Hey!

The northern hemisphere is too hot. I know there’s a lot of video content recently, so all I can figure is that the weather is making reading extremely difficult for me. Summer is cancelled.

A-Side

load-bearing shelves
This essay from Sacha Judd about the volunteer labor projects of the early internet that became critical infrastructure and what happens when these grassroots projects can no longer survive under the weight of the genAI clop vacuum that the tech companies have made our new reality hit me strongly. I’ve had several projects end because the tech bros ruined the tools that made them possible. She highlights several projects that show this is happening everywhere, in very different communities, and it makes me incandescently angry that a place so many of us come to connect with others who share our interests and values are losing the places and resources we loved. I think about this problem a lot now because of the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom, because one day Google will do something to ruin the tool, or put it behind a paywall, or something nefarious. I have no clue what I’ll do at that point! I wish these rich dudes could be happy with their billions instead of chasing Line Go Up.

Book Riot's Best Science Fiction of the 21st Century
At Literature Science Alliance, Angela goes over the entries on the Book Riot list. It’s an interesting analysis and also shows a neat…generational divide? between how readers look at 20th century authors who are still writing when their books make a 21st century list. Generational might be the wrong term, but I’m going with it for now and reserve the right for my brain to uncover a better term 4.5 minutes after sending this to everyone. Also, I remember a few months ago when we almost had a “is science fiction just fantasy?” discourse that didn’t have enough juice to take off. This list really leans into that overlap, which Angela notes several times. Perhaps they should have called it a Science Fantasy list for Maximum Discourse Power.

Did George RR Martin ruin publishing by not writing Winds of Winter?
When I first saw this video essay’s title, I snorted and went, “lol no!” because I simply don’t think George R.R. Martin (or Patrick Rothfuss, who the video also mentions) have that kind of power. Luckily for my blood pressure the title was ragebait, so I guess it worked, as I watched the whole thing twice. :D It’s also a good example of how Larry “I Spoiled The Hugo Awards for Multiple Years” Correia’s true legacy is going to be…everything but his books. The main takeaway is that publishing is an extremely messy industry, and that industry is led by, as aforementioned, people obsessed with Line Go Up. This is why I buy so many books in series even if I haven’t started the series yet. Maybe stockholders don’t understand passion for stories, but they do understand money!

There are no white people on Middle-Earth
Jamelle Bouie responds to a comment made by Andy Serkis about the lack of diversity in Tolkien’s work. Happily for me, because I enjoy when Bouie calmly eviscerates someone’s disingenuous arguments, he neatly dismantles it. Even though I have not read the books (I’m a film-only girlie…still…for now…) I have done a lot of thinking about this particular fantasy world through the writing of others and deciding that it’s white seems to do a disservice to the text, on top of Bouie’s point that Serkis is quietly doing the work of the empires that created whiteness, centuries later.

Reviews/Discussions

The Amberlough Dossier by Lara Elena Donnelly (Clara Cohen @ Nerds of a Feather)
Anti-State by Allen Stroud (Eric Hendel @ Strange Horizons)
Bedlam Rose by Terry Dowling (Alexandra Pierce @ Locus)
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Emory Rose @ The Lesbrary)
The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon (Joey @ SFF Insiders)
The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon (Petrik Leo @ Novel Notions)
Everybody's Perfect by Jo Walton (Only the Best Fantasy Novels)
Exile’s Gate by C.J. Cherryh (Nathaniel Harrington)
The Felicity Complex by august clarke (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
The Felicity Complex by august clarke (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
The Felicity Complex by august clarke (Becky’s Book Blog)
The Floating Republic by Rebecca Campbell (Roseanna Pendlebury @ Ancillary Review of Books)
The Gods Must Burn by T.R. Moore (Stewart Hotston)
The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-do, translated Anton Hur (Abigail Nussbaum @ Locus)
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (lexi aka newly nova)
The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon (Marlene Harris @ Reading Reality)
The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong (ilikereadingactually)
Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Phoenix Scholz @ Strange Horizons)
Moss’d in Space by Rebecca Thorne (T.O. Munro @ Fantasy Reviews)
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher (Niko’s Book Reviews)
The Next Enemy Shall Be The Last by Stewart Hotston (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves
Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer (Jhamedi @ Jam Reads)
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson (Esmay Rosalyne @ Grimdark Magazine)
Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (Science Fiction Book Review Podcast
The Traveler by Joseph Eckert (Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus)
The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (skygiants)

B-Side

The hot news in my sphere this week was the announcement of the Booker Prize longlist, featuring a speculative novel: The End of Everything by M. John Harrison. Neon Hemlock has launched the Kickstarter campaign for Volume 7 of their novella series. This is a great way to get the whole set, as the lowest pledge is all the ebooks. Over at Transfer Orbit, Andrew Liptak has a final list of July SFF to check out. The Skiffy and Fanty crew are looking for new voices. The Top Ten Tuesday this week was about books we’ve bought because we needed them immediately and then…we didn’t read them. I read Dina’s entry for the prompt, saw the first book, and was like, “I feel called out.” But once I read the books I won’t be able to anticipate them anymore! There won’t be more book! The real struggle of being a reader.

