Hey!

This week there are fall book lists, (I honestly expected more, but maybe in September), exciting TV/movie updates, and art recs return. This issue is coming to you live from me hotspotting on my phone because my ISP decided to take a little nap at my normal send time. Please pardon any weird errors or extra typos!

A-Side

Suyi Davies Okungbowa talks Season of the Serpent, Writing for IP & More
This interview with Suyi Davies Okungbowa was great. I’ve been pondering communication lately in my offline work. I end up in situations where it’s clear people are struggling to transfer the ideas they’re having to words. Is everything in life just telling each other stories? Maybe? Okungbowa summed up this idea well when he says, “I've always been interested in how we learn how to write and literacy because I think before writing becomes art it first starts out as literacy […]. It's a sense of ‘can you convey what you're trying to say?’” I put that in my notes so fast.

Step Into the Future with Our Fall Fantasy & Sci-Fi Preview
When I saw these lists from Goodreads of anticipated SFF for the rest of the year, I clicked in passively only to realize: they’ve actively chosen to split romantasy from fantasy. They might have done that last year? But the debate about where romantasy “belongs” (as well as dystopian/paranormal romance) has been so hot that a big corporate site making a choice for romantasy as a thing separate from fantasy feels notable. Further, I’m always fascinated by which of these science fiction entries I’ve never heard of in my circles. Many of them sound good, I just haven’t heard a sliver of discussion/hype around them. The horror list is available, too.

Recent Reading: On the Calculation of Volume I-IV by Solvej Balle
Abigail Nussbaum wrote an essay about the first four volumes in a new series that a lot of the UK critics I follow have been discussing recently. Time travel and time loops as tropes are ones I have a love/hate relationship with. Time loops rely on me caring about the characters specifically. This is why I’m always more interested in time loop fanfic than time loop originals, but I’m also more interested in less explicit forms or where the time travel isn’t always literal. A good example of that for me is Inception, which plays with the flow of time without explicitly being about time travel. Abigail makes On the Calculation of Volume sound very cool, though, so once I can get my hands on my library copies (huge hold lists everywhere!), I may give them a try.

the O’Connells and the Addams would get on really well
Never before have a wanted a 100k gen fic of this exact scenario more than I did when I read this thread.

Legolas please gain a sense of urgency
Y’all…I fear I am incepting myself into reading The Lord of the Rings just so I can enjoy more of the fandom commentary about it.

Reviews/Discussions

All the Hidden Places by Cadwell Turnbull (Galen Strickland)
The Astronaut Among the Flowers by P.A. Cornell (Alan Dell)
Deathbringer by Sonia Tagliareni (Kristen @ Fantasy Cafe)
The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon (Martin Cahill @ Ancillary Review of Books)
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (Ant Jones @ SF Book)
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett (Bonnie @ Red Headed Femme)
Fishbone Cinderella by Elizabeth Lim (Alex Brown @ Reactor)
Harbour of Hungry Ghosts by Eliza Chan (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
Heaven’s Graveyard by Grace Curtis (Molly Templeton @ Reactor)
The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope (Melissa A Watkins @ Lightspeed)
The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope (Tar Vol on)
The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong (Maggie @ The Lesbrary)
Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (A.C. Wise)
Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Arley Sorg @ Lightspeed)
The Order War by L.E. Modesitt Jr. (Joe Sherry @ Nerds of a Feather)
Pasha the Storm by Linda H. Codega (Maura Krause @ Reactor)
A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-young, translated by Sophie Bowman (Tammy @ Books, Bones, & Buffy)
The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed (Alexandra Pierce @ Locus)
Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov (Andrew Sztehlo @ SFRA Review))
The Sovereign by C.L. Clark (Tadeo Ward @ Strange Horizons)
The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu (Wizards Vs. Lesbians Podcast)
Sunshine by Robin McKinley (geraniums-red)
A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett (Narrated Podcast)
A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett (Rob B. @ SFF World)
When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift (Science Fiction Book Review Podcast)
When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift (Simon Guerrier)
The Witch by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump (Roseanna Pendlebury @ Ancillary Review of Books)
The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (Workers’ Lit Podcast)

B-Side

The WSFA Small Press Award Finalists were announced. I haven’t followed this award for very long and my exposure to small press work is basically…Roseanna…so all these works were new to me. The MarkWHO42 podcast discussed a few of the Hugo Award fiction categories. Bailey talked about how she ranked the Best Novella Hugo finalists. Based on what I’ve seen, it feels like the overall vibe this year re: novellas is that it was a weaker slate. I wanted to read all the novellas, but it didn’t work out because I entered a terrible reading slump right before the voting deadline.

