Intergalactic Mixtape #22
Hey!
This week, I learned how to turn on the newsletter archives and make them searchable, after 22 weeks. :D Technology: 1, Renay: 0.
Welcome to October! Now that September has wrapped up the reading month, I would like to put together a “Intergalactic Mixtape Readers Recommend” rec list for the month! Please share your favorite science fiction, fantasy, or speculative horror reads from September via the book rec form. All publication years welcome!
A-Side
I have been busy the last few weeks, so haven’t been reading a lot of essays (do you know of a great SFF essay? It doesn’t have to be new! I love older work. Send it my way!). What I have been reading, because I’ve been on Tumblr: headcanons for The Murderbot Diaries. This week, please enjoy this Short Rec List of headcanons from fans of our beloved SecUnit and Pals.
Network Effect from Seth’s Perspective
I’ve linked this recently! I keep coming back to so I can giggle at the whole thing, because it’s so good. Therefore, I must link it again!
Ratthi loves Sanctuary Moon
My favorite thing about lines like this is that they are short but they open up all these incredible moments if you, like me, have Fanfic Brain. It’s a spiral of imagining all the hilarious moments when SecUnit uses a line and thinks: that was comforting/badass/cool and then Ratthi pops up with episode citations and time stamps, and SecUnit must then deal with the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known.
Being in the head of another SecUnit that’s…normal
I don’t know if Three will make future appearances in the series, but that’s okay because I can tell fandom is about to have a great time with them.
You can’t be an ex-SecUnit until you’re dead
This is art that got reblogged around and people added amazing tags and commentary about becoming a person.
I would absolutely read a Murderbot Diaries Daemon AU
I love fans. Fans are great.
Miki is THE client in Rogue Protocol
I loved this insight on Rogue Protocol, because it’s easy to assume that the humans are the clients, because we’re coming off Artificial Condition where the clients were human. Of course, this reading is heartbreaking for multiple reasons. Fans are great but will rip your heart out.
SecUnit and ART as fandom participants
I love this so much especially that we now have them doing canonical vidding.
Reviews/Discussions
The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed (Jacqueline Nyathi @ Strange Horizons)
Alien: Earth (2025) (Arturo Serrano @ Nerds of a Feather)
Blood for the Undying Throne by Sung-il Kim, translated by Anton Hur (Rachel Cordasco @ SF in Translation)
Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee (Alex Brown @ Reactor)
The Death of Mountains by Jordan Kurella (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
Dredd (2012) (Octothorpe)
Fate's Bane by C. L. Clark (Roseanna @ Nerds of a Feather)
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Fiction Fans Podcast)
Hearthspace by Stephen Baxter (Mark Yon @ SFF World)
The Heist of Hollow London by Eddie Robson (Trish Matson @ Skiffy and Fantasy)
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher (Bonnie McDaniel @ Red Headed Femme)
Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings (Molly Templeton @ Reactor)
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Bonnie McDaniel @ Red Headed Femme)
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (greekchoir/Bailey)
The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar (Abigail Nussbaum @ Locus)
The Man Who Saw Seconds by Alexander Boldizar (Hugos, There!)
Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction by Men: No Plans for the Future by Sara Martin (Paul Weimer @ Skiffy and Fanty)
The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai (Alex Brown @ Reactor)
The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
Moonflow by Bitter Karella (Abigail Nussbaum @ Locus)
The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King (Tarvolon)
Queen Demon by Martha Wells (Liz Bourke @ Locus)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Alina’s Library)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Susanne Salehi @ The Lesbrary)
Road to Ruin by Hana Lee (Caelin @ The Lesbrary)
The Shattering Peace by John Scalzi (Narrated Podcast)
Sky on Fire by E.K. Johnston (Liz Bourke @ a garden from the libraries)
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow (Randomly Yours, Alex)
A Sword of Gold and Ruin by Anna Smith Spark (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986) (Hugo, Girl! Live)
These Memories Do Not Belong To Us by Yiming Ma (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
(If there’s a review you’d like me to check out, feel free to rec it!)
B-Side
The lists have started rolling in! Transfer Orbit has 17 more sci-fi, fantasy, and horror books to close out September with, and the October 2025 Table of Contents column collecting the short fiction TOCs of multiple genre magazines. The September edition was also updated. Gizmodo has its usual TBR danger zone list of 116 New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror books dropping in October.
