#sff author

[franklyn-newt]

Hey bookish folks, Narratess is kindly hosting an Indie SFF sale this weekend 24-26th August!

Synthetic Sea, my trans cyberpunk mystery romance, will be included along with almost 400+ other SFF books of every flavour, with prices ranging from $0 - $1.99 so check it out if you want to fill up your ereader for the winter ahead <3

[girl-and-her-cat]

Chapter One: Extended Contracts

The probe was dead.

I knew it the moment I lay eyes on the thing. And no, it wasn’t because of the layer of icy crust surrounding the shaft nor did it have anything to do with user error. I knew it the moment they told me what the issue was. The probe had been running non-stop for four months in a freezing cold vacuum. AKA; space. And they were using a standard run-of-the-mill type-13. No way could that handle a four month operating time with no breaks.

Dumbasses.

The two techs that had brought me out here were arguing through their helmets on the main channel; I could hear everything from the saliva smacking against their lips to their stuffed up noses they wouldn’t stop snorting through as if that would help them breathe any better.

Just use a goddamn tissue.

“What’s the application?” I asked again. I knew what it was, I just wanted them to stop barking at each other. The techs got nervous when I came up here. At first I thought it was because my job was to report back to HQ and let them know if the tech’s were doing their jobs; RJ told me it’s because I’m a woman.

One tech, the one that only had one front tooth and was clearly the follower of the other guy responded after snorting mucus down his throat. “Temp and pressure of the atmosphere surrounding the pipes. Gotta know how much they can handle before being blown to shit.”

He looked at his bro for approval and smirked at me after receiving a nod.

“Can you tell us what the problem is so we can get back down? Boss don’t like us being up here too long wasting oxygen.” Leader boy said this nonchalantly but I knew who his boss was and also knew that a guy had been fired last week for using more than the mediated level of oxygen for a site run like this one. Found out he had brought his girl up for some “sight seeing”.

Fucking idiot.

“It’s dead. You’ll need to get a new one. A Type- 15 to be exact if you want it to run longer than 4 months out here.”

Read More Here

[souldagger]

my biggest tumblr book crime is that i think annihilation by jeff vandermeer is just okay

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Compound Fracture

YA thriller set in rural West Virginia

follows an autistic trans boy who survives being almost killed by the Sheriff’s son after a party, and accidentally kills one of the boys who hurt him when he tries to get back at him

and is pulled head-first back into the 100 year old feud between his & the sheriff’s families, that began when his great-great grandfather was executed after inciting a miner’s rebellion, the grandfather whose ghost has started to haunt him

community & family & socialist revolution

aro-questioning MC

arc from netgalley, out september 3

[inkcurlsandknives]

The next man to derisively refer to Romantasy as "fairy smut" is gonna have me tearing their throat out with my teeth. Just heard a dripping with condescension NPR bit on Romantasy being the most popular fiction genre. NPR is failing me as my calm car listening station 😔

What an exhausting way to live. Just let people like entertainment, be happy people are reading longform media, enjoy the fact that the fantasy target audience is growing and gaining new readers!

Traditional hero's journey fantasy and SFF in general has been a near impossible to break into oversaturated market with an audience that mostly started reading SFF under the age of 15. This has been the case for years, despite the massive popularity of SFF TV shows and movies, it just wasn't translating into people becoming SFF readers if they weren't already. That means by and large authors were not attracting new adult readers only readers who'd already been reading SFF. As literacy and reading rates among kids plummets that's CONCERNING

The move towards romantasy and cozy fantasy in books has opened up the market, and demand for new and diverse stories. We're getting readers who've never touched SFF before! That's excellent news!

[dalestromberg]

“I’ve Always Been Into Weird Fish”

Look at this MAP.

It’s for my forthcoming high fantasy novel MAEJ (out October from tRaum Books).

The incomparable Marten Norr drew it. I interviewed him about the process, and about how folks who hire him can get the most out of it.

Interview gift link. (You have to read the interview to find out about the weird fish.)

