#Raising Stony Mayhall

[hotpinkstaples]

trying not to cry about this story about a single mom and her daughters raising a zombie baby, but failing fast

[rhetoricandlogic]

Gary K. Wolfe and Adrienne Martini Review The Album of Dr. Moreau by Daryl Gregory

July 15, 2021Adrienne Martini, Gary K. Wolfe

Already in the public domain for years, H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau has practi­cally spawned a microgenre all its own, with Brian Aldiss, Gwyneth Jones (as Ann Halam), Gene Wolfe, Theodora Goss, the Simpsons, and even Marlon Brando having a whack at the story or its characters and themes. I’m pretty sure, though, that Daryl Gregory is the first to come up with the notion that those human/beast hybrids would make a dandy boy band. It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise; Gregory has been fasci­nated with the plasticity of the body and altered humans throughout his career: the grotesquely transformed residents of a small town in The Devil’s Alphabet, a zombie somehow raised from infancy in Raising Stony Mayhall, the victims of mutilations, cannibals, and cults in We Are All Completely Fine. The idea of mashing up the closest thing Wells wrote to a pure horror story with KPop-style media stardom might sound fatally whimsical, except for two things: the compassion with which Gregory customar­ily treats his most damaged characters, and his decision to cast the whole tale as a locked-room murder mystery with all its formal conventions, even to the point of quoting T.S. Eliot’s “five rules of detective fiction” (which, for the most part, Gregory cheerfully ignores).

Calling themselves the WyldBoyZ, the band members are all genetic human-animal hybrids, victims of a heinous Moreau-like program on a mysterious barge, which we eventually learn about as their backstory unfolds. Rescued by an Ecuadoran fishing boat after they escape, they become an international tabloid sensation, and then a musical sensation once they come under the management of a sleazy promoter who calls himself Dr. M – who has been ripping them off royally, mostly by taking advantage of their legal status (technically, they entered the country as livestock). As they gain fame, they inevitably adopt the de rigueur roles of boy band members – the romantic one (part bonobo), the shy one (part pangolin), the funny one (a giant bat), the smart one (part elephant), and the cute one (part ocelot). The mystery opens when Bobby O – the cute one – wakes up in his hotel room covered in blood, the butchered corpse of their manager in bed next to him. He has no memory of what happened after a wild party the night before, but he’s not the only suspect: another band member has been sleeping with the manager’s opportu­nistic wife. The detective assigned to the case, Lucia Delgado, also happens to be the mother of a nine-year-old WyldBoyZ superfan, setting up some tension as well as some rather sweet sitcom moments for later in the story.

As usual, Gregory writes with empathy and in­sight about the plight of damaged outsiders, as the unique problems and resentments of each of the band members emerge during the investigation. His neatest trick is keeping the grim backstory balanced with the sort of wacky good humor that teen superstars are expected to display, and with the formal demands of the locked-room proce­dural. The whole thing is structured as an album, with 14 tracks, an introduction, and a “bonus track,” and framed as a letter sent years later to the detective’s grown daughter, now a superstar herself. As with much of Gregory’s fiction, there’s a sentimental edge to the grotesquerie, and a grotesque edge to the comedy (which sometimes edges into James Morrow territory), but it all somehow works, thanks to Gregory’s essentially optimistic humanism and his apparent total lack of concern about recriminations from Wells’s vengeful ghost.

-Gary K. Wolfe

Daryl Gregory’s novella The Album of Dr. Moreau is a wink to the H.G. Wells novel but wholly its own detective story about a murder, an intrepid investigator, and genetic engineering. It’s about a million times more entertaining than both the Wells novel and the Val Kilmer-vehicle that was made from it.

It’s 2001 in Gregory’s Las Vegas. Last night, the WyldBoyZ, a boy band, played their last show. This morning, the band’s Svengali-esque Dr. M is discovered dead, shredded to death by someone or something with big claws. Band member Bobby woke up in the same bed as the dead doctor and, given that he’s part ocelot, happens to have very big claws. Detective Luce Delgado, who has her own very Vegas backstory, is called in to figure out whodunnit. The result is a straight-up detective tale with science fictional tropes about gene splic­ing underpinning the whole world. There are puns a’plenty and colorful characters to keep the tone brisk and engaging. Underneath, however, there are questions about what makes a human human, and that makes Gregory’s sleight-of-hand more meaningful than it first appears.

