more thoughts on the Vess Earthsea

I'm picky, we know this, but Vess's character designs and maybe general art style just weren't a good match for the Earthsea in my head. His Ged doesn't look like my Ged, he's too cartoony, he looks like a damn elf or something in the endpaper illustration. The dragons are wrong - dragons are hard, I often don't like the dragons, but I don't want these wrong ones in my eyeballs confusing me. Very tempted by the book otherwise - it's a weighty tome, there's something very satisfying about having it all in one place, I only managed to skim the final essay since the book suddenly became due back before I was ready, I'd have a copy of Firelight (and everything else) to work from and revisit and overanalyze. But those dragons! No!

2018 online short SFF recs - misc

It's online SFF time! Maybe 2019 will be the year I actually start the 2019 stories in 2019... 2018 wasn't for 2018 fiction, except for this handful of random stories here.

Under the Sun, Gavin Schmidt, Motherboard. Short story by a climate scientist to accompany his paper about how humans would investigate the possibility of paleontological civilizations.

Element 174, Syinat Sultanalieva, The Calvert Journal. Feminist sf from Kyrgyzstan!

When the Letter Comes, Sara Fox, Book Smugglers. About getting your letter for magic school, or not getting it. So many feelings.

Field Biology of the Wee Fairies, Naomi Kritzer, Apex. Delightful science-vs-patriarchy fun.