Tag Archives: Emma Newman

Pixel Scroll 4/9/25 Do Not Scroll Gentle In That Good File, Pixels Should Burn And Rave At End Of Thread

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(1) MURDERBOT TRAILER. Murderbot premieres May 16 on Apple TV+.

It’s rogue. It’s powerful. It would rather be watching TV. Based on the award-winning, best-selling series by Martha Wells, Murderbot follows a rogue security unit as it searches for the meaning of life.

(2) BABELING ABOUT BOOKS. Starship Alexandria is a new podcast by Emma Newman and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The Sci-fi and Fantasy podcast from the best of futures!

In this future, humanity has solved its problems and is now sending spaceships from Earth, not in a desperate attempt to escape the apocalypse but because we can do so in a spirit of hope and exploration. 

As a part of the Starship Alexandria Project, the far-future analogues of 21st century authors Emma Newman and Adrian Tchaikovsky have been tasked to make recommendations from the ship’s vast library of creative works based on the preferences of our 21st century counterparts.

Each of us will take it in turns to nominate a book, film or similar work, and the other will play judge and give the thumbs up or thumbs down to be recommended across the fleet.

Because despite the great technological advances that have made this grand journey possible, space travel can still take a while and everyone can benefit from a good recommendation. 

Starship Alexandria episode 1 is “The Kraken Wakes”.

For this very first episode of Starship Alexandria, Emma puts forward John Wyndham’s classic SF novel The Kraken Wakes (1953) for Adrian to read and consider (published in the US as Out of the Deeps.) 

Bonus episodes and other material are available for those who subscribe to the Starship Alexandria Patreon.

(3) MAKING A STATEMENT. Jeremy Szal forwarded the post he’s written making clear his stance on AI/LLM. Szal is also included in the Kadrey v. Meta class action lawsuit. “Statements on AI”.

Without in any way limiting the author’s and his publisher’s exclusive rights under copyright, it is expressly prohibited to use any of the author’s works to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text. The author reserves all rights to license uses of his works across any platforms.

In addition, it is expressly prohibited to upload any part of any of this author’s work to any generative AI programs (including but not limited to Meta, ChatGPT, etc).

Any violation of these rights are infringing on copyright law (Copyright Act 1968, to name but a few examples) and may be subjected to prosecution, not including the ongoing class action lawsuit in Kadrey v. Meta – of which the author is already included.

The author also asks that no one “create” AI-generated fan-art, fanfiction, or any kind of material, based on or inspired by his works. Any emails containing such “art” will be deleted unread.

******

I will also decline to wittingly blurb or support any books that were written, in part or as a whole, with generative AI. The waters here can be murky, but if any text in the book was not written by a human, and instead was written by a machine/LLM, then I have no interest in reading it, or anything that the author ever writes.

 Art is human expression created by human hands. That matters to me, and that will always matter to me, so I will give no quarter to machine-generated slop. That is my ongoing stance.

(4) A WRITER OVERCOMES. “Butt in the Chair: How Disability Changed My Writing Habits” by Catherine Tavares at the SFWA Blog.

It’s spring 2023. My desk is clean, my laptop on and humming along like a charm. It’s open to a brand new Scrivener file, and I have three hours free to work on my stories.

Only, I’m not in the chair writing. I’m on the floor in agonizing pain.

In the years since that day, there have been many doctors, tests, and treatments that have all led to the same disappointing diagnosis: unexplained, chronic nerve pain. On a good day, that means a hot, tingling buzz radiating from my hips on down. On a bad day, it’s like the entire lower half of my body is being scraped raw by fiery sandpaper.

That day, I could not sit, and just like that, I could not write.

A common bit of writing advice given to authors is to just “get your butt in the chair” and write. For a long time, that advice worked for me, and I built my habits around spending hours at my desk, not getting up until I met my goal. My desk was my writing haven; the mere act of sitting down triggered creativity, productivity, and joy.

But as the days of unending pain dragged into weeks and months, my haven became a horror….

… If I could hack my own brain, I figured, then I could most certainly hack my own writing process.

I did so, inspired by a mental health exercise called Internal Family Systems Therapy. I enjoyed IFST because it let me do what I do best: create characters, assign them roles, and take them on a journey together. IFST helped me through a lot of the trauma of disability, and it also made me realize just how much work I can do inside my own head—no desk or chair required.

In the wake of that breakthrough, I abandoned Team Pantser for a term I am making up just now: Team Daydreamer. When I’m in the shower, lying in bed, eating a meal, exercising, I meditate on my stories. I plan out the plots, worlds, characters, compose entire scenes word-for-word—all before I ever actually get my butt in the chair to write. And when I do finally get to my desk, with half the story work already done, I can spare the attention my body needs and have a productive session well within my pain limits.

I can finally physically and mentally write again….

(5) LAGNIAPPE. Dina shares “My Thoughts on The Hugo Award Finalists 2025” at SFF Book Reviews.

Isn’t it lovely when there’s a Hugo finalists announcement without too much fuss? I said this last year already, but after living through the Puppy Years and then witnessing the shit show that was the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo Awards, I always release a breath of relief when the finalists are… just normal….

Dina punctuates the ending of several categories with a recommendation about something she wishes had been a finalist, like this novella —

Books I wish were here:

Once again, let me tell you about the amazingly talented Moses Ose Utomi, who blew me away with The Lies of the Ajungo and then followed that novella up with one that’s just as great, The Truth of the Aleke. I nominated it, of course, and I will probably love and nominate the third in the trilogy next year. Man, do I wish this book was on the ballot, as it would be an easy number one spot. Since it isn’t, let me urge you to pick up the first book. It’s suuuuper short.

(6) WEIRDLY SUSPICIOUS. Christopher Lockett looks at his course outline with a Trumpian eye: “Curriculars: The Relative Weird, Part One—Horror as Privilege” at The Magical Humanist.

…Growing up, we were often taught that Canada and the U.S. share “the longest undefended border in the world.” That was always spoken with pride and approbation. Lately, I’m finding those words resonating in my mind with something less than the spirit of national confraternity, and something more like the spirit of paranoia.

This sense is exacerbated by the spectacle of the anti-“D.E.I.” jihad currently scouring government databases and websites, the first salvoes against universities, and most recently against museums and parks (and, bizarrely, zoos). The March 27 executive order about this last category employs language—such as that about removing “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and elsewhere—reads like the Project 2025 crowd considered Orwell’s 1984 as a useful guide rather than a cautionary tale…

… In my fourth-year course “The American Weird,” I must imagine that my first three weeks would have passed muster, as we did a selection of stories by H.P. Lovecraft. As I talk about at length in my earlier post “The Trumpian Weird,” Lovecraft’s particular brand of racist ideation, in which threats to White subjectivity are allegorized by the monstrous and eldritch, is perfectly consonant with MAGA’s White nationalism. But after that? Well, I can’t imagine any of it would remain un-purged.

Last time I talked about my American Weird class in this space, I outlined a very rough breakdown of contemporary weird fiction: the banal weird, the relative weird, and the utopian weird. As I noted in that earlier post, the banal weird doesn’t tend to make for great storytelling (unless you’re China Miéville), but it is something we constantly encounter in reality, as at the root it’s about our apparently bottomless capacity to normalize the unthinkable. We don’t get Trump 2.0 without the banality of Weird. And, ironically, it is the forces that animate and facilitate Trumpism that make what I’m terming the Relative Weird a particularly significant iteration of Lovecraftian fiction…

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 9, 1937 — Marty Krofft. (Died 2023.)

H.R.Pufnstuf.
Who’s your friend when things get rough?
H.R. Pufnstuf.
Can’t do a little, ‘cause he can’t do enough

Who here didn’t grow up watching some of the shows created by the Krofft brothers? Well, this is the day that Marty Krofft was born, so I get to talk about their work. Let’s get started.

Their very first work was designing the puppets and sets for Banana Splits, a rock band composed of four animal characters for Hanna-Barbera.  To get a look at them, here’s the open and closing theme from the show.

After working for Hanna-Barbera, they went independent with the beloved H. R. Pufnstuf, their first live-action, life-sized puppet series. It ran a lot shorter than I thought lasting only from September to December of ‘69. Like everything of theirs, it ended up in heavy, endless syndication.

