(Nice.)

This week I’ve got some SFF adjacent essays, Hugo commentary, both pre- and post-con (I love con reports or Hugo thoughts), multiple new book lists, and a ton of rec lists for both books and short fiction. If your email provider truncates this, I’m sorry. I can’t be contained.

A-Side

Is There a Wrong Way To Chase Your Dreams? Some Thoughts Post WorldCon.
You know how some writers write a thing and make you go, “wow, I want to be a writer and express myself this well?” Yeah. Micaiah Johnson is so good. “You're thinking of who you can use for success, not realizing that we rely on each other far more to cradle us in our failures.”

Issue #2 of Small Planet
The next issue of the SF in Translation magazine is out. There are great interviews with Jonathan Strahan and Jake Casella Brookins, plus several list of books. This is a great resource if you’re looking to get into translated SF. And you should, because it looks like translated work is going to be a part of Locus long term.

Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same
Someone sent me this essay (thank you!). I’m admitting up front that I read it three times and probably still missed something because it’s talking a lot about numbers and charts and machine logic, and I didn’t get that kind of autism. This essay made me think, though, of something I read about fascism and the suppression of color, which I can’t find now, but feels connected to this. Cars used to be delightfully bright, but in the 21st century car lots are mostly monotone. We’re also living through the rebirth of fascism via our tech oligarchs. This essay makes me think that culture is a monotone car lot. “Renay,” you ask, “how do these ideas relate to SFF at all?” And to that I say: the rise of conservatism and how it overlaps with the popularity of mainstream M/F romantasy. Specifically from this essay (which is great): “Once prediction shapes the choices in front of us, we lose the ability to tell the difference between what people wanted and what the system made easy to want.”

Hi reddit! I'm Wile E. Coyote. I'm taking on ACME. AMA!
This is brilliant. So many of these are about to become reaction gifs for the next five years. Excellent commitment to the bit.

Sometimes I think about how so much of what makes Murderbot who it is comes down to it being a rental SecUnit.
It’s worth being back on Tumblr just for the Murderbot meta.

Reviews/Discussions

The Astronaut Among the Flowers by P.A. Cornell (A.C. Wise)
The Astronaut Among the Flowers by P.A. Cornell (Hugh @ Turn & Work)
The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman (Anne @
The Lunar Flaneur)
The Book of Bots by James Patrick Kelly (Ian Mond)
The Calamities by Chuck Wendig (Tammy @ Books, Bones, & Buffy)
The Deep and the Drowned by Ian Green (Roseanna Pendlebury @ Nerds of a Feather)
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman (Science Fiction Book Review Podcast)
Eco24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction edited by Marissa Van Uden (Jacqueline Nyathi @ Harare Review of Books)
Extremity by Nicholas Binge (Shannon Blake Skelton @ SFRA Review)
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip (Hugos There Podcast)
Heaven’s Graveyard by Grace Curtis (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall (Wizards Vs. Lesbians Podcast)
The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope (Narrated Podcast)
Nobody’s Baby by Olivia Waite (Emory Rose @ The Lesbrary)
Oath of Fire by K Arsenault Rivera (Cheryl Morgan @ Salon Futura)
Portrait of a Witch Undone by K.S. Shay (Dina @ SFF Reviews)
Radiant Star by Ann Leckie (Stewart Hotston)
Scion by James Islington (Petrik Leo @ Novel Notions)
Scion by James Islington (Vinay Vasan)
Scion by James Islington (Marlene Harris @ Reading Reality)
Scion by James Islington (Mark Yon @ SFF World)
She Haunts Me Still by De Elizabeth (Tobias Carroll @ Reactor)
The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
Slow Gods by Claire North (Ben Felton @ Cultural Consumption)
The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (Nathaniel Harrington)
The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu (Camestros Felapton)
The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty (Alex Brown @ Locus)
The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty (Anushree Nande @ Strange Horizons)
There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (Ant Jones @ SF Book)
This Is Where The Future Bleeds by Mike Brooks (Womble @ Runalong the Shelves)
The Thrice-Bound Fool by Christopher Buehlman (Bill Capossere @ FanLit)
A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett (Galen Strickland)
The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy, translated by Gini Alhadeff (A Meal of Thorns Podcast)

B-Side

The Hugo Awards were held over the weekend! One of the best things about being a finalist is that even when you lose, a) you’re a finalist forever and b) your peers/colleagues win. Which is what happened for Intergalactic Mixtape, because Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together won. I’m so excited for them because I love their work so much. Congratulations to them! I remember when they were a little baby blog. 🥹

Lots of commentary came in after the last issue went live. Pre-awards, Womble discussed his novel and novella choices. Abigail went over the novel finalists and predicted the winner (to her despair). Holly discussed the finalists and her choice/prediction for the winner (less despair). Post-awards, Cora Buhlert had some thoughts. Angela from Literature Science Alliance went over the winners. Camestros Felapton shared Some Hugo Stats Observations and More Hugo Analysis, digging into the voting statistics. The Binary System podcast did a short discussion of some of the fiction winners.

