Hey!

It’s awards and lists all the way down! And Hugo Award/WSFS debates, but that’s what we do best, honestly. July is my month for locking in on my Hugo reading instead of arguing, though, because the deadline for voting always arrives fast.

A-Side

The 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the short list for this award and it’s finally available! I’m so happy to see Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman and Slow Gods by Claire North on the list. I’m pretty sure I filled out the nomination form for Notes from a Regicide because I had read it in time. I only read Slow Gods recently and was very shocked it wasn’t on the Clarke Award list, so I’m pleased to see it here. The judges have their work cut out for them! I know some readers who have recced me The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes a few times are now staring at me intently, like, “Well? What are you waiting for?” To be less of a wimp! That’s what! Viscera by Gabriel Squailia has made me so nervous about books described as moist.

Yuna Is Still Gaming’s Greatest Character, 25 Years Later
Final Fantasy X is one of my favorite entries in the series. I’ve been thinking of it a lot lately after finishing Expedition 33, because it was tackling similar themes around grief and trauma from a different perspective (I often read Final Fantasy X’s big bad as a metaphor for climate change/environmentalism, which is a long essay I don’t have the time to research/write but wish I did). This essay about Yuna captures so much of what I love about her character, although I’m wary of the thesis because I don’t know if we need to be ranking women characters. Yuna is one of my favorites, though, and one of the big reasons that the sequel, Final Fantasy X-2, works for me so well. Beware spoilers if you haven’t played this video game released in *checks notes* 2001.

Obsession, Backrooms and the rise of the YouTube movie
This essay about the success of horror Youtubers at the box office was interesting. I agree with most of it (I can’t agree about whether the movies are bad, because I haven’t seen any of them yet), but I think I come down slightly adjacent to the main argument. These films were made by Youtubers, but they were made to be new. They aren’t part of a cinematic universe. Even if some of them are adaptations on other stories or riffs on tropes, their directors are young and grew up in a dramatically different world than their predecessors, so their perspectives will be—refreshingly—different! I wonder if it’s useful to look at the ways other art has popped off recently, like K-Pop Demon Hunters, Sinners, or Heated Rivalry. I can’t say what audiences want (can anyone? Art that resonates is always a gamble) but I know what I want: artists willing to take chances on bold new ideas or tell old stories with a new twist and for the suits to leave the artists alone unless they’re cutting a check.

Limitation on Listed Contributors for Hugo Award Finalists
I’ve been pretty bummed all week after reading part of the agenda for the WSFS Business Meeting, where there’s business up to amend Section 3.2.1 of the WSFS Constitution to limit the number of contributors to eight. Why they decided on eight looks to be because of how previous committees handled it, but because of the justifications in the first paragraph of the agenda discussion, where they say listing large teams “dilutes the significance of finalist recognition” it seems to target previous teams with 10+ contributors and indirectly accuse them of hurting the award’s legitimacy. This feels like it was written as a compromise position where one side that’s meant to be compromising wasn’t consulted at all about how we might feel about it. I agree the most with Ed, Roseanna, and Kat. The dilution argument poisoned the whole proposal for me, so I hope this fails and they come up with a more nuanced approach that treats the award listings and the award ceremony as discrete interests.

Reviews/Discussions

Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (Trish Matson @ Skiffy and Fanty)
Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (Stewart Hotston @ Nerds of a Feather)
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (Galen Strickland)
City of Illusions by Ursula K. Le Guin (Niko’s Book Reviews)
The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell (Liz Bourke @ Locus)
The Employees by Olga Ravn (Ronit J @ SFF Insiders)
Everybody's Perfect by Jo Walton (Marlene Harris @ Reading Reality)
Everybody's Perfect by Jo Walton (Stephen Saperstein Frug @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Everybody's Perfect by Jo Walton (Tar Vol on)
The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey (Russell Letson @ Locus)
The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean (Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus)
House of Margins by Tloto Tsamaase (Sinclair Adams @ Strange Horizons)
Jitterbug by Gareth L. Powell (Gabino Iglesias @ Locus)
The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe (Mahvesh Murad @ Reactor
The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
The Many by Sylvain Neuvel (Jacqueline Nyathi @ Harare Review of Books)
The Nightland Express by J. M. Lee (Arturo Serrano @ Nerds of a Feather)
Plastic, Prism, Void by Violet Allen (Vanessa Wolosz @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Plastic, Prism, Void by Violet Allen (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
Platform Decay by Martha Wells (Alexandra Pierce)
Platform Decay by Martha Wells (T.O. Munro @ The Fantasy Hive)
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Vanessa Fogg @ It’s a Jumble)
River of Bones and Other Stories by Rebecca Roanhorse (Alex Kingsley @ Strange Horizons)
Seek the Traitor’s Son by Veronica Roth (Saberin C. @ Grimdark Magazine)
Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim (Gryftkin)
The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
Villain by Natalie Zina Walschotts (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed (Roseanna @ A Reader of Else)
Your Behavior Will Be Monitored by Justin Feinstein (Ian Mond @ Locus)

