Hey!

The year is wrapping up and things are slowing down in my corners. Next week will be the last issue of the year before the holidays, so depending on what fandom does, it could be a normal issue or be stuffed so full it’s overwhelming (no in-between).

Next week will also have the debut of the Intergalactic Mixtape Survey, a large survey meant to slurp up all your recs, anonymously. It was supposed to be done this week, but instead I accidentally reread the entire Murderbot Diaries.

A-Side

Anatomy of a Sex Scene: Heated Rivalry Edition
Do you ever want to crawl into someone’s brain and watch them create hilarious sentences that leave you wheezing? That’s how I feel any time Jenny writes for her blog. I haven’t watched Heated Rivalry. I haven’t read the book (and apparently it’s hard to get the book now?). But I did stop and read every word of this, spoilers and all, twice, cackling throughout (a scholar of boning). Not that it matters; romance can’t truly be spoiled for me because it’s about the journey. It’s about the yearning. Jenny’s analysis of romance and the importance of sex scenes to plot and characterization is delightful and educational.

everyone HATES a negative review
Marines digs into that age old topic: who are reviews for? What are fan/reader spaces? What do reviewers owe authors and vice versa? I once attempted to talk about this topic and an editor got so emotionaly dysregulated he sent the entire SFF internet on Twitter after me. Professionals lost their minds about being told there might be a power imbalance re: them going into fan/reviewer spaces about their own work, even if they were also fans. It’s a fraught topic, and it comes around again and again. It’s wild to see that there’s a new generation of authors having to discover that, yes! There is a difference between being, as Marines says, a canonical power (the author) versus an interpretive power (a fan). I loved all of her points. If you’re looking for a Reviewing Discourse podcast for your next Boring Life Task, I highly recommend her video.

Hollywood is Dead. Long Live Hollywood.
I didn’t have a lot of initial thoughts about Netflix trying to buy Warner Brothers and setting off a whole industry earthquake, only a sinking feeling. However, my second reaction was that the last thing we need is more consolidation. In the U.S., anti-trust law has been dead for a long time and won’t be enforced here, so there are only two outcomes, both bad for artists and fans. This long essay by Vance over at Nerds of a Feather connects the history of Hollywood and how we ended up at this moment. He highlights and expands on my primary worry: there will be even fewer options for us nerds who like weird, risky, or niche stories. Relatedly, it’s never a bad time to invest in physical media again.

Reviews/Discussions

The Art of Legend by Wesley Chu (Adrienne Martini @ Locus)
Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill (Fiction Fans Podcast)
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Nileena Sunil @ Strange Horizons)
Bloodtide by Sophie Burnham (Paul Weimer @ Nerds of a Feather)
Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree (Mark Yon @ SFF World)
Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree (Vinay Vasan @ The Fantasy Hive)
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (Realms of my Mind)
The Dead Withheld by L.D. Lewis (Randomly Yours, Alex)
The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke (Alan Brown @ Reactor)
Every Galaxy a Circle by Chloe N. Clark (Trish Matson @ Skiffy and Fanty)
Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings (Roseanna Pendlebury @ Strange Horizons)
Mirror Marked by Vida Cruz-Borja (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
Psychopomp and Circumstance by Eden Royce (Jenny Hamilton @ Reactor)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, narrated by Daphne Kouma (Narrated Podcast)
Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei (Molly Templeton @ Reactor)
Slayers of Old by Jim C. Hines (Green Team of the Legendarium Podcast)
There Is No Anti-Memetics Division by qntm (Sasha Bonkowsky @ Reactor)
Welcome to Olympus, Mr. Hearst by Kage Baker (Brian Collins @ SFF Remembrance)
The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
Zootopia 2 (2025) (Arturo Serrano @ Nerds of a Feather)

B-Side

New 2025 book lists are slowly being overtaken by 2026 Anticipated Books lists as the year ends, but December books deserve their flowers, too! Helen Rhee has a short list of books out from authors from the entire continent of Asia and the Pacific Islands and the Locus new books video is live.

In awards news, the deadline to become a member of the World Science Fiction Society and nominate for the Hugo Award is January 31, 2026. There’s a handy new guide on participating, because after last year I decided that telling people “it’s fun to take part, but it’s complicated!” is silly and scares people away, when it’s easier than say, dealing 1:1 with an ISP or doing an online product return. The Nommo Awards were given, and Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase took home Best Novel. Sylvia Bishop talked about five of the fantasy award winners from 2025 over at Five Books.

Myna Chang has a flash fiction round up for October and November. A.C. Wise shared her favorite collections and novellas of 2025. She’s also still collecting eligibility posts from authors, which is an incredible resource. Ancillary Review of Books has their eligibility post out and there’s also an eligibility post from Strange Horizons. These posts are good discovery engines for the individual writers, all of which are likely eligibe for Best Fan Writer Hugo or comparable categories of the other SFF awards. As the ARB editors said, “We’ll be the first to admit that awards are often strange, frequently goofy. However, the work that awards do—in creating a record for future readers, in prompting analyses and sparking conversations—keeps us interested and at least lightly invested.” What must it be like to only be lightly invested in awards season? That’s another country.

The Supergirl teaser trailer is out, which I enjoyed because I didn’t realize we were getting a Supergirl film. I thought this year’s Superman was one of the most successful film outings for the character in a long time. The new Letterboxd video rental portal is open, and a horror movie that several film critics I follow loved is available. It Ends is on the Unreleased Gems shelf. It’s pricey, but the film is not available anywhere else right now. James Islington’s Hierarchy series has been optioned by Sony for an adaptation. What I know about this series: the first book has a big cliffhanger and the fans were heated about the change to the covers when the books were released in the U.S. Should I read these books? I’ve gone back and forth for months.

Antimatter Pod covered Star Trek: TNG episode, Data’s Day, where Spot (very critical character for me) debuts. Coode Street continued their podcast advent calendar with short episodes with Adrian Tchaikovsky, Nancy Kress, Aliya Whitely, Isabel J. Kim, Paul McAuley, Emily Tesh, James Bradley, and Nnedi Okorafor. There’s a new episode of Critical Friends, an episode of Octothorpe that dropped last week (their episodes are great but their episode titles are greater—I never know what I’m about to put in my ears), and an episode of Functional Nerds who chatted with Marie Lu.

Freya Marske will have a new book, Bodies of Magic, out next year from Tor. I will read anything she does, even dark academia. Her new novella, Cinder House, is buzzing right now, but I reread A Marvellous Light earlier this year and it remains stellar. If you’re looking for some grimdark recs by women writers, there’s the Greekchoir Grimdark Girls starter pack. My contribution was Kameron Hurley, although I can’t be 100% sure because I was never brave enough to attempt The Mirror Empire.

For more interesting SFF links and round-ups, don’t miss last week’s Wombling Along.

Art recs: Fall Phoenix by Aled Thompson; birb on a branch by Anaïs Faë; Peppermint Lemon by Zuccnini; a bird dragon by Ello; Salmon fishing! by Danny!; Comet by parker parrella; Hair styling by gdbee; seasonal frog by Linnea Sterte

Outro

Please go read all the quotes on my post about the value of telling people you like their art, even if (like me) it makes you feel silly/embarrassed/too perceived.

That’s it for this week! Have a great weekend.