Intergalactic Mixtape #33
Hey!
This is the last issue of IGMX until 2026! I’ll be back on January 1. It will be the first Winter/Spring book season for the newsletter, and I’m excited to see what everyone will be talking about in the new year (and excited to see your favorite books lists, hint hint).
Although there won’t be an issue next week, it doesn’t mean there won’t be an Activity! Everyone needs the week off to fill out the 2025 Intergalactic Mixtape Survey and stuff it full of recs. :) It’s a bit long, but all questions are optional, so feel free to pick and choose if you decide to fill it out.
This week we have a few essays, some misc links, and a review section that isn’t subtle about which book people are buzzing about.
A-Side
Some of Reactor’s Best Articles About Fiction, Reading, and Writing in 2025
This seems like a simple round up of posts from a publishing company blog. Wrong! It is, instead, an example of the power of people using the open Internet to share ideas with each other. A person spent time writing about art. The Reactor editors helped them with their vision. Now there is art for us to read. In sharing The 10 Best Book Reviews of 2025, Adam Morgan wrote on Bluesky, “Criticism is literature!” I have the seed of an idea: the rise of anti-intellectualism with the rise of microblogging social media, the rise of fascism with the rise of short form video content, where nuance goes to die. It’s the bean soup of it all. I don’t know how to connect these ideas yet, but they feel related to me as someone who has been writing on the Internet for a long time. Writing on the open internet, in long form and from a place of trying to connect with people, is now a radical act. One day perhaps I will have a longer, evidence supported take instead of just ~vibes~. Until then, Reactor’s got a whole lot of cool essays for you to read.
Stories for the masses
At Transfer Orbit, Andrew discusses the end of the mass market paperback and gives us concise history of the format. I think bought my last brand new mass market last year, when I picked up The Scavenger Door by Suzanne Palmer. My mass market versions of the first two books in the series were excellent quality. I could feel it in how they felt in my hand, the familiar weight of a book meant to travel and last. But The Scavenger Door mass market was a mess. The quality was dire, it felt like it might fall apart, the cover/pages were borked, and when I had my bookseller try to fix it, the replacement copy was even worse. I’m not surprised to hear that the format is done, which is a shame. The effects of this are going to be bad for the people downstream, too. Like me: I volunteer for my Friends of the Library used bookshop, and people are much more generous with donating their mass markets than the more expensive trade and hardcover to help us raise money for our library. But then again, I think of the popularity of vinyl records now and wonder. These markets are, as ever, controlled by the demand from people when publishers stop chasing infinite profit. It could be that in twenty or thirty years, we’ll see their triumphant return.
A few tidbits:
If there’s not some kind of Merriam/Webster fanfic after this, I’m rioting.
This essay at Inner Spiral powered this issue.
How to avoid AI audiobooks on Libby. Those guys can kick rocks.
This is the only place to get official, approved-by-the-author merch for Murderbot online. No, none of those raggedy T-shirt sellers on Instagram are above board. I will eat them.
Chloe N. Clark asked people what art brought them joy. People answered.
Reviews/Discussions
Against a Dark Background by Iain M. Banks (Gabe @ Pedals and Pages)
Artifact Space by Miles Cameron (Randomly Yours, Alex)
Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold (Niko’s Book Reviews)
The City of Others by Jared Poon (Sia @ Every Book a Doorway)
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Bailey/greekchoir)
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Bill Capossere @ FanLit)
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Rob Bedford @ SFF World)
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Andrew Liptak @ Transfer Orbit)
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Joshua MacDougall @ Geekly, Inc)
The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson (Shannon Fay @ Strange Horizons)
Made Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Mark Yon @ SFF World)
Made Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky (T.O. Munro @ The Fantasy Hive)
Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung (Molly Templeton @ Reactor)
No One to Hold the Distant Dead by K.L. Schroeder (Fiction Fans Podcast))
The Poison Song by Jen Williams (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
Predator: Badlands (2025) (Overinvested Podcast)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Danika Ellis @ The Lesbrary)
Rumor Has It by Cat Rambo (Paul Weimer @ Nerds of a Feather)
Swordheart by T. Kingfisher (Books That Burn Podcast)
Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz (Jenny Hamilton @ Reactor)
B-Side
We’re in favorites/best of season! Even so, there are still new books. Locus’s New Books video is out with the handful of books out this week. But that’s the only one I came across; finally the retrospective and anticipated lists took over. I debated how to link these, and decided that maybe a straight list would be best to make browsing through the options easier.
