Hey!

This week there’s a great interview with Martha Wells, a special review section, more award commentary, and an unofficial space opera rec list as I continue trying to make my Space Opera reading challenge manageable by tricking people into telling me where to start. :D

This is also the last issue before the Hugo Awards voting deadline closes, so get in there and rank some selections!

A-Side

My Favorite Thing: The Cat That Hates Me + That One SFF Author Who Hates Everyone (Thoughts on Exile)
This essay by Micaiah Johnson was so lovely and kind. I have a lot of thoughts about community, since I’ve been working for years to build a community of people through my political work. A thing I started reminding myself is that one of the costs of community is often being slightly annoyed or inconvenienced. This is a beautifully written defense on the value of community, even with the annoying people where interacting with them feels like stroking a microfiber cloth. Sometimes we’re all the microfiber cloth (I definitely am, thanks so much, autism) and deserve grace, and the best way to earn it is to wear gloves when touching the microfiber cloth instead of setting them on fire in an overstimulated rage. Anyway, read her essay, which has better examples (featuring cats!).

The Specific Bliss of Just Not Having an Opinion (Sometimes)
Molly Templeton talks about a practice I started some time in 2022? 2023? for myself. Having an opinion about everything that caught my attention was fun for awhile, but it contributed to me engaging less deeply with things I care about. I have no data other than personal experience, but it also felt like trying to have a position on everything also made me a meaner, more judgmental person about things that I never needed to have an opinion on in the first place. This might seem strange given I run this newsletter, a literal Collection of Opinions From Other People, but it’s been great practice. I can see why other people care about the things they do, and like Molly says, do the work to not develop a take on every little thing. I can just share it and move on! It’s also made my corner of the internet a much nicer, less performative place. Highly recommend both this piece and the action item within. :D

MurderBot & More: Martha Wells' Nerds Out About Her Show
Maude Garrett interviewed Martha Wells for her podcast and it was a great discussion. They talked about Murderbot, of course, and I was happy to learn that although the next Murderbot book might be a hard stop for now, it’s only because our author needs a rest! Valid! I need Martha Wells to write many more fun universes for us and not burn out. There could be more books in the future if she has an idea, and honestly, with the Apple TV show hopefully going to adapt all the novels (or else, APPLE), it’s probably the best time. It was also fun to hear the adaptation compared to fanfic, because…yeah. I mean, it’s not quite the same thing, and I’m sure any fandom journalists reading this are clawing at their faces (sorry, y’all), but it feels similar. People don’t just make TV shows and movies because play pretend is fun and they get paid for it. They want to share stories with other people and make fun art. Especially with book adaptations, I’ve always loved watching how the book fandom continues on one path, the adaptation(s) on another, and then the creative third thing were people remix the two. That happens a lot in the Murderbot fandom, because all the actors are attractive. :P

Readercon 2026
An absolute hero sent me this collection of Readercon panel recaps from Kate Nepveu, and I’ve been reading through them. On A Meal of Thorns, Casella talked about the panel he was on, Things Everyone Likes But You. It sounded really run, and it turns out Kate moderated it and took notes! These types of panels are fascinating for how they reveal how differently we react to art, especially depending on when we read it. For example, one of the panelists hated Speaker for the Dead, but Speaker for the Dead was my beloved for so long, my entry to adult science fiction novels, until a) the author was a bigoted loser and b) I grew up and read better things. The panelist wrote a whole essay about it, which I’ve bookmarked to read. Anyway, there are several panel recaps here to dig into if you like them! Thank you again to the person who shared these with me. :D

The Hugo Awards Trial Committee Report is Available Now
Kat Kourbeti summarizes the work her committee did about the 2023 Hugo Award censorship. I’m happy her committee was formed and they got to do their work. If you’re an attending or virtual member of this year’s con, you can log in and read all about it. Now I’m going to be a grump so feel free to skip to the next section! If you’re a Supporting member now and were a Supporting member in 2023 (which I am and was), you get…nothing. Even if you nominated and voted in those awards, you don’t get to learn the details of what happened except second hand unless you want to pay more money. This a very weird decision, considering Supporting members often are Supporting because they only participate in the Hugos. I don’t understand it at all.

