Hey!
This week, there’s the return of the Long Review section, me going wild on KPop Demon Hunters fanart (it’s all so good!), and happenings around my corner of SFF fandom. Plus, a Slight Detour into a non-SFF rec (but it’s fine because it’s Art).
Silksong Hastens the Death of the Critic and Games Criticism is Dead; Long Live Games Criticism
These pieces are in conversation with each other; the first was posted and the second was shared as commentary, about a recently released and highly anticipated game series that I haven’t played. I’m interested in criticism in the book community specifically, and although these are about games I see a lot of the same problems book critique is struggling with. Less the early copy (most publishers are generous with review copy in my experience), but in some of the downstream problems: when does “review” act as critique, and when is it simply PR in exchange for review copy? The labor issues, too, are a problem, because jobs writing critique seem rare as venues get rid of those positions. They become contract labor, and it’s very low paid. The people making money are the people doing monetized book content on Youtube and TikTok as individuals and for most that’s not something you live on. Also, I come from a genre community where if you don’t review a book the year it comes out, that review is sinking like a stone when it does drop. I’m jealous of games criticism having long tails!
Towards a Taxonomy of Historical Science Fiction
This was fascinating. This is the kind of intra-genre discussion I love to see, instead of us arguing yet again whether people today really need to read some dead white dudes in order to have a good picture of the genre (answer: no). This also ended up being a pretty incredible tour through a section of SFF history. I would read a whole book like this.
Exploring Author Self-insertion in Yellowface and The Ministry of Time
Have I read either of these novels? No. Did I watch this whole thing and find the thesis fascinating? Yes. I enjoy all of Bailey’s analysis regardless of whether I’ve read the works in question, but if you have read these books, I bet it will hit different.
2025 Hugo stats
Nicholas Whyte gave all us nerds who have trouble with data visualization some nice words to read about the Hugo stats. I always enjoy his commentary on the Hugos, too. One thing that jumped out at me was that Best Fanzine would have been automatically No Awarded if one of the old rules had still been on the books. This is so sad to me because there are fanzines (and blogs, and newsletters) being nominated, it’s just that people aren’t participating in the category. I don’t really know how to fix this, though. Encourage people to start more blogs and newsletters? Encourage people to read them more? Full court press during nomination/voting season where I shout about all the places I know about incessantly? If anyone has any ideas, please let me know because I want to try to implement them!
17776 & 20020 by Jon Bois (Tarvolon)
All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu (Randomly Yours, Alex)
Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill (Alex Brown @ Punk-Ass Book Jockey)
Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill (Roseanna Pendlebury @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill (Paul Weimer @ Nerds of a Feather)
The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
A Catalog of Storms by Fran Wilde (Paul Di Filippo @ Locus)
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
The Ephemera Collector by Stacy Nathaniel Jackson (Gabino Iglesias @ Locus)
Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (Tarvolon)
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, translated by Ros Schwartz (Stewart Hotston)
If the Stars Are Lit by Sara K. Ellis (Redfern Jon Barrett @ Strange Horizons)
The Island of Last Things by Emma Sloley (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Camestros Felapton)
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (poetry.shaman)
Katabasis by R.F Kuang (Mari)
Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman, narrated by Avi Roque (Narrated Podcast)
Red City by Marie Lu (Caitlin G.)
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (Classic SF with Andy Johnson)
Sunward by William Alexander (Alex Brown @ Punk-Ass Book Jockey)
Three Eight One by Aliya Whiteley (Nicholas Whyte @ From the Heart of Europe)
The Two Lies of Faven Sythe by Megan E. O’Keefe (Rob Bedford @ SFFWorld)
The Wayfarer Redemption by Sara Douglass (Niko’s Book Reviews)
The Women of Wild Cove by J. Kelland Perry (Zoe L. Tongue @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Wednesday Season 2, Part 2 (Arturo Serrano @ Nerds of a Feather)
In other Hugo stuff, the Translated Hugo Initiative fixed their signatory page, so you can once again sign up to support the project. Kelsey from The Fancy Hat Lady Reads discussed a few categories in the Hugo Awards long list. Congrats to the Stitch & Bitch team for making the long list again! The Sword & Laser podcast discussed the Hugo and Dragon Award winners and a ton of other genre stuff.
