Hey!

Next week is Intergalactic Mixtape’s one year anniversary! I can’t believe it’s been a year already. To celebrate, Buttondown ate my first draft of this issue and I had to rewrite it. Goodbye, art recs that I hope I can rediscover and nerdy jokes I’ll never remember. I’m sure you would have made at least a few people chuckle.

In this issue we have critical fan journalism news, some Hugo commentary from the video folks, and reviews as usual! Art recs will return next week now that I’ve learned Buttondown may betray me. 😂

A-Side

(Re)Introducing Fansplaining
I loved the Fansplaining podcast. Elizabeth Minkel and Flourish Klink were always such curious, thorough hosts, welcoming on a wide-range of guests and helping to explain and contextualize fandom. I always learned a lot from their episodes. I have a lot of affection for fandom projects (no, really?!) and so I was over the moon when I learned Fansplaining was returning as a fan journalism platform (and that the older content will still be available for discovery). I’m so excited to see where the project goes.

What fantasy books do you think will be classics in the future?
The discussion question at Pages Unbound this week was about predicting the future! “Classic” depends on so much context and social privilege, and often, how many Earth rotations we’ve each collected. Then, because publishing is weird and fickle to skilled artists, that throws in another wrench. We can’t forget indie books, because those have a place in the ecosystem now. It’s tempting to use individual award lists, but those are for the present moment. They’re still fun historical documents, though! My guesses, because fantasy is not my main genre: N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth, Katherine Addison’s The Chronicles of Osreth, and Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower, which I will single-handedly keep relevant through individual handselling and peer pressure.

“Do we have a Tor problem, or do we have an everything else problem?”
This thread by Jake Casella Brookins, the quoted post, and the discussion that spiraled out from both were really interesting. Bluesky threads suck to navigate, but I’m linking to it, anyway, because I thought the back and forth raised a lot of good questions. It did make me think: have the magazines stopped publishing novellas as much because of Tor’s dominance, or are they still doing so but don’t have the marketing budget for the type of promotion they’d need to get traction so the novellas are getting lumped in with the shorter fiction? Time for an investigation.

Reviews/Discussions

The Body Builders by Albertine Clarke (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
The Coincidence Makers by Yoav Blum, translated by Ira Moskowitz (Rachel Cordasco @ SF in Translation)
The Dead Withheld by L.D. Lewis (Maya C. James @ Locus)
Death in the Promised Land by Pat Cadigan (Brian Collins @ SFF Remembrance)
First Mage on the Moon by Cameron Johnston (Fiction Fans Podcast)
First Mage on the Moon by Cameron Johnston (Vinay Vasan @ The Fantasy Hive)
First Mage on the Moon by Cameron Johnston (Sasha Bonkowsky @ Reactor)
Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons (Liz Bourke @ Locus)
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Choyeop, translated by Anton Hur (Trish Matson @ Skiffy and Fanty)
The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon (Narrated Podcast)
The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang (Tammy @ Books, Bones, & Buffy)
Luminous by Silvia Park (Roseanna Pendlebury @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Mortedant’s Peril by RJ Barker (Stewart Hotston )
Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman (Ian Mond @ Locus)
The Orb of Cairado by Katherine Addison (Cheryl Morgan @ Salon Futura)
The Poet Empress by Shen Tao (Tar Vol on)
The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Nick Hubble @ Prospective Cultures)
Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves
Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire (Joe Sherry @ Nerds of a Feather)
They Made Us Blood and Fury by Cheryl S. Ntumy (Galen Strickland)
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews (Bonnie McDaniel @ Red Headed Femme)
Walking Practice 보행 연습 by Dolki Min (Hache Pueyo @ Reactor)

B-Side

Andrew Liptak has one final list of April SFF releases. Fangirlish has a list of their notable fantasy books for May. The crew at The Fantasy Hive picked their favorite books for the month. Kila Greene has a big list of queer SF from April. Depending on how dedicated you are to building out your TBR months in advance, this list of books out later in 2026 might be of interest. Petrana Radulovic has a list of genre movies out in May at Reactor; I’m most excited for The Sheep Detectives and Backrooms.

The LA Times Book Prize Winners were announced and Locus has the books of genre interest. Bailey shared her thoughts on a few of the Hugo categories. I laughed out loud at: “If the Hugos doesn’t nominate at least one T. Kingfisher book a year, they explode.” Lauren from Literature Science Alliance made a long video talking through all the categories. Emily discussed the fiction categories and had a very different reaction than most I’ve seen! Nicholas Whyte put together a list of the Hugo finalists and where to find some of them online. As a finalist (I’m still agog and thankful and it feels surreal) I can confirm the Voter Packet team is hard at work to make our dreams come true. They deserve all our flowers.

