Hey!
This week there are great essays, lots of reviews, tons of cool announcements, and a soft-launch of book recs!
Hugo Novella Roundup
Roseanna wraps up her coverage of the Best Novella category for the Hugo Award, with a ranking! I love a ranking. If you've posted a discussion with a ranking please send it to me. I am aligned with her on The Practice, the Horizon and the Chain being great, but I have also only read What Feasts at Night so don't know where I fall on the others yet. It'll take a lot to unseat the Samatar, though!
Roseanna digs into the giant elephant in the room, which is Tor's sweep of the category this year. She handles it with a lot of nuance, which I appreciate. Often this discussion can turn into digs at the authors instead of the nominating body. The nominating body did the naughty thing! Authors are just trying to get their bag.
In the past, some motivated person added a formula to the novella sheet on the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom to note the percentage of novellas from Tor and they (or a collaborator who loves the idea) replaces it each year. It's at 19% right now, but there are only 32 recs since it's early in the year. Read Roseanna's great essay and then go grab a rec of a 2025 non-Tor novella from the Hugo sheet. It'll be fun!
Murderbot Shows That It Cares in "Command Feed"
Another recap from Alex Brown over at Reactor! I was mostly sure, but this confirmed that this episode's plot was all new material except for some of the dialogue. Tonally, it felt good and all of us with good pattern recognition were rewarded as the Leebeebee part of the storyline comes to a head (ha ha).
Do Androids Dream of Anything at All?
This is an interesting profile of Martha Wells. The big news is that there's another book in the Murderbot series on the way, called Platform Decay. (Dear Tor: 👁️👄👁️) At the beginning, the profile unpacks the history of robots and AI. Surely there are some classics of this trope/theme by women somewhere in our past? I'm suspicious of the interviewer's commitment to Sparkle Motion, who says, "the human beings on the screen [....] come across as much bigger dipshits than they are in print". Potentially I could see this argument for Ratthi, but the show delivers some of the same interactions, word for word, that the book does. I don't think TV!Preservation deserves this tone. I come back to my idea that this show wasn't going to hinge on Alexander Skarsgård as much as it would on the characters that were lightly characterized by Wells for us to fill in the blanks on as they interact with SecUnit, because so much of the books are internalized to our favorite traumatized, unreliable narrator construct. Meanwhile, I’m sending out "Kevin R. Free is a member of SAG-AFTRA" into the universe once more, because they cannot mess up on ART.
Musing on the PresAux team, SecUnit, and murder
This short tumblr post on some of the violence around constructs raised an issue I didn't really think about, which was the reaction to the violence from SecUnit in the last episode versus the violence from when Arada and Pin-Lee rescued SecUnit, Mensah, and Ratthi in the Deltfall episode.
Ali Hazelwood Dislikes Peeta, And That Was a Problem for Some Folks
There was some drama on Instagram this week re: Ali Hazelwood. This essay sums it up pretty well. What caught my attention was the part of this essay about critique. I've had a lot of thoughts about book critique and discussion. I wrote about it back in January. This essay from SBTB looks at the problem from the other side: when fans act like a bunch of weirdos. "Critique is softened" is something I absolutely agree with. I keep coming back to the fact that social media and algorithmic timelines have flattened communities so much that we're all in a big mish mash together instead of interconnected and overlapping communities that take a little effort to cross, which leads to the effect this essay talks about. I'm sure there's an age component, too. My big takeaway is: be kinder to everyone and start a blog/newsletter/youtube for critique instead of doing it on social media where it can be reposted into virality.
Octothorpe #137 - My Brain Automatically Goes to Sandwiches
Within this grab bag of topics, there’s a longer discussion about a post that Jake Casella Brookins made over at Ancillary Review of Books about a Best Translated Book Hugo Award. I came away from the pod agreeing with most of the concerns, especially the one about: do enough WSFS members read widely enough in translated work to populate a Hugo category? I struggle to read all the books I want to that are written in English originally. I don’t mind the category bloat, but I recognize I’m in the minority on this. I think I agree with John that the idea has merit, but it’s not ready to serve yet, not because of the idea, but because of the nominating body.
bowling to determine what i read this summer
This will only be interesting to people who are a) autistic or b) very interested in wild ways to choose books. I was entertained the whole time both by the bowling and by the different options of books. Some of the gutter ball moments were laugh-out-loud funny. We live in a time of Content, so I appreciate it when people lean into their interests and get creative. The facial expressions? The interstitials? Perfection. There were lots of SFF books chosen, too!