There’s a new episode of Sword & Laser, featuring genre news plus discussions of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews and A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang by Lee Onhwa (translated by Slin Jung). I want to read the Andrews after a few pals gave it positive scores on the fun factor. Octothorpe did an episode about the WSFS Business meeting, with a large mailbag section. I contributed, I guess, and I’m not sorry! But no, I will not be running a Worldcon, ever, and all the SMOFs should be relieved. :P I also agree with John that Business Meetings are not the place for community organizing around proposals. I go through this constantly in my political work where people expect business meetings to be big arguments and throwdowns hashing out an issue, but that’s incredibly ineffective. If we can do the organizing work ahead of time, even if there is opposition during business time, it doesn’t matter because all the main stakeholders are already on board. Turns out that democracy is a hard thing to achieve! On Coode Street, Jonathan and Gary talk about Jonathan’s anthology-heavy year. It’s interesting to hear from anthologists about their workflow and vision for their collections.

Readercon came and went; one day I want to go and give it a try. It sounds very fun. Jake Casella Brookins did one of his neat interview/recap episodes for A Meal of Thorns. Lisa shares some of her interviews from her Readercon trip, too, and this is only Part 1 so there’s more coming. Con recaps have become rarer since COVID, but if anyone has a Readercon discussion/recap, etc. I’d love to read/listen it!

As we bear down on the Hugo voting deadline, there are more opinions! Trish Matson looked at the short story and novelette categories. Roseanna wrote about all the books in the novella category, which she of course had many opinions about as a Novella Connoisseur. Based on what I’ve read so far, I agree that it feels like a pretty safe year. There were a few single reviews, too: Nick Hubble reviewed What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher; Red Headed Femme reviewed Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett; Paul Weimer reviewed A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett; and the Workers’ Lit Podcast talked about The Incandescent by Emily Tesh.

In short fiction, Charles Payseur has a list of queer SFF out in June; some of the short fiction have story links to read. flameswallower has a collection of recs for the month. Brian Collins reviewed “A Game of Unchance” by Philip K. Dick. Tar Vol on reviewed issues of Adventitious, Kaleidotrope, and Reckoning, with a list of his favorites at the end. FIYAH #39 is out and you can get a copy here (and should because FIYAH is great and gets less review/rec attention due to the lack of free stories). Myna Chang has an interview with Jo Miles, who has written a lot of short fiction, but has just released a novella, The Final Chronicle of Yeneh. Emmie Christie profiled the work of KT Wagner, with a bonus interview. Galactic Journey, back in 1971, reviewed the August issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I watched a lot of trailers this week, including Carrie (we’re doing this again, although it feels like it wasn’t that long since the last iteration), Neuromancer (I guess I’ll read the book finally, because this looks pretty good), Children of Blood and Bone (I want to see it just because of the supporting cast, wow, although it feels like most of the movie is here), and It Ends (yesssss, another fun horror/psychological romp). Supergirl got a digital release, and will get a physical release in September (useful to know if you want to make sure your library orders a copy). I’m excited to watch it, since I don’t think it can be nearly as awful as some of the reviews I’ve read made it out to be. Then again, I’m a Jupiter Ascending fan, so who knows about my taste.

For even more SFF links, check out Wombling Along!

Art recs: mischief in the flowers by Adam; gator expressions by Rii Abrego; Exam Knight by SimzArt; heat by Linette; Did it 👍 (eventually) by Aubo; 10 cute fluffy montreal raccoons by Kness; Bring on the fall! by Crystal Smith; Coastal Town by Maxine Vee; Halloween the Devour of Souls by JLMeyer; No data centers, no ai, NO BILLIONAIRES by Marie Enger; Galaxy Crocs! by Malky

Outro

That’s it for this week! Good luck to everyone who is, like me, frantically jamming Hugo finalists into their ongoing reading schedule. :D — Renay