. Reader, when I was a child, this would have been normal! It's how men in my life talked to women (it's still how men in my life talk to me because I work in politics). Baby Renay was not prepared to deconstruct any of this.

There was a strong line of "indigenous folks are competent" and "white folks who screw over indigenous communities suck", which I didn't expect. Baby Renay also did not pick up on these things. It turns out her favorite parts were A) the dude being nice (it happens like, three times total and I don't think the romantic resolution counts, unfortunately), B) the very strong sibling relationship between Fen and her young brother, and C) the dude being traumatized by mass death and showing human emotion beyond condescending judgment. I did know what that was on my first time through. My memory has this book as much longer than it is but I'm amazed at the level of detail I recalled.

Internalized misogyny is a hell of a drug. I give this book -10000 palm trees, but my memory 20 gold stars.

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu | Tordotcom | October 2023
This book is bananas.

It's rare I crack open my Tome of Shamelessly Bananas Fiction to add a new entry. There was Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (maybe the sequels? I haven't read them! No spoilers!!). Then Descendent of the Crane by Joan He; we were robbed of the series that should have spawned from that book. Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton is also in the Tome. It features a crow named Shit Turd, his trusty canine companion Dennis, and a zombie apocalypse. It is the most normal book on this list. And yes, it's still the most normal book even with the newest addition.

Because I'm 100% adding The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport to the Tome.

The comps on this one sold a lot of people (when I was scoping out reviews it kept coming up), but they made me dubious. I wasn't sure what a "mash up of Aladdin and Murderbot" would mean. Aladdin is a big, boisterous story. Murderbot I enjoy more for the interiority, frank discussions of anxiety, creative problem solving (often in the face of oncoming doom) and the recognition that sometimes it's fine to hide and watch media. This story seemed to need something more keyed to the Aladdin vibe than the "panicked reflections when being perceived by too many humans" or "having a mental health crisis in the midst of a meatspace crisis" vibe. The good news: the Aladdin story is definitely here! The bad news: this isn't very similar to Murderbot in tone, even if we have a bot telling the story. The other good news: I think Moku and Murderbot would get along well. The bad news: Murderbot would lock Bador in an airlock within 35 seconds of meeting him. Not sure how long it would like; once Murderbot found out how much Moku likes humans and Bador is tired of them and their contradictions, it could change. Maybe the comps were picking up on something else; the wider universe is a mystery in this world, deliberately so. The Corporation Rim might be just offscreen.

This is how epic fanfics are born.

The novel plays with perspective via our narrator, a story-bot named Moku who Bador, a monkey android, rescues from a cache of buried technology. There is a lot of distance between Moku and the other characters; he is using his skills to weave a specific narrative and he's a little over-confident about his abilities. In the beginning of the novel, he tells Bador and Lina, Bador's human sister, that he shouldn't be a part of the story in the way they're using him. His concerns on that score are dismissed, and we watch how that unravels his motivations, changes his perspective, and hilariously, shows us how little he knows himself. A lot of people thought the end came out of nowhere, while ignoring all the things Moku missed throughout the story about other characters. I'm still mulling it over, so maybe it did come out of nowhere. But humans can lie to each other and themselves. I'm not sure, in this universe, if bots are so different.

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport is otherwise a wide-ranging critique against capital, oligarchs, corruption in government, forced scarcity, the surveillance state, over-reliance on technology, and the unknowable complication of consciousness. What I found most interesting is the debate that comes back to conversations we're having even now in every society around the world. Can we fix the master's house with the master's tools? Or must we burn it all down first? Is it possible to fix centuries of systemic rot with a simple blank slate? Is the slate truly blank if we put the oppressed into the same structures and systems that led to the oppression? Can we truly take away the excesses of the wealthy in a way they can't one day undo? Is there a middle ground in any of these paths that would be visible to us with different perspectives? There's a lot of philosophy here, both moral and political. One thing that calls back to Murderbot is the debate about bots and bot rights. Preservation Alliance is ahead of Shantiport on this topic.

The book is slow to start. The pacing feels very uneven for the first 30%. Then everything gets so supercharged that it's hard to stop turning the pages. Amid the giant robot battles, political monologues, evil villain monologues, explosions, and familial drama, there's the city of Shantiport. The city is dirty, broken, corrupted by oligarchs, and yet beloved by the people who have carved out lives there and know it could be better one day. It's a very relatable problem. It came up again and again: Lina wants to stay and reimagine a Shantiport for all. Bador wants to leave for epic space adventures and a less tenuous, marginalized existence. It feels like the chorus that goes around social media whenever a voter suppressed state gets another terrible law or policy passed: "Why don't you just move?" or "Well, they live there and haven't left so they deserve it." That ignores so many things: money, for one. It ignores ability, resources, power dynamics, the gutting of social programs like education that would teach us how to navigate these systems. Most of all, it ignores connection to a physical place and the culture that can only be found there. When you love the place you're from it's hard to give up on it. Lots of people in the U.S. South know that with collective effort, more reliance on community, and less on short-term technological fixes, things could change. In the end, I understood Bador's perspective, but I sided with Lina. They could make it beautiful there.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells | Tordotcom | May 2018
Ah, my annual Murderbot reread…or maybe it's biannual now. Every time I do a series reread since I passed reread #5 I muse, "This is the time where I will finally have had my fill." but even upon finishing this I could have turned around and read it again. This entry is Murderbot making friends, discovering it likes part of its function, and adjusting to being a truly free agent.