Next was The Bugaloos. This was a musical group, very much in keeping with the tone with Banana Splits. It was four British teenagers wearing insect outfits, constantly beset by the evil machinations of the Benita Bizarre. Here’s the opening song, “Gna Gna Gna Gna Gna” courtesy of Krofft Pictures.

Sigmund and the Sea Monsters lasted two seasons though it was aired over three years, the second delayed because a fire at the beginning of season two which destroyed everything. It’s about two brothers who discover a friendly young sea monster named Sigmund who refuses to frighten people. Poor Sigmund. This time you get a full episode as that is all Krofft Pictures had up, “Frankenstein Drops In”

There’s two more series I want to note. 

The first is Land of the Lost which was created though uncredited in the series by David Gerrold. So anyone know why that was? It was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft who co-developed the series with Allan Foshko. Lots of genre tropes here. A family lost in a land with dinosaurs and reptile men? It was popular enough that it lasted three seasons. And here’s the opening and closing credits for season three.

The very last pick by me is Electra Woman and Dyna Girlwhich lasted but sixteen episodes of twelve minutes. Despite the ElectraEnemies, their foes here being way over the top, this is SF though admittedly on the pulp end of things. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) SPACE COWBOY BOOKS ONLINE READING. On Tuesday April 22 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific, Space Cowboy Books will host an online reading and interview with Ai Jiang. Register for free HERE. Get your copy of A Place Near the Wind HERE.

From a rising-star author, winner of the both the Bram Stoker® and Nebula Awards, a richly inventive, brutal and beautiful science-fantasy novella. A story of family, loss, oppression and rebellion that will stay with you long after the final page. For readers of Nghi Vo’s The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Neon Yang’s The Black Tides of Heaven and Kritika H. Rao’s The Surviving Sky.

Liu Lufeng is the eldest princess of the Feng royalty and, bound by duty and tradition, the next bride to the human king. With their bark faces, arms of braided branches and hair of needle threads, the Feng people live within nature, nurtured by the land. But they exist under the constant threat of human expansion, and the negotiation of bridewealth is the only way to stop— or at least delay—the destruction of their home. Come her wedding day, Lufeng plans to kill the king and finally put an end to the marriages.

Trapped in the great human palace in the run-up to the union, Lufeng begins to uncover the truth about her people’s origins and realizes they will never be safe from the humans. So she must learn to let go of duty and tradition, choose her allies carefully, and risk the unknown in order to free her family and shape her own fate.

(10) LET ROVER COME OVER. “Lunar Outpost unveils sleek new ‘Eagle’ moon rover” at Space.com.

Colorado-based Lunar Outpost just unveiled its new “Eagle” moon rover at the Space Foundation’s 40th annual Space Symposium here, and it looks straight out of science fiction. Sporting a sleek metallic finish and ice-blue LED lighting, the Eagle rover turned quite a few heads on the expo floor this year. But Eagle boasts more than just futuristic looks.

The rover is packed with features designed with the next generation of Artemis program moon explorers in mind and is based on feedback from current NASA astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, according to Lunar Outpost’s A.J Gerner….

… In the configuration shown here at the symposium, the Eagle vehicle features two seats for crew, each with its own redundant and mirrored controls, meaning either astronaut can control the rover. The steering controls on each side consist of a single handle that controls four individual motors that drive each wheel. Each wheel can turn independently of the other three, allowing the Eagle rover to turn on its center axis or “crab walk” sideways, Gerner said…. 

(11) TARDIGRADE MOTION. [Item by Steven French.] If we really do want to go to Mars, perhaps we need to pay less attention to a certain billionaire and look more closely at the ‘water bear’ (recently voted Invertebrate of the Year by Guardian readers): Want to know how to survive in space? Ask a tardigrade (phys.org) at Phys.org.

The 2025 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which took place from March 10–14 in The Woodlands, Texas, witnessed some very interesting proposals for space exploration and science. In addition to bold mission concepts, scientists presented exciting opportunities for potential research that addresses major questions. Not the least of which was “How can humans survive in space and extraterrestrial environments”? One study in particular presented how the study of tardigrades could help address the challenges involved….

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Lis Carey, Teddy Harvia, N., Jeffrey Smith, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mark Roth-Whitworth, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day johnstick.]

Pixel Scroll 1/19/25 Also Spock Zarathustra

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(1) AND KEEPS ON TICKING. It didn’t need three days to rise again. “TikTok Starts Working Again After Trump Says He Will Stall a Ban” – New York Times link bypasses the paywall.

TikTok flickered back to life in the United States on Sunday after President-elect Donald J. Trump said that he would issue an executive order to stall a federal ban of the app.

The abrupt shift came just hours after major app stores removed the popular social media site and it stopped operating for U.S. users as a federal law took effect on Sunday. The company said in a post on X that in “agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service.”

Mr. Trump said in a Sunday morning post on Truth Social that he would “issue an executive order on Monday to extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect, so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.”

The ban stems from a 2024 law that requires app stores and cloud computing providers to stop distributing or hosting TikTok unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. Lawmakers passed the law over concerns that the Chinese government could use the app, which claims roughly 170 million United States users, to gather information about Americans or spread propaganda….

(2) IT’S TIME-WIMEY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Time travel is a major trope of SF. This week’s Radio 4 cinema programme Screenshot examined time travel…

Groundhog Day (1993) gets a mention but 12:01 (1993 film, “12:01 P.M.” 1973 story) ???

How does film and TV make time travel real? Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode take a quantum leap into the world of time travel and time loops on screen, from Back To The Future to Groundhog Day.

Mark speaks to theoretical physicist Sean Carroll about how films like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Interstellar have handled the science of time travel – and whether it really is just the stuff of fantasy….

Personally speaking, I have been time travelling all my life. For most of it this has been at the rate of one second per second, but recently I have speeded things up to one minute per minute…  That’s the way I roll!

You can download the Radio 4 programme here.

(3) IT’S QUANTUM TIME-WIMEY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Parallel universes and the multiverse are firmly established SFnal tropes. Younger fans not into science may be forgiven in thinking that multiverses were largely an invention of Marvel and even the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’, but actually you can trace it way back to the ancient Greeks.

And of course even if there are multiverses, each with their own realities, what is real?  Is reality real?  In quantum physics, particles may not even be located in one space but smeared across a region of space until observed and then somehow they become fixed in one specific place: it is as if the act of observing is key to the nature of real reality. And can you even ‘shift’ between realities?

This week, BBC Radio 4’s Sideways programme takes a half-hour deep-dive into alternate realities and the multiverse…

You can download the programme here.

In 2020, a curious trend went viral on social media, especially among teenagers and young adults. As much of the world stayed at home to curb the spread of CoVID-19, Reality Shifters began claiming they could move from one reality to another, referencing multiverse theory.

Beyond the actual possibility of switching between realities, this craze raised intriguing questions about the fabric of the reality we experience. Philosophers and scientists have long speculated about the existence of multiple realities. Today, Matthew Syed explores the blurry line between what we perceive as reality and what may lie beyond it, inviting us to question the very nature of existence.

(4) WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED? Episode 15 of Scott Edelman’s Why Not Say What Happened? podcast takes listeners back to “My Mysterious Mid-’70s Comic Con Meeting with Anthony Bourdain”.

Shredding hundreds of pages torn from notebooks filled by my teen and twentysomething self causes me to reminisce about my collaboration with artist P. Craig Russell which could have been, the poem 18-year-old me wrote about Action Comics #1, my mysterious mid-’70s New Jersey comic convention meeting with Anthony Bourdain, why when it comes to the process of writing I’m a voyeur but not an exhibitionist, the complete lyrics to a song I had Rick Jones sing way back in Captain Marvel #50, my joy upon seeing Superman co-creator Joe Shuster’s name in my old address book, how the Grim Reaper might have prevented my Scarecrow from being born, and much more.

And here’s where to find a dozen places where the episode can be heard, depending on taste.

(5) EATON FIRE AND JPL. The LA Times reports “NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory unscathed by Eaton fire, but not its workforce” (behind a paywall).

With its physical buildings and structures intact, the La Cañada Flintridge institution escaped the worst of the fire unscathed. The same can’t be said for its workforce.

At the height of the emergency, about 20% of the institution’s 5,500 employees were evacuated from their homes, director Laurie Leshin said.

About 210 employees lost their homes in the fire and an additional 100 — Leshin included — will likely be displaced long term by the extent of the damage to their house or neighborhood. Many more evacuees have yet to receive clearance to return home….

NASA has posted a satellite photo showing that “Eaton Fire Leaves California Landscape Charred”. (Click for larger image.)

On the afternoon of January 11, 2025, NASA’s AVIRIS-3 (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-3) flew aboard a B200 aircraft over Los Angeles County, where it captured images of several areas affected by wildland fires.

These false-color images show areas burned by the Eaton fire in Altadena and parts of Pasadena, Arcadia, and Sierra Madre. Charred trees and buildings in developed areas appear dark brown, whereas the burned wildland areas, particularly in Angeles National Forest, are shades of orange.

The Eaton fire ignited in the hills of Eaton Canyon, near Altadena, on the evening of January 7. By 10:30 a.m. the next day, the fire had quickly grown to cover more than 10,000 acres (40 square kilometers), according to Cal Fire. Around the time of this image on January 11, it had expanded to 14,117 acres (57 square kilometers), and the Los Angeles County Fire Department reported it was about 15 percent contained…

(6) WHY OCTAVIA BUTLER SEEMS PRESCIENT. “As California Burns, ‘Octavia Tried to Tell Us’ Has New Meaning” says New York Times contributor Veronica Chambers. (Link bypasses the NYT paywall.)

In the wake of the devastating fires in Los Angeles, many people are referencing the work of the science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Butler, who grew up in Pasadena, was the daughter of a housekeeper and a father who was a shoeshiner. She went on to become the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur “genius” award. Her book “Parable of the Sower,” published in 1993, paints a picture of a California ravished by the effects of climate change, income inequality, political divisiveness and centers on a young woman struggling to find faith and the community to build a new future.

The phrase “Octavia tried to tell us,” which began to gain momentum in 2020 during the pandemic, has once again resurfaced, in part because Butler studied science and history so deeply. The accuracy with which she read the shifts in America can, at times, seem eerily prophetic. One entry in “Parable of the Sower,” which is structured as a journal, dated on “February 1, 2025” begins, “We had a fire today.” It goes on to describe how the fear of fires plague Robledo, a fictional town that feels much like Altadena, a haven for the Black middle class for more than 50 years, where Butler lived in the late ’90s.

In 2000, Butler wrote a piece for Essence magazine titled, “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future.” She wrote: “Of course, writing novels about the future doesn’t give me any special ability to foretell the future. But it does encourage me to use our past and present behaviors as guides to the kind of world we seem to be creating. The past, for example, is filled with repeating cycles of strength and weakness, wisdom and stupidity, empire and ashes.”…

(7) DIDN’T PKD LIKE GRASS, TOO? [Item by Daniel Dern.] Not quite sure where androids would fit in here, and these would be either non-electric sheep, or perhaps hybrid electric/biofuel sheep… Perhaps: Do Android Farmers Dream Of Hybrid Electric/Biofuelled Sheep? “Large-Scale US Solar Farms Brings ‘Solar Grazing’ Work for Sheep” at Slashdot. (Clipped from ABC News.)

In Milam County, outside Austin [Texas], SB Energy operates the fifth-largest solar project in the country, capable of generating 900 megawatts of power across 4,000 acres (1,618 hectares). How do they manage all that grass? With the help of about 3,000 sheep, which are better suited than lawnmowers to fit between small crevices and chew away rain or shine. The proliferation of sheep on solar farms is part of a broader trend — solar grazing — that has exploded alongside the solar industry. Agrivoltaics, a method using land for both solar energy production and agriculture, is on the rise with more than 60 solar grazing projects in the U.S., according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory….

(8) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Nineteen years ago, Pan’s Labyrinth premiered. In Spanish, it was called El laberinto del fauno which means The Labyrinth of the Faun. It was written, directed and co-produced by Mexican-born and raised Guillermo Del Toro. 

Other producers were Bertha Navarro, Alfonso Cuarón, Frida Torresblanco and  Álvaro Augustin. 

It was narrated by Pablo Adán with a primary Spanish language cast (Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ivana Baquero, Ariadna Gil and Álex Angulo) with the exception of Doug Jones as the Faun and the Pale Man who of course has a very long relationship with Del Toro going back to Mimic which was based on the Donald Wollheim story of the same name. 

The “Mimic” story was nominated for a Retro Hugo at Worldcon 76.

Reception for it was excellent. It won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, at Nippon 2007 which had dual Toastmasters in the guise of George Takei and Nozomi Ohmori. Children of Men, The Prestige, V for Vendetta and A Scanner Darkly were also nominated for this Award.

Critics really liked it. Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun Times said of it that “Nothing I am likely to see, however, is likely to change my conviction that the year’s best film was Pan’s Labyrinth.” And Mark Kermode writing in The Observer exclaimed that it is “an epic, poetic vision in which the grim realities of war are matched and mirrored by a descent into an underworld populated by fearsomely beautiful monsters.”

Box office was quite superb as it cost just under twenty million to produce and made over eighty million. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give a near perfect ninety five percent rating. 

Usually I don’t note the figures made for a film but the Faun got some great ones including the NECA eight inch version which you see here in all its nightmarish glory. The Pale Man got his own figure as well.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) YOU CONTROL THE HORIZONTAL. YOU CONTROL THE VERTICAL. THEY CONTROL THE OFF SWITCH. Inverse remembers“60 Years Ago, The Most Sneakily Influential Sci-Fi Series Came To An Inglorious End”.

…The Outer Limits was ahead of its time — and misunderstood accordingly.

By the time it went off the air, however, the show was a shadow of its former self. Its season-and-a-half, 49-episode run (can you imagine a modern genre show producing nearly 50 episodes in less than two years?) came to a close with “The Probe.” Directed by Felix Feist, who helmed the 1953 sci-fi B-movie classic Donovan’s Brain, the story concerned three men and a woman who survive a plane crash, only to find themselves aboard an automated alien laboratory.

The series had already been canceled, and writers and crewmembers were literally walking out the door as “The Probe” went into production. The episode reflected that with wooden acting, cheap-looking sets and effects, and an exposition-heavy plot, all sad aspects of the truncated second season that drag it dangerously close to Ed Wood levels of amateurishness. Even the episode’s monster, a microbe that grows to an alarming size, was a large, silvery blob of rubber pulled over a man who crawled around on the floor (the stuntman inside the costume, Janos Prohaska, pulled off a much more successful version of the same idea two years later as the Horta in the classic Star Trek episode “The Devil in the Dark”)….

(11) UNKNOWN INDY. ComicBook.com contends they can name “10 Indiana Jones Adventures You Didn’t Even Know About”. There are definitely some I hadn’t heard about before. Let’s start with –

Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead

Steve Perry’s 2009 novel Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead acts as a prequel to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and provides some backstory for Indy’s relationship with his friend George “Mac” McHale (Ray Winstone) in the movie. Taking place in 1943, Indy and Mac team up on an adventure to Haiti to find a mysterious voodoo artifact known as the Heart of Darkness. However, Indy and Mac must battle both Nazi and Japanese soldiers also pursuing the artifact.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull provided an unexplored backstory of Indy’s military background when the United States officially entered World War II, revealing that he and Mac worked as double agents for the U.S. government during the war. Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead not only takes Indy on a gripping literary adventure but also fleshes out his relationship with Mac before the latter joins forces with Soviet military leader Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which makes the novel a great read for Indiana Jones fans.

(12) DEFENSE ADVICE FROM SF WRITERS. Reminiscent of Dr. Arlan Andrews’ Sigma Forum of the last decade, the Guardian takes note as “UK Ministry of Defence enlists sci-fi writers to prepare for dystopian futures”.

It’s a scenario that would make Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, shudder: a future where self-driving cars are the norm but a catastrophic electronic breakdown traps thousands of people inside them.

This dystopian vision of the future was one sketched out by science fiction writers at an event this week where experts were asked to prepare Britain for threats ranging from pandemics to cyber and nuclear attacks.

The writers joined researchers and policymakers working in crisis management and resilience at the gathering organised by RBOC (Resilience Beyond Observed Capabilities), a network of academics whose funders include the Ministry of Defence (MoD).’

Emma Newman, a sci-fi novelist who was at the event, said: “Taking a very character-based approach can help reveal aspects of future scenarios that you might not necessarily get from a more pulled-out approach.”…

(13) THE HEAT IS ON. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Hot stuff from the last edition of the Astronomical Journal of 2024. With dayside temperatures hot enough to sustain a magma ocean and a silicate atmosphere, lava planets are the best targets for studying the atmosphere of a rocky world.  Some rocky exoplanets orbit so closely to their host star that the dayside temperature is high enough to melt rock!

Such planets are thought to have a magma ocean surface on their dayside, which is tidally locked to always face the star. Outgassing from the magma should produce an atmosphere on the dayside only, which freezes out on the nightside.  

“Clouds in Partial Atmospheres of Lava Planets and Where to Find Them”, Nguyen et al have simulated cloud formation in the partial atmospheres of five previously observed lava planets. These simulations indicate that clouds of silicate vapour form on the dayside and they would cast shadows on the magma ocean, so cooling it slightly…  Hal Clement’s Iceworld (1953) anyone?

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside “Mufasa: The Lion King Pitch Meeting”.

(15) VIDEO OF AN EARLIER DAY. The Zombie Apache Trailer dropped in May 2024.

The story of ZOMBIE APACHE unfolds as a greedy real estate developer desecrates a sacred Viking burial ground, unleashing a comical nightmare upon the unsuspecting locals. This perfect blend of absurdity and horror, highlighted by the stellar performances of our lead actors, promises an unforgettable and wildly entertaining film. experience.”

 [Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Masked Filers Reading SFF:
After Atlas

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Goobergunch is passing the time with a book while he awaits his next social distancing opportunity.

I’ve been taking advantage of the library’s ebook lending program to do some Hugo reading during shelter-in-place. Here’s me reading After Atlas by Emma Newman, and wishing cloudLibrary had the subsequent two Planetfall novels. (Not that I’m likely to run out of books to read any time soon.)

The mask is my cold-weather hiking balaclava; I’m a little envious of everyone who’s creative enough to have a mask that’s both fancy and effective.

If you want to see this series continue, send photos of your mask and social distancing reads to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com

Masked Filers Reading SFF: The Girl With No Face

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Kendall volunteered to kick off a series inspired by the latest worldwide fashion statement.

I’m too shy to take my own photo and I don’t promise I’m reading all of these right now, but here is a photo for the new feature.

Cry Fox (“Rivers of London” graphic novel), Zero at the Bone written by Jane Seville and art by Son Gaepi (manga adaptation of the novel), No Way by S.J. Morden, The Girl With No Face by M.H. Boroson, Before Mars by Emma Newman, and Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James.

If you want to see this series continue, send photos of your mask and social distancing reads to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com

2019 Hugo Awards Best Series Discussion

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Before Mars by Emma Newman
Taste of Wrath by Matt Wallace
Searching for the Fleet by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Andrea Cort by Adam-Troy Castro
Into the Fire by Elizabeth Moon
Europe at Dawn by Dave Hutchinson
The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman
There Before the Chaos by K.B. Wagers
The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
The Accidental War by Walter Jon Williams

 
By JJ: With the Hugo Award nomination deadline only a month away, I thought it would be helpful for Filers to have a discussion about the potential nominees for Best Series. What follows is a précis of the series which I’m considering nominating for the Hugo Awards, telling you why I think these series are worthy.

Of the (as of this writing) 170 series listed on the Best Series Hugo: Eligible Series from 2018 page, I’ve read all or most of 43 series, 2 or 3 books each in five of the series, and 1 book each in thirteen of those series. That gives me more than 60 possibilities which I have to whittle down to a shortlist of 5 series.

While I do feel that some of the Best Series finalists from the past two years are Hugo-worthy, I’d like to highlight excellent series for which the individual volumes have not received much in the way of Hugo recognition thus far. So I’ve selected 10 series which I’ve especially enjoyed to feature in this post. These series, I feel, epitomize what the Best Series Hugo Award should be about: groups of works which, as a whole, are greater than the sum of their parts, and which, even if they’re still ongoing, can be said to have told a complete story at this point.

Because this post is about what I’ve read and liked, please bear in mind the following:

  1. I read predominantly science fiction, though I do read a fair bit of fantasy, and I especially enjoy science-fictional mysteries.
  2. I apparently had a stunted, defective childhood and do not find Tolkien-style fantasy, nor fairytale retellings or subversions, particularly compelling.
  3. I am not a big fan of urban fantasy or horror, especially not of vampires or Lovecraft.
  4. I have very definite opinions about what I like and don’t like, but these are of course entirely subjective, and the opinions of people who disagree with me are just wrong  as valid.

This means that I am counting on you Filers to make a compelling case for your own favorites, to broaden the scope of this post. Please talk about the series you like in the comments, and tell everyone what you think makes them Hugo-worthy.

(As always, please be sure to rot-13 any spoilers.)

Hyperlinks are to stories and excerpts which are available to read for free on the internet.

Sin du Jour by Matt Wallace (list of works)
2018 work: Taste of Wrath (novella)
Notes: series contains 7 novellas and 1 short story; author has verifed that it meets the word count

What it’s about: Sin du Jour Catering has a specialty: they prepare banquets and dinners for supernatural beings and extraordinary events. But of course, no catering plan survives contact with the diners… the big question is whether the Sin du Jour crew will survive the inevitable catastrophes which ensue.

Why I think it’s great: This is an unexpected, clever, slyly-witty delight. The catering staff members are a diverse, idiosyncratic group of people who have managed, despite their annoying habits and their weaknesses, to make a true family with each other – and the author manages to weave his supernatural worldbuilding in with the real world so deftly that the reader can almost believe it’s all really true. Each volume tells a new story, but only the first novella really stands well on its own. As a whole, this series is the story of that family’s journey: lots of amusing and terrifying subplots to enjoy, full of adventure, heartbreak, humor, and caring.

Kylara Vatta / Vatta’s Peace by Elizabeth Moon (list of works)
2018 work: Into the Fire (novel)
Notes: subseries contains 2 novels; previous subseries Vatta’s War contains 5 novels; must be nominated under the main series, as the subseries has insufficient volumes. The author’s notes in the most recent novel give me concern that there won’t be any further volumes; I’d really like to see this series recognized while it’s still eligible.

What it’s about: Forced to resign in disgrace from the spaceforce academy due to another cadet’s treachery, Vatta’s family gets her out of the way by assigning her to captain one of their decrepit merchant cargo ships. She proves to be a capable, inventive captain, who must marshal her crew and allies when her extensive family group and their mercantile empire are attacked and assassinated on multiple planets and in space. Her strategic skills and leadership ability aid in her rise to lead the fleet in a galactic war… but even in victory, there are enemies lying in wait to take down her family’s company and the government.

Why I think it’s great: This is smart, fast-paced space adventure with a complex, clever, and competent main character and a supporting cast whose personalities become more deeply-developed over the course of each book. The strength of the series is that, while each book works as a standalone entry, the individual plots are woven into a larger, complex story, full of edge-of-the-seat action and political machinations.

Diving Universe by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (list of works)
2018 works: Searching for the Fleet (novel), The Rescue of the Renegat (novella), Dix (novella), Joyride (novella), and “Lieutenant Tightass” (novelette)
Notes: series contains 7 novels, 11 novellas, and 2 novelettes

What it’s about: The owner of a small spaceship-wreck exploration company discovers tantalizing clues to an ancient, more advanced spacefaring civilization, and embarks on an obsessive search for the relics which will bring more knowledge of those who came before… resulting in one really big, unexpected answer – which leads to many further mysteries.

Why I think it’s great: Scuba diving, but on spaceships! Time Travel! Ancient Mysteries! With an ever-widening cast of well-developed, complex characters, its extensive worldbuilding for a vast spacefaring civilization, mysteries to be solved, and adventures on many worlds, this series hits all of my sweet spots.

Andrea Cort / Draiken by Adam-Troy Castro (list of works)
2018 work: Blurred Lives (novella) and A Stab of the Knife (novella)
Notes: subseries contains 4 novellas; main series contains 3 novels, 4 novellas, and a novelette; must be nominated under the main series, as the subseries has insufficient word count

What it’s about: A brilliant, tenacious investigator and prosecutor, Andrea Cort serves the Diplomatic Corps of the Hom.Sap.Mercantile Empire, sent on missions to preserve the fragile peace between humans and other races. But Cort has a very dark past, and there are a lot of beings who, in their anger and contempt for her, wish to bring her a death from which the Corps protects her only as long as it suits their purposes. Draiken has retired from a profession as a highly-skilled spy and assassin for a powerful galactic organization… but his past, and his own demons, won’t let him escape so easily. Each of them faces encounters where only their own brilliance at finding the answers keeps them from being killed – but eventually their courses are destined to collide, in a game of cat-and-mouse that one of them may not survive.

Why I think it’s great: Not only is each of the stories in this series a standalone science-fictional mystery, they are so deftly-plotted, featuring intricate twists, that it’s only when the pieces slot into place that the brilliance of the plotting becomes apparent. The author has created compelling, well-fleshed-out characters, and fascinatingly-alien races and worlds, served up with intriguing spycraft and detective work.

Planetfall by Emma Newman (list of works)
2018 work: Before Mars (novel excerpt 1 excerpt 2)
Notes: series contains 3 novels

What it’s about: The first novel in the series tells the stories of the colonists on a distant, far-from-ideal planet and their gradual disintegration after their charismatic leader disappears. The second tells the stories of the people left behind on Earth, especially that of the son of one of the colonists and the resentment he faces from the rest of the planet. The third novel tells the story of an artist who accepts a position in-residence at a Mars habitat funded by an extremely wealthy man.

Why I think it’s great: Each of the novels in this series stands alone well, though they are set in the same near-future Earth universe and do have some interlinked threads. Each novel features a different compelling mystery and main character who must solve it in order to save their own life. The worldbuilding is plausible, and the characters wonderfully multi-faceted. I think that each novel has been progressively more intricate and skillful, creating a well-crafted vision of a possible not-too-distant future.

Xuya Universe by Aliette de Bodard (list of works)
2018 work: The Tea Master and the Detective (novella – scroll down for excerpt)
Notes: series consists of 25 short stories novelettes, and novellas; author has verifed that it meets the word count

What it’s about: Xuya is an alternate history universe where China discovered the Americas before the West, which led to a global Asian domination of the globe rather than the Western one – and to a space age initially dominated by Chinese and Vietnamese galactic empires.

Why I think it’s great: The author’s worldbuilding through the numerous stories in this universe is deep and extensive. The different cultural perspective makes it a refreshing change from Western-oriented science fiction. It features sentient ships capable of subdimensional intergalactic travel, resulting in widespread colonization of space, and mysterious technologies of weaponry and teleportation. Rather than featuring a small core cast of characters, this series finds its strength in the breadth of the worldbuilding details and insights into the personalities of many different characters.

Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (list of works)
2018 work: The Mortal Word (novel)
Notes: series contains 5 novels

What it’s about: As a librarian for the mysterious Library, Irene is not only a researcher, but a professional spy and thief, acquiring variant versions of significant works from alternate realities (some of which are very like our own, and some which differ wildly). Time spent in The Library is outside of real time – librarians do not age while they are there, and thus are nearly immortal. However, Irene is at the beginning of her career, just out of training, and after being viciously betrayed by her mentor, must undertake missions to prove her value. After being saddled with her own inexperienced apprentice – who has some dark secrets of his own – she is sent to various worlds, where others with their own nefarious purposes will try to thwart her success in favor of her own.

Why I think it’s great: Like many avid readers, I admire and adore librarians, with their seemingly-magical powers of knowing which books will meet various needs, and their ability to find almost anything. The adventures in this series include mysteries, dragons, fae, magical language which can compel objects to behave contrary to their ordinary nature, endless alternate timelines to explore, complex villains, and books, books, and more books. The author’s storytelling skills have leveled-up as the series has progressed, and each new entry released is an automatic addition to my TBR.

Fractured Europe by Dave Hutchinson (list of works)
2018 work: Europe at Dawn (novel)
Notes: series contains 4 novels

What it’s about: This fantasy series features a near-future Europe where the Union has fallen apart in the wake of a catastrophic pandemic and subsequent economic collapse. The borders of countries are constantly shifting and increasingly fragmented with the political winds, making mail and freight service unreliable and impractical. A mysterious spy/courier organization has come into existence, with agents who are heavily trained in spycraft and subterfuge and who will, for a hefty fee, deliver packages in a timely fashion across what are now frequently tightly-controlled and policed – or even impassable – borders. The main character, a chef who moonlights as a courier, discovers a shocking revelation: na nygreangr jbeyq shyy bs crbcyr ybfg va gvzr, juvpu pb-rkvfgf jvguva gur fnzr trbtencul nf Rhebcr, naq juvpu pna or npprffrq ivn n srj frperg ragenaprf. Naq vgf erfvqragf unir gurve bja frperg ntraqn, bar juvpu znl cebir sngny gb gur Rhebcr ur xabjf.

Why I think it’s great: The first novel can be read on its own, but the full depth of the worldbuilding slowly develops over the course of the series, with each successive volume producing new revelations which gradually weave a larger tapestry. The mysteries and spycraft are of the sort found in Le Carré novels, with some deadpan humor and lots of suspense as the mysteries unfold and random events take on significance. This is one of those series which richly rewards a re-read, as hindsight provides a new perspective on events as they occur.

The Praxis by Walter Jon Williams (list of works)
2018 work: The Accidental War (novel)
Notes: series contains 5 novels, 2 novellas, and a short story

What it’s about: This series begins with the end of the rule of a powerful alien race who conquered humans as well as numerous other alien species, setting them all under a rigid doctrine of laws known as The Praxis. The power vacuum created by the end of their empire (bored with life after many millennia, they have deliberately wiped themselves out) provides the opportunity for one of the other races to attempt a takeover – one in which the humans will be on the receiving end of some serious oppression. However, two different officers of the Terran navy, each a brilliant tactician in their own way, fight on different fronts to prevent that takeover and change the empire into some version of democracy (or at least an approximation of equality among species).

Why I think it’s great: Readers who appreciate military and social strategy, tricks, and tactics will find a lot to enjoy here – and there are some good mysteries and suspense thrown in, to boot. The main characters are well-developed and sympathetic, while still being complex and flawed, and the author continues to expand the worldbuilding with each entry in the series. As a whole, this series is very much a greater adventure than the sum of its parts.

Hail Bristol / Farian War by K. B. Wagers (list of works)
2018 work: There Before the Chaos (novel)
Notes: first novel in this subseries; previous subseries Indranan War contains 3 novels; must be nominated under the main series, as the subseries has insufficient volumes

What it’s about: After her father is killed, a younger daughter of the Empress, who disdains life in the royal court, runs off to become a feared gunrunner with criminal ties. When her sister-heirs are assassinated, with the Empress deathly ill, the royal bodyguards come to drag her, unwillingly, back to her obligations to the throne. But there are forces still hiding within the empire who want her – and her family – out of the picture for good, and she must fight to stay alive while she tries to bring some stability to her planet and her people.

Why I think it’s great: Not only does this series feature a kickass strong protagonist, it also portrays a matriarchal ruling structure which she recognizes as being inherently sexist and wrong, and must work to reform. Even her enemies are people who do what they do for the sake of what they believe is right, and there is no simple good vs. bad story here. It’s also a story of finding your family among the people around you, of obligation and duty versus desire, of loyalty and betrayal, of cruelty and kindness, and of hope.

2017 Novellapalooza

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[Editor’s note: be sure to read the comments on this post for more novellas and more Filer reviews.]

By JJ: I’m a huge reader of novels, but not that big on short fiction. But the last couple of years, I’ve done a personal project to read and review as many Novellas as I could (presuming that the story synopsis had some appeal for me). I ended up reading 31 of the novellas published in 2015 and 35 of the novellas published in 2016 (though a few of those were after Hugo nominations closed).

Last year, the result of this was the 2016 Novellapalooza. I really felt as though I was able to do Hugo nominations for the novella category in an informed way, and a lot of Filers got involved with their own comments. So I decided to do it again this year.

The success of Tor’s novella line seems to have sparked a Golden Age for SFF novellas, with Subterranean Press, NewCon Press, PS Publishing, and Book Smugglers jumping on the bandwagon, as well as the Big 3 magazines and the online fiction venues – so there are a lot more novellas to cover this year. Toward the end, I’ve gotten to the point of being more selective about which ones I read, based on the synopsis.

It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book despite not feeling that the jacket copy makes the book sound as though it is something I would like – and to discover that I really like or love the work anyway. On the other hand, It is not at all uncommon for me to choose to read a book in such a case, and to discover that, indeed, the book doesn’t really do much for me.

