Hey!

There’s lots of news to read, but I didn’t manage to get to everything as I have Switching Away from Daylight Saving Time Syndrome. Every year, without fail, the time changes and my brain decides, “oh, time to be sleepy for 18 hours a day.” No, brain! I need to read the internet! Someone is wrong about the Booker Prize.

This week there’s world shaking award news, the Goodreads Choice Awards opened their first round which means it’s officially 2027 Hugo Award Season (for me, Keeper of Recs), and many SFF podcasts I listen to dropped an episode and now I’m behind. Which, I suppose, is better than having nothing at all to listen to.

A-Side

As we approach the end of the year, I look at my archive of things I’ve read and wanted to talk about. Then I look at the calendar. Then I look back at my archive. Then I cast a side-eye at the calendar. It’s a stalemate. Time marches ever onward and there’s never going to be less to read. Have some extra short recs!

A Heartfelt Appreciation of C.J. Cherryh
This is a kind examination of the career of an author I’m looking forward to reading.

Mailbag: On Interviews
I read and listen to a lot of author interviews, so this behind-the-scenes look at how Andrew Liptak puts his together was neat.

Speculative Fiction and the Limits of the White Imagination: Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel
Race is a topic that SF struggles with and although I’m not sure I agree completely with the thesis, I’ve thought about it a lot as I’ve read reviews of Exit Party.

Crafting My Womanhood in Virtual Worlds
After the BioWare news, Alli re-shared this essay that takes something now commonplace—the avatar—and writes a deeply personal and beautiful essay about how this new way of engaging with others online changed her life.

($$) Three Bags Full’s Faithful Flock
I’ve linked this before, but after seeing The Sheep Detectives, I reread it. It’s both a love letter to the book the film was based on but also to how fans found fellowship reading the book together in the early days of Bluesky. I love fans so much.

Critical poll from Christina Orlando: would you fuck the Balrog?
I’m both delighted and annoyed that so many people online are funnier than me (I get to cry laugh but I also want to be that funny).

Where to find romance novel reviews online
Felicia Davin collected a thread full of recs for people writing about romance online. Much like hobby SFF reviews and discussion, although a lot has shifted to video platforms, there are still people doing written content. I keep begging the universe to inspire someone to do a weekly romance review round up (that I could link to), but recognize that maybe only I am this Intense about reviews.

Reviews/Discussions

After World by Debbie Urbanski (Kelsey Chen @ SFRA Review)
The Angel at the Gates by Karen Lord (Niall Harrison @ Locus)
The Bloodright trilogy by Emily Skrutskie (Alex Wallace @ Nerds of a Feather)
Cello’s Gate by Maurice Africh (Will Swardstrom @ FanFiAddict)
A Compendium of Supernatural Entities Found in the Government Girls Higher Secondary School by Kuzhali Manickavel (Sam Tyler @ SF Book)
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (Lekden @ Reading from the Depths)
Defy the Dusk by Danielle L. Jensen (Caitlin Lloyd @ FanFiAddict)
The Drakon King by Terry J. Benton-Walker (Elias @ Bar Cart Bookshelf)
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison (Alexis Ong @ Reactor)
The Enigmatic Madam Ingram by Meihan Boey (Jenny Hamilton @ Reactor)
Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel (Christian P. Haines @ Ancillary Review of Books)
The Fist of Memory by Wole Talabi (Adam Roberts @ Locus)
From the Library of Jurgen Leitner by Premee Mohamed and Jonathan Sims (Galen Strickland)
Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison (Alasdair Stuart @ The Full Lid)
The Gates of Midnight by Helene Wecker (Paul Di Filippo @ Locus)
The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang (Bonnie @ Red Headed Femme)
Milkteeth by Caitlin Starling (Sia @ Every Book a Doorway)
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (Hugo History Podcast)
Null Entity by Seth Haddon (Alex Pierce @ Locus)
Off Armagedon Reef by David Weber (Legendarium GT Podcast)
Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey (Tammy @ Books, Bones & Buffy)
Passengers by Alexander Maksik (Jacqueline Nyathi @ Harare Review of Books)
The Passing of the Dragon and Other Stories by Ken Liu (Bill Capossere @ Ancillary Review of Books)
A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-Young, translated by Sophie Bowman (William Shaw @ Strange Horizons)
Platform Decay by Martha Wells (Lashaan @ Roars & Echoes)
Prudence Marsh Is Not a Nobody Anymore by Emily Krempholtz (Marlene Harris @ Reading Reality)
The Scarlet Ball by Nghi Vo (Lauren @ FanFiAddict)
The Unhaunting by Micaiah Johnson (Sullivan Summer @ Ancillary Review of Books)
The Universe Box by Michael Swanwick (Stephen Case @ Strange Horizons)
Vaster Than Empires edited by Jonathan Strahan (Maya C. James @ Locus)
A Wall Is Also a Road by Annalee Newitz (Gary K. Wolfe @ Locus)
The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang (Emory Rose @ The Lesbrary)
Wickhills by Premee Mohamed (Molly Templeton @ Reactor)
Windhaven by George R.R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle (Tar Vol on)
The Wolves of War by John Gwynne (Mada @ FanFiAddict)

