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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

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Reading and Gaming Highlights of 2023

I read more than I watch or listen, and so here are highlights from this year of the close to 200 books I read or reread in 2023. I get the majority of my reading from NetGalley, BookBub deals, ARCs, and the library. I include publication dates so I can remember what I will recommend for Nebula reading; bolded titles are eligible for award stuff this year; titles in italics indicate a forthcoming title.

Here are some of my favorites in speculative reading from this year:

  • F.M. Aden – The Bride of Death (Northern Light Press, March 1, 2024) – Lovely fairytale retelling.
  • Emma R. Alban – Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend (Avon, Jan 9, 2024) YA – queer Victorian romance with a whiff of The Parent Trap.
  • Cassie Alexander – AITA? (2021) – Fun paranormal sexy romance.
  • Julia Armfield – Our Wives Under the Sea (2022) Lovely, eerie horror.
  • Rachel Aukes – The Lazarus Key Waypoint, (Jan 8, 2024) – Thriller with fish & wildlife officers going up against dinosaurs
  • Bridget E. Baker – The Birthright Series, 2020. Solid space opera, and I liked the PoV changes from book to book. I read the first three and will be picking up the other five when I get the chance.
  • S.A. Barnes – Ghost Station (April 9, 2024) Great psychological thriller on a space station.
  • Redfern John Barrett – Proud Pink Sky (Amble Press, 2023) Linked short stories of a gay homeland. Enjoyed this a lot.
  • Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett – The Long Earth Parallel earth series, 1st of four.
  • Melissa Blair – A Broken Blade (2021) – Solid YA fantasy, first of three books.
  • Marie Brennan – The Market of 100 Fortunes (Aconyte, Feb, 2024) Loved this Legend of the Five Rings tie-in novel.
  • Tobias Buckell – A Stranger in the Citadel (Tachyon Publications, 2023), Terrific world-building and a librarian questioning that world.
  • Octavia E. Butler – Mind of My Mind. Rerelease of work by one of my favorite writers. Everyone should read Octavia. Over and over again.
  • Sebastien Castell – The Malevolent Seven (2023). Absolutely solid and fun fantasy that lives up to the excellence of Castell’s other works.
  • Heidi Catherine – The Whisperers of Evernow (2019) Interesting premise, YA.
  • Beth Cato – A Thousand Recipes for Revenge (47North, 2023) I love Cato’s work and this was no exception. Plus — food and fantasy! First of 2 and I’ve already preordered the sequel.
  • P. Djèlí Clark – The Dead Cat Tail Assassins (Tor, April 23, 2024) Delightful secondary world fantasy.
  • David Clawson – My Fairy Mother is a Drag Queen (2017) – Fun Cinderella retelling. YA.
  • Lex Croucher – Gwen and Art are Not in Love (Tor Macmillan 2023). YA queer romance, fun and frothy.
  • Alex Evans – I Am a Barbarian (BooksGoSocial, Dec 17, 2023) Fun YA secondary world fantasy.
  • Philip Jose Farmer – Lord of the Trees (2012), The Mad Goblin (2013) Typical crazy-ass Farmer and a certain amount of (literal) cock-swinging.
  • Brandon Gillespie – Atom Bomb Baby (2023) Strong whiff of Fallout fanfic about this book, but in a good way.
  • Nicole Glover – The Conductors (2021) Loved this alternate history with magicians running the Underground Railway; first of two books
  • Kim Harrison – American Demon (2020) I always enjoy Harrison and this was no exception.
  • Christina Henry – The House that Horror Built (Berkeley, June 14, 2024) Solid horror about the cinema, nicely creepy.
  • Kevin Hincker – The Ghost with a Knife at Her Throat (August 13, 2023) I adored this urban fantasy, which had some cool twists. First in a series and I’m picking up the rest.
  • S.J. Himes – The Necromancer’s Dance (2016) First in an urban fantasy series of the vampires/werewolves ilk, fun gay fantasy with lots of action.
  • Dara Horn – Eternal Life (2018) Is living forever a boon or a curse? Lotsa historical texture.
  • Kat Howard – An Unkindness of Magicians, A Sleight of Shadows (2023) Loved this duo of mannerly magician books.
  • Sarah Zachrich Jeng – When I’m Her (Berkley, March , 2024) Compelling story of female friendship.
  • Mary E. Jung – Blossom and Bone (2022) Cozy fantasy feel to this series that I really enjoyed, first of a 3 book series.
  • T.J. Klune – In the Lives of Puppets (2023) Terrific SF retelling of Pinochio. One of my favorite reads of the year.
  • Tim Lebbon – Among the Living (Titan Books, Feb 6, 2024) Lebbon is always good, and this is solid and compelling.
  • Ann Leckie – Translation State (2023) More in Leckie’s complex and compelling SF universe, along with one of my favorite characters of all time, Qven.
  • Britney S. Lewis – The Undead Truth of Us (2021). YA zombie with a lot of emotion to it.
  • Megan Mackie – Death and the Crone (2023) Enjoyed this older woman romance in Mackie’s Lucky Devil setting.
  • Melissa Marr – Remedial Magic (Tor, Feb 20, 2024) Cozy fantasy with a lovely lesbian romance.
  • J.R. Martin – The Engineer’s Apprentice (2023) Solid beginning to a steampunk series.
  • Zoe Hana Mikuta – Off With Their Heads (Disney, April 24, 2024) Great queer Alice in Wonderland riff with Gideon the Ninth vibes.
  • Jo Miles – Dissonant State (2023) Fun space opera that has me looking for the beginning of the series.
  • Premee Mohamed – The Siege of Burning Grass (Rebellion Publishing, March 12, 2024) If you buy one book in 2024, this should be it.
  • Sunny Moraine – Your Shadow Half Remains (Tor, Feb, 2024) Creepy horror of the everyone is the enemy apocalypse variety.
  • Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Silver Nitrate (2023) Sharp-edged horror set in cinematic history.
  • Tamsyn Muir – Harrow the Ninth (2020), Nona the Ninth (2022) I loved Gideon and Harrow but bounced hard off the third book for some reason.
  • Patrick Ness – The Rest of Us Just Live Here (2015) – YA and I LOVE this book about what it’s like to not be the Chosen One so much.
  • Naomi Novik – A Deadly Education (2020), The Golden Enclaves (2022) Fabulous entry into the genre of magic schools.
  • Allison Saft – A Dark and Drowning Tide (Random House, Sept 17, 2024) Loved this secondary world fantasy frenemies to lovers take on a murder mystery.
  • Lilith Saintcrow – A Flame in the North (Orbit, February 13, 2024) I always enjoy Saintcrow and this was a pleasurable read but I like her more modern fantasy stuff considerably more.
  • Robert Shearman – We All Hear Stories in the Dark (2022). I’m still working my way through this massive three volume set and enjoying it enormously. Highly recommended if you love short stories.
  • A.J. Steiger – Eye of a Little God. (January 2, 2024). Well-executed psychological horror.
  • Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland – The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (2017) Great time travel corps stuff with a fun romance. There’s a sequel, which I need to pick up.
  • Andrew F. Sullivan – The Marigold (2023) Fabulously unhinged horror.
  • Lavie Tidhar – The Circumference of the World (2023) His usual brilliance, so much lovely stuff in this!
  • K.B. Wagers – A Pale Light in the Black (2020) Fun start to a series.
  • Khan Wong – The Circus Infinite (2022) Terrific SF with a runaway teen with special powers.
  • Z. J. Ryder – Twisted Neuros (2023) I love this story of an AI trying to figure out its own existence.