Thus, my opinions on the following novellas vary wildly: stories I thought I would love but didn’t, stories I didn’t expect to love but did, and stories which aligned with my expectations – whether high or low. Bear in mind that while I enjoy both, I tend to prefer Science Fiction over Fantasy – and that while I enjoy suspense and thrillers, I have very little appreciation for Horror (and to be honest, I think Lovecraft is way overrated). My personal assessments are therefore not intended to be the final word on these stories, but merely a jumping-off point for Filer discussion.

I thought it would be helpful to have a thread where all the Filers’ thoughts on novellas are collected in one place, as a resource when Hugo nomination time rolls around. Which of these novellas have you read? And what did you think of them?

Please feel free to post comments about any other 2017 novellas which you’ve read, as well.

(Be sure to rot-13 any spoilers.)

Read more…

Emma Newman’s Industrial Magic Series

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By Carl Slaughter: The first two books in Emma Newman’s Industrial Magic series have come out from Tor this year.

BROTHER’S RUIN
by Emma Newman
Released March 14, 2017

The year is 1850 and Great Britain is flourishing, thanks to the Royal Society of the Esoteric Arts. When a new mage is discovered, Royal Society elites descend like buzzards to snatch up a new apprentice. Talented mages are bought from their families at a tremendous price, while weak mages are snapped up for a pittance. For a lower middle class family like the Gunns, the loss of a son can be disastrous, so when seemingly magical incidents begin cropping up at home, they fear for their Ben’s life and their own livelihoods.

But Benjamin Gunn isn’t a talented mage. His sister Charlotte is, and to prevent her brother from being imprisoned for false reporting she combines her powers with his to make him seem a better prospect.

When she discovers a nefarious plot by the sinister Doctor Ledbetter, Charlotte must use all her cunning and guile to protect her family, her secret and her city.

Brother’s Ruin is the first in a new gaslamp fantasy series by Emma Newman.

WEAVER’S LAMENT
By Emma Newman
Released October 17, 2017

Charlotte’s magical adventures continue in Weaver’s Lament, the sequel to Emma Newman’s Brother’s Ruin.

Charlotte is learning to control her emerging magical powers under the secret tutelage of Magus Hopkins.

Her first covert mission takes her to a textile mill where the disgruntled workers are apparently destroying expensive equipment.

And if she can’t identify the culprits before it’s too late, her brother will be exiled, and her family dishonoured…

Praise for Emma Newman:

“Newman reworks the familiar idea of magical schools, breathing some new life into the premise by exploring the darker corners of London and their murky morality.” ? Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Emma Newman

EMMA NEWMAN writes dark short stories and science fiction and urban fantasy novels. Between Two Thorns, the first book in Emma’s acclaimed Split Worlds urban fantasy series, was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Awards for Best Novel and Emma was nominated for Best Newcomer.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Website: http://www.enewman.co.uk/

Blog: http://www.enewman.co.uk/blog

Twitter: @emapocalyptic

Facebook: Emma Newman

Leveling-Up in Emma Newman’s Split Worlds

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Angry Robot 2013

By JJ: A couple of centuries ago, the World was split to protect humans from the much-more-powerful Fae. Now the Fae reside in their land of magic, Exilium. They are separated from the mundane world by the Nether, a mirror-image version of Mundanus where society is frozen in that of Regency/Victorian times and populated by the people who chose to leave the real world and serve the Fae in exchange for near-immortality.

While the human denizens of the Nether are able to reproduce, those children must be raised in Mundanus in order to grow to maturity. This is often accomplished by living in homes which straddle the border between the Nether and the real world, keeping the children in the mundane section; since adults from the Nether will continue to age naturally whenever they enter Mundanus, they try to do so as seldom as possible.

Although Nether humans are able to visit the real world, a group of sorcerers known as Arbiters monitor the Fae to ensure that they do not violate the terms of the agreement, that they and their magic are kept away from the humans and Mundanus, and that innocent humans are no longer abducted from the real world to serve as playthings — or food — for the Fae.

Each of the Fae lords are designated by a flower, and the families who are their servants in the Nether take this as their surname to make their allegiance clear, including Rose, Lavender, Iris, and Rhoeas-Papaver. The latter family’s headstrong daughter, Catherine, has run away to the real world to escape an abusive father and the traditional Victorian restrictions and mores in which she has been raised — strictures which include marriages arranged by parents. In Mundanus, Catherine has made a life for herself as an independent adult, free of her family’s control.

Angry Robot 2013

But Catherine’s family is extremely unhappy about her escape, and they are determined to drag her back to a life she sees as stifling and strangling — and a husband chosen for her, without her consultation.

This, then, is the setting for the opening of the first novel in Emma Newman’s Split Worlds pentalogy. In the Nether, the author has created a world both charming and horrifying — one where the lovely fashions and entertainments mask the more sinister underlying society controlled by capricious Fae and tyrannical family patriarchs.

The biggest success of these books, I think, is the author’s choice to show almost all of the characters with complexity. Most of the people featured here are slowly revealed as neither all good or all bad, but as conflicted, contradictory people embodied by a mix of admirable and despicable characteristics, of virtues and weaknesses. Even though some of them behave quite badly, the reader is often able to feel empathy — or at least understanding — for them, due to recognition of the pressures and fears which motivate that behavior.

I especially appreciated the way that Newman has avoided slipping into the easy tropes of romance and idealised resolutions. The people in these books, and their relationships, are messy and realistic — and conflicts are handled in a believable way, rather than with pasted-on Happily-Ever-After Hollywood endings.

Angry Robot 2013

Due to Filer recommendations and my enjoyment of Planetfall and After Atlas, I had these books near the top of my To-Be-Read pile, anyway — and when the newly-published fifth and final novel in the series became available through NetGalley, the publisher was kind enough to give me the opportunity to read them all at once, in exchange for an honest review.

I make no secret of the fact that I much prefer Science Fiction over Fantasy. But I have to admit that I really enjoyed this series — not just for the detailed and believable worldbuilding, but for the way the author has deftly interwoven into the stories the current hard questions and challenges facing our own world regarding gender roles, race, domestic violence, and social status.

My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Tsundokus, highly recommended.

Diversion Books 2016

Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman [Split Worlds #1]

Beautiful and nuanced as it is dangerous, the manners of Regency and Victorian England blend into a scintillating fusion of urban fantasy and court intrigue.

Between Mundanus, the world of humans, and Exilium, the world of the Fae, lies the Nether, a mirror-world where the social structure of 19th-century England is preserved by Fae-touched families who remain loyal to their ageless masters. Born into this world is Catherine Rhoeas-Papaver, who escapes it all to live a normal life in Mundanus, free from her parents and the strictures of Fae-touched society. But now she’s being dragged back to face an arranged marriage, along with all the high society trappings it entails.

Crossing paths with Cathy is Max, an Arbiter of the Split Worlds treaty with a dislocated soul who polices the boundaries between the worlds, keeping innocents safe from the Fae. After a spree of kidnappings and the murder of his fellow Arbiters, Max is forced to enlist Cathy’s help in unravelling a high-profile disappearance within the Nether. Getting involved in the machinations of the Fae, however, may prove fatal to all involved.

Diversion Books 2016

Any Other Name by Emma Newman [Split Worlds #2]

Cathy has been reluctantly married into the Iris family and moves to Londinium, the magical Nether reflection of London, setting her on a collision course with the restrictive, high-pressure social circles that demand propriety and obedience, things the vocal and free-spirited Cathy cannot abide. Will, meanwhile, is trying to find a compromise for his new bride, but whispers in his ear are urging him towards dark deeds…

Sam, determined to dive back into the world of Exilium to rescue innocents, crosses paths with Cathy and Max once again as Max and the gargoyle uncover more information about the mysterious Agency and the chain of events that wiped out the Bath Chapter. Sacrifices, terrible deals, and dreadful revelations mark this second installment of Emma Newman’s wondrous Split Worlds series.

Diversion Books 2016

All Is Fair by Emma Newman [Split Worlds #3]

Caught in the insidious designs of powerful puppet-masters and playing a life-or-death game for control, Cathy and her comrades face their greatest challenge yet: changing the balance of power in the Split Worlds.

Now at the heart of the Londinium Court, deceit and murder track Will’s steps as he assumes his new role as Duke. Faced with threats to his throne and his life, the consequences of his bloody actions are already coming back to haunt him…

Meanwhile, Cathy, wrestling with the constraints of the Agency and Dame Iris, comes to terms with her new status in Fae-touched society and seeks others who feel just as restricted by its outdated social rules. As Max works with Cathy to uncover the horrors that underpin Fae-touched society, he bears witness as the final blow is struck against the last Sorcerers in Albion…

Darkly imaginative, vividly detailed, and genre-defying in scope, ALL IS FAIR is at once a thrilling and intellectual journey into worlds beyond sight.

