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The Deep Sky, Yume Kitasei, 2023 novel. I am picky about space (specifically, like, astronaut attitudes and practices) and at first I was struggling with this one. Why did they seem so ill-prepared? Why didn't they have better contingency planning? But I kept with it because I really liked a couple of Kitasei's choices (the set-up where, like, half of these astronauts are pregnant and some of them are hugely pregnant is such a delightful contrast to the whole thin-people-in-bodysuits space aesthetic. and I appreciated the matter-of-fact implication that if you wanted your whole crew to be able to bear children but also wanted various kinds of diversity, you'd end up with a bunch of trans/nb people for gender diversity). And as we learned more I did end up feeling like there was narrative justification for a lot of what bugged me. I still felt like there was a certain amount of the plot driving the bus (like, a lot of background choices that were made to set up the story Kitasei wanted to tell and not because that's what anyone would actually do) but it was a fun take on space colonization/extended duration space travel stories, and super aesthetic. I mean, would make one heck of a movie, not that Hollywood is going to put space-SFX money into a movie with an entirely AFAB cast half of whom are in pregnancy prosthetics. But I think Kitasei had a very cinematic approach to the visuals and pacing, and some of the more dubious bits made a lot more sense if I thought of them as movie-logic rather than novel-logic.

Emergent Properties, Aimee Ogden, 2023 novella. My brain has not been in reading mode - I have a couple of library books that are going to expire without my having gotten more than a few pages into them (which I think also happened last fall, although it was later in the fall and I was further along in the books - I'm not sure if there's a seasonal thing happening here or if I'm connecting not-that-similar things) - but I did manage to finish this novella. Didn't love it. Like, it's a little bit Greg Egan and a little bit Murderbot, which makes it sound *fantastic*, and "detective story with new iteration (clone/backup/whatever) trying to solve previous iteration's murder" is a classic, but, I dunno, it never quite took off for me, the plot felt muddy and the denouement didn't click.

The Last Binding, Freya Marske, 2023 novel concluding the Last Binding trilogy (previous book here). I might have liked this least of the three of them - the second one is *such* a romp, and this one was more constrained by having certain setup/connective work it has to do, so the pacing early on was a little less propulsive. And I didn't love the pairing as much as either prior. Still, the last act had some great drama and momentum, and I liked how she landed the plane. I would definitely still recommend the trilogy, and am pleased with the second-place vote I gave it on the Hugo Series ballot.

Dry Land, B Pladek, 2023 novel. I've recced some of Pladek's short fiction: the outstanding All Us Ghosts (one of my favorite stories from 2021), The Salt Price, last year's Spring Woods Spring. This year's The Spindle of Necessity is a very meta piece about fiction and identity and authenticity.

Dry Land is his first novel, historical fantasy about a queer forester during WWI who discovers he has a power to make plants grow. It's a slow, thoughtful book that repeatedly turns away from a simpler story and says "maybe more complicated than that". It's about self-illusion and self-acceptance, Muir's preservationism vs Forestry Service timber management, the construction of ideas of "wilderness" and "naturalness" and how those ideas sit awkwardly on real landscapes, what-ifs about super powers and how they might be received and used, human connection, the grounding power of observation and contact with living things. ("Touching grass", as the internet says.) It's a profoundly Le Guin-ian novel both in its Daoism, its critique of action, effort, and resistance and corresponding celebration of quietness and endurance, and in its appreciation of the small vs the large, the everyday, the moments between. He writes here in a 2016 essay about the image of the Dry Land in Earthsea and how that connects to Dante and Rilke; the central problem in Pladek's novel (whether the "shortcut" of the power is necessarily sterilizing and ultimately futile) is directly related to the "cheating" desire for immortality in Earthsea. Or if you want a living/current comp, Rebecca Campbell's Arboreality, for similar specificity of landscape and concern with how to live in it.

Here's one more short story: What the Marsh Remembers is an earlier take on a similar concept and themes as Dry Land. They are the same in the way that Mary Brown's When Pigs Fly is the same as Unlikely Ones - Pladek's thoughts about the whole business clearly evolved a lot as he thought more about what he wanted to say - so if you do think you want to read Dry Land, I would recommend not reading this story until afterwards, so you can look back and see the seed of it.

The Witches of World War II, written by Paul Cornell, art by Valeria Burzo. This was neat - an alternate history in which Rudolf Hess's (real-life) flight to Glasgow was the result of manipulation by a team of (real-life) British occultists. I enjoy this kind of alternate history, and I like a good con story, and I liked the interplay and tension between belief and con-artistry, both between different people and internally. I also liked that I could tell and keep track of who everyone was, which is sometimes tricky with artists doing a more-realistic style, and great fun was being had with one character's devil-horns hairstyle.

Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons, Kelly Sue DeConnick, art by Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha, and Nicola Scott. I was not enthusiastic about this - oh look, I thought, it's this year's obligatory big two entry, at least there's only one this year. I was so wrong! This was terrific! Epic story, gorgeous art, does interesting things with canon. Perhaps I should have considered from the start that Kelly Sue DeConnick is a more interesting writer than Tom King.