Murderbot delves into its past in this book. I've never thought too deeply about it. This time, though, I thought more about how dismissive it is of Comfort Units. Nothing drastically changes, but the shift after Murderbot learns more about its origins pre-hacked governor module is intriguing. Obviously, no one, not even a Murderbot, unlearns prejudices that fast, but here I think we begin to see the beginnings of it, that are repeated in the next book, brought up again in Fugitive Telemetry, and may come up again one day more explicitly. Wells has left herself so many open doors in this universe. Yes, I will read all of them. Then I'll start them all again from Episode 1 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

The Paradox series by Rachel Bach | | Orbit | 2013 - 2014
This series contains Fortune's Pawn, Honor's Knight, and Heaven's Queen. I started three of these and finished two, and I tried to get through the third book but I simply could not handle any more. I loved Fortune's Pawn the first time I read it. Looking back over that review fresh from a reread, I see why past me loved the first book so much. It's also clear that I was really annoyed at some of the reviews by dudes in fandom. There was so much casual sexism in fan reviewing! I'm sure there still is; I'm just pickier about the reviews I read. According to my reading log from the past, I also read Honor's Knight. The book had four stars but no heart in my old filing system, which translates to a 2/3 star read for me today because I have finally thrown off the shackles of peer pressure re: star ratings. I barely remembered it; the reread was like a first read. I didn't remember the last book at all. I have no record of starting it and therefore assume I either tried and failed or never even bothered to try.

My main critique of the first book back then was this:

There was no nuance; it felt like the book was simply dobbing spaces on the sexism bingo card in order to entrench Devi's position as a take-no-shit badass lady.

It's true for the whole series. I had fun with the reread of Fortune's Pawn but didn't enjoy the book like I did the first time. The whole book is gratuitously unsubtle in a very Feminism 101 way. Sometimes gratuitously unsubtle is what I want! It's still readable, like a big budget disaster movie is fun in the moment but absolutely nothing holds up when examined. Alas!

I've read enough good romance now that the romance felt forced and manipulative. The second book was always going to need to do some heavy lifting based on what happened in the first book and it did not. In the second book, the author leans heavily on romance/kink tropes that deserve to come with content warnings. I hated the love interest by the time I hit the middle of the second book after all the lying, memory manipulation, attempted murder, etc. All the things I loved in the first book get tossed out in favor of a plot that I found undermined the whole idea of supposedly writing feminist science fiction. The interesting crew members we meet in the first book are sidelined in favor of spotlighting the miserable captain and other characters who were empty avatars. The captain getting a bigger role really irked me. I disliked him in the first book and only proceeded to dislike him more until I DNFed the third book and looked eagerly at the end of the book to see whether he died miserably or not.

There was also a backstory for the main character who comes from a society with a monarchy where there are sacred royals. They believe democracy is unholy, somehow? And that eugenics is…cool, actually? Some genocide is fine and necessary? Although the books did finally draw the line at "using child soldiers against their will is bad", even if most of the characters are like "but this is how we've always done it! We can't change now!".

There was some promise for the first book in a series, but it did not bear out in the subsequent books. Although if you're in search of some wild, "no thoughts, head empty" space dramatics with creepy romance vibes, this series might work out for you! It didn't for me! I continue on in search of space opera romance that sticks its landing.

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Sidetracks - January 13, 2024

2024-01-13T06:18:21Z

Posted by: helloladies

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

KJ

1. More Joy Day is an annual tradition created by sdwolfpup. It's basically what it says on the tin: one day in January to focus on bringing joy to others, in whatever small way you can. In 2024, More Joy Day will be observed on Friday, January 12. I realize that's only one day after publication, but I appreciated the reminder and thought I would still share with you all. It's never the wrong time to spread a little joy, right?

2. One of my favorite year-end traditions is Linda Holmes's 50 Wonderful Things, and the 2023 edition is as delightful as ever.

3. At long last, despite decades of the Disney corporation fighting it tooth and nail, Mickey Mouse is finally in the public domain… sort of. The Center for the Study of the Public Domain explains the ins and outs of what is and isn't allowed now that "Steamboat Willie" (widely considered Mickey's first appearance) is public domain.