Diversion Books 2016

A Little Knowledge by Emma Newman [Split Worlds #4]

Cathy and Will are now the Duchess and Duke of Londinium, the biggest Fae-touched Nether city, but they have different ideas of what their authority offers. Pressured by his Fae patron, Lord Iris, Will struggles to maintain total control whilst knowing he must have a child with his difficult wife. Cathy wants to muscle the Court through two hundred years of social change and free it from its old-fashioned moral strictures. But Cathy learns just how dangerous it can be for a woman who dares to speak out…

Meanwhile, as Sam learns more about the Elemental Court it becomes clear that the Fae are not the only threat to humanity. Sam realises that he has to make enemies of the most powerful people on the planet, or risk becoming the antithesis of all he believes in.

Threatened by secret societies, hidden power networks and Fae machinations, can Sam and Cathy survive long enough to make the changes they want to see in the world?

Diversion Books 2017

All Good Things by Emma Newman [Split Worlds #5]

As the Iris family consolidates their hold on society within the secret world of the Nether, William Iris finds himself more powerful and yet more vulnerable than ever. His wife, Cathy, has left him, a fact that will destroy him if it becomes public. To keep his position – and survive – he needs to get her back, whatever the cost.

Cathy has finally escaped the Nether, but hates that she must rely so heavily on Sam’s protection. When the strange sorceress Beatrice offers her a chance to earn true freedom by joining the quest Sam has been bound to, Cathy agrees. But can she and Sam navigate Beatrice’s plans for the future without becoming two more of her victims?

And Beatrice, a self-taught and powerful killer, is not without her enemies. Rupert, the last sorcerer of Albion, is obsessed with finding and destroying her. He orders Max and his gargoyle to help him, pulling them away from protecting innocents. As the Arbiter and his partner face the ugly side of their responsibilities to Rupert, they begin to question where their loyalties should truly lie.

Amidst death, deceit, and the fight for freedom, friendships are tested, families are destroyed, and heroes are forged as the battle to control the Split Worlds rages to its climatic conclusion.

Emma Newman

(Fair notice: all Amazon links are referrer URLs which benefit non-profit SFF fan website Worlds Without End)

Other works by Emma Newman:

The year is 1850 and Great Britain is flourishing, thanks to the Royal Society of the Esoteric Arts. When a new mage is discovered, Royal Society elites descend like buzzards to snatch up a new apprentice. Talented mages are bought from their families at a tremendous price, while weak mages are snapped up for a pittance. For a lower middle class family like the Gunns, the loss of a son can be disastrous, so when seemingly magical incidents begin cropping up at home, they fear for their Ben’s life and their own livelihoods.

But Benjamin Gunn isn’t a talented mage. His sister Charlotte is, and to prevent her brother from being imprisoned for false reporting she combines her powers with his to make him seem a better prospect.

When she discovers a nefarious plot by the sinister Doctor Ledbetter, Charlotte must use all her cunning and guile to protect her family, her secret and her city.

  • Planetfall [Planetfall #1] (Roc / New American Library, 2015)

Renata Ghali believed in Lee Suh-Mi’s vision of a world far beyond Earth, calling to humanity. A planet promising to reveal the truth about our place in the cosmos, untainted by overpopulation, pollution, and war. Ren believed in that vision enough to give up everything to follow Suh-Mi into the unknown.

More than twenty-two years have passed since Ren and the rest of the faithful braved the starry abyss and established a colony at the base of an enigmatic alien structure where Suh-Mi has since resided, alone. All that time, Ren has worked hard as the colony’s 3-D printer engineer, creating the tools necessary for human survival in an alien environment, and harboring a devastating secret.

Ren continues to perpetuate the lie forming the foundation of the colony for the good of her fellow colonists, despite the personal cost. Then a stranger appears, far too young to have been part of the first planetfall, a man who bears a remarkable resemblance to Suh-Mi.

The truth Ren has concealed since planetfall can no longer be hidden. And its revelation might tear the colony apart…

  • After Atlas [Planetfall #2] (Roc / New American Library, 2016)

Gov-corp detective Carlos Moreno was only a baby when Atlas left Earth to seek truth among the stars. But in that moment, the course of Carlos’s entire life changed. Atlas is what took his mother away; what made his father lose hope; what led Alejandro Casales, leader of the religious cult known as the Circle, to his door. And now, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of Atlas’s departure, it’s got something to do why Casales was found dead in his hotel room – and why Carlos is the man in charge of the investigation.

To figure out who killed one of the most powerful men on Earth, Carlos is supposed to put aside his personal history. But the deeper he delves into the case, the more he realizes that escaping the past is not so easy. There’s more to Casales’s death than meets the eye, and something much more sinister to the legacy of Atlas than anyone realizes…

LONDON, 2012: It arrives, and with that the world is changed into an unending graveyard littered with the bones, wreckage, and memories of a dead past, gone forever.

LONDON, 2032: Twenty years later, out of the ashes, a new world begins to rise, a place ruled by both loyalty and fear, and where the quest to be the first to regain lost knowledge is an ongoing battle for power. A place where laws are made and enforced by roving gangs-the Bloomsbury Boys, the Gardners, the Red Lady’s Gang-who rule the streets and will do anything to protect their own.

THE FOUR: Zane, Titus, Erin, Eve. Living in this new world, they discover that they have abilities never before seen. And little do they know that as they search post-apocalyptic London for Titus’ kidnapped sister that they’ll uncover the secret of It, and bring about a reckoning with the forces that almost destroyed all of humanity.

  • From Dark Places
  • The Straw
  • The Need to Create
  • Burnt
  • Someone to Watch Over Her
  • The Perfect Escape
  • The Tenth Lord
  • Sunday Lunch
  • The Art of Desire
  • No Surprise
  • Seeing Him Again
  • Shedding
  • The Victim
  • The Letter
  • The Unwoven Heart
  • And Then There Were None
  • Everything in its Place
  • The Best Pie in the World
  • The Handsome Dragon
  • The Bell
  • In the Bag
  • Her Fall
  • The Supporting Statement
  • Idolised
  • Getting Fixed

Emma Newman writes dark short stories and science fiction and urban fantasy novels. Between Two Thorns, the first book in Emma’s Split Worlds urban fantasy series, was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Awards for Best Novel and for Best Newcomer in 2014. “A Woman’s Place” won the 2015 British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story, and her science-fiction novel After Atlas, the second in her Planetfall series, is a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the Locus Award in 2017. Emma is a professional audiobook narrator and also co-writes and hosts the Hugo-nominated and Alfie-winning podcast Tea and Jeopardy which involves tea, cake, mild peril and singing chickens. Her hobbies include dressmaking and role-playing games.

 SOCIAL MEDIA

Pixel Scroll 3/22/16 The Scrolls Are Alive With The Sound of Pixels

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(1) MEDIA CON INFLATION. Rob Salkowitz at ICv2 says “As The 2016 Con Season Begins, Seams Are Starting To Show”.

Competition for big names is getting crazy. Every show wants the top names to draw fans, but the bidding war for A-list talent is starting to sound unsustainable. I’ve heard reliable reports that the appearance fees for the Wizard World Show in Philadelphia in June, which lists Chris Evans, Chris Helmsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie and the stars of Back to the Future, top $1 million in guaranteed money.

Well sure. Those are all the stars of what seems likely to be 2016’s biggest movie, all in one place.

But this is having a trickle-down effect. Because this is Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, the surviving original cast members and just about everyone associated with all versions of the show, are in unusually high demand. Competition to get these names on the marquee has reportedly led to cancelled contracts, bidding wars, waivers of exclusives, a shift from guaranteed revenues for autograph sales to straight appearance fees, and other cutthroat tactics.

Cons need to make that money back somewhere, and it’s coming from three places: fans, exhibitors and sponsors.

Costs are rising for attendees. Badges for 3- and 4-day events are starting to crack the $100 level, and that’s just the start. More and more events are not only adding VIP packages, which start around $195 and can go as high as $800-900, but are also requiring fans to pre-pay for celebrity photo ops and celebrity autographs in advance. SVCC even experimented with charging a $10 surcharge for admission to the Back to the Future Panel in its big room on Saturday afternoon, only to oversell the event and not have room for prepaid customers.