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer (Womble @ Runalong The Shelves)
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (Bonnie McDaniel @ Red Headed Femme)
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab (Emma @ Miss Print)
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (Annemieke @ A Dance with Books)
Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne (Jamie Rose @ The Lesbrary)
City of All Seasons by Oliver K. Langmead & Aliya Whiteley (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes (Shannon Fay @ Strange Horizons)
The Creator by Aliya Whiteley (Roseanna @ Ancillary Review of Books)
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (Meal of Thorns Podcast)
Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi (Alex Brown @ Reactor)
Heir of Light by Michelle Sagara (Liz Bourke @ a garden from the libraries)
The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig (Bailey/Greekchoir)
The Mercy Makers by Tessa Gratton (Sia @ Ancillary Review of Books)
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
Red Sword by Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur (Roseanna @ Nerds of a Feather)
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tar Vol on)
Transmentation | Transience by Darkly Lem (Jake Casella Brookins @ Locus)
Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata (Alexis Ong @ Reactor)
Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan (Nils Shukla @ The Fantasy Hive)
Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell (Narrated Podcast)
The shortlist for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction is out. It features North Continent Ribbon, one of my favorite books so far this year! It's such a strong list. The Sunburst Awards are back with their finalists after a long hiatus. The 2025 Mythopoeic Award finalists were released. The Stoker Awards were announced and you can watch the ceremony on Youtube.
You can read a preview of Starstruck by Aimee Ogden, which came out this week. There's also a Big Idea essay from Ogden over on Whatever. The first chapter pf Rachel Hartman's Among Ghosts is up at Reactor. You can read an excerpt of Seventhblade by Tonia Laird over at Civilian Reader.
Charlie Jane Anders wrote 10 Hot Takes About Superman and I agree: superhero stories are soap operas. Alex Brown rounds up the Must Read Short Speculative Fiction for May 2025. Oren Ashkenazi ranks the Hugo Best Novel finalists. (I did say I love a ranking.) Eddie over at Borrowed and Blue put together a list of SFF with queer community building. Skiffy and Fanty is doing an open call for contributors. ConCurrent is still looking for donations to host a one-day SFF con in Seattle. The Strange Horizons funding drive reached 50% funded a few days ago. Can confirm their ebook rewards are great. Already funded but of particular interest given (gestures to everything), Wrath Month - Stories of Queer Rage has an option for just the ebook—or more! (h/t to Els!)
I only have one art rec this week, this beautiful and haunting piece featuring a cityscape and a bridge, but with ghosts by Devin Elle Kurtz. And finally, there's apparently a game where you can...date...everything? Everybody’s so creative.
What's better than a ton of recommended reading links and review coverage? If you guessed book recs, you get a gold star. I hit up my pals for recs of books they want more people to read.
The Breath of the Sun by Isaac Fellman
Summary: We must climb the mountain that is god again. It went terribly the first time, but maybe this time?
Rec: I am not interested in mountains, climbing or indeed god, but Fellman manages to make me in awe of all of them because he writes so damn pretty. It is the feeling of wonder purified into book form. He is the master of exquisite gut punches of complex emotions, and I think this is the book in which he punches the hardest.
From: Roseanna
Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace
Summary: In a future corporate dystopia, an orphaned woman hustles for water credits by streaming a popular video game, always hoping to catch a glimpse of the in-game versions of the celebrity supersoldiers. Only, then she meets two of the supersoliders in real life and begins by chance to discover they were once orphaned children like her, stolen by the corporation.
Rec: I found Firebreak a gripping, intense read, but what I really loved was the platonic love that underlies this book. The protagonist is aro ace, and the most important relationships in this novel are all platonic. They are as deep and heartrending as any romance.
From: @illustratedpage.bsky.social
I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped In a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming
Summary: A researcher and a lion have a horrible day, become likely friends, and both find love (separately) in unlikely places.
Rec: Completely unexpected and delightful at every turn. A refreshing read.
From: Harry
North is the Night by Emily Rath
Summary: Two best friends are separated and must fight to save their way of life and their people. But more importantly, will they kiss???
Rec: Twisty twisty twisty turns. Complex characters who make infuriating choices. And animal companions!!!
From: Harry
I appreciate my pals so much in helping me soft launch the Intergalactic Mixtape Book Rec form. Prompt for the next version and to stay on theme for this issue: your favorite 2025 novellas that aren’t from Tor!
Last week I had a birthday and made some Financial Decisions re: book acquisition that may come to haunt me later. Here's The Stack:
Battle of the Bookstores by Ali Brady
Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho
The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott
Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
The Two Lies of Faven Sythe by Megan E. O'Keefe
Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins
I bought lots of them at different times and stores so didn’t quite understand the depth of my “oops” until I saw them all in a list. Let this be a lesson to always buy the book regardless.
(You didn’t think I was going to suggest NOT buying the book, did you?)
See y’all next week!