Hey!

Sometimes folks review their ARCs fairly early, I read and save their reviews, and then link to them once the book’s release date arrives. Going forward, if I read 5+ advanced reviews I’m going to give the book in question its own section in B-side. I think this will help as I discover more people discussing books!

This week: a project I’ve been following shared its final entry (cue a lone tear from me), a cover reveal I saved to look at turned into a banger essay, and I watched a lot of trailers.

A-Side

The Queersar Not An Award 2024
The very last entry in this not-an-award series by Eddie Clark was the first where I found more new-to-me books than books I was familiar with. This project has been a delight to follow. It really does show that there’s a gap in recognition for these stories. Awards are expensive and hard to run, though, so I don’t blame him at all for not wanting to do it officially. I hope that one day someone does. Having a judge panel or maybe doing an open vote long list and a judged short list (or vice versa?) might help expand the perspective of an award like this. Obviously Eddie has good taste, but he’s only one man and can’t read all the books. :) The other entries are available too, if you’d like to see them all in context: 2020, 2021, 2022, & 2023. Now all that’s left is for someone to turn his project into a reading challenge/podcast series.

The need for novelty in SF
This is a great thread by Roseanna! I see what she describes when SF and what I and others call “literary” fiction (affectionate) merge or run parallel while playing with similar ideas all the time. I don’t read SF for things to be newly invented, though. It’s nice when it happens, but I read for the fun tropes. I’m on the wrong side of the debate. Why yes, I will read a found family political space opera adventure dozens of times. I don’t need people to innovate unless they want to do so and there’s nothing more embarrassing to me than someone claiming they’re innovating when, uh…they…have not… There were lots of replies to Roseanna’s thread which are excellent. Do go read them and the quotes, which will lead you to Molly’s great thread, too, which I liked. It’s great seeing lots of smart people sharing their ideas, but I decided I didn’t have the fortitude for summarizing everyone I liked. I’m back on my “if you’re tempted to write a thread/reply longer than three posts, consider: blogging” soap box (I’m only half joking here). You can still post it to social media! Cory Doctorow does it all the time!

Art work and Preorders
I thought about it for awhile after I read this essay: have I read something this emphatically honest and passionate from an author about their cover reveal before? I can’t remember if so. Kai Ashante Wilson takes us through his experience of SFF book covers, then on a tour of his past covers and their artists, and finally on a journey through where he’s landed on cover preferences. This essay makes me want to read the book he’s promoting and sharing the cover for immensely (The Fall of Elvenesse) because wow, the writing.

Reviews/Discussions

The Best of All Possible Planets by Alex Shvartsman (Adrienne Martini @ Locus)
Bird Deity by John Morrissey (Alexandra Pierce @ Locus)
The Curve of the World by Vonda N. McIntyre (Paul Di Filippo @ Locus)
Earthly Playing Field by Radhika Singh (Zara Dershowitz @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Fantasy: A Short History by Adam Roberts (Stephanie Burt @ Strange Horizons)
The Forest on The Edge of Time by Jasmin Kirkbride (Ian Mond)
Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison (Rebecca @ Powder & Page)
Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
Homebound by Portia Elan (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, tr. by Ros Schwartz & The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, tr. by Shaun Whiteside (Niko’s Book Reviews)
Kill All Wizards by Jedediah Berry (Trish Matson @ Skiffy and Fanty)
The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang (Vanessa Fogg @ Locus)
The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee (Lashaan @ Roars and Echoes)
The Magic Engineer by L.E. Modesitt Jr (Joe Sherry @ Nerds of a Feather)
Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer (Tammy @ Books, Bones, & Buffy)
Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer (Tar Vol on)
Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler (Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus)
The Rainshadow Orphans by Naomi Ishiguro (Only the Best Fantasy Novels)
Streams of Silver by R.A. Salvatore (Sean Guynes @ Genre Fantasies)
Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim (Mahvesh Murad @ Reactor)
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews (Paul Weimer @ Nerds of a Feather)

B-Side

The Hugo commentary continues at a fast pace! I was shocked when I opened my archive by how much I had read/listened to since the last issue. Marlene at Reading Reality reviewed "Kaiju Agonistes" by Scott Lynch. Bailey has a review of Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite. Dina reviewed The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison. There are reviews of Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky at Skiffy and Fanty and Pixelated Geek. There are two reviews for The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson, taking a more critical look at the writing/world building: one by Camestros Felapton and another by skygiants (if you don’t read book posts by skygiants and all the comments you’re missing out. I always learn so much!). I haven’t reread The Raven Scholar since my first frantic read where I fell in love, so I wonder if I took more time if some of the weaknesses would stand out more. I’m hoping to have time to reread it. The Stitch & Bitch crew gathered for their monthly live show to review and discuss their recent books and media, which included a lot of Hugo commentary.