Reviews/Discussions

Absence by Andrew Dana Hudson (Abigail Nussbaum @ Locus)
Beauty by Robin McKinley (Hugos There Podcast)
The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O’Keefe (Esmay Rosalyne @ Grimdark Magazine)
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Rob B. @ SFFWorld)
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey (Andrew Liptak @ Transfer Orbit)
The Farewitch of Foxe Holler by Ellen Pauley Goff (Tammy @ Books, Bones & Buffy))
Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Cheryl Morgan @ Salon Futura)
Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell (Krystle Matar @ Grimdark Magazine)
Ignore All Previous Instructions by Ada Hoffmann (Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus)
The Infinite State by Richard Swan (Adrian Collins @ Grimdark Magazine)
The Infinite State by Richard Swan (Mark Yon @ SFF World)
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark (Paul Kincaid @ Through the Dark Labyrinth)
Not with a Bang by Temi Oh (Genevieve Williams @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer (Mahvesh Murad @ Reactor)
Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer (Bonnie @ Red Headed Femme)
On The Calculation of Volume (Book 1) by Slovej Balle, translated by Barbara J. Haveland (Ian Mond @ Substack)
The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager (JL George @ Ancillary Review of Books)
The Silver Stallion by James Branch Cabell (Sean Guynes @ Genre Fantasies)
A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (lexi aka newlynova)
Thistlemarsh by Moorea Corrigan (Dina @ SFF Book Reviews)
The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden (Sasha Bonkowsky @ Reactor)
The West Passage by Jared Pechaček (Bailey/Greekchoir & Mr. Greekchoir)

B-Side

There’s a new edition of the SFRA Review for Summer 2026. Prepare to see several of these links in the coming weeks. New issues of this are always wonderful; it’s fun to see people thinking deeply about SFF. Ancillary Review of Books has their call for reviews/essays up for November, in case anyone wants to think deeply about SFF with them. Gizmodo has their monthly list of new SFF out in August. There’s another, shorter list of new releases at Transfer Orbit. And SFFWorld shared their recs for summer reading!

Narrated shared Part Two of their Readercon chats. All these con reports are making me have serious FOMO about Readercon. :D Earlier this week someone said, “hey, Felicia Davin mentioned you!” and I went to see and then immediately got sucked into her essay about the word “metalled”, and I ended up charmed by this woman biking across countries who I didn’t know existed before I opened the link. The storytelling here is so good and made me think fondly of Everfair by Nisi Shawl. I also want something like Intergalactic Mixtape for other genres. Romance! Mystery! Nonfiction! We can compile the internet, together. Lexi released an hour long video of nothing but book recs based on prompts given to her by her instagram followers, and it’s a delight the whole way through.

I read this short article (which is effectively an ad for the Switch 2) about Super Mario Sunshine. Luckily, I don’t need a Switch 2 to replay it because I kept my Wii and all my GameCube games (I was a genius, I know). It was such a delightfully weird game, even if the mechanics were janky. I also watched the Wicker trailer, and I swear, Alexander Skarsgård is always at the scene of the weirdo-sex-thing crime. Humans are the best.

Roseanna Pendlebury and Dan Hartland had a long discussion about the Clarke Award finalists. Via Camestros Felapton, I learned there are finalists for the Dragon Awards. I wonder if the authors who said the Dragon Awards would be the place they would go for award recognition instead because the Hugo Awards were too “woke” feel annoyed any time they see these lists. It’s very funny. Cora Buhlert shared her thoughts on the Dragon Awards finalist list (we agree that making fascists upset is hilarious). Transfer Orbit has the finalists for the World Fantasy Award, and I was surprised. The whole novel category had me like “?????.” I expected a different list for sure, but congrats to everyone regardless! Thomas Ha is having a great year. The Mythopoeic Awards announced their winners, and Tolkien is also having a moment.