The ten best SF books I read in 2025 — Classic SF with Andy Johnson
Roseanna is doing a thread of book recommendations on Bluesky
The Very Best Books of Q4 in 2025 - Jenny @ Reading the End
Notable Young Adult Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror of 2025 - Alex Brown @ Reactor
Best Science Fiction Published in 2025 - Rachel @ Shades of Orange
Top 10 Fantasy Published in 2025 - Rachel @ Shades of Orange
The Best Fantasy and Science-Fiction Books of 2025 - Elle Magazine
20 Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Authors Pick Their Favorite Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books of 2025 - Gizmodo
The first 2026 anticipated video I saw this year was this one by Caitlin (who writes reviews at Realms of My Mind). I’m sure there will be more. Maybe you will write one?
Over at Five Books, Sylvia Bishop discussed the 2025 Hugo Award winners. Roseanna wraps up her close read of The Fellowship of the Ring, while Abigail Nussbaum begins a chapter-by-chapter reread of The Lord of the Rings, with a banger introductory essay. I also learned about a new podcast from her post. This is a good example of why you talk about projects you like regularly. It’s noisy out there!
Narrated Podcast talked about some of the series they’ve been reading in 2025. Alex Brown dropped their must read short fiction for November. Antimatter Pod covered Star Trek: Deep Space 9‘s “You Are Cordially Invited”, and y’all listening to the episodes are also reading the show notes? Yes? Just checking. Octothorpe Episode #150 is out, the last of 2025, with news from SMOFCon. If you want a deep dive into future Worldcons, you will be well-fed.
FIYAH dropped the cover (by Kymani Gayle, whose IG is here, maybe?) and TOC for Issue #37. Did you know you can gift someone a FIYAH subscription? Treat the short speculative fiction fan in your life. Cadwell Turnbull did an AMA on Reddit. Sophie Burnham was on Skiffy and Fanty. There’s an interview with Maddie Martinez, author of The Maiden and Her Monster at Nerd Daily. Martin Cahill has an interview with Victor Manibo, author of The Villa, Once Beloved, at Reactor. The Coode Street Podcast continues their advent calendar episode series with several authors: Theodora Goss, Wole Talabi, Michael Swanwick, Kim Stanley Robinson, Alastair Reynolds, Ray Nayler, and Natalia Theodoridou.
For more fun SFF links and round-ups, don’t miss last week’s Wombling Along.
Art recs: Princess Mononoke by Mike Maihack; watcher in the leaves by Mx Morgan; Brioche the Doughmancer by Gaziter; Do you Recall the Time Before the Breaking of the Ring of Sun by Beren; sketching little mice by The Hermit of Everything; extremely realistic brachiosaurus reconstruction by mossworm; Moon and sky by Dominique Ramsey; must complete their collection by Will Quinn
Outro
This week, I shared some of my Hugo nominations for next year, mostly in the Best Dramatic Presentation and the fan categories (because we desperately need more participation in those categories). It is Very Earnest.
That wraps up 2025 for Intergalactic Mixtape! Thanks for allowing me into your inboxes/feeds this year. I hope you’ve discovered a new book or a new artist to enjoy, or been inspired to start writing yourself! Here’s to 2026, and all the good books we’ll be reading in the new year. Have a relaxing year end. :)