-Adrienne Martini

[thebestbookrecommendations]

Feed - Mira Grant (Newsflesh #1)

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives—the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will get out, even if it kills them.

Read if You Like:

Horror

Zombies

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Dystopian FIction

Fantasy

Thriller

Sarcasm

Journalism

Recommended if You Enjoy:

Max Brooks (World War Z)

M. R. Carey (The Girl with All the Gifts)

Daryl Gregory (Raising Stony Mayhall)

The Walking Dead (T.V. Series, 2010)

Shaun of the Dead (Movie, 2004)

Mira Grant (Into the Drowning Deep)

4/5

Next in the series:

[theorangedeath]

Inktober #22 - my birthday!! The safe

[chlfl]

Favorite Books of the 2010s: Quick Takes of 2011 Novels

Favorite Books of the 2010s: Quick Takes of 2011 Novels

This is a series of reviews of my favorite books published between 2010 and 2019. These are shorter reviews of good reads published in 2011.

  The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (2011)

The notorious hired killers, the Sisters brothers, set out on one last job to track down and kill a gold miner and inventor at the height of the California Gold Rush. I enjoyed this book quite a lot. The…

[stacks-reviews]

Must Reads Part 5

Happy Friday! This week on Must Reads we have a gun-slinging Snow White, zombie babies, evil plans, a hangman, and more.

--The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee (8/8/17) All sixteen-year-old Genie thinks about it how to get into a top-tier college. That is until the day she finds out she is a celestial spirit; straight out of Chinese folklore, who is strong enough to break through the gates to Heaven with her fists. Helping her adjust is new transfer student Quentin Sun. Genie will have to dig deep to be able to control this new power. But the more she trains, the more she realizes the secret of her true nature is entwined with Quentin. I was drawn to this one because of the cover. It shows a girl doing a superhero landing (thank you Deadpool). Comparing that to the title I was expecting something more to due with her being a superhero. It sounds like it could be pretty good. I was mainly drawn in because the play on the title compared to the cover.

--The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente, illustrated by Ana Juan Twelve-year-old September used to have a ordinary life until her father went to war and her mother went to work. One day a Green Wind stops by her home and says her help is needed in Fairyland. September is to enter the enchanted woods to retrieve a talisman for Fairylands new Marquess. And should September refuse or fail then the Marquess will make life miserable for the citizens of Fairyland. Along the way September will make new friends: a book-loving Wyvern and a boy named Saturday. This just sounds really good. I really want to get to know the book-loving Wyvern.

--The Hangman’s Daughter by Oliver Potzsch Magdalena is the daughter of Bavarian hangman Jakob Kuisl. In 1659 the Thirty Year’s War is finally over and there hasn’t been a witchcraft mania is decades. Until a boy washes ashore with a mark of a witch tattooed on his arm. The town suspects the local midwife, Martha Stechlin. Jakob’s job is to torture Martha until she confesses but Jakob believes she is innocent. With the help of his daughter and her would-be suitor, they race against the clock to find the true killer. Then other dead orphan is found with the same mark and the town becomes frenzied. And more than one person reports seeing a devil with a bone hand nearby.  At first I thought this series was going to have more of a focus on Magdalena but as I read the description of a few of the books, it sounds like the focus will be more on Jakob. Though Magdalena and her suitor do help it looked like Jakob is doing most of the work. The descriptions of the ones I looked at make the series sound pretty good. It feels like it should be a nice blend of sci-fi (at least I think it was labeled as sci-fi) and mystery. Even if the magic isn’t necessarily real.

--Raising Stony Mayhall by Daryl Gregory The first zombie outbreak occurred in 1968. Wanda and her daughters find the body of a mother with her baby wrapped up in her arms. It is stone-cold, not breathing, and doesn’t have a pulse. But then his eyes open and he begins to move. Wanda hides the baby from the authorities that would kill the baby and decide to name him Stony. Against all scientific reasons, Stony begins to grow. For years his adoptive family keep him hidden away until the night that Stony is forced to flee. And Stony learns that he isn’t the only dead child in the world. I don’t read a lot of zombie stories and I definitely don’t watch a lot of zombie shows or movies. I loved The Forest of Hands and Teeth series by Carrie Ryan and I enjoyed both The Girl with all the Gifts and The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey and I own but still haven’t read Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. But there were times when I was afraid to read them once it got dark out because I was worried about having nightmares. At one point it time if you had said zombie (or the z word as I started to call it for a time) to me close enough to when I went to bed, I would have zombie nightmares. It’s not that bad anymore but I still didn’t read them very much when it gets dark out. But every now and then there’s one I want to try. Raising Stony Mayhall sounds like it will be really good and goes along the line of the smart zombie as we have been seeing lately in different media. It makes me think of M.R. Carey’s two books mentioned above so I thought I might enjoy this one.

--Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente A Nevada silver baron forced the Crow people to give him one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him. They have a child together but Gun That Sings dies in childbirth. This world has no place for a half-native and a half-white child and is hidden away. A very wicked stepmother decides to name the girl Snow White for the pale skin she will never have. Another twist on a fairy tale. I love it every time I see a twist on a fairy tale but the hero is some kind of awesome fighter. And for whatever reason, lately I have been wanting to read more books with gun fights in them. Whether or not this Snow White will actually become a gunfighter remains to be seen. The descriptions I double checked on Barnes and Noble and Goodreads never said if she did. I really hope she does and I hope that it might also be the name she chooses for herself. Although, there would be something to be said about keeping the name if she defeats it and doesn’t see it as a mark of shame or humiliation as I’m sure her stepmother would want.

--Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom by Bradley W. Schenck “After a surprise efficiency review, the switchboard operators of Retropolis find themselves replaced by a mysterious system they don’t understand. Nola Gardner pools their severance pay to hire Dash Kent, a freelance adventurer and apartment manager, to find out what happened. Dash discovers that the replacement switchboard is only one element of a plan concocted by an insane civil engineer: a plan so vast that it reaches from Retropolis to the Moon.” The first part of the summary for this books describes it as, “A madcap, illustrated mashup of classic Buck Rogers and Futurama. Ray-guns! Robots! Rocket-cars! Retropolis! Alliteration! Exclamation points!....a gonzo, totally bonkers vision of the future imagined in the 1939 World Fair--a hilarious, illustrated retro-futuristic adventure.” It sounds like it could be pretty funny and that’s why I decided to add it to my list. If it will be that funny, we’ll just have to wait and see. 

[rockislandadultreads]

Alongside the new release of The Last of Us Part ii, here are some great Apocalyptic reads similar to the survival game’s story line. 

The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

Melanie is a very special girl. Dr. Caldwell calls her "our little genius." Every morning, Melanie waits in her cell to be collected for class. When they come for her, Sergeant Parks keeps his gun pointing at her while two of his people strap her into the wheelchair. She thinks they don't like her. She jokes that she won't bite, but they don't laugh.

Melanie loves school. She loves learning about spelling and sums and the world outside the classroom and the children's cells. She tells her favorite teacher all the things she'll do when she grows up. Melanie doesn't know why this makes Miss Justineau look sad.

The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell

Zombies have infested a fallen America. A young girl named Temple is on the run. Haunted by her past and pursued by a killer, Temple is surrounded by death and danger, hoping to be set free.

For twenty-five years, civilization has survived in meager enclaves, guarded against a plague of the dead. Temple wanders this blighted landscape, keeping to herself - and keeping her demons inside. She can't remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her on a personal journey toward redemption. Moving back and forth between the insulated remnants of society and the brutal frontier beyond, Temple must decide where ultimately to make a home and find the salvation she seeks.

Feed by Mira Grant

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop.

The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. Now, twenty years after the Rising, bloggers Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives—the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will get out, even if it kills them.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

IT HAPPENED FAST. THIRTY-TWO MINUTES FOR ONE WORLD TO DIE, ANOTHER TO BE BORN.

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear--of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors, but for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey--spanning miles and decades--toward the time an place where she must finish what should never have begun.

Raising Stony Mayhall by Daryl Gregory

In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman’s arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda — and he begins to move.

The family hides the child — whom they name Stony — rather than turn him over to authorities that would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow. For years his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret — until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run and he learns that he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.

[sigritandtheelves]

What are your top five favorite books? (asks the public library employee)

AHH!! That’s the world’s hardest question!! Also, I worked at a public library all through undergrad and it’s how I met my husband so I have lots of  ❤️ for public libraries. I’m gonna give this a try with the caveat that this list is subject to change at any moment based on mood, memory, and new information. Also, these are favorites (some of them maybe problematic faves, lol) not “bests.” 

1. Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (1978) - probably the only novel I’ve read more than three times. A childhood fave. Purple prose and melodramatic queer vampires? YES PLEASE.

2. Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983) - another fave I’ve read several times, and I have so much to say about it. A masterful exercise in the carnivalesque and the grotesque--in both form and content. Hilarious, tragic, beautiful, hideous. A must-read.

3. Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) - (not to be confused with the terrible film adaptation.) This book broke me, folks. I cried in my room for two days. Nothing gets me like the terrible melancholy of foreknowledge and inevitability that’s reflected in the form/structure of the text itself (see also Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life,” which Arrival is based on... fucking brutal).

4. Stephen King, Wizard and Glass (1997) - been a King fan since I had The Gunslinger confiscated by my fifth grade teacher because it was “inappropriate,” or maybe even before that, so this can stand in for pretty much all his stuff (guys, even the bad stuff... I get mad when it’s not good, but I love it all, even so). The Dark Tower series made me believe the world could be stranger than it is, and though I was disappointed by the last three books, this one is just... enchanting. In the very best way.

5. Victor LaValle, The Changeling (2017) - LaValle is becoming one of my favorite authors, and this is my fave of his that I’ve read so far. It’s weird, haunting, sad, funny and full of the best kinds of magic and strangeness. Internet trolls and then suddenly LITERAL TROLLS. What??? Who can make that seem plausible? 

And runners up because I have to... Toni Morrison, A Mercy (2008); Meg Elison, Book of the Unnamed Midwife (2014); Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (1998); Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (1996); George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860); Daryl Gregory, Raising Stony Mayhall (2011).... okay, I’ll stop.

Thanks for the very difficult ask 😂

Send me more!

[thelinguisticlibrary]

Genre: Horror Year: 2011 Page Count: 403 Summary: In 1968, after the first zombie outbreak, Wanda Mayhall and her three young daughters discover the body of a teenage mother during a snowstorm. Wrapped in the woman’s arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda — and he begins to move. The family hides the child — whom they name Stony — rather than turn him over to authorities that would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow. For years his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret — until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run and he learns that he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.

I really liked this first book. It had a really strong first half, and then it was like they just didn’t know where they were going with it. It felt like it could have been half as long as it actually was. It was very unique and worth a read, but the last half and ending are pretty weak. Would give a soft recommendation.

Stats: Read: 2021 Time: 3 Days

[a-ray-of-moonshine]

"Get to Know Me Better” Tag

Thanks to @homesteadchronicles for tagging me! ^^

ONE / name / alias: My first name is Olga, but I usually go by my middle name, which is Rachel. A lot of my friends shorten it to Ray, which I'm totally okay with.

TWO / birthday: My birthday is September, 15, and I've just realized because of this tag game that it's less than a month left until my birthday? Wow. Time flies. I should probably start planning something. :D

THREE / zodiac sign: I'm a Virgo, and I have never managed to form any connection between myself and how that sign is normally described. I'm sad to report the stars are mistaken on my account. My personality is a lot closer to a Gemini or maaaybe a Libra.

FOUR / height: 5' 6" or so.

FIVE / hobbies: I love writing, reading, listening to music and podcasts (that counts as a hobby, right?), swimming, cooking, and working with horses.

SIX / favorite colors: Blue! Lots of shades of blue are my favorite. The closest runner-ups are black and beige.

SEVEN / favorite books: This is so incredibly hard, because there are so many, and I get a new favorite every 5-6 books that I read. I think right now my top-5 looks like this: - the entire Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire; - Middlegame by Seanan McGuire; - the Innsmouth Legacy duology by Ruthanna Emrys; - Raising Stony Mayhall by Daryl Gregory; - We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory.

EIGHT / last song listened to: It was definitely someone by Billie Eilish, probably COPYCAT.

NINE / last film watched: Goodbye Christopher Robin.

TEN / inspiration or muse: Browsing pinterest, listening to music, writing prompts online, daydreaming, reading.

ELEVEN / dream job: I'm not sure I'm ever gonna get there, but I'd love to be a full-time writer.