In other award news, The African Speculative Fiction Society announced the finalists for the Nommo Awards, which you can read at Locus. I’m only familiar with A Song of Legends Lost by M.H. Ayinde (on my TBR) and Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor from the novel list. Locus also has the list of winners for the Sidewise, for alternate historical fiction. SFWA announced that Nancy Kress would be the next Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master. I have had so many of her books on my TBR for a shamefully long time.

Dina shared the September edition of the State of SFF column. Also, big congrats to her on getting married. Ancillary Review of Books has their regular call for reviews and essays for December. Someone who is not me write about Call Me Traitor by Everina Maxwell! At Words for Worlds, Gautam Bhatia discussed two books: The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-Do (translated by Anton Hur) and The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang. One of my favorite reviewers, Lexi, reviewed The Poet Empress by Shen Tao and Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty.

Charlie Jane Anders shared some of her recent favorite reads. Bailey talked about her Advanced Fantasy recs. Eddie Clark went digging in publisher catalogues and B&N preorder pages and compiled a whole list of 2027 books. My TBR list is in danger. My pal Adri released a cool zine with recs and reviews, plus a longer take on Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill. This honestly made me want to make a zine. They’re so cute. Throughout August, Kila Greene collected queer books that were dropping. I don’t read YA much anymore, so these lists are great for finding queer YA SFF books that might be of interest, especially if you’re reading for the Lodestar. Via coffeeandink, I learned that there’s a Humble Bundle for C.J. Cherryh novels This is a great deal.

Meanwhile, it’s officially fall book season. Time for book lists! Titan Books did a photo scroll of their September releases. Gizmodo has their monster release list, as usual. Reactor has a big list of all the books out this month plus a list of SFF Crossover Books. Book Riot has a shorter list. Andrew Liptak collected the new books that caught his eye. There’s some overlap with all of them but a few highlights on each one. And it’s not a book list, but if you’re looking for SFF/H to stream this month, Reactor has a list for you. I’m most excited about Backrooms. However, I would still like a physical release.

In short fiction, Table of Contents is live for September with magazine TOCs, and Andrew updated the August issue. Charles Payseur collected short queer SFF from July on his Patreon. V. Astor Solomon shared their weekly short fiction recs after a short break. flameswallower has a collection of recs of free-to-read short fiction. Tar Vol on reviewed Asimov’s, Future Tense, and Uncanny and recced four stories. I read two reviews over at SFF Remembrance: “The Horror of the Heights” by Arthur Conan Doyle and “The Araqnid Window” by Charles L. Harness. The mid-1900s, viewed through SFF fiction, is a weird delight. Marlene Harris reviewed "10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days" by Samantha Mills as part of her Hugo reading, but I somehow missed it. Bruce McCosar did a lengthy profile of Kaleidotrope and recced both new and old stories. I wish more people would do this with magazines! It’s a very cool idea.

As part of the lead up to the Le Guin Prize, Hiron Ennes read from the book everyone has recced me, that I own, and am still intimidated by, The Works of Vermin. I also read the third chapter of Bodies of Magic by Freya Marske, which I’m very excited for even if if I don’t understand the obsession with dark academia vibes (I’m happy for everyone, though). Alan Dell has a short interview with P.A. Cornell. James Islington was on the SFF Addicts podcast. Skiffy and Fanty interviewed Daniel Kraus on their podcast.

For even more links (should you have not gotten your fill here), check out Wombling Along.

Art recs: tiger by KikiDoodle; Faraway by Maxine Vee; The first leaf, autumn is near by Serana; Tired little birb by Sita Art; Following a dragon through an echoing canyon by Floverale-Hellewen; Autumn by Basil

Outro

Thanks to everyone who voted for Intergalactic Mixtape for the Hugo Awards! It was such a delight to be nominated with so many of my good friends and celebrate with them. IGMX is still a whole baby and finding its identity so it was an incredible honor. If I had won, Kate Elliott was going to accept for me and I was going to use it as a sneaky way to promote The Witch Roads. But I decided I could still do that, so if you like epic fantasy, give The Witch Roads duology a try. :P

I’m slightly breaking my stated rule from last week to announce that starting…now…the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom will have a Discord and you can join via this link! I’m hoping it will help everyone who contributes to the spreadsheet collaborate better. And of course, we’ll be discussing all our favorite art throughout the year and trading recs. The Discord is not required to edit or use the spreadsheet, though, so no pressure out there to my lurker buds. — Renay

Recent Reading

(Last) A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett
(Now) Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
(Next) The Feywild Job by C.L. Polk