falling rakes and iron gardens
Brave readers,
The Le Guin foundation announced today that Vajra Chandrasekera’s novel Rakesfall has won the Ursula K. Le Guin prize. I've read that one of the major criteria for the Booker prize is that a book must reward reading over and over. Rakesfall strikes me as that sort of book--a story that will reveal ever-new facets as you revisit it--and I'm delighted on Vajra's behalf. Watch or read his acceptance speech for some thoughts on why science fiction matters now, of all years, and read his short story Documentary if you'd like a partial sense of where Rakesfall is coming from and how it will bend your mind inside out.
Vajra asks for donations to the Sameer project. The Le Guin prize isn't one of those prizes that builds suspense by asking all the nominees to draft an acceptance speech just in case, but if I'd had to come up with one, I'd have included the Detroit Justice Center somewhere in there. The stories in North Continent Ribbon return again and again to the gap between imagined and real justice. The DJC looks for concrete, practical ways to prevent collision with the court system in southeast Michigan from destroying people's lives; I encourage you to support them. (If you're American but not Great Lakes-adjacent, consider your local bail fund too.)
In other writerly happenings, I recently reviewed A.D. Sui's forthcoming Iron Garden Sutra. It's a haunted spaceship story, which makes me wish I could offer it to you as Halloween reading, but you'll have to wait till February (or pregame with Rakesfall's haunted planet!)
Meanwhile, the forthcoming queer sf magazine Otherside is running a Kickstarter to fund its first years of operation. Through hard work and stylish marketing, they've zoomed past their initial goals, but there are still rewards to claim. In particular, I donated a poetry critique--as have other fabulous poets, including Angela Liu.
Here's Gennoveus, who is always stylish:
Yours,
Ursula.