This short list of the best SF of the year so far made me realize, whoops, it’s the halfway point and almost time for mid-year lists to start dropping. Of course I agree with the inclusion of The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang! Is everyone going to read it and then tell me your post-book theories? I hope so. Joachim Boaz asked folks what pre-1985 SF they’re reading on Bluesky and on his blog (a great example of how to do social media/blogging…okay, that was the last time this issue, I promise). Octothorpe dropped Episode #162 with lots of con updates. Sword & Laser tried to decide what the EGOT version of an SFF Award would be in Episode #536. I think we should have two: one for fan voted awards and one for juried awards. It would make finding a cool short name easier because we would have more vowels. Coode Street dropped Episode #724, with a retrospective on Jane Yolen’s career and influence (among other things).

There are several advanced reviews of Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I still maintain that this man is 17 sentient typewriters in a trenchcoat. You can read an excerpt of Green City Wars over at Civilian Reader and Paul Semel has an interview with Tchaikovsky.

Reviews/discussions:
— Christine D. Baker @ Nerds of a Feather
— Narrated Podcast
— T.O. Munro @ The Fantasy Hive
— Ronit J @ SFF Insiders
— Galen Strickland @ Templeton Gate
— Will Swardstrom @ FanFiAddict

V. Astor Solomon has their two weekly short fiction recs. Vanessa Fogg shared her favorite short fiction from the last few months. Brian Collins reviewed “The Halfling” by Leigh Brackett. A.C. Wise has reviews, plus her favorite stories, from the March/April issue of Asimov’s. Maria Haskins reviewed and recced stories from various issues of Baffling, Strange Horizons, and Lightspeed. Submissions for Thyme Travellers 2 are still open, so if you know any Palestinian SF writers, encourage them to submit!

I watched the new trailer for Forgotten Island and am still excited but a little more nervous about the vibe now that it’s going to involve dog humor. I’m…dubious. I’m hoping the strong friendship vibes from the teaser trailer will persist, though! I never read Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, but after watching the adaptation trailer and reading some of the comments dogging Ishiguro and saying that we don’t need media that promotes “AI” (facepalm), Roseanna’s thread in A-Side seems really relevant. I also don’t know how I feel about Practical Magic 2, other than I guess I’ll watch it when my library gets a DVD copy and decide if it was wise to revisit. In option news, The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow has been scooped up by Netflix.

Meg Elison, doing the rounds of promo for her new book, Foundling Fathers, was on the Turn the Page podcast. She was also over at Whatever with a Big Idea essay about the book. The Fifth Inflection by Gautam Bhatia has a cover and a pre-order link; it was previously released in India as The Sentence. SFF World has an excerpt of Moss’d In Space by Rebecca Thorne. Reactor has an excerpt of Null Entity by Seth Haddon, the sequel to Volatile Memory. I read that last year and liked it a lot. Tashi Suri has a new book out in 2027, The Lady of Thorns, and shared the cover on Bluesky. Hache Pueyo’s full length novel, Tyrant in the Cracks, has a cover in a gorgeous art style. It will be out in 2027.

For more SFF book reviews, check out Wombling Along!

Art recs: sometimes u just gotta draw tifa by riki; Heron by the waterfall by Aled Thompson; Eye of the cosmos by Ello; Orange by Gusya; Your cat is an anime villain by jesse hawke; [Growth] by geneva; standing stone with three moon phases by LindenShieldARTs; pov: waiting for that sweet sweet petrichor by Arthur Baron-Clément; these weather apps getting a bit personal by tomattiea; pride planet by faith; The Black Rabbit of Inle by MX MORGAN

Outro

That’s it for this week! Stay cool out there, northern hemisphere pals. — Renay

Recent Reading:

Zero, dude to Expedition 33. It’s really eating up my Hugo reading time (whoops). This is how I feel about this game so far: