When Suzy was born, her parents filled her mouth with sand. But this is normal and natural and the way things are always done.
And if she finds it uncomfortable to keep it there, to eat with it there, to talk with it there, she’s just going to have to learn to live with it.
“Sand” is a heart-wrenching tale about generational trauma and healing.
For the residents of this mycological ecosystem, creating art feeds the World around you and requires working in harmony with your inner voice. When one artist’s voice begins screaming, he’s forced to travel farther than he ever has before to reconcile with the noise in his head and find his true place in society before it’s too late.
Judge Dee returns to solve a new case involving a Parisian party gone wrong. But this time? Everyone in attendance is a suspect, including the judge himself.
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In this Martian city, each stop along the monorail has a purpose behind its namesake. However, none are quite like the Station of the Twelfth, and if you decide to visit, you’ll be sure to learn why.
In a fairy tale equal parts gorgeous and gruesome, village couples seek approval for marriage from a stag with golden rings adorning its horns. That is until one suitor, determined to convince a woman to fall in love with him, makes a rash decision.
In this provocative and rich retelling of the Greek myth, Orpheus, the musician son of Apollo and Calliope, successfully rescues his wife Eurydice from Hades after her untimely death.
There are several ways in which authors can provide the public with ample reading material. One is, of course, to compose individual books of great length (like these, for example). Another is simply to write a lot of books. (…No, even more than that!) Of course, not every prolific author writes books worth reading. Allow me to suggest three prolific authors (now deceased) who often (but not always) wrote books worth reading. For each of these three authors, I’ve chosen five works that I think are well worth reading.
It is common knowledge that Frank Herbert’s classic Dune novels are chock-full of Islamic and MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) references. However, as a Muslim reader, I have long maintained that the Muslim influences go deeper than many may have realized. I am of the theory that if one is Muslim, or otherwise intimately aware of Muslim traditions, that person’s experience of Dune differs vastly from any other reader’s encounter with the saga.
When the weather turns cooler and the nights grow longer, when leaves begin to turn the color of pumpkins, that’s when it comes: the hunger. It starts softly. A horror movie here. A spooky comic there. Then it grows, and if you’re anything like me, before you know it, you find yourself elbow-deep in novels. The hunger never really goes away; it just sleeps. It waits. And vampire books are like vampires themselves: one feeding just isn’t going to cut it.
Vampire fans have been pretty lucky for the past couple of years. Between Stephanie Meyer’s return to the world of Twilight with Midnight Sun and Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire—the bastard lovechild of The Witcher, Interview with a Vampire, and Castlevania—we’ve had plenty to sink our teeth into. But with everything going on in the world, you might have missed some new vampire books that absolutely deserve to be added to the Bram Stoker canon.
First published in 1937, Genzaburō Yoshino’s How Do You Live? has long been acknowledged in Japan as a crossover classic for young readers. Academy Award–winning animator Hayao Miyazaki has called it his favorite childhood book and announced plans to emerge from retirement to make it the basis of a final film.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from the novel’s first English edition, translated by Bruno Navasky—available October 26th from Algonquin Books.
Once upon a time, Aeryn Sun gave Mr. Tumnus some advice.
To be accurate, Mr. Tumnus wasn’t Mr. Tumnus yet. He was just James McAvoy, a young actor in Syfy’s Dune miniseries. But Aeryn Sun was, as she always is, actress Claudia Black. As one of the stars of Farscape, she was invited to Syfy’s premieres. And at one of those, she spoke to James McAvoy—who never forgot what she said.
Within These Wicked Walls, Lauren Blackwood’s debut YA fantasy novel, is marketed as an Ethiopian-inspired imagining of Jane Eyre. The description fits, but I’d argue that it doesn’t do the book justice—there are elements of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, yes, but Within These Wicked Walls is its own story, one that has magic and heartache as well as romance.
It’s all the podcasters’ fault. At least, that seems to be the narrative progressing from David Gordon Green’s 2018 Halloween reboot to its covid-delayed sequel, Halloween Kills—that there’s a straight line from Jefferson Hall’s true crime podcaster shaking the Michael Myers mask in the man’s face, roaring for a reaction to the first generation of Michael’s surviving victims taking up baseball bats, screaming “EVIL DIES TONIGHT!” and seeking to… unmask Michael Myers? What seems intended as a redemptive sequel about a town exorcising its Bogeyman instead turns into The Purge: Haddonfield and sacrifices one of its best new characters in a perfect demonstration of the problem with middle-movie syndrome.
Welcome to Close Reads! In this series, Leah Schnelbach and guest authors will dig into the tiny, weird moments of pop culture—from books to theme songs to viral internet hits—that have burrowed into our minds, found rent-stabilized apartments, started community gardens, and refused to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, writer and Marvel editor Sarah Brunstad slaps headphones on our ears and creeps us all the hell out with Colin Stetson’s soundtrack to Hereditary.
“It’s something we have to either make peace with or not.”
Ari Aster was referring to the fear of death and the unknown, but I haven’t heard a better thesis statement for Aster’s feature film directorial debut, the 2018 horror film Hereditary, whose peace with the devil now resonates with America’s own, very real, demonic possession by the hand of a pandemic demon.
Elements of horror are naturally central to all of the books within this tradition, from Fear Street to Point Horror and beyond. But when the ‘90s teen horror trend collides with Halloween, there’s a whole different level of scares to be had with Halloween tricks, the looming fun—and potential danger—of Halloween parties, and costume-fueled subterfuge, confusion, and terror.
Richie Tanskersley Cusick’s Trick or Treat and R.L. Stine’s duo of Halloween Night and Halloween Night II are excellent examples of this ‘90s teen horror Halloween tradition. In each of these books, in addition to just trying to survive, the characters face the challenge of figuring out whether their lives are actually in danger or if the seeming threat is an ultimately harmless Halloween prank that just went a little too far, and just whose face resides behind those Halloween masks.
To celebrate an upcoming wedding between two of their number, a group of friends who grew up together in Malaysia reunite to spend one night in a crumbling Heian-era manor house. Ghostly thrill-seeking used to be their lifeblood, so an ancient mansion built on the bones of an entombed bride-to-be and more than two hundred companion girls holds a certain appeal. After all, what better place could there be to prepare for a marriage and blow an obscene amount of their near-billionaire friend Phillip’s inheritance?
However, the drawing together opens old wounds—jealousies, romantic failures, abandonments, privileges and cruelties—especially for Cat, who’s fresh off a six month long recovery from a serious depressive episode. But histories far nastier than their interpersonal squabbles lurk within the creaking foundations of the manor house… and the ghost of a centuries-dead bride has designs on the guests interrupting her estate’s moldering quiet. She’s bound to be getting a little lonely, buried down in the dirt.
The Fires of Heaven ebook cover; art by Dan Dos Santos
I have now read the first five books of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, as well as about half of the prequel novel New Spring, and it’s been fascinating to watch the complexities of the story, and the world, unfold. There are quite a few mysteries that it may take a long time to get any resolution on—there are still nine more books to go, after all—but one thing in particular has caught my attention lately. There is something about Aes Sedai agelessness that just doesn’t add up. So I decided this week to go back through my reading and see if I could puzzle out the mystery of Aes Sedai agelessness, and how the Power really does—or does not—affect the age and appearance of a channeler.
What’s the deal with dykes and swords? From beloved ’90s franchises such as Revolutionary Girl Utena and Xena to She-Ra today, sapphic swordswomen aren’t exactly over-represented, but they show up just often enough that if you’re a certain kind of queer nerd, you’re familiar with the trope. The hashtag #swordlesbian has over 9 million views on TikTok, 2019 gave us viral bisexual sword wives, and last year the independent roleplaying game Thirsty Sword Lesbians raised almost $300,000 on Kickstarter, beating its initial goal fifteen times over.
More than that, Sword Lesbians seem to be having a moment in SFF literature right now. In the last few years books such as Gideon the Ninth, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, and The Unspoken Name have established a subgenre of speculative fiction all about codependent women with swords. These aren’t just stories about swords, they’re stories about queer relationships, kink, the roles we play for one another, and the ways we negotiate them. They’re stories about chivalry.
This isn’t a trailer—that’s coming in a week. It’s a “Lost Session.” Whatever you want to call it, this new look at Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop is clever, cartoony in the right ways, and includes a very important bowl of noodles—and it suggests the show is going to do a lot of things right.
One of the best questions a writer can ask themselves is: What Would Ursula K. Le Guin Do? Asking this question can lead to inventive, unconventional storytelling, and thought experiments that might result in a better world. And this question will now be on the minds of the jurors of the first annual Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which will be awarded next year!
When the weather turns cooler and the nights grow longer, when leaves begin to turn the color of pumpkins, that’s when it comes: the hunger. It starts softly. A horror movie here. A spooky comic there. Then it grows, and if you’re anything like me, before you know it, you find yourself elbow-deep in novels. The hunger never really goes away; it just sleeps. It waits. And vampire books are like vampires themselves: one feeding just isn’t going to cut it.
Vampire fans have been pretty lucky for the past couple of years. Between Stephanie Meyer’s return to the world of Twilight with Midnight Sun and Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire—the bastard lovechild of The Witcher, Interview with a Vampire, and Castlevania—we’ve had plenty to sink our teeth into. But with everything going on in the world, you might have missed some new vampire books that absolutely deserve to be added to the Bram Stoker canon.
It’s question time here at SFF Equines, and commenter Jazzlet has a good one:
Could you tell those of us who have only ridden other people’s horses a bit about saddles? I’ve seen mention of people with their own saddle, if I remember rightly one TNG Star Trek starts with the Enterprise being completely vacated, but Picard goes back for his saddle and so the story. Anyway that and other mentions made me wonder about saddles, it’s obvious that no one saddle will fit all horses and ponies, but that’s as far as I get.
I was surprised to discover on searching my past articles that I have never actually devoted one to the subject of saddles. I’ve mentioned them in passing here and there, but never done a whole post. That’s a pretty big omission. I will remedy that in the very near future.
In the meantime, I’m captivated by the idea of Captain Picard’s saddle. Here on this very site, a few years ago, Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer wrote about the horsekid side of Star Trek, with special reference to the episode Jazzlet mentioned, “Starship Mine” (The Next Generation, S6 E18). It’s kind of a tragic post. I’m going to mercifully forget that part, and just think about the Captain’s saddle.
The Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction has unveiled this year’s winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award: Rebecca Campbell, for her novella “An Important Failure,” which came out in Clarkesworld Magazine in August 2020.
The year is 1927, and Shanghai teeters on the edge of revolution…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Chloe Gong’s Our Violent Ends, the sequel to These Violent Delights—publishing November 16th with Margaret K. McElderry Books.