TWELVE / meaning behind your url: So one day I got a little drunk with my girlfriend, we were goofing around, and she called me "a ray of sunshine," to which I wanted to reply that nah, I prefer nighttime, so I'd rather be a ray of moonlight. But of course, being really tipsy, I mangled it and called myself "a ray of moonshine," and then we had a lot of giggles about the double meaning, that was very appropriate, cause we were a little drunk. This all probably sounds dumb as I'm retelling it, but it was a very funny and cute moment for us and I've loved the phrase "a ray of moonshine" ever since, so I used it as my url.

Tagging: @writerfae @jess---writes @storyteller-shealie @me-between-the-lines @starrys0ul (feel free to skip if you don’t feel like doing this / have already been tagged)

[hotpinkstaples]

so i thought stony being zombie jesus was the main plot twist, but no, his deranged human niece forcing his ass back into a mortal coil and thus resurrecting him as bag-of-bones zombie jesus by threatening to burn his fanfiction was actually the actual, greatest plot twist. i swear this book could have been a fever dream. i want to know what daryl gregory was smoking when he decided to mash zombies with allegories of human rights politics applied to non-human bodies, with a dash of vitalist philosophy, and a meditation on the power of mass-produced paperbacks and their stans who can and will write reams of fanfiction about their favorite stories. genuinely unhinged.

[tachyonpub]

Happy birthday to the singular and amazing Daryl Gregory

Author of the World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award winning WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY FINE, Daryl Gregory also wrote the Crawford award  winning novel Pandemonium, The Devil’s Alphabet, Raising Stony Mayhall, Afterparty, the young adult prequel to WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY FINE, Harrison Squared, and most recently the Nebula Award finalist Spoonbenders. 

Gregory has written several comics and graphic novels including Legenderry: Green Hornet, Secret Battles of Genghis Khan, Dracula: Company of Monsters, and an acclaimed run on Planet of the Apes.  Many of his stories were collected in Unpossible and Other Stories.

All of us at Tachyon wish the magnificent Daryl an extraordinary birthday. Hope it all stays fine.

For information on WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY FINE, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

[thebestbookrecommendations]

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War - Max Brooks

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years. Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Read if You Like:

Horror

Zombies

Science Fiction

Fantasy

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

War

Mockumentaries

Faux Historical Fiction

Recommended if You Enjoy:

M. R. Carey (The Girl with All the Gifts)

Mira Grant (Feed)

Daryl Gregory (Raising Stony Mayhall)

Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain)

The Walking Dead (T.V. Series, 2010)

4/5

[kraken-spines]

Blurb, cover, and epilogue, please?

Blurb: How many books are you reading right now?

I tend to read a lot of books simultaneously right now I would say it’s like 5. (But all at different paces and all are different types of books)

Cover: Recommend a book for me?

No. 

Just kidding. But I think I saw you mentioning that you liked The Girl with All the Gifts? And I just read a book called Raising Stony Mayhall it’s about a baby zombie being raised by a family in the 70′s-80′s and then things happen… The author, Daryl Gregory called it an anti-horror book. The zombie apocalypse already happened humanity beat it order has been restored…but there are zombies that are straggling and what are they going to do now?

Epilogue: If you could rename any book, what would it be?

Hmmm… probably Steig Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and rename it “That book where I don’t even pretend to care about women but I’m going to get credit for being v feminist anyways because I’m a man and I’m dead”. Long title but tbh if that was the title I wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place and it would have saved me some time.

Thanks for the ask! :)

[danbensen]

Hopepunk

I read an interesting post the other day, which coined the word "hopepunk." As I understand it, it's stories about bad people doing good things (or regular people doing the best they can with a bad situation). It's exactly the sort of thing I enjoy in books (and music), and what I try to write into my own stories. In the interests of spreading the word about this genre, here's a list of fiction and music that I think might be hopepunk. @ariaste (and anyone else) , please correct me where I'm wrong.

BOOKS

Terry Pratchett - Nation (you mentioned the Discworld books, but Nation encapuslates...something. Maybe that something is hopepunk?) 

Greg Egan - Dichronauts (and most of his other work) 

Louis McMaster Bujold - Paladin of Souls (and the rest of her work, too) 

Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End 

James S.A. Corey - Babylon's Ashes (not sure about the rest of the Expanse, but this book at least) 

Kage Baker - The Bird of the River (and the rest of her work) 

Daryl Gregory - Raising Stony Mayhall (and the rest of his work) 

David Wong - Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

Brian K. Vaughan - Saga 

Ted Chiang - Exhalation 

MUSIC

Vienna Teng - Level Up