In anthologies and collections, I recently began a project to go through all my anthologies and collections to see which I want to keep. So far that’s included:

  • Space Opera, edited by Brian Aldiss. Keeping for historical relevance more than any innate quality.
  • Light Years and Dark, edited by Michael Bishop. Keeping for the high degree of original fiction, the quality of writers and works, and the editorial vision.
  • The Black Science Fiction Society’s Genesis: An Anthology of Black Science Fiction Book One, edited by Jarvis Sheffield. Keeping for the breadth of established and new voices.
  • A Larger Reality: Speculative Fiction from the Bicultural Margins, edited by Libia Brenda. Keeping because I love books with the stories in the original language as well as English, plus the range of established and new voices.

In my short fiction reading club, in which we read classic stories of F&SF, we read: Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn,” Karen Joy Fowler’s “Standing Room Only”, Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies,” and “The Green Hills of Earth,” Anne McCaffrey’s “The Ship Who Sang,” Vonda N. McIntyre’s “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand,” C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner’s “Vintage Season”, Clifford Simak’s “Desertion,” Connie Willis’ “A Letter from the Clearys”, and Roger Zelazny’s “Auto-da-Fe.” I’ve found these craft-focused sessions, which are part of my Patreon community, illuminating and useful in terms of learning more about F&SF history as well as craft tips and tricks.

In video/computer games, I started playing the early version of Baldur’s Gate 3 in early September, and I’ve been obsessed with it. Earlier in the year, I was playing Sun Haven and really enjoyed it, along with occasional bouts of Darkest Dungeon. If you’re a Stardew Valley fan, you will like Sun Haven, because there’s a lot of similarities and fun writing. I continue to play Pokemon Go on my phone.

RPG-wise I’m running a live game of D&D 5e and playing in two f2f homebrew D&D campaigns, one virtual D%D campaign plus Esper Genesis on Twitch. That sounds like more than it really is, which is a chance to game once or twice each week. Early in the year, I played in a game of Apocalypse Hearts run by Lowell Francis and want to recommend the Open Hearth gaming community for people interested in finding interesting story-focused games to play online. I also used the Party Backstory Generator tool by Justin Sirosis in my D&D game as the session 0 and found people really grooved with it and generated some interesting connections.

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Nattering Social Justice Cook: Prepare to Ride, My People

photo of someone saying yeahTo those who have said “wait and see” about the results of the election, I have seen enough events and phenomena to feel that I am sufficiently prepared to venture an opinion on the results of the election. Here are some, listed in random order:

I need to stop because the more I look, the more the hits keep on coming. What a bizarre time to live in.

So. For those of you who either didn’t vote for Trump or did and now are all “I’ve made a huge mistake“, aka the sane and/or informed ones, yeah, buckle up because it’s going to be a rocky ride. At best, a lot of wealthy people are going to skim money from our government while changing laws so they can exploit us even more while at the same time, hatred and intolerance are normalized and neo-Nazis are allowed to try to silence dissent. At worst our rights are stripped away and things go up in flames.

There were election shenanigans, to a point where people should be at a minimum auditing the results. There was documented Russian interference and more than that, there was the result of sedulous gerrymandering on the part of the Republicans for the past decade along with their removal of the Voting Rights Act.

In my opinion. You may disagree, and that’s fine. This is what I think and what’s driving my actions over the next four years. I am going to speak up and object and point things out. I am going to support institutions that help the groups like the homeless, LGBT youth, and others whose voting rights have been stolen and whose already too-scant and under threat resources are being methodically stripped away.

I am going to continue to insist that honesty, tolerance, and a responsibility for one’s own words are part of our proud American heritage, the thing that has often led us along the path where, although there have been plenty of mistakes, there have been actions that advanced the human race, that battled the forces of ignorance and intolerance, and that served as a model for the world. That “liberty and justice for all” are not hollow words, but a lamp lifted to inspire us and light our way in that direction.

I will continue to love in the face of hate, to do what Jesus meant when he said hate the sin while loving the sinner. I will continue to teach, formally and by setting an example of what a leader, a woman, a good human being should do, acknowledging my own imperfections so I can address them and keep growing and getting better at this human existence thing. If I see a fellow being in need, I will act, even if it means moving outside my usual paths.

I will not despair or give way to apathy. And as part of that, I will celebrate the good, point out the wonderful, witness the absurd, the amazing, and even the wryly amusing. I will let my sense of humor buoy me, and I will continue to consider the alt-pantless, sorry, alt-right, petty, pathetic, and laughable. They know that they are. Writing in 1944 about anti-semitism in his essay Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate, Sartre stated things with a prescience that makes his words apply to their theater of outraged outrageousness, in which they prance around with the self-importance of bright preteens who have just discovered death metal and nihilism.

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely aware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

I will not be intimidated or disconcerted. Feel free to laugh at my naiveté, my over-earnestness, and idealism. I’m going to dance right past you, m-fers, and you will never know what hit you.

Language matters. Truth matters. Even in the face of this sort of thing:

The world is broken. Love isn’t enough to fix it. It will take time and effort and blood and sweat and tears. It will stretch some of us almost to the breaking point and others past it. We must help each other in the struggle, must be patient and kind, and above all hopeful. We must speak out even when we are frightened or sad or weary to the bone.

The millennials, may the universe bless them, are inheriting a shitty world. Those of us from older generations must teach and support and help where we can, realizing that what we do now affects the rest of their lives. We cannot let things slide into any of the nightmarish worlds we see depicted in so much science fiction, but if we do not act, they will. I will not sugarcoat things; it may be too late. But living as though it is not is the only way we’re going to survive.

Act now. Even if it’s just saying hello or smiling at someone that you wouldn’t normally. Start putting some good energy out in the universe to counteract the fog of hate. You’ll be surprised by how much better it makes you feel. Don’t pay attention to the trolls; they’re trying to keep you busy so you won’t act, to discourage you into slumping back onto the couch before you can even take a step out the door.

And here’s a recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies I know. In case you need a little chocolate in your life. We’ve gone through several batches of them in the past week here at Chez Rambo.

Bright blessings on you all,
Cat

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