Hey!

This week, there’s some great essays, more best of lists, more anticipated lists, and the start of the 2026 book award season (although it’s always awards season in my heart).

Books that came into my house this week. At least I only bought one? :D?

A-Side

Resisting the Hivemind: Pluribus, Generative AI, and Empire
Jenny gave me the link to this essay yesterday. I read it once, read it a second time, read part of it out loud to my partner and sent it to him to finish, and forwarded it along to some pals. We finished Pluribus last week and this is the first big essay I’ve read about the full season. It’s a banger that digs into not just the show, but the technofascist hellscape we’re all living in right now and how the show is reflecting that back at us. If you’ve watched the show, don’t miss this essay!

REVIEW: Old Man's War series by John Scalzi - Part 1
Last year I reread the entire Old Man’s War series in preparation for The Shattering Peace. It was an interesting exercise in going back to older SF—the first book was out in 2005—and seeing what the series was interested in over the different publication eras. There’s the original trilogy and companion novel, Zoe’s Tale. The next era were the short fiction releases that were then collected into two books, The Human Division and The End of All Things. Now we have The Shattering Peace, the third era (and maybe more? The door is wide open!). This review of the first five captured something I hadn’t been able to verbalize about the big ideas Scalzi sets up. Things are constantly in movement in his stories, with not a ton of time for reflection. That’s not to say he doesn’t deal with anything—the whole series is the characters going, “wow, so we’re the baddies” and an authoritarian space military getting smacked on the nose with a rolled up newspaper in the form of an alien coalition sick of humanity’s nonsense. One day someone will study empire in 2000 - 2020 space operas, publish a book about it, and I’ll be in heaven.

Why one small American town won’t stop stoning its residents to death
Not to sneak uninvited into The Rec Center’s lane, but this cropped up multiple times on my skyline with effusive praise until I had to read it. The additional tag is the summary: "Isaac Chotiner interviews the guy who runs the lottery in Shirley Jackson's ‘The Lottery.’” When I got to the detail about COVID deaths, I scream-laughed and woke up my cats. Apparently there’s a push to get this nominated for a Hugo Award (best short story?), which is possibly the only way anything related to The New Yorker will come near the genre award space.

Reviews/Discussions

An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole (Emily M. @ The Nerd Daily)
Asunder by Kerstin Hall (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
The Brides of High Hill & A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
Counterweight by Djuna, translated by Anton Hur (Nat Harrington @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Countess by Suzan Palumbo (Susanne Salehi @ The Lesbrary)
From These Dark Abodes by Lyndsie Manusos (Roseanna Pendlebury @ Ancillary Review of Books)
God’s Junk Drawer by Peter Clines (Paul Di Filippo @ Locus)
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov (Hugo, Girl! Podcast)
Ice by Jacek Dukaj, translated by Ursula Phillips (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
Lame Fate/Ugly Swans by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, translated by Maya Vinokour (Rachel Cordasco @ SF in Translation)
Letters from an Imaginary Country by Theodora Goss (Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus)
Lives of Bitter Rain by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Russell Letson @ Locus)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Tar Vol on)
The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson (Abigail Nussbaum @ Locus)
The Shamshine Blind by Paz Pardo (Anne @ The Lunar Flaneur)
Slow Gods by Claire North, narrated by Peter Kenny (Narrated Podcast)
Song of the Beast by Carol Berg (Only The Best Fantasy Novels)
The Swan’s Daughter by Roshani Chokshi (Nils Shukla @ The Fantasy Hive)
A Sword of Gold and Ruin by Anna Smith Spark (T.O. Munro @ The Fantasy Hive)
We Will Rise Again edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, and Malka Older (Alex Kingsley @ Strange Horizons)

B-Side

We’re halfway through January and the awards season has formally started with the announcement of the 2026 Philip K. Dick Award finalists.

Sunward by William Alexander (Saga Press)
Outlaw Planet by M. R. Carey (Orbit)
Casual by Koji A. Dae (Tenebrous Press)
The Immeasurable Heaven by Caspar Geon (Solaris)
Uncertain Sons by Thomas Ha (Undertow Publications)
Scales by Christopher Hinz (Angry Robot)
City of All Seasons by Oliver K. Langmead and Aliya Whiteley (Titan Books)

The PKD award is for the best science fiction published in paperback. The mix of publishers is also nice to see. I have read zero (0) of the finalists, which is pretty normal for me with this award.