Over at the Shades of Orange, Rachel has a recs list for 10 Dark Academia Novels to Read this Autumn. Helen Rhee has a list of books out in September from authors who are from the whole continent of Asia, Native Hawaiian, or are from other Pacific Islands. There’s always some SFF/H in her roundups. Over at Speculative Fiction in Translation, Rachel Cordasco shared the books out this month. At Reactor, Alex Brown has a list of Young Adult SFF/H coming out in September/October for us Lodestar and Andre Norton nerds. Transfer Orbit has a list of 13 September releases. At Book Riot, they’ve joined the 2026 hype train with this list of seven releases. This is where I learned that the third book in Robert Jackson Bennett’s series featuring Ana and Din is called A Trade of Blood. And my pal Charlotte was in The Bookseller with some book recs! This counts because she recs a fantasy book. :D
Also, there’s a rec list of The Best Portal Fantasy Books over at Five Books. My introduction to portal fantasy in literature was Through the Ice by Piers Anthony and Robert Kornwise. Once, long ago, I inflicted this book on my pal Ana via Fangirl Happy Hour. It went about as well as you can imagine. Anyway, I definitely could have used a better introduction! Everyone else got Chronicles of Narnia. I’m jealous.
The Rec Center dropped Issue #505, and from it I found Physical Media Is Cool Again. As someone who started collecting physical media again this year: hell yeah. The Full Lid dropped, and it was a recap of their trip to New York City! I have never been and any time someone goes I live vicariously through them. Over in short fiction land, Translunar Travelers Lounge posted Issue #13.
Mona Lisa Overpod discussed William Gibson’s Count Zero and the culture around it and Neuromancer in Episode #31. Antimatter Pod dropped Episode #212 about “Terrarium”, S3E9 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. If you’re not also reading their show notes along with the episodes, please start because they’re so good. On Episode #685 of the Coode Street Podcast, they discussed the loss of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and the Anthropic AI stuff (genAI can go away any time). On A Meal of Thorns, the topic was Authority by Jeff VanderMeer for Episode #32.
I was all over the place the last week because I finally went in and followed a bunch of people back on Bluesky. That resulted in even more cool things being boosted onto my timeline. There’s going to be a roleplaying game based on The Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemisin, and it’s available for preorder now. Nominations are open for Festivids! Will we get any Murderbot or KPop Demon Hunters vids this year? (Obviously the answer is yes.) You can follow the team over on Bluesky @festivids. Via Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, I loved looking through this gallery of fashion decisions from both the Sailor Moon manga and anime adaptation. Rei, Makoto, Haruka, and Michiru were style icons.
The trailer for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is out. If you like post-apocalypse stories or Ralph Fiennes covered in dirt, this might be your thing. Reviews are dropping for the adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk, which I didn’t even realize was a thing. It comes out this week. Here’s the trailer.
Author-wise, this week I caught lots of happenings! Most importantly, Premee Mohamed found her last missing cat. I’m now grateful I spent the money to chip my naughty boy as well as airtag him. Why do cats want to stress us out like this by going on adventures!!! Wendy N. Wagner, author of Girl in the Creek, was on Writers After Dark. Charlie Jane Anders wrote “They Call us NPCs, Because That's What they Want us To Be”. Katherine Kerr wrote “Boys' Books” and I swear I time-traveled to 2010. Sharon Shinn has a Big Idea column over at Whatever. Jo Walton shared her reading list for August 2025 and my to-read list swells once more. Jason Sanford was with the Skiffy and Fanty folks for an interview about his new book, We Who Hunt Alexanders. Kosoko Jackson, author of The Macabre, was over at The Nerd Daily for an interview. Over at Locus, there’s an excerpt from an interview with Cadwell Turnbull. Finally, on Friday, November 21, Kate Elliott and Ann Aguirre will be at Powells/Cedar Hills (Beaverton) at 7PM. Because I live in the armpit of the South and can’t afford to travel to Oregon for one book event, I need everyone to go to this event for me and have a great time. Thanks in advance. (Tell them Renay says hi.)
For even more links, be sure to catch Wombling Along for September 6! Also, reminder for Advanced TBR pile nerds to check out his “What Are You Reading?” thread for last week.
Art recs: 3 baddies with the power of music by chai (KPDH/FFX-2 crossver!); Is it spooky time yet?! by MossyPine; "I still think of you on your birthday." by Evi; and i promise, one day you will soar by ana; Owl illustration by Reimena Yee; Follow the Fox by Mali; Bobby shirt by ikimaru (KPDH); what if this part of her won by peanuttoffee (KPDH); kpop demon hunters by alinalal-art.
I’ve gone back to this post about Gurathin multiple times to wheeze laugh. I’ll be doing another comfort re-read of the book series soon (‘tis the season) and then after plan to rewatch the show, too. A first! Will this series be the thing that gets me back into writing fanfic that I can potentially share without crushing social anxiety? We shall see.
And this is not SFF related at all, but hey, I have a captive audience upon which to inflict another one of my special interests! So please be aware all the entries for the 2025 Federal Duck Stamp have been posted. You can look through them and marvel multiple times that the water you see is paint. If you look at them, please reply with your favorites. :D
That’s it for this week! Until next time, stay safe and hydrated.