B-Side

The world shaking award news is that The End of Everything by M. John Harrison won the Booker Prize. The Booker is emphatically not a genre award. I haven’t read any true Dramatics myself, but I’ve heard on the grapevine that certain circles are rending fabrics and clutching pearls over this decision. I saw Abigail responding to the commentary about this specific Booker win, and she has a point! There is very little chance that The End of Everything ends up on the Hugo short list unless the Hugo Award electorate gets really cool with a lot of really experimental stuff at warp speed. Not to start a fight except—I know people call the Hugo Award the “most prestigious SFF award,” but I am pretty sure the old Hugo Award electorate in the 1900s gave themselves that title and the award is so old it stuck around. Maybe “oldest, like a cool dinosaur” is more accurate these days. Camestros Felapton discussed the win in how it relates to the SFF genre and Harrison’s place in it. The one other tussle I saw was this quote from Harrison making the rounds, which I only found because Kate Elliott re-shared an essay she wrote back in 2013, The Status Quo Does Not Need World Building and I went on the hunt for where the world building conversation started. Her essay is still a banger. I fully expect anyone who reads/watches more verbal sparring over this win among both SFF fans and anti-SFF critics to immediately send me the hot gossip. I’m counting on you!

In other award news, you can vote in the Goodreads Choice Awards. Sometimes this award makes me feel deeply out of touch, but both the fantasy and science fiction categories seem like a good snapshot this time around. I can’t take it that seriously anymore, though, because of how it uses ratings and the history of review bombing marginalized authors Goodreads has. The InkMark awards were announced, the big (cash!!) prize went to Baffling Magazine and eight pieces of short fiction. This seems like a cool new award to watch for short fiction fans. A.C. Wise has her annual eligibility post collection for authors available, which is a great way to see if an author you like had work out this year that you missed. And of course, the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom awaits (Hugo participation not required).

Over at Ancillary Review of Books, Casella shared links to critical articles and essays from around the web in Wow! Signal. This is one my favorite features from ARB because he turns up fascinating writing every month. Jared Pechaček asked people to share a book they want people to read, which means: recs. Kemi Ashing-Giwa shared some SFF books she enjoyed (plus bonus nonfiction recs). Kila Greene has collected the queer SF out in November. Alex Pierce recapped season five of Stargate SG-1 (only five to go and then we’re doing Atlantis, right?). Narrated Podcast is taking part in Novellavember and discussed several recent faves. I added Mystery of the Bitten Peach by Cecilia Tan to my TBR after this episode. Lexi covered her recent reading with a set of reviews. It’s very funny when I see Dungeon Crawler Carl reviewed in the same space as something like The River Has Roots. The visual I get from imagining these two books in a conversational space together is, for some reason, extremely hilarious to me. Someone host El-Mohtar and Dinniman in conversation expeditiously.

Jonathan and Gary discussed genre again and some of their favorite short fiction collections from the year on the latest episode of Coode Street. I hope the rising success of collections will convince publishers to re-release some of the anthologies that are only available in ebook (for example: anthologies by Jonathan). I love a print edition, publishers! The latest episode of Read Receipts from Reactor is all about dystopia. Hugo, Girl! discussed The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler, which was good, and then I read an interesting Bluesky thread from Casella that changed my perspective on the novella. I love things that change my perspective!

Octothorpe has your regular dose of SFF convention culture news. I also agree about the difficulty of having discussions about fandom issues. Remember forums? We could bring those back! Surely out there somewhere someone is creating a mobile-first forum tool. Obviously everyone would have to be calm about their forum signatures for loading times, but I realize what a big ask that is. A new (but old) tool and we can’t put animated gifs in our forum sig? It might be a step too far. Discord simply isn’t cutting it for loads of us, though. Alas, I don’t have a real solution. In my day we just created a nice Livejournal/Dreamwidth community. 🦕🦕🦕

We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2025, edited by Bogi Takács & Charles Payseur, is now available for preorder. There’s a romantic SF novel coming from Jill Tew next year, Headspace, although predictably I prefer the UK cover. Jo Walton shared her October reading list at Reactor. Premee Mohamed has an interview with Paul Semel about her new release, From the Library of Jurgen Leitner. John Gwynne was on SFF Addicts Podcast to talk about his book, The Wolves of War. Helene Wecker was on The Incomparable Mothership to talk about The Gates of Midnight and future plans. Wecker was also on The Functional Nerds. M. John Harrison and Julia Armfield were in conversation earlier in 2026 right after the release of The End of Everything. It’s interesting to hear him talk about the book before the Booker win. Back in October, Martha Wells was on Eating the Fantastic, a podcast I discovered via the Octothorpe folks (thanks, y’all). I also read a few excerpts: An Edge Sharp Enough by Jesse Q. Sutanto, Bones of Jade, Flesh Like Ice by Gracie Marsden, and the third and fourth chapter of Call Me Traitor by Everina Maxwell, one of my hotly anticipated December releases.

Check out Wombling Along for more links to reviews and essays in case that wasn’t enough!

Outro

Art recs will return next week, after I have slept 900 hours. Have a happy (and restful) weekend. :D — Renay

Recent Reading

(Last) Warchild by Karin Lowachee
(Now) Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
(Next) Prophet by Sin Blaché & Helen MacDonald