B-Side

Award seasons continues! Camestros Felapton also weighed in on the limit on Hugo finalists (he’s more sympathetic to the proposal than I am, but has some interesting ideas). At Pixelated Geek, Kathryn reviews the Hugo finalists for Short Story. Lauren at Literature Science Alliance discussed the finalists for the Ignyte Awards. The chair of judges for The Clarke Award, Andrew M. Butler, did an interview with Five Books about the finalist slate. I talked about the Le Guin Prize in A-Side, and was curious what I’ve read (if anything) about these books in the past, so I went through my archive:

• Sunward by William Alexander: Alex Brown, Narrated Podcast, Ian Mond

• Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur: Molly Templeton @ Reactor

• The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes: Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf, Tobias Carroll @ Reactor, Sia @ Every Book a Doorway, Paul Di Filippo @ Locus, Niall Harrison @ Locus, Zachary Gillan @ Ancillary Review of Books, Cat & Jonathan @ The Fantasy Hive, Phoenix Scholz @ Strange Horizons, Stewart Hotston @ Nerds of a Feather

• Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman: Amy Nagopaleen @ Strange Horizons, Roseanna Pendlebury @ Nerds of a Feather, Narrated Podcast, Jake Casella Brookins @ Locus, Marion Deeds @ FanLit, Marlene Harris @ Reading Reality, Misha Grifka Wander @ Ancillary Review of Books, Alexandra Pierce

• One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed: Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus, Alex Brown @ Locus, Libby Langhorn @ Sower

I didn’t have any reviews of Audition by Pip Adam, Call and Response by Christopher Caldwell, or Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta (this one felt weird! I thought I had read at least a few??), so if you know of any, send them in so I can add them to my hoard. Coverage of a book doesn’t always translate to award success, though it’s fun to see what everyone thought about the books over time.

It’s July and being at the halfway mark of the year means it’s List O’Clock. If you write a SFF rec list, recap list, or review of your SFF reading/media I want to see it. Gizmodo has their massive list of new books for the month, and Andrew Liptak has another list of new books from June that caught his eye. Kila Greene has a big list of queer SFF that came out in June. Rachel at the Shades of Orange has her list of the best SFF so far this year and Roseanna shared her six favorite books with some bonus secondary lists. Bailey, in an attempt to distract people with shiny book recs after kicking the Discourse hive, shared her favorite books of the year so far. A couple of folks I follow did the Mid-Year Book Freak Out tag survey, which has become a solid tradition in book blogging spaces and I always enjoy them. Dina at SFF Book Reviews has her version (it’s fine, Dina, don’t even worry about the damage to my TBR) and Sia at Every Book a Doorway has hers with charts! Goodreads has a list of the most popular SFF for the last three years on their site (lots of SFF readers use Goodreads, but not ALL of us). It’s a pretty mainstream list, but there were a few surprises. My next internal debate: do I link to more anticipated book lists this year? I’m very tempted.

Romancing the Vote, an online auction that raises money for voting rights organizations, is live through July 5! There’s so many cute things and lots of SFF books, lots of them signed/annotated. STARLOG Magazine is returning with a new editorial team and some cool projects like a newsletter and a podcast. You’ll probably see links to these things in the future as I dig into everything. There’s a new issue of Journey Planet, dedicated to Mel Brooks. Ancillary Review of Books has their call for essays and reviews up for October of this year. It’s always exciting to see what they might have coming down the pike. And Dina shared her State of SFF column for July (TBR damage 999999).

Over in short fiction, Andrew Liptak has his Table of Contents column up for July, and has updated the June column with fresh story links. flameswallower has a few short fiction recs. Brian Collins has a review of “Stay Off the Moon!” by Raymond F. Jones. Tar Vol on reviewed stories from Asimov’s, Otherside, and Uncanny and shared his favorites.

If you need even more SFF links, check out Wombling Along!

Art recs: I will outlive you and that is a threat by Megan; deer creature by Camber Allison; young pine among foliage by Aled Thompson; Welcome home!! by Jessica Elena; Fox and rabbit sketches by MX MORGAN; bread!!!!! by laura; lunch break with the lads by Ainsley S; Love and Regret by greybriar

Outro

This week’s newsletter is a little light because I was under the weather for a few days (and also crying over Expedition 33), but as usual the discussion internet continues to be robust so it’s hard to even tell.

If you made it this far down (and you want to), reply to this message or email intergalacticmixtape@gmail.com and tell me your favorite SFF/H book from the first half of the year (doesn’t have to be a 2026 release)! Drink water, get plenty of rest if you can, and say hi to your pets for me. — Renay

Recent Reading/Media:

(Last) Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
(Now) The Summer War by Naomi Novik
(Next) The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

(I’m happy for you, Brussels! I am. I am.)