One of the most anticipated books in my bookish corners of the internet has arrived: A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett. The second book in the series is a Hugo finalist, and the first book won. Will the WSFS voters decide to repeat last year’s decision?

Reviews/discussions:
— Trish Matson @ Skiffy and Fanty
— Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer
— Eddie Clark @ Nerds of a Feather
— Will Swardstrom @ FanFiAddict
— Bill Capossere @ FanLit
— Vinay Vasan @ Substack

Speaking of the Hugos, now that time is running out people are flinging their thoughts onto the internet almost faster than I can read them. That’s saying a lot! Tar Vol on reviewed What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher and Cinder House by Freya Marske. He also shared his rankings for the Hugo in Best Novel. It’s really interesting to me how people approach ranking things in the fiction categories, because we’re all making different compromises. At Skiffy and Fanty, Trish Matson ranked (maybe?) the Best Novella finalists. I’m assuming based on the order. No one can ask me my ranking until 24 hours before the deadline, because I will inevitably change it 50 times before then. I know myself.

It’s an election year! After the elections end I tend to get a big rush of energy before I spend December as a husk of a human and this year I decided I’m not going to use that energy to start yet another Stardew Valley farm. Instead I’ll be reading lots of space opera. I asked on Bluesky for people to share their favorite space opera books/series. What I came away with was more books for my Ultimate Space Opera Rec List, a list of titles to thrift, and a list of books to pull from my shelves that I’ve owned forever but haven’t read. Then this video from SciFiScavenger dropped into my feed, with a whole list of his top space operas, many of which I’ve never heard of. Perfect timing.

In short fiction, it’s a new month, so Andrew Liptak has his Table of Contents column up for August, with updates to the July issue to add more links. I know I say it all the time, but this is such a massive undertaking and we’re lucky Andrew does it each month! Emmie Christie shared her favorite short fiction from July and also did a spotlight interview for Amanda Helms. A.C. Wise reviewed the May/June 2026 of Asimov’s and recommended five stories from it. Maria Haskins covered issues of Escape Pod, Cast of Wonders, and Lightspeed, and recced four stories. Hugh at Turn & Work reviewed Shoeshine Boy & Cigarette Girl by P.A. Cornell (thanks to the person who highlighted this review!).

Andrew Dana Hudson did an event at Left Bank Books, the indie I like to go to when I visit St. Louis, for his book, Absence. Rebecca Thorne did an interview with Gryftkin for her new book, Moss’d in Space (which is apparently a series and I didn’t realize it until I finished the book). Amal El-Mohtar talked with Jonathan and Gary on the Coode Street Podcast about both Seasons of Glass and Iron and The River Has Roots (which I 100% believe is winning that Hugo). At Audible, there’s a short Q&A with Mahmud El Sayed. SFFWorld has a quick interview with Richard Swan. Annalee Newitz will be on tour for their new book, A Wall Is Also a Road. Because I live in the wet armpit of the U.S. South where there is very little SFF literary culture, I need everyone who can go to book events to go and enjoy them so I can live vicariously through you.

For a slew of more SFF content, check out Wombling Along!

Art recs: babushcats say destroy capitalism by Cloudy; moon prism power, make up! by Chloé Stawski; corn's favorite snake by Gwen; Noodle thief and Pancake snatcher by Aubo; Purple Glossy Starling by rubylith

Outro

It’s August and that means the Q3/Q4 book season is upon us. What SFF books are you looking forward to the rest of the year? My selections:

• Wickhills by Premee Mohamed

• Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske

• Line of Descent by Adam Oyebanji

• Call Me Traitor by Everina Maxwell

I know my list doesn’t have enough small press stuff! I need someone to start a blog/newsletter/feature for monthly lists of small press SFF titles (that’s my answer to everything these days as I enter my Take Back the Internet Era). Someone else, please take this idea so I can use your work for reading inspiration and link to you every month.

As always, don’t hesitate to send me interesting SFF links/reviews/videos. :) Stay safe, well-hydrated, and don’t suppress any wild urges to buy a book! — Renay