Renay

4. The Texas Library Association invited Chuck Tingle to and event and when he wouldn't remove his mask, disinvited him. This is wild behavior from a library organization. Their response was also extremely weird.

5. The marketing boycott of St. Martin's Press (plus imprints) continues. It's mostly a TikTok phenomenon, but there's been some backlash to the boycott using flat out lies, along with, apparently, some of the boycott opponents letting one of the boycott organizers know they were stalking them? Absolutely unhinged behavior to protect a company that's being asked to do the bare minimum.

6. Kelsey shared her favorite books from 2023 and raised a point about how we read books we know will have sequels, books we don't know will have sequels, and how that changes the reading/enjoyment calculus of any given series/book.

7. The H Word: All the Missing Mothers by Kelsea Yu was an excellent read about the intersections of childbirth and fairytales/fantasy. Content warnings: medical trauma. h/t Jenny.

8. Alex Brown collects some short fiction published at the end of 2023 that might have gone unnoticed as we switch from reflection to anticipation.

9. StoryGraph is the Goodreads alternative worth switching to was an excellent deep dive into the platform. I was an early bird supporter and remain a paid user because I love the project so much. Their revamped recommendation engine has been super fun to play around with:

Through StoryGraph, you can search for books using filters for mood, genre, pace, length, and even trope. If you want to take recommendations a step further, you can fill out a comprehensive reading preferences form, where you can note genres, tropes, themes, and content you like and ones you’d prefer to avoid. You can even select specific books that you want StoryGraph to refer to while generating recommendations.

If you do decide to check Storygraph out, be aware they just had a massive popularity spike and the Goodreads imports are backed up a lot; the site is running a little slower than usual (for me at least).

10. Tordotcom will become Reactor. I wonder if this is so the website that covers non-Tor content and the publishing arm can be distinct things? I am the physical embodiment of the shrug emoji over this, though.

11. The 2024 Philip K. Dick shortlist is out. I've heard of two of these, which is incredible for anything that's not Hugo-related.

Danged Black Thing by Eugen Bacon (Apex)
The Museum of Human History by Rebekah Bergman (Tin House)
Infinity Gate by M. R. Carey (Orbit)
Wild Spaces by S. L. Coney (Tordotcom)
Where Rivers Go to Die by Dilman Dila (Rosarium)
These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs (Orbit)

12. The cover of Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson is beautiful. The art is by Tarajosu.

13. Clarkesworld is open for submissions.

14. Best Fantasy Books of 2023 from BookRiot. I have read exactly one of these.

15. A TikTok collecting 2024 books out from Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander authors. There are several here that look really good!

16. A massive amount of 2024 book releases from Nerd Daily.

17. Top Ten Tuesday: anticipating Q1 2024 by imyril. I'm starting to see some overlap in books folks are mentioning!

18. A collection of SFF mysteries from Mary Robinette Kowal.

19. We just finished Scavenger's Reign and...wow. It was incredible and I highly recommend it. After finishing, I was able to go back and read this beautiful essay from Arturo Serrano:

At its simplest, eating means seizing something external and acquiring the energy stored in it, while converting its matter into you. In that small, everyday act lies hidden the blueprint of more destructive possibilities. Take that pattern and multiply it by the thousands of years of human development and you get, for example, the ravages of colonialism, which snatches whole populations and sucks all usable energy from them. What does it say about humankind that the way we describe the act of spreading our species beyond our home planet is also called colonization?

20. The Great Abdication: Why No One Can Be Bothered Anymore hit me really hard, especially this part: "I think maybe it's hard to hang out with someone now that deep down everyone knows that everyone else is willing to let them die for concerts and brunch."

21. Wow, one of the people who hopped on the train of "the 2020 election was stolen!" refuses to say whether she's certifying the 2024 election? Big shocker. I'm resigned to a second Trump term due to the hostility against direct voter contact and younger voters. I'm simply holding out hope we can keep Congress and make inroads locally.

22. Democrats Can’t Keep Ignoring Covid in 2024 from New Republic. I have bad news as someone who works with Democrats both locally and on the state level—they will absolutely keep ignoring COVID until we replace them with people who believe in science.

23. I've been following the development of Glaze and Nightshade as our generative algorithm nightmare marches ever onward. There's a quick survey asking users to differentiate between images that are by human artists and images that are generated. It was pretty tough for me, especially when it comes to traditional painting.

24. Substack says it will remove Nazi publications from the platform, which means they'll take the more egregious material down but the stochastic terrorism content remains fine with them because what's missing from the headline that's in the post itself is the word "some". Several newsletters I follow have begun to make the switch. It sucks for the folks who can't move for whatever reason. This thread from Amal El-Mohtar has a great perspective as a previous user of the service. I'm not going to boycott Substack links, but I'm also not going to subscribe to new ones or give anyone on them any money going forward.

25. With a new year, I like to go back to old favorite songs. This is one I love dearly: Can't believe / how strange it is to be anything at all

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