Meanwhile, Roseanna looked at the finalists for the Ignyte Awards in their novella category and gives the whole slate a positive score. The Ignytes develop their shortlists differently, so Tor didn’t dominate like they did in the Hugos. The Aurora Awards were presented via an online stream (here’s the text version at Locus). I had never even heard of the winner, The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine by Robert J. Sawyer, nor the first book in that series. This is why it’s helpful to look at all the SFF awards. There’s always more to discover. Finally, the 2026 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize is slowly dropping videos of authors reading from their shortlisted works. So far there’s Pip Adam with Audition and Will Alexander with Sunward.

Erewhon Books posted a slideshow of the rest of their books coming out in 2026. Andrew Liptak has another short list of August SFF releases. Kristen from Fantasy Cafe continued her rec sessions with the Ashland Public Library. There’s a whole tag of the previous recs and she’s developing quite a collection! The Stitch & Bitch crew did their August liveshow. Angela shared a list of her favorite anthologies and there are lots of genre options!

In excerpts, cover reveals, and announcements, it was a busy week on my feeds! Marissa Lingen will have a new book out next year, That Fatal Discontent, what she calls a “gender-bent Richard III generation [ship] novella.” There’s a cover reveal for Sweet Saints by Cassandra Khaw, which had me asking, “Cozy what??? Who is this imposter pretending to be Cassandra Khaw?” And yet people contain multitudes! Womble has the covers for a new series by RJ Barker, Beasts of the Wild Black. There’s a cover for another (how?????) new Adrian Tchaikovsky title, The Eighth Face. I read three excerpts: The Calamities by Chuck Wendig, A Snake Among Swans by Hannah Kaner and Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske, who is also branching out into sports romance. That’s okay! I’m happy for us!! My space opera adventure/romance heart will just be over here…pining…

The new cast members for Murderbot Season 2 were announced; Molly has the text list at Reactor and this is the video that’s going around. One question she didn’t raise: if we’re getting more Sanctuary Moon, does this mean some of those folks are going to star in World Hoppers? Please let there be World Hoppers. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley is getting an adaptation, and they’ve cast Aoife Hinds and Billy Howle, two actors I don’t know at all, which is novel! The longer trailer for Whalefall is intense (it’s about being eaten by a whale, and also daddy issues), and this author really has a wild bibliography. “Oh yeah, I wrote the book about a guy who gets eaten by a whale. They made a movie! And hey, look at my Pulitzer for Angel Down!” Meanwhile, I might actually break my self-imposed theater ban to go see Wildwood, because the more footage I see the more amazing it looks.

In short fiction Marlene Harris reviewed “Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro. Paula Guran reviewed issues of The Deadlands, The Dark, and stories on Reactor, plus issues of Apex and Uncanny. Recs included! Maria Haskins reviewed issues of FIYAH, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Small Wonders as well as Samovar, GigaNotoSaurus, and Diabolical Plots. She recced eight stories. A.C. Wise looked at the latest issue of khōréō and recced one story. At Skiffy and Fanty, Cam Coulter recapped their favorite short fiction from June and July. Also, at the end of August there was a new issue of The WYRMHOLE. My inbox cruelly hid it from me for some reason. It is my favorite short fiction rec newsletter. Everyone who wants short fiction recs in their inbox a few times a year should subscribe with my referral code so I can become the #1 HOLE FAN or without it if you’re morally opposed to referral codes (I don’t know anyone’s life).

Check out the latest issue of Wombling Along for other SFF links.

Art recs: tangle by MX MORGAN; please keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times by Deb JJ Lee; a big whale looming by franz; Three-legged crow by Sygnin; I'm ready for summer to end by Abigail Larson; famous maple tree by Erin Hanson; Hopefully a cat will see this and start smoking by Cats of Yore; the end of summer by Chloé Stawski

Outro

Dina wrote about the book series she wanted to catch up on and as I was browsing all the other lists people had made, I thought, “oh, but I haven’t even started that many series.” Y’all, this was a lie. I hoodwinked myself. I had no clue things were so dire on my series TBR. I made a list and when I got to eight I started sweating. I wrote about ten of them at Lady Business and also did an overflow list. I am banned from starting any new series in 2026 until I finish at least two.

Send me your lists of your anticipated Q3/Q4 SFF books if you have them, or any upcoming lists I may have missed of SFF interest! I know there are small presses out there publishing bangers in September/October, I just don’t know about them yet. I’m hoping some Book Anticipation will help me with the hellacious reading slump I’m in (it’s Clair Obscur’s fault, but I’m ready for it to be over). Also, if you’re on Tumblr, let’s be pals! I’m trying to start posting there more often. :) — Renay