One of my favorite artists, Yuumei, launched a Kickstarter for her star projectors, which are beautiful. Cheryl Morgan wrote up her experience of Eastercon. Maureen shared short reviews of Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers and The Spellcoats by Diana Wynne Jones. Episode #532 of the Sword & Laser podcast has the launch of their next book discussion, Slow Gods by Claire North, plus the (spoilery) wrap up of their discussion for The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson. S&L are finishing the first book now so they, luckily, have less of a wait for The Fox in Winter, which comes out in October 2027. I knew a 2026 date wasn’t possible, but I was definitely hoping for Spring 2027. It’s fine! Authors should take their time! This is what why rereads are great.

In short fiction, Charles Payseur collected a list of queer short SFF out in March. flameswallower has a list of short fiction recs for April. Maria Haskins wrote reviews and recs for issues of Flash Fiction Online, Kaleidotrope, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Paula Guran reviewed and recced stories from Adventitious, Reactor, and The Dark. Myna Chang has a flash fiction roundup for March and April. Emmie Christie shared her favorite pieces from April. Over at Tar Vol on, he discusses issues of Clarkesworld and GigaNotoSaurus.

The Great Tolkein Rereads continues, and Alexandra Pierce joined the fellowship and shared her own thoughts. Abigail Nussbaum took a break from The Lord of the Rings to revisist The Hobbit. Roseanna, on Book 4 already, read two chapters, and I really appreciate the level of detail in her analysis of Frodo, Gollum, and Sam. She pulls out so many interesting threads. Nick Hubble has reached Rivendell in their reread project. Shelved by Genre discussed Book 2, chapters 8-10 and then I went down a Thomas the Tank Engine rabbit hole before I finished the whole episode, which was unexpected. And while this seems unrelated to the ongoing rereads (but who knows, maybe everyone is incepting everyone else), it fits here! Camestros Felapton wrote “Sauron isn’t a character in The Lord of the Rings.”

Women in SF&F Month wrapped up with final essays from Sonia Tagliareni and Ai Jiang. Kristen shared a full list of all the essays, so you can catch up on any you missed. I found The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling very creepy and unsettling, especially as an audiobook. There’s a Kickstarter to turn it into a stage play. T. Kingfisher was on the Ink to Film podcast to discuss retellings. She will also be writing a prequel novel about a character from Baldur’s Gate 3, Astarion. I don’t go here, but I’m very happy for both Astarion and Kingfisher fans and hope y’all have a great time.

Ann Leckie talked about some recent books she’s been reading and also shared details about the upcoming release of Radiant Star. Martha Wells will be doing a short tour in May. If you can attend, please do so I can live vicariously through you. She also did an interview with Polygon, and once I got over the chest-squeezing realization that Murderbot’s series can’t go on forever and the end may be sooner than I want, I got really happy about this: “I'm really bad at planning out ahead of time what I'm going to write. I used to have conversations with my agent about what that would be, and then I would go and do something different. So I'm really lucky at this point, I guess, to be popular enough that my publisher understands that and puts up with me.” My favorite song: publishers giving Martha Wells freedom/space to be creative! DESERVED.

I always forget Kameron Hurley has a Patreron full of short fiction that unlocks if you pledge at $1. I really need to get on that, but I also want a publisher to pay her lots of money to publish a big collection of her stories with a cool cover so I can buy it in hard copy. Author collections are starting to get hot again! Don’t sleep on Hurley, publishing! Ai Jiang, John Twelve Hawks, and Kamilah Cole were all over at The Nerd Daily for short Q&As. Mike Chen was on the SFF Addicts to talk about his new book, The Photonic Effect. RJ Barker was at Nerds of a Feather for their 6 Books feature and Alastair Reynolds was on an episode of SciFiScavenger to talk about his novel, Halcyon Years.

For more SFF links, don’t miss Wombling Along.

Outro

April was not a great reading month for me. I burned myself out reading 15 October Daye books in a row in the first quarter (don’t do this). I tried to recover with some audiobook rereads and a new space opera series (Captive’s War by James S.A. Corey), but I clearly needed some time off! My next book is The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang, and I’m excited because the reviews have been promising. I’m an original S.L. Huang fan because I read Zero Sum Game when it was still indie and knew Huang was going to be a superstar. Nice to be correct!

That’s it for this week. Drink water, get plenty of rest, and read lots of good books. — Renay