[hedgehog-moss]

do you ever read scifi or fantasy in french? i am trying to read more sff that was originally published not in english but it's not easy to find 💀

I do! It’s not my favourite genre but one of my friends loves it so I read a bunch of SFF books every year ahead of her birthday to try and find a gift for her. I’m glad I do this because it’s allowed me to discover N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy which was amazing, and I don’t know if I would have picked it up otherwise!

Here are some French-language authors I’ve read or plan to read (unfortunately English translations are few and far between :( I bolded the names for which I found English translations—if you read in another language you can check out the non-bolded authors, there are often translations available in other languages long before English ones)

When it comes to classics you've got Pierre Boulle (Planet of the Apes of course; also Garden on the Moon, which is (deservedly imo) less known), Jacques Spitz (La Guerre des mouches—it was translated but not into English), René Barjavel (The Ice People, Ravage, Future Times Three—I read them a long time ago but I remember them as very sexist even by French classic standards), Bernard Lenteric (La nuit des enfants rois), Alain Damasio (La Horde du Contrevent—maybe too recent to be a classic but it’s everywhere. I was surprised to find no English translation!), Bernard Werber (I feel like he rehashes the same 3 ideas again and again but some of his earlier stuff was fun), Alexandre Arnoux (Le règne du bonheur), Jules Verne of course, Stefan Wul (Oms en série which was adapted into the film La Planète sauvage—Fantastic Planet in English. I like the film better!) And some I haven’t read: Georges-Jean Arnaud, Serge Brussolo (I liked his Peggy Sue series when I was in middle school but it spooked me so much I haven’t dared to pick up any of his SFF for adults, like Les semeurs d’abîmes), Élisabeth Vonarburg.

Newer authors: Estelle Faye (L’arpenteuse de rêves, Un éclat de givre—I tend to like her worldbuilding more than her plots); Sandrine Collette (The Forests—if you count speculative fiction as SFF) (I didn’t like it at all personally but others might), Jean-Philippe Jaworski (I really liked Janua Vera; didn't like Gagner la guerre but it was mainly because I have a low tolerance for rape scenes in fantasy books) (he’s about to be translated into English according to his editor), Stéphane Beauverger (Le déchronologue)

More authors I haven't yet read: Pierre Pevel (The Cardinal's Blades—I've been told it's "17th century Paris with dragons"), Romain Lucazeau (Latium), Laurent Genefort (Lum’en), Christian Charrière (La forêt d’Iscambe), Roland Wagner (La saison de la sorcière), Aurélie Wellenstein (Mers Mortes—I love the synopsis for this one), Magali Villeneuve (La dernière Terre, trilogy)

And non-French, non-anglo SFF authors: Maryam Petrosyan (my review of the Gray House last year was that I understood maybe 1/3 of it but I liked it anyway!), Hao Jingfang (haven’t read her yet), Arkady & Boris Strugatsky (idem), Jaroslav Melnik (I’ve read Espace lointain (originally Далекий простір) but didn’t like it much), Andreas Eschbach (The Carpet Makers), Walter Moers (I read The City of Dreaming Books back when I was still learning German and found it very charming), Liu Cixin (I loved The Three-Body Problem but The Dark Forest was so sexist it made me not want to pick up the third volume), Lola Robles (El informe Monteverde, translated as Memoirs of an Interstellar Linguist), Elaine Vilar Madruga (Fragmentos de la Tierra Rota), Tatiana Tolstaya (The Slynx), Karin Tidbeck (Amatka), Emmi Itäranta (Memory of Water, The Moonday Letters), Angélica Gorodischer (I’ve read Kalpa Imperial and found it only so-so but it always takes me a while to warm up to characters or a setting so I struggle with short story collections. I’ll still give Trafalgar a try) Also my favourite fantasy book as a kid was Michael Ende’s Neverending Story, I was obsessed with it. I re-read it in the original German a few years ago and it was still great.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

also for newer followers who might not know

i'm writing a book! and it's getting published!

if you just want the immediate details you can click the read and read a short FAQ! if you need more to get sold on it, stick around and check it out!

My YA SFF fantasy debut, ALVOSKIA: Call of the Infrans, follows an Unchosen one named Ally who is struggling to find where she belongs amidst her chosen one found family family when violence arrives at their doorstep, and they're forced to fulfil their duties earlier than expected. There's dragons and child soldiers and subverted fantasy tropes, some tone consistent werewolves, an almost entirely queer main cast with the majority also being characters of colour, and if you've been following my blog for any amount of time, it probably has something for you.

If you like ATLA: "what if there were multiple Avatars running around, and what if they weren't all automatically good people?" + past lives and reincarnation cycles

If you like Derry Girls: hot mess of teenagers getting in and out of trouble together while being ridiculous (and sometimes very sad)

If you like PJO: young teenagers with cool powers going on quests together and coming-of-age. And snark. Lots of snark

If you like Six of Crows: morally dubious collection of protagonists, some heisting may or may not happen, outsiders working together

If you like TDP: elves and dragons and long standing grudges and politics

If you like Star Wars: y'know how the Force like consumes you the farther you wander in? yeah that's the magic system here. + some shadow, death, and shapeshifter stuff

If you like HTTYD: you're here for the found family and fun fantasy aesthetic aren't you

Rep: queer (aro, ace, bi, pan, trans, lesbian, nonbinary, genderfluid, gay main characters, often times overlapping); Asian (Indonesian), Black, Sri Lankan and Pakistani (coded) rep; hijabi rep; one character is an amputee and one main character is Autistic.

The debut month is March 2026! Sometimes there is even very pretty (commissioned or friends) art for it:

If you want more info in the meantime you can shoot me an ask or you can follow this sideblog for it. If you want a taste of my fandom writing first you can check out my AO3 or writing snippets on said side blog, like this one:

Likes and reblogs mean a lot and I hope you enjoy!

[alvoskia]

tentative release date for now, but first one i've been given so we'll have to see if it changes. either way

March 3, 2026 😊

[hasmoneanbulbasaur]

A photograph of the late, great Tanith Lee, taken by her husband John Kaiine back in the 20th century.

[vyriadurav]

My book, Catnip, is on the list for best sapphic trans/nonbinary books! Please consider voting if you enjoyed Catnip and remember: you can vote once a day! https://iheartsapphfic.com/2023/09/21/vote-for-best-sapphic-trans-nonbinary-books/

[essektheylyss]

Day two of reading SFF shorts! Here's today's:

[bookishfeylin]

Are you going to be reading House of Flame and Shadow, if only to keep up with what’s happening in ACOTAR now that there's a crossover?

No I’m much more interested in reading this:

[franklyn-newt]

I think my trans cyborg novel looks pretty cute on the shelf imo 👉👈

[scholar-of-yemdresh]

r/fantasy recommend books other than by the same 7 cis white guys challenge: level herculean.

It's genuinely disgusting to me how myopic their recommendations are. No wonder we keep getting posts asking for books with good female characters or POC or Queers because the image of fantasy you project is cishet dude mantasy slop where women are rape doll incubators(the more underaged the more "realistic") and poc/queers are more mythical than dragons.

I swear to God if I see one more neckbread bleating about The First Song Of Wheel Storm Name Winds Law by T.R.M McWhiteman I'll b*mb an orphanage.

Seriously if the only "zomg must read most epicest bestest fantasy everrrr!!!" Are ALL the SAME cis white men, your reading tastes are shit, your literature pallet is unrefined to the point of non-existence, you have no idea what you're talking about, you have no ability to give actually good book recommendations, you're just shovelling the same mantasy slop that the ur-neckbreads shoved at you, your recommendations are bad and you should feel bad.

Are you giving worthwhile recommendations that fit the brief or are you just throwing your uwu favourite books at a person, damn the fact that it doesn't fit or might even be the exact opposite of what the OP is looking for? Hmmm???

[luckydicekirby]

i know being annoying on tumblr dot com isn't a crime but like, have we considered that maybe it is?