Intergalactic Mixtape #28
Hey!
It was a pretty quiet week as the year winds down, but I’ve slowly started making both my 2026 reading list and my 2019 reading list, which is part of my reading redux project. I like to make a point to focus on older titles as well as newer, since newer titles take up so much oxygen in the Discourse. Plus, why have one reading list when you can have multiple?
A-Side
Reacting to the 2025 Fantasy & Sci-fi Goodreads Choice Awards Nominees
Tori looked at the finalists for this year’s Goodreads Choice Awards. I’m still salty they don’t allow you to write in a finalist during the opening round anymore. I’m also still not sure how they choose books to be on the list. I agree with Tori that the science fiction lists skews toward literary SF rather the genre SF. Both are good! But I really wish we were in a moment for strong, hard genre SF getting some recognition. Other subgenres are ascendent at the moment! My time will come again; I will wait. Interesting to me is how these overlap with the Top 20 SFF Books of the Year from Amazon. These corpo lists tell the commercial story, which is different than the reader story, which is the moment I’m waiting for. (Yes, I did dust off my Goodreads account to vote for The Raven Scholar.)
In Severance, the perfect work-life balance is a horrific illusion
I recently finished the available seasons of Severance. I’m trying to read as much explicitly season 1 commentary without too much bleed from season 2, which does drastically deepen the show’s mythology and also rachets up the horror elements. This essay from Arturo Serrano was the first I read, and is a good overview of the first season. I like Arturo’s TV/film analysis a lot because he’s good at highlighting the visual storytelling I miss due to not being a film critic. (If you know of other Severance reviews/discussion, hit me up.)
There’s potentially going to be a new Mummy movie with Fraser and Weisz, and the nostalgia addict in me is extremely interested despite my logic brain reservations. These films are so deeply racist and messy even when they do a lot of characterization/pacing things right, so I don’t know whether it’s wise to bring them back to modern audiences and make them newly relevant. Someone please write them a brand new romantic fantasy adventure comedy instead to take advantage of their great chemistry together.
Reviews/Discussions
Artifact Space by Miles Cameron (Sia @ Every Book a Doorway
Birth of a Dyncasty by Chinaza Bado (Daniel Haeusser @ Skiffy and Fanty)
The Brutal Moon by Bethany Jacobs (Realms of My Mind)
Coldwire by Chloe Gong (Abigail Stevens @ The Fantasy Hive)
Colourfields by Paul Kincaid (Shinjini Dey @ Strange Horizons)
Dead Hand Rule by Max Gladstone (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer (Green Team of the Legendarium)
The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley (Clara Cohen @ Nerds of a Feather)
The Mercy Makers by Tessa Gratton (Liz Bourke @ Locus)
A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo (Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus)
The Nameless Land by Kate Elliott (Niko’s Book Review)
On the Calculation of Volume (Book III) by Solvej Balle, translated by Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell (Rachel Cordasco @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston (Trish Matson @ Skiffy and Fanty)
Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
A Red-Rose Chain by Seanan McGuire (Only The Best Fantasy Novels)
Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
Spread Me by Sarah Gailey (Bonnie McDaniel @ Red Headed Femme)
Spread Me by Sarah Gailey (Ian Mond @ Locus)
The Strength of the Few by James Islington (Tori Morrow)
Song of Spores by Bogi Takács (Alex Brown @ Punk-Ass Book Jockey)
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (Tarvolon)
An Unbreakable World by Ren Hutchings (Paul Di Filippo @ Locus)
The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott (Kristen @ Fantasy Cafe)
B-Side
The 2025 British Fantasy Award winners were announced.
Over at Books, Bones, & Buffy, Tammy shares a list of 26 science fiction books dropping in 2026. TIME has a list of 100 Must-Read books from 2025, and there are several genre options. At Reactor, there’s a list for most anticipated Young Adult SFF/H for the rest of November and December. Another list for Novellavember: Alex Brown recs five novellas for those of us who haven’t quite reached our 2025 reading goals. In the same vein, the Narrated Podcast covered a whole slew of novellas on Episode #333.
Jo Walton shared her October 2025 reading list. Hugo, Girl! has a new Happy Hour episode out. At the story ain’t over, Jananie does a deep dive into dark academia. Roseanna has the latest entry in her deep dive analysis of The Lord of the Rings. Next week, Kristen from Fantasy Cafe will be doing another book rec session in collaboration with the Ashland Public Library, and everyone can sign up to attend the Zoom stream. Womble wrote up a con report from World Fantasy 2025 in Brighton. Sword & Laser dropped Episode #522 and covered recent awards and a few different books. Over on Youtube, Locus has their new book video for the week.
It’s not just us fans getting ready to lock in on recommendations for the year. Folks are starting to roll out eligibility posts, and A.C. Wise collects them each year. This is a great resource, especially to see if an author you love is there and if they have any work you missed.
Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim has a cover. If you want signed books from John Scalzi for the holidays, he coordinates with a local bookstore where you can order. Wole Talabi announced a new book on his blog, The Fist of Memory. The cover for World's Okayest Oracle (Reluctantly) Seeks Demon by Olivia Dade is super cute.
At Reactor, Christina Orlando interviewed Vajra Chandrasekera, who just won the Le Guin Prize for Rakesfall. Beth Cato, author of A House Between Sea and Sky, was on Episode #684 The Functional Nerds. Kate Elliott did a book chat with Niko’s Book Reviews. At The Fantasy Hive, there’s an interview with Claire North, author of Slow Gods. Stewart Hotston has a Big Idea column for his new book, Project Hanuman, over at Whatever. Theodora Goss, author of Letters from an Imaginary Country, also has a Big Idea. Book excerpts: This Gilded Abyss by Rebecca Thorne; Break Wide the Sea by Sara Holland; The Seventh Champion by Sylvia Mercedes;
As always, if you want more links, catch last week’s edition of Wombling Along.
Art recs: garden snail by Nicole; ducks in the rain by Charlene Chua; Little Sunfish and Heal a Broken Heart by GDbee; murderhelion feed cuddles by omagpies; this machine kills fascists (cross stitch pattern) by amandasmith
Outro
What better way to open the holiday season than with a Stranger Things series marathon? My partner hasn’t seen it and I’ve only see a few seasons, so that’s where I’ll be for the next few weeks.
This week I posted my review of The Nameless Land by Kate Elliott, the final book in the Witch Roads duology. If you’re into political fantasy novels with a sprinkle of romance and some sentient zombie mushrooms, you might like it! If you’ve already read it and like the world, there’s more to look forward to in 2027.
That’s it! Have a great weekend. — Renay
Thanks for reading this issue of Intergalactic Mixtape! To drop a book rec for a future issue, use this form. Link suggestions can be sent in using this form. You can also subscribe via RSS, view the newsletter archive, or find Renay on bluesky/tumblr/carrd.