#sff 2021

[teachablr-moment]

Reading Dune right now and I was thrown off that there weren't more Melville-esque natural history rambles.

( Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / RedBubble / Buy Me A Coffee )

[heavenlyyshecomes]

recs directory

all my book / articles / film recs !! please check before sending an ask for recs <3 (this are mostly from 2020-22 so don't hesitate to ask for newer recs)

last updated: 13.04.2024

books

essay collections

short books for a reading slump

old wlw books

on generational trauma

social media accs for book recs women in translation MET art books on loneliness / pt. 2 lithub syllabi arthurian + atmospheric on internet culture gentle books underrated favs 2022 reads fav prose quarterly book recs summer reading list: 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 monsoon reading list: 2022 yearly tbr: 2022, 2023 random fiction, pt. 2, pt. 3*, pt. 4*, pt. 5*, nonfiction yearly fav reads: 2019*, 2021 on colour theory* drive link to books*

sff recs related tags: ref: mine, ref, book recs, book log

articles

misc readings tag random recs

places to read articles related tags: readings, articles

films

short films horror films random recs fav first watches: 2022 related tags: movie log

[nowtoboldlygo]

twenty books in spanish, tbr

for when i'm fluent!! most with translations in english.

Sistema Nervoso, Lina Meruane (2021) - Latin American literature professor from Chile, contemporary litfic

Ansibles, perfiladores y otras máquinas de ingenio, Andrea Chapela (2020) - short story collection from a Mexican scifi author, likened to Black Mirror

Nuestra parte de noche, Mariana Enríquez (2019) - very long literary horror novel by incredibly famous Argentine journalist 

Canto yo y la montaña baila, Irene Solà (2019) - translated into Spanish from Castilian by Concha Cardeñoso, contemporary litfic

Las malas, Camila Sosa Villada (2019) - very well rated memoir/autofiction from a trans Argentine author

Humo, Gabriela Alemán (2017) - short litfic set in Paraguay, by Ecuadoran author

La dimensión desconocida, Nona Fernández (2016) - really anything by this Chilean actress/writer; this one is a Pinochet-era historical fiction & v short

Distancia de rescate, Samanta Schweblin (2014) - super short litfic by an Argentinian author based in Germany, loved Fever Dream in English

La ridícula idea de no volver a verte, Rosa Montero (2013) - nonfiction; Spanish author discusses scientist Maria Skłodowska-Curie and through Curie, her own life

Lágrimas en la lluvia, Rosa Montero (2011) - sff trilogy by a Spanish journalist

Los peligros de fumar en la cama, Mariana Enríquez (2009) - short story collection, author noted above

Delirio, Laura Restrepo (2004) - most popular book (maybe) by an award-winning Colombian author; literary fiction

Todos los amores, Carmen Boullosa (1998) - poetry! very popular Mexican author, really open to anything on the backlist this is just inexpensive used online

Olvidado rey Gudú, Ana María Matute (1997) - cult classic, medieval fantasy-ish, award-winning Spanish author

Como agua para chocolate, Laura Esquivel (1989) - v famous novel by v famous Mexican author

Ekomo, María Nsué Angüe (1985) - super short litfic about woman's family, post-colonial Equatoguinean novel; out of print

La casa de los espíritus, Isabelle Allende (1982) - or really anything by her, Chilean author known for magical realism; read in English & didn't particularly love but would be willing to give it another try

Nada, Carmen Laforet (1945) - Spanish author who wrote after the Spanish civil war, v famous novel

Los pazos de Ulloa, Emilia Pardo Bazán (1886) - book one in a family drama literary fiction duology by a famous Galician author, pretty dense compared to the above

La Respuesta, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1691) -  i actually have a bilingual poetry collection from our favorite 17th century feminist Mexican nun; this is an essay defending the right of women to be engaged in intellectual work (& it includes some poems)

bookmarked websites:

Separata Árabe, linked by Arablit

reading challenge Un viaje por la literatura en español

[bloody-wonder]

2024 reading wrap up

january is almost over and yet the ghost of reading year past shall not rest untill i rank all the books👻📚

*the tiers are once again named after different things from the books featured on this list - see explanation below🙃 **the following series i read in full are represented only by one book respectively: doctrine of labyrinths, her instruments, the riverside trilogy, the memoirs of lady trent, the cemeteries of amalo, the stolen heir, the summer hikaru died, evander mills, page & sommers ***usually i don't rank rereads but since this year i had only two - the three musketeers and swordspoint - and they both ended up on the top tier i decided to add them for completeness' sake

so in 2024 i broke all my previous records in regards to the amount of books/pages read. my secret? being unemployed lol. but now that i have started my phd and got a full time job my reading is bound to decrease dramatically which is probably a good thing bc i feel like, while reading so much definitely helps you find more good books and authors faster, the downside is that stories stand out less, regardless of their quality. altho i do love every book i put on the top tier dearly, compared to the previous year's (smaller) selection this one seems quite homogeneous and sff focused. and 3 out of top 5 books/series are straight! who is responsible for this?!🤨

i did well on almost all my nerd ass challenges: finishing and continuing series, starting new ones, not neglecting standalone sff, reading widely in terms of genre and language, not putting off big intimidating books etc etc. i even completed my oldest challenge for the first time by finally managing to read five chunky classics in the span of one year - this won't be happening again any time soon😅 in the future i want to shift my focus to difficult historical novels instead bc i sure don't have enough brain space for both. where i "failed" on the other hand was reading nonfiction: i realized that no matter how much interest i have in the topic the only way i'm able to process factual information is if a trans youtuber dressed as a dominatrix or a cat or some sort of jester is telling it to me in an asmr voice. i'm not very good at encouraging myself to reread the things i want to reread either - hopefully that will change in 2025 so that i can finally reread aftg🪄

last year i tried blogging more about my current reads and it was fun while it lasted - now i sadly don't have time to do that anymore :( so my 2024 reading updates must remain unfinished. in any case, just by looking at this tier list i can come to the same conclusions i would've come to if i had reviewed each and every one of these books: niche sff is where it's at for me, older books are better written, and simply queer is not enough for me anymore - i need intricate mind games and rituals that transcend sexuality lol.

so if you know such books please rec them to me! and tell me about your reading year - by making a tier list, or writing a post or just sharing your fave 2024 reads like @oliviermiraarmstrongs tagged me to do. thank you btw😌💜

@figuringthengsout @fugitoidkry @pinkasrenzo @fandomreferencepending @counterwiddershins @magpiefngrl @sugarbabywenkexing @weirdsociology @theodoradove @doh-rae-me @venndaai @sixappleseeds

p.s. it just came to my knowledge that my year in books is still active. tagging everyone who wants to do this! :D

goodreads │ old yearly wrap ups 2020 2021 2022 2023 │ my book tag

✨explanation of the tier titles under the cut✨

obligation d'âme is a spell a wizard can cast on a person in sarah monette's doctrine of labyrinths that binds them "closer than lovers". it's very bdsm-coded and a tiny bit problematic bc the enchanted then has to do everything the wizard commands and they may or may not be referred to as slave🫢🙈 on the bright side tho it's very hot and gay🤷‍♀️ just like obligation d'âme these books have put me under their problematic spell🪄

peltedverse is the unofficial name of mca hogarth's sci fi universe populated by humans, human-animal hybrids, space elves and aliens, which has been steadily growing on me ever since i discovered the dreamhealers. in 2024 her instruments completely charmed me by its cast of loveable characters, wacky adventures and fairy-tale romance. it's not the best thought-out world but it has this home-cooked quality to it which i prefer to carefully calculated lore that makes 100% of sense all the time. and these books, while not as good as the ones in the upper tier, have still captured my heart😌

racallio ryndoon is an episodic character in george r.r. martin's fire & blood. he's a chaotic crossdressing bisexual pirate captain with purple hair who likes to be spanked by his wives, gives severed heads as a courting gift and will sell the right of safe passage through his waters for a kiss. all in all, a perfect character who is sadly present only for one short episode. i remember him fondly but i wish he had more to give - just like these books☠️🦜⛵

calliagnosia is a procedure ted chiang invented in his short story liking what you see: a documentary which enables people to turn off their perception of physical beauty - leading to less lookism-based discrimination at the cost of finding nobody hot lol (at least in their looks). the story follows the controversy around making calliagnosia obligatory in certain environments and just like the characters who can't seem to decide whether finding people hot or stopping discrimination is more important, i am of two minds on whether these books are actually good or not😅

gong bath is the preferred method of patient treatment of the sex therapist the main character of jen beagin's big swiss is working for. meaning: the patient rests on the couch while the therapist chants and strikes the gong he has in his office. just like gong bath, these books didn't harm me - but they didn't cure me either😐

the philosophers' colloquium is the crusty dusty male centered science academy that kept refusing to admit lady trent despite her outstanding contributions to the natural history of dragons😠 disappointing, overrated, ill-shampooed - just like these books🧐

life-sickness is something the inhabitants of hope mirrlees' lud-in-the-mist didn't realize they suffered from until they tried forbidden fairy fruit. these books were so disappointing, boring, annoying or offensive that they made me brain-sick, depressed and upset about the state of Literature😩

[ckiramman]

i made this post without even remembering the exordia announcement and that some desperate glory and bitterhorn are releasing in the next few months

new cl clark sapphic romeo + juliet series announced the day after adofn release and a week before the faithless release book sapphics we are winning 2023!!!!

[ashmouthbooks]

EARTH IS MISSING! / EVERYONE'S WORLD IS ENDING ALL THE TIME

this spring I entered the Elizabeth Soutar Bookbinding Competition held by the National Library of Scotland. The theme this year was climate change. I didn't win any of the categories (I certainly didn't think I'd win any of the Craft categories, but I thought I had a decent shot at the Creative categories) but I am very happy with how my binding came out anyway!

under the cut is the details of the binding and the process that went into it, plus a full list of the texts included.

this is a modified 3 piece bradel binding - a 3 piece bradel is usually made with leather spine with the spine attached to the textblock and the front and back covers added on after. there's another variety of a 3 piece bradel case where the spine and boards are assembled with a thin piece of paper to later be covered with a bookcloth. I wanted to use some leftover misprint cardstock I had (the same stuff I'd previously used to make paperbacks) and I wanted to print the titles directly onto the covers and spine (specifically I wanted to overprint the titles to imitate the existing misprint), and in order to fit it through my printer I had to have it in three pieces. so I assembled a bradel case as if it were to be covered with a cloth, only the cardstock I was using to assemble the case would also be the cover material.

everything I used to make this book was recycled or reused, with the exception of the greybeards which were new (I didn't have any rescued book boards from secondhand books at the time). the text paper is recycled eco-craft paper, the endbands are re-used macramé cords wrapped in green wrapping paper that came from a gift bag, and as mentioned, the cover material comes from a misprinted running sheet.

a few process photos of getting the case together:

in terms of content, I took care that not only should the binding fit the theme of climate change - by using recycled and reused materials - but the text inside should also fit the theme. there were a lot of considerations there because I could easily have just bought a copy of something like Greta Thunberg's speeches and rebound them, but I wanted the texts to be something that made sense to me. so I went and looked at the SFF magazines I read for climate fiction and essays, I looked for academic papers, and I looked on Gutenberg for older pulp fiction relating to climate change. once I had a selection of texts I pared them down to two categories, fiction and non-fiction, and decided the most fun way to bind them would be as a tête-bêche with fiction on one side and non-fiction on the other, and this then informed how the binding would physically turn out - the modified 3 piece bradel.

here is the full table of contents for each side of the book:

EVERYONE'S WORLD IS ENDING ALL THE TIME and other writings

A Climate of Competition: Climate Change as Political Economy in Speculative Fiction, 1889–1915 by Steve Asselin Published in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 45, No. 3, SF and the Climate Crisis (November 2018), pp. 440-453

A Century of Science Fiction That Changed How We Think About the Environment by Sherryl Vint Published in the MIT Press Reader, 20th July 2021

The climate is changing. Science fiction is too. by Eliza Levinson Published in The Story, 30th June 2022

’Not to escape the world but to join it’: responding to climate change with imagination not fantasy by Andrew Davison Published in Philosophical Transactions: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 375, No. 2095, Theme issue: Material demand reduction (13 June 2017), pp. 1-13

Science in Fiction: A Brief Look at Communicating Climate Change through the Novel by Eline D. Tabak Published in RCC Perspectives, No. 4, COMMUNICATING THE CLIMATE: From Knowing Change to Changing Knowledge (2019), pp. 97-104

Everyone’s World Is Ending All the Time: notes on becoming a climate resilience planner at the edge of the anthropocene by Arkady Martine Published in Uncanny Magazine issue 28, May 7, 2019

EARTH IS MISSING! and other stories

Earth Is Missing! by Carl Selwyn in Planet Stories (1947)

Climate—Disordered by Carter Sprague in Startling Stories (1948)

Climate—Incorporated by Wesley Long in Thrilling Wonder Stories (1948)

A Being Together Amongst Strangers by Arkady Martine in Uncanny Magazine (2020)

You’re Not The Only One by Octavia Cade in Clarkesworld Magazine (2022)

Why We Bury Our Dead At Sea by Tehnuka in Reckoning Magazine (2023)

[no-where-new-hero]

Legitimately obsessed by how this 2021 Reactor article on modern "Bluebeard" retellings included The Blue Castle as its bonus pick. TBC is forever, Maud will never die, she is beloved even in the darkest SFF corners of the Internet.

[labjegyzet]

Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2024 antológia - novellapályázat

Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái antológiasorozat 2018-ban indult, abból a tapasztalatból kiindulva, hogy a fantasztikus kispróza népszerűsége az olvasók körében is megnőtt, és hogy nincs egészséges és írói fejlődésre teret adó fantasztikus irodalmi élet gazdag és több platformon zajló novellakiadás nélkül. Ehhez a GABO az antológiasorozatával maga is hozzájárult: a kezdetek óta nagyjából száz novella jelent meg köteteiben ismert és új szerzőktől.

Kiadványaink a Márai-program segítségével határon túli könyvtárakba is eljutottak, valamint a megújult Zsoldos Péter-díj jelöltjei és nyertesei  között számos 2019-ben, 2020-ban, 2021-ben és 2022-ben antológiáinkban megjelent novella megtalálható. A 2023-as Zsoldos-díj eredményhirdetése a minap zajlott: novella kategóriában Gaura Ágnes Az erdő szíve című írása nyert, amely antológiasorozatunk legfrissebb kötetében jelent meg, regény kategóriában pedig Rusvai Mónika Kígyók országa című művét díjazták, amely szintén a GABO Kiadó gondozásában került boltokba. Emellett a szintén novellásköteteinkből ismerős Puska Veronika Vétett út című regénye is nálunk talált otthonra.

A GABO SFF idei novellapályázatára is fantasy, science fiction, horror és weird novellákat várunk. Arra kérünk azonban minden pályázót, hogy a sokszínűség érdekében igyekezzenek minél szabadabban nyúlni az egyes zsánerekhez, ne ragaszkodjanak az esetleg már bevált megoldásokhoz, használják ki a lehetőséget, hogy a fantasztikum szinte határtalan játékteret biztosít.

A kiadó szerkesztői által legjobbnak ítélt művek 2024 őszén fognak megjelenni.

A pályamunkákat az info@gabo.hu címre kérjük. Kollégánk, aki nem vesz részt az értékelésben, nyilvántartást vezet a pályázók adatairól, és a novellákat anonimizálva küldi tovább az elbírálást végző szerkesztőknek. Eredményhirdetés 2024 augusztusában várható. Amennyiben a pályázat elbírálásakor a szerkesztők nem találnak elég novellát, hogy megtöltsenek egy kötetet, utólag pályázaton kívül íródott műveket is beleválogatnak az antológiába.

Ami pedig a kritériumainkat illeti, azok évek óta változatlanok, ezért idézünk a 2018-as pályázat utáni blogbejegyzésünkből:

„Mi nem divatnovellákat keresünk, nem kell igazodni trendekhez, nem érdekel minket a jól ismert régi. Olyan fantasztikus novellákat szeretnénk látni, amelyeket nem tudna más megírni, csak az adott szerző, az ő saját, egyéni látásmódjával és érzékenységével, amelyek épp emiatt újak és különlegesek.”

Határidő: 2024. június 17. éjfél

Terjedelmi korlát: 10 000 - 40 000 leütés

Honorárium: megjelenés esetén bruttó 40 000 Ft

Megjelenés: 2024 ősz

Formai követelmények: A novellákat RTF vagy DOC formátumban várjuk, a fájl neve tartalmazza a szerző nevét és a novella címét. A fájlban szintén fel kell tüntetni a szerző nevét és elérhetőségét. A szöveg legyen sorkizárt, a sortávolság szimpla vagy másfeles, kiemelésre bold vagy kurzív használható, hacsak a novella nem tartalmaz rendhagyó formai megoldásokat.

Beküldés: elektronikusan az info@gabo.hu címre, az e-mail tárgymezőjébe kerüljön bele a “pályázat” szó, pl. Tárgy: PÁLYÁZAT: Gipsz Jakab: Novella címe. A kísérőlevélben a könnyebb adminisztráció érdekében szerepeljen a pályázó neve, emailcíme és a novella címe.

Tematikai megkötés: science fiction, fantasy, horror, weird

Kikötések: Magyar nyelven sem nyomtatott, sem online formában nem publikált, eredeti, fennálló franchise-hoz nem köthető műveket várunk, amelyekkel máshol sem találkozhattunk korábban (tehát nem kaptuk meg korábban kéziratként, pályázaton kívül). Egy szerző egy pályaművet küldhet be.

Friss, eredeti, tartalmas novellákat várunk. Ugyan bármilyen témát szívesen látunk a fantasztikum területén belül, van néhány történettípus és -elem, amelyiknél már nehéz újat mondani. Javasoljuk, hogy a pályázók olvassák el a 2018-as kiírás tartalmi megkötéseit, és a novellapályázat tanulságait 2018-ban valamint 2019-ben.

További támpontok, milyen novellákat keresünk:

Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2018

Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2019

Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2020

Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2021

Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2022

Az év magyar science fiction és fantasynovellái 2023

és

Az év legjobb science fiction és fantasynovellái 2016

Az év legjobb science fiction és fantasynovellái 2017

Az év legjobb science fiction és fantasynovellái 2018

Az év legjobb science fiction és fantasynovellái 2019

Az év legjobb science fiction novellái 2020

Kleinheincz Csilla és Roboz Gábor

szerkesztők

[magpiefngrl]

2023 Book Review

Photo Credit (original): Ed Robertson

I read 95 books this year. Here's some of what I enjoyed and what I didn't, in genre or arbitrary categories:

Fave SFF books

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Susanna Clarke)

Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik)

All Systems Red (Martha Wells)

The Library at Mount Char (Scott Hawkins)

Mammoths at the gates (Nghi Vo)

Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir)

Amberlough (Lara Elena Donnelly)

Fab m/m romances

Seven Summer Nights (Harper Fox)

The Lodestar of Ys (Amy Rae Durreson)

The Scottish Boy (Alex de Campi)

Magician (KL Noone)

Heated Rivalry (Rachel Reid)

Also Role Model and The Long Game (Rachel Reid)

The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen (KJ Charles)

The older ones

(recently published books can feel very samey after a while. The irony of these being old books but feeling like a breath of fresh air)

Tam Lin (Pamela Dean) (1991)

Swordspoint (Ellen Kushner) (1987)

Wise Children (Angela Carter) (1991)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) (1981)

(more books under the cut)

Best atmosphere

The Likeness (Tana French)

The fun rereads

Scum Villain's Self-Saving System (MXTX_

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MXTX)

The King of Attolia (Megan Whalen Turner)

Empress of Salt and Fortune (Nghi Vo)

The Ruin of a Rake (Cat Sebastian)

The unexpected delight

(it's a biography, and I never anticipated feeling so engrossed in one of them)

The invention of Angela Carter (Edmund Gordon)

The one that hurts so good

Checkmate (Dorothy Dunnett)

Didn't quite love the books but adored the characters

The Dreamer Trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater (my typical experience of her stories)

The meh

Bardugo's Nikolai duology

Schwab's Darker Shades of Magic

The dreadful and my only DNF

A Taste of Gold and Iron (Alexandra Rowland)

Most bitterly disappointing

The third installment of Hall's billionaire series How to Belong with a Billionaire.

Biggest book hangover

Seven Summer Nights and Heated Rivalry

Best book boyfriend

ILYA ROZANOV

Most bonkers book

The Library at Mount Char (Scott Hawkins)

The "not sure I liked it but it'll definitely stay with me"

Some Desperate Glory (Emily Tesh)

The writing craft book that actually offered a new insight

The Heroine's Journey (Gail Carriger)

Overall, a decent year. My goal of completing series I'd started in the past and hadn't finished meant I subjected myself to some less enjoyable books, but I also read some excellent romances and fantasy novels, and I really enjoyed reading some older books, a practice I plan to continue.

past years

2015 2016 2019 first half of 2020 top 5 books of 2020 2021 2022

[accidentalspaceexplorer]

6, 13, 22?

End of year book asks:

6. Any new favorite authors?

I absolutely loved Lev A. C. Rosen's Evander Mills books, and I'm so excited to see what he continues to write! Also, while she isn't new to me, necessarily, I do think I've bumped Seanan McGuire up to a favorite author this year with how obsessed I got with the October Daye books.

13. How would you summarize your reading choices for this year?

Honestly probably "scattered" lol. One of my priorities was to read down the number of series I had, so I tried to focus on picking up the next book in a series, and that worked occasionally - I really went ham on the October Daye books & I'm caught up with those now, & I DNF'd or completed 7 series that I hadn't read a book in since 2021 - but I also mood read a lot, picking up new series and binging them in a way I haven't since I was in like middle school, or picking up something totally random and reading it when I had all sorts of other books that were more conscious priorities. So my reading was all over the map this year.

22. What are some books you discovered this year that you added to your TBR?

I've added probably 300 books to my TBR this year, so I'll give you a couple of the backlist ones I've added recently that I'm really excited about: Crocodile on the Sands by Elizabeth Peters (a mystery writer from the 1970s I'd never heard of before), Ammonite by Nicola Griffith (I knew about Hild but I didn't realize she'd been writing queer SFF for decades), and Scarlet Odyssey by C. T. Rwizi (an African fantasy that came out in 2020 I somehow had never heard of before!).

Thanks for asking! :)

[rhetoricandlogic]

One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(This review was originally posted on Goodreads in 2021):

“We were the time warriors, and we killed time.”

Somewhere, no – somewhen, at the edge of Time (or whatever is left of it after the time-shredding Causality War) is a peaceful idyllic farm where the last survivor of the time war spends his days tending the crops, restoring old Soviet tractors, feeding his pet allosaurus — and murdering any remaining time travelers that come to his “when”, a bottleneck in Time. This is the only way he sees to prevent yet another Time War.

“They all end up here, because this is the end-time. This is all the time there is. This is the trailing edge of what comes later, after the breach in regular transmissions left by the war. A bottleneck, you understand. You want to fling yourself forwards past the badlands of the war, this is where you end up. And I’ll be waiting for you. Nobody gets by me. I have literally all the technology in the world, culled from every moment that anyone ever had a Big Idea, to make sure of exactly that. I am the ultimate surveillance state.”

Except for – of fragging course! – things will not go the way they are supposed to. Many many times. Because threats don’t only come from the shattered past. There will be tractors and dinosaurs and murders and statues and unpleasant visitors and even polite tea time, and bonding over mutual misanthropy and assassination attempts, and it all will be funny and twisted and darkly humorous.

“By setting up shop here where the regular passage of time recommences, and denying access to the future to all comers, I am saving the unseen future from interference. I am time’s gatekeeper, and without me the future would become the same ruin as the past.”

Adrian Tchaikovsky is a guy I’d love to hang out with and pick his brain and share a drink or two with. He’s obviously brilliant and wonderfully funny and can pull the rug out from under you with a few sentences that you need to reread a few times just to understand how throughly he just messed with your expectations. All while having a blast with the sardonic and misanthropic and yet objectively funny story that comes from dark places and leads to those even darker — but chuckling along the way. Oh, and you betcha there’s going to be a grandfather paradox — but presented Tchaikovsky-style, with a fresh irreverent take on it and a healthy dose of sarcasm.

“How I love the rugged outdoors life! Living out here with nothing but the fields and the animals and literally the best technological support that anyone ever invented.”

I start to think that there’s nothing in SFF that Tchaikovsky cannot do. He is yet to disappoint me. His books have all been solid for me, and if he doesn’t eventually become one of SFF acknowledged classics, I will be quite baffled.

And if you don’t feel a shiver of dread at hearing the word “twee” after finishing this book, then you, my friend, will need to give that last page or two another read.

[mayarab]

BEHOLD THE BEANS!

These are Aliyah (they/them) in the back, Horace (e/em) in the middle and Rumi (he/him) and they are the ace main characters from The Chronicles of Nerezia!

The first one, Awakenings, is already funded on Kickstarter, but you can still help!!!

Blurb and Description

As the city’s eternal apprentice, Horace has never found a clan to belong to. E has joined Trenaze's guards with hopes to finally earn eir place during eir trial day at the Great Market—that is, until the glowing shards haunting the world break through the city's protective dome. Armed with a sword and too little training, Horace doubts in eir ability to defend the market-goers. But eir last stand is interrupted by a mysterious elven figure who can dissipate the shards with a single, strange sentence: your story is my story. 

From the moment it is uttered, Horace knows the sentences holds true for em, too—and when the elf collapses in the middle of the market, e carries them to safety. After an afternoon of board games in their quiet, sharp-witted company, Horace is ready to follow this elf as they seek the forest that haunts their dreams, and answers to the confounding events at the Market. Their story is eir story, and e is willing to confront the dangers of the road to hear their laugh again and finally feel like e belongs.

The Chronicles of Nerezia is a series of nine queer fantasy novellas with non-binary aroace MCs that marries the quiet moments of cozy fantasy and the sweeping twists of epic fantasy. It’s currently running on Kickstarter!

—

Author Bio

Claudie Arseneault is an easily-enthused aromantic and asexual writer with a never-ending cycle of obsessions but an enduring love for all things cephalopod and fantasy (together or not!). She writes stories that centre platonic relationships and loves large casts and single-city settings, the most notable of which are the City of Spires series (2017-2023) and Baker Thief (2018).

In addition to her own fiction, Claudie has co-edited Common Bonds (2021), an anthology of aromantic speculative short stories. She is a founding member of The Kraken Collective, an alliance of self-publishing SFF authors, and the creator of the Aromantic and Asexual Characters Database.

[olderthannetfic]

Everyone I know who found TIHYLTTW mildly disappointing and overhyped (including me) read it shortly after it came out and won all those awards. I'm not sure where people got the idea that everyone is suddenly discovering it thanks to that Trigun fan's tweet going viral (which was neat in itself). Anyway, the mixed opinions of this book among core SFF readers starting in 2019 are part of an ongoing conversation about what gets praised in the Hugo-winning mainstream (non-Puppy, non-dudebro space), which is often cliquey, risk-averse, and arguably compromised in terms of the core ethics/values of progressive SFF. For instance, the Hugo Awards got a ton of backlash in 2021 for being sponsored by the American defense giant Raytheon. This was the same year that you had winners like the fifth instalment of Murderbot Diaries, which has been recced on your blog as good ace rep (I only half-agree as it falls into the robot-as-ace stereotype, but that's beside the point; for a certain kind of reader, "good rep" is the only real litmus test of a book's quality and so they praise it even when it's iffy). Basically you have a situation where an org devoted to progressive, inclusive SFF takes blood money while feeling minority-allied and conflict-free. And while none of this implicates TIHYLTTW directly or any other Hugo-winning book from any adjacent year, I can't help but feel like the excessive (imo) praise of certain books exists against the background of larger decoupling of personal ethics/politics and inclusive rep in fiction. And what inclusive queer rep looks like in a space where you're discouraged from taking risks and getting nasty is shallow characterization, bloodless insta-love, and stylish prose that keeps you at arm's length.

--

[gideonisms]

Idk I want to believe tlt will have an influence on sff for years to come but who could say, that's hard to predict. I can't be objective because do you know how wild it was to be interested in something at the end of 2021? I was like this is the best book ever written (made me feel real emotions a year into my fifth customer service job, pandemic edition)

[eldritchwyrm]

finally watched dune (2021). assorted thoughts

i really enjoyed this movie but i'm having serious trouble explaining why. i didn't get the same type of enjoyment out of it that i'm typically looking for in a big-budget sff movie. i wasn't worried about the characters' fate at literally any point. i didn't find it "exciting," i didn't "relate" to anyone, and i wasn't "emotionally invested" in the character relationships. i wasn't even intellectually invested in the adaptation project from a critical perspective. i was drawn in by... something else?

felt like timothée chalamet phoned in all his lines. it was like he was doing a cold read of the script over a zoom call and the vibes were just absolutely flatlining. but i don't actually think that was his fault? i think that was an accurate depiction of the character as given to him?

as far as i can recall this is the first time that a sci fi movie actually gave me a gut-swoop feeling via its portrayal of LARGE SCALE. every other sf movie tries soooo haaaard to get me to care about Identical Giant Spaceship #28489211 Did I Mention It's Big, but this is the first time i actually had a "oh that's BIG" feeling

pretty sure that effect was almost all shot composition. lots of extreme wide shots in which architectural features / space objects formed austere, abstracted shapes

i really liked every shot EXCEPT, ironically enough, the ones that featured dunes (lowercase).

me pointing at a generic sand dune: i've had enough of this guy

related to the sand imagery. i am Aware that dune enacts a complex critique of imperialism over the course of several novels and that the Point is to make you uncomfortable at first. i am still uncomfortable. this is fine. this is the point. but i find the move of "immerse you in white saviorism for a whole novel, then subvert it" a lot easier to handle in book form? the cinematic gaze is very different from the novelistic gaze. it does Things to the portrayal of otherwise very similar plot events. still deciding if i like that

then again it's been so many years since i read the novel... idk

i did feel like maybe i should've seen this on a big screen. and i will probably attempt to see the sequel in theaters? something i have not done of my own volition in many years, even before the pandemic?

whatshername who played jessica was an incredible actor. profoundly weird in exactly the correct way

i was surprised by how little emphasis they gave to the litany; it was present just enough but they didn't Make A Scene of it. i'm guessing that's being saved for the sequel

okay now that i've thought about it more: i think i enjoyed this movie the same way i might appreciate an art film.

so the thing about arthouse films is many of them prioritize reflective, reflexive commentary, often in a brechtian or approximately brechtian mode. often this promotes certain kinds of immersion (an ill-defined term! which we use a lot regardless!), especially the intellectual and aesthetic, at the cost of other kinds of immersion.

there's a certain liveliness of character that can be found in the best "commercial" artworks — the sort of thing that makes people say the characters "jumped off the page". that particular brand of liveliness is much rarer in "literary"/arthouse texts because the particular flavor of reflective mode that's fashionable right now puts up a barrier between that "liveliness" and the reader/viewer/etc.

i don't mean that these texts can't directly engage audience emotion or deliver a gutpunch or whatever -- i'm trying to get at the fact that they exhibit a deep distrust of charm. charm as an affect is contradictory to brechtian detachment. that's not particular to 21st century literary fiction or arthouse film, that's a cultural movement that's been happening in fits and starts in america and britain for a while now?

(this is reminding me i still need to read erin horáková's dissertation)

(damn that's reminding me i need to find her dissertation)

(i could always. ask. but that seems. embarrassing)

anyways these aren't inherent qualities of genre. they're not foundational.

you see plenty of texts that employ "commercial" modes of audience engagement that are later recuperated into the literary canon and treated as literary fiction, even if they weren't originally marketed as such. to kill a mockingbird is a decent example of this

ANYWAYS i'm almost sure i enjoyed dune (2021) as an arthouse film? i found myself wishing i could turn down the character voices into a low murmur so that i could just be whisked through the interplay of light and shadow without being bothered with "plot"

despite my apparent lack of investment in the characters, i thought duncan's death was a great example of a classic trope done right? i just found the whole scene incredibly satisfying, narratively? idk.

i got seriously tired of seeing dreamy wordless visions of zendaya's face tho. so you paid for zendaya to be in this movie. WE GET IT.

[gollancz]

Locus Awards - Vote for Gollancz!

The annual Locus Awards close for voting on 15th April - anyone can vote, for their favourite SFF books, authors, short stories, editors, magazines and fanworks!

You can vote here! Voting is open to anyone, you just have to request a link.

We have a number of nominations, hidden below the cut for easy reference! (Write-ins are also welcome if you have any books you adored but which aren't currently listed)

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

The Thousand Earths, Stephen Baxter

Eversion, Alastair Reynolds

The This, Adam Roberts

Beyond the Burn Line, Paul McAuley

The Red Scholar's Wake, Aliette de Bodard

BEST FANTASY NOVEL

Aspects, John M. Ford (published under our Gateway imprint, with introduction by @neil-gaiman)

The Cartographers, Peng Shepherd (published under our sister imprint Orion)

BEST EDITOR

Gillian Redfearn, Gollancz

Maybe we're biased, but Gillian's the best. She's been at Gollancz nearly 20 years, and is the editor for Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie, Alastair Reynolds, Aliette de Bodard, Joanne Harris, Garth Nix, Elizabeth Bear, Patrick Rothfuss, Miles Cameron, Chris Wooding, Sarah Pinborough, Charlaine Harris... the list goes on! The only UK-based editor to be shortlisted for a Hugo award, she's also genuinely one of the nicest people you will ever meet.

BEST PUBLISHER

Gollancz

We are the oldest dedicated SFF imprint in the world. Founded by Victor Gollancz in 1927, we were the original home of George Orwell, Daphne du Maurier, Kingsley Amis and many others. Victor Gollancz was a proud humanitarian, and that informed his publishing ethos. A newspaper review in 1933 read, "On a yellow Gollancz wrapped you will alway find a black V on G. You may interpret it as either Victor Gollancz or as Very Good, and in either case you'll be right." In the 1960s, Gollancz became a dedicated SFF and horror imprint, and has continued to publish some of the best works in the genre. Through our SF Gateway list, we have created an archive of books which has rescued and reissued books which had never before been digitised, as well as collecting some of the greatest SFF ever written.

In 2019, we partnered with Ben Aaronovitch to launch the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME award, looking for British writers from underrepresented backgrounds. The success of this led to it expanding into its current form as The Future Worlds Prize, which now involves several UK SFF publishers.

In 2021, we won the British Book Award for Best Imprint - the first time it had ever been awarded to an SFF imprint.

We have big plans to keep growing in the run up to our centenary, and we can't wait to tell you about them!