10 new books I read and loved in 2025 from Maria Haskins is the first 2025 favorites collection I’ve seen so far, although it’s more open-ended. She also did a massive deep dive in the Strange Horizons archives and built an incredible rec list of stories going back to 2000. This is the good stuff.
(This is a great time to remind everyone to go share your favorite SFF book you read in September 2025 via the book rec form! We can build an incredible rec list together.)
Magic: The Gathering continues to have sets that make my wallet cry. Next year, there are a bunch of cool sets coming out, but the one I’m most interested in is Star Trek. MTG decided not to wait for the debate over “is science fiction just part of the fantasy genre?” to dive right in and so far, I’ve really loved how they do it. And it looks like there will be more Final Fantasy cards, too. In other adaptation news, there’s a full trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and the vibe is right. I also caught a teaser trailer for We Bury the Dead, starring Daisy Ridley. Zombies are back!
Dina at SFF Book Reviews posted The State of SFF for October 2025. I always appreciate these wrap ups, although they are dangerous for my TBR. In one month, it will be time for SciFi Month 2025! I find so many cool recs through this project so I’m rubbing my hands together gleefully. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog has two posts about “nuclear war depicted in cinema and television”: The Nukes Of Hazard and Bunker Mentality. They also recently updated their list of labor unions in SFF, which is a great resource. Over at Ancillary Review of Books, Wow! Signal is out for September, and this is always a great collection of critical writing. They also have their Calls for Reviews & Essays: January 2026 out, if you want to look over the items they’re interested in coverage for to see if something jumps out at you. They also take pitches!
Roseanna continues her slow read and discussion of Lord of the Rings with chapters 6 - 9, and this is where I had to define the term “scansion”, because it has been long enough since my degree program I forgot. :D Truly, reading Roseanna’s redicoversy and analysis of this book is both intellectually stimulating and relaxing at the same time, and I can’t explain why.
OTHERSIDE, a new queer-led speculative fiction magazine, launched their Kickstarter and immediately blew by their initial goal. There are some stretch goals left, though! Apex Magazine also has a freshly launched Kickstarter project.
Excerpts-wise, there’s one for The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake by Rachel Linden; The Sleepless by Jen Williams; and Savage Blooms by S.T. Gibson.
Kate Elliott will be in conversation with Ann Aguirre in Beaverton, Oregon on November 21 and they’ll sign books! You can preorder The Nameless Land, sequel to The Witch Roads, and get hyped! Martha Wells will also be on tour soon, and all the dates are listed here. I need someone to go to both of the above events so I can live vicariously through you (and you can tell them I said hi). If U.S. readers want any signed copies of any of Shannon Chakraborty’s books, now's the time, as she’s partnered with a bookstore to make it happen. The deadline is November 15.
Paul Semel has an interview with Premee Mohamed. In Clarkesworld, Arley Sorg has an interview with Ken Liu. Yume Kitasei, author of Saltcrop, has an interview at Nerdy Daily. John Scalzi was on the book tour for The Shattering Peace and did an event at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore, who shared the recording on their Youtube page. Beth Cato, author of A House Between Sea and Sky, did an AMA on r/fantasy. Fran Wilde, author of A Catalog of Storms, was on The Nerd Count Podcast. Marie Brennan, who just won the first Best Poetry Hugo, was interviewed in Interstellar Flight Magazine.
As always, for more SFF links, don’t miss last week’s edition of Wombing Along.
Art recs: Spooky Intro by La Fumettista; Happy October 1st! & Leafy tumble by Aubo; sunny autumn days by Cloudy; Mycella Nightcap by Yuumei; Witchy Yard Sale by Maxine Vee; Forbidden Facility by miski & Natasha Tara Petrović; happy autumn equinox! by parker parrella; It’s soup season! by Jennie; welcome autumn! by Nicole; baby blue by meyo; cactus kitties by Ida; Magical bunnies, large and small by Marissa
And! Every October, one of my favorite Halloween comics goes around on Tumblr. I reblogged it recently because it’s that time of year, so I finally took the time to track down the artist, Heather Franzen. The comic is called Scaredy Cat. It’s wordless and adorable and perfect. She even turned it into a little book. Even if you don’t know her name, I bet you’ll recognize the comic. :)
Outro
I have recently completed my shelf trophy set of The Murderbot Diaries (I own all the audiobooks already). What I didn’t realize was: Tordotcom is into torture.
I will continue to hold out hope for nice collector’s editions one day. It could happen!
That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend.