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Stop me if I’ve raved to you about these books before, but finally been reading at the kind of speed/intensity I used to be able to after years, and there’s been a lot to recommend.
Kate Elliott’s Unconquerable Sun. I see why everyone was raving about this, and it’s finally out here. Genderflipped Alexander the Great in Space is an easy way to describe it, but it’s a lot more, and I’m really excited for the whole series.
Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby is heartchurning
Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds, smartest multiversing I’ve seen yet.
John Scalzi’s Interdependency series - haven’t yet finished the third book, The Last Emperox, but really enjoyed the first two, and not just because the FTL travel paths are called the Flow.
Aliette de Bodard’s new Xuya story Seven of Infinities is out (not available in India yet, but bookmark the link or something). I don’t know how she does it, this casual productivity-quality high score, all the time.
Had the pleasure of meeting a lot of wonderful authors at FiyahCon, which was great news for me, but bad news for my TBR. Started off with the Jordan Ifueko’s most impressive fantasy Raybearer, the first in a series.
MR Carey’s The Trials of Koli
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Doors of Eden
Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes
Yudhanjaya Wijeratne’s The Salvage Crew which is giving me headspin with how quickly it moves. Must post more about after finishing.
Temporarily villain-lairing in Calcutta
Which means binge-consumption of the world’s greatest biryani and chaamp and rolls and phuchka and fish and …anyway, you get the picture, and much high-quality pottering around house being grumpy about next-book decisions. Also finding things, like the news that my great-nephew is an adult now, and book editions I hadn’t seen in a long time.
Grateful for this kind review of Chosen Spirits in Strange Horizons (also, plot spoilers, be warned)
Chosen Spirits was also discussed on Science Friday as part of a list of must-read specfic from POC writers.
There was also this essay in Mint as part of the JCB announcement runup:
(which brings to a wrap all the JCB stuff: many congratulations to Hareesh and his magnificent moustache! It was great to meet all the other shortlisted writers in a video panel Scroll recorded and Shreya Ila Anasuya moderated, the edited transcript is here.
More Reading
Diverse Speculative Fiction, the future of - this was most heartwarming and personally frustrating to read.
Kim Stanley Robinson is asked whether SF can save us, and probably says yes
A Wired article about network science whose headline is such blatant clickbait I didn’t even use it and here I am linking to it anyway.
Cory Doctorow on the tech-SF intersection
The mysterious jetpack man of LAX
Japanese towns use this robotic wolf to scare away bears
Trust yourself, says Hilary Mantel
A wild ram’s horn squid appears
Kate Elliott is running a series on the SFWA channel about worldbuilding, and all writers should see these videos - the first one is with the very cool Tade Thompson
Here is a duck I enjoyed
Back in a bit
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