Bea Wolf, Zach Weinersmith, art by Boulet. Cute concept, but seems very much like the kind of project that was more fun to do than it is to read. At least, I found it tedious, skimming through silently in one sitting - I can imagine it might work better as a readaloud, read to kids chapter by chapter. (I tried reading Q the first page and we agreed it seemed to work that way. If he was younger or we were all stuck on a road trip or something, maybe. But not really something I'm looking to do at this time.) Some fun panels art-wise.

I talked about Shubeik Lubeik here.

Saga Vol 11 - I was such a big Saga fan in the early years (that breastfeeding cover! I was sold!) but I did not miss Saga when it went away for a few years and I was not eager to see it when it came back (in fact last year's Graphic ballot was so generally uninteresting that I had forgotten whether Saga 10 was on it or not) and I think at this point I can liberate myself from feeling obligated by further Saga.

Similarly, Three Body Problem seems to be everywhere - two different television series, and this comic adaptation (and also apparently a movie, an animated series, and a series animated in Minecraft?) - and I just don't feel like I need to read or watch any of it.

My ballot behind the cut: ( Read more... )

Starter Villain, John Scalzi, 2023 novel. Fast and lightweight read, one of Scalzi's go-to plots - an average Joe dropped into an escalating SFnal situation - with one truly excellent laugh-out-loud moment that made me glad to have read the whole thing. If you like Scalzi this is one, if you don't like Scalzi you won't like this either. (If you've never read Scalzi I'd go for either Old Man's War if you want classic or I guess Kaiju if you want recent.)

Anyways, now I get to rank Novels! ( Read more... )

The Great Transition, Nick Fuller Googins. Similar sort of territory as Lost Cause - an America that has undergone a massive transformation to deal with the climate crisis and try to reach sustainability - but a better book. This one focuses on the tension in one family over the question of how do you know when you've gone far enough, permanent revolution vs can there be a post-revolution. Is it enough to build a better world or does justice demand punishment. Not outstanding, but I continue to be interested in how different people imagine this kind of scenario. This one has a retreat to the north with a making-over of current big cities into industrial-only kind of zones with temporary residents.

One content note for waaaaay too much music nostalgia... I find it so tedious when an author decides their future teens will *just happen* to love the music of the author's own era. I want to say this could never happen but unfortunately I did personally listen to a lot of oldies radio in high school, and big band on cds, so, like, this second-half-of-the-21st-century kid caring about U2 or the Cranberries isn't that much more far-fetched than teen me being into Glenn Miller or Elvis. It's lazy Ready-Player-One writing though, boo.

To Shape A Dragon's Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose, 2023 YA novel. Why didn't anybody tell me this was a chemistry fantasy?? If I had read it in time to Hugo-nominate it, I absolutely would have; luckily it seems to have gotten some buzz and made the Norton ballot, so I think there's a good chance we'll see it on the Lodestar. An extremely enjoyable book, which I would like to recommend to people who like school stories, locals who will enjoy the local alternate-history setting (the protag is more or less a Wampanoag from ~Nantucket, attending school somewhere south of the greater ~Boston area, and there's a bit where I think she goes out to ~Waltham), fans of Tamora Pierce (there is a lot of tonal/thematic similarity to the Alanna and Kel books here, and it would not shock me to learn Blackgoose was a Kel/Lalasa shipper), fans of Pern, fans of "Uncleftish Beholding".

Behind the cut I am going to talk more about some of Blackgoose's choices around tone, handling of racism and colonialism, and chemistry worldbuilding. I don't think any of this is massively spoilery for big plot points, but it's probably more detail than you want if you like to read things cold, ymmv. ( Read more... )

Better Living Through Algorithms, Naomi Kritzer, Clarkesworld. An online AI-guided happiness club. Spreadsheet.

Spring Woods Spring, B. Pladek, Strange Horizons. A silent but bright apocalypse.

There's a Door to the Land of the Dead in the Land of the Dead, Sarah Pinsker, The Deadlands. A roadside attraction with a secret. Locus, spreadsheet.

missed connections - Central square today around 930, Jess Cameron, Strange Horizons. An interesting take on time loops and relationships.

The Big Glass Box and the Boys Inside, Isabel J. Kim, Apex. Also contracts, this time with Fae. Locus, spreadsheet.

A last batch. Yay Strange Horizons.

The God of Minor Troubles, Megan Chee, Strange Horizons. A nice folklore/fairy-tale-esque story. Locus.

missed connections - Central square today around 930, Jess Cameron, Strange Horizons. An interesting take on time loops and relationships.

Always and Forever, Only You, Iona Datt Sharma, Strange Horizons. I read this one back when it came out, or around then, and I've gone back and forth on how I feel about it. Spreadsheet.

A Chronicle of the Mole-Year, Christi Nogle, Strange Horizons, novelette. A very different take on time loops, or maybe on virtual life.

On the Way to Jeju-do, Michelle Denham, Strange Horizons. I like that people are still finding interesting things to say about clones. Spreadsheet.

I'll Be Your Mirror, Rebecca Schneider, Strange Horizons. Artificial people. I also like that people are still doing interesting robot stories.

For However Long, Thomas Ha, khōréō. Family and moving away. Locus, spreadsheet.