In other awards news, A.C. Wise has updated the big collection of eligibility posts, a great resource for readers. The Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom is also starting to hop; we’ve already had one case of someone deleting an entire column (this happens at least a few times a year by accident, along with deleting entire sheets). The deadline for being a nominating WSFS member of LAcon V is on January 31; you don’t have to be deeply well read in 2025 SFF. If you loved something last year and want to nominate it, come join us in our big nerdy book club. It being January, that means that lots of reviewers are already months deep into 2026 releases, so the 2027 Hugo sheet also exists and can be bookmarked for use throughout 2026!

There are still lists! Strange Horizons posted Part Three of 2025 in Review. Niko’s Book Review talked about 2025 favorites with a twist that it’s full of backlist books. The Lesbrary shared their favorite sapphic reads from last year, with lots of genre options. Narrated Podcast shared their anticipated reads of 2026. Hugos There Podcast did a 2025 favorites recap, too. Christina Orlando over at Reactor posted some upcoming 2026 titles and now I will be reading a fantasy novel titled Bromantasy. It will be similar to last year where I read Behooved, the romantasy where the love interest gets magicked and shapeshifts into a horse. Kristen at Fantasy Cafe has her list of anticipated reads, and I’ve seen enough people mention The Book of Fallen Leaves by A.S. Tamaki that I’m intrigued. If you read YA, Alex Brown has a big list of SFF/H YA coming out in January and February. The State of SFF is out from SFF Book Reviews. Eddie Clark has a thread and a nested thread of anticipated 2026 books; there’s lots of high profile stuff, but some titles I hadn’t seen anywhere else.

It’s all sold out now, but for a hot minute there was a $1000 version of The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I would never encourage anyone to buy a $1000 book, but I will encourage everyone to look at the pretty art. This post about Jupiter Ascending…yes. This thread by Jenny, responding to an article about Heated Rivalry, isn’t SFF specific…except for how we’ve been having these conversations about M/M romance in fandom/genre spaces forever. All her thoughts are excellent. The cover of Call Me Traitor by Everina Maxwell has me by the throat. The artist is Eliot Baum.

The full Season 2 trailer for One Piece dropped, and it looks incredible. I’m very excited that we’re finally going to meet two of my favorite characters (Vivi and Robin). What’s going to be really weird for me is that David Dastmalchiann plays Mr. 3 (incredible casting), but I spent 2025 obsessing over/rewatching Murderbot, so it’s going to be a hard shift for me. I suspect this is part of my anti-faceblindness (does this have a name?). I’m also very pumped for The Sheep Detectives, an adaptation of Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. And since there are legit trailers for the latest Magic: The Gathering set, it’s worth a watch if you like muppet musicals. I’m excited for Lorwyn Eclipsed, but I’m also poor. :D

Last year, Roseanna did a close reading of the first book in The Lord of the Rings. It seems like there’s something in the air, because last year Abigail Nussbaum announced a reread and then got started with A Long-Expected Party and The Shadow of the Past. A podcast that Abigail shared, Shelved By Genre, are doing a reread/discussion series. Nick Hubble is also doing a reread. Is anyone else out there digging into this series? It feels like Tolkien fever!

In short fiction news, Andrew Liptak has the first 2026 Table of Contents column out. This tracks the TOCs of short fiction magazines, and he updates previous versions with links, too. Womble read and reviewed Interzone 303. This year I’m still following FIYAH, which is well worth a subscription, and I will toss in another rec for The WYRMHOLE, for short fiction recs.

There are several excerpts floating around: To Ride a Rising Storm by Moniquill Blackgoose (out Jan 27), Queen of Faces by Petra Lord (out Feb 3), Twelve Months by Jim Butcher (out Jan 20), and Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire, which is already out. At Nerds of a Feather, there’s an interview with Erin M. Evans, author of Relics of Ruin, which won the 2025 Endeavour Award. Paul Semel has an interview with the author of City Of Others, Jared Poon. SFF Addicts has an interview with Nicole Glover, author of The Starseekers.

For more great links, remember to check out Wombling Along.

Art recs: Supurrnova by gdbee; mulot sur pomme by Victoria Maderna; birbfest days 7-12 by Adam; Some sun would be very much appreciated! by Natalia Zaitseva; Jean Grey by Mike Maihack; Celestial Reunion by Serena Malyon; Adorned with memories by Dominique Ramsey

Outro

I’m looking to ~expand my reach~ in 2026, so if you know of a great SFF review blog/channel (it’s most helpful if they have an RSS feed, but it’s not required), please let me know about it!

I’m very attached to the below song, because a) Heated Rivalry, and b) I happened to see a TikTok video of the artist’s reaction and it was wholesome. Love to see artists succeed! The show used music in such a powerful way.

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