(2) PATHFINDER. Marion Deeds has an excellent report on FOGCon 2016 at Fantasy Literature.

Is 72 Letters Enough? In Search of the Perfect Language

I consider a panel “good” if I come away with new book titles to track down, or lots of ideas. By those two measurements, this panel was the best panel of the convention. Panelists included Ted Chiang, who took his inspiration from the Umberto Eco book In Search of the Perfect Language (The Making of Europe). The other panelists were Cathy Hindersinn and Steven Schwartz, with Michelle Cox moderating. There was another panelist but I don’t remember her name and it doesn’t appear in the program. Hindersinn studied linguistics before making a lateral move and becoming a computer programmer. Schwartz is part of the FOGCon committee and writes speculative fiction and epic poetry. He loves language and he loves to talk about language. Cox has an MA in Church History and theology and is a technical writer.

Chiang is scary-smart, articulate if a bit abstract at times, and serious, but he has a great wit, which was on display during the panel. This panel was held in the large room and, as near as I could tell, there was one empty chair. Several people were standing. The panelists were opinionated, and in some cases their passion outstripped their knowledge; the audience was the same way. It was brilliant.

Chiang used the Eco book as a jumping off point for a discussion and critique of the conceit of a “perfect” language; one that existed in the past, in humanity’s “golden age;” a language that all humans could speak and understand. There are two parts to that idea: universalism; the idea that there is one language every human on the planet can communicate in, (perhaps as a second language); and then a language that has the smallest possible divide between the signifier and the thing signified.

(3) STRANGE PUBLISHING TREND. The New Republic reports “The Mass-Market Edition of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ Is Dead”.

We may never know what Lee’s will stipulates, but the estate’s first action in the wake of Lee’s death is both bold and somewhat baffling: The New Republic has obtained an email from Hachette Book Group, sent on Friday, March 4 to booksellers across the country, revealing that Lee’s estate will no longer allow publication of the mass-market paperback edition of To Kill a Mockingbird…..

That said, mass-market paperbacks have been on a precipitous decline lately, though TKAM’s success, particularly in the education market, makes it a notable exception. But many publishers are moving away from the format. Pressed for further comment, a HarperCollins spokesperson informed me that “Like many American classics, To Kill A Mockingbird’s primary paperback format will be the trade paperback edition.” That’s an important distinction: The general trend in publishing has been against the mass-market and toward more expensive (and durable) editions—many American classics, including The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath no longer have mass-market editions.

(4) THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. Murray Leinster’s warning is just waiting for tech to catch up. “A Logic Named Joe: The 1946 sci-fi short that nailed modern tech. 70 years later, Murray Leinster’s disaster scenario is the internet you know and love.”

The story goes on to tell how “Joe,” a rogue logic with a slight manufacturing defect, becomes self-aware and resolves to provide his owners and all other “logic” users with whatever information they require. Leinster says of Joe:

Joe ain’t vicious, you understand. He ain’t like one of those ambitious robots you read about that make up their minds the human race is inefficient and has got to be wiped out an’ replaced by thinkin’ machines. Joe’s just got ambition. If you were a machine you’d wanna work right, wouldn’t you? That’s Joe. He wants to work right. And he’s a logic, an’ logics can do a lotta things that ain’t been found out yet.

This, in turn, leads to logics around the city providing tips on everything from poisoning spouses to covering up drinking binges and robbing banks. Only when Joe is taken offline is that information hidden away from humanity and order restored.

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born March 22, 1931 – William Shatner. The whole internet is barely big enough to contain everything there is to know about his show biz career. Google revealed to me that Shatner was on the old What’s My Line? game show in January 1965.

He was there to plug the premiere episode of his (then) new lawyer drama series For The People — which fortunately for all concerned failed in time for him to be cast in Star Trek.

(6) TODAY’S OTHER BIRTHDAY BOY

trekkie-recipe-william-shatners-cappuccino-muffins_w654

(7) RECORD STRAIGHTENER. Larry Correia has been unfairly charged with abandoning the battlefield, as he explains in “The Guardian’s Village Idiot Declares Another Career Ruined”.

I wasn’t going to write anything about SP, but it has come to my attention that a new narrative has arisen amongst the mushy headed dope punditry of fandom, because they are always scrambling for something to get their collective panties in a bunch over. This time it is that Brad and I are cowards—and are probably misogynistic women haters too—because we abandoned poor female Kate to their mighty wrath.

Well, you’ll have to forgive Brad’s cowardice, because he has been deployed by the US Army to the Middle East for the last year, supporting missions against terrorists, but that’s nothing compared to the courage it takes to have a good fandom slapfight. (And really? Scared of what? There are only so many ways you guys can send out a press release alleging that somebody is a racist).

And you’ll have to forgive me too, because I thought I had made my point in 2014 that the system was biased, and I was done. Only Brad asked me to come back to help in 2015, so I did, and after the CHORFs proved my point for me far better than I ever could—wooden assholes and No Awarding the most deserving editor in the business—I said at the end of that I was done.

Why am I out? Mostly because it was a giant time suck, and I’ve got stuff to do. Unlike most of my detractors, I actually write books for a living. I wrote a novella worth of posts on SP in public, and another one worth of emails on the topic behind the scenes. Then there is the joy of spending an hour on the phone with reporters, so that they can quote one sentence from you, and then quote paragraphs from some dolt who knows jack about the topic but belongs to the right clique.

Honestly, in the time I spent on Sad Puppies, I probably could have gotten another book out the door. Plus in 2016 I’ve got my European research trip, I have a new business venture I’ve not talked about at all, I bought a big chunk of property, and mountain fortress compounds don’t build themselves. All that’s in addition to the three novels that are coming out this year, the short fiction collection I have to put together, and the MHI anthology I have to edit.

So I could either try to prove again the point that I’ve already proven, or I can get paid more. Hmmm…. Tough call.

(8) A PUPPY SURPRISE. Apparently Jeffro Johnson was the last person on Earth to realize this was the game plan from Day 1. “Comments on Sad Puppies IV and Rabid Puppies II” at Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog.

You know, I have to say… making the Puppies lists for Best Related Work was a real shock for me. That’s just not something that ever even occurred to me as being a possibility. Maybe it’s a bit ironic, but it’s actually humbling to have even a modest number of people think that well of me. I honestly don’t know what else to say, but “thank you.” So: thank you! 

(9) HONORED. Cheah Kai Wai (Benjamin Cheah) is also pleased to be included. See “Rabid Puppies Recommended”.

I am greatly honoured to accept such praise, and am deeply humbled by the fact that there are people who believe I am worthy of standing beside such luminaries as Stephen King and Andy Weir. Looking at the rest of the Rapid Puppies recommendations, I am fully confident that the recommendations will live up to the Rapid Puppies’ mission of making the Hugos great again.

Further, I am especially pleased by Vox Day’s inclusion of Space Raptor Butt Invasion. Science fiction is the literature of ideas, allowing radical concepts to be explored in great detail. This story is indubitably a masterwork that skilfully portrays interspecies non-heterosexual relations within a vividly-created science fictional universe, and would surely be a shoo-in for the Hugos among certain quarters.

(10) REMOVAL REQUEST. In revolutionary Boston the tea had to be thrown overboard. This time it jumped.

Emma Newman speaks “Regarding Tea and Jeopardy being included on a certain list”.

All I know is that I would like Tea and Jeopardy to be removed from this latest list. I don’t want something that Pete and I spend a hell of a lot of time and energy creating to be associated with anything like this. Our podcast has made it to the nominations shortlist two years in a row on its own merit and if we are lucky enough to be shortlisted for a third time, I want it to be because people listen to the show and are moved to nominate it. Nothing more.

Sadly, it seems that requests to be removed for the Sad Puppies 4 list are being ignored. Whilst part of me agrees that people can put whatever they like into a list on their own website, the part that values courtesy disagrees with the refusal to respect a creator’s requests to remove something from it. I’m sorry if this hurts the feelings of the people involved, but no matter what the intentions are this year, no matter the reasons why our podcast made it onto that list, I personally do not want my work to be associated with it.

(11) SECOND CUP. Peter Newman affirms the request in “Tea and Jeopardy, Hugo nominations and Sad Puppies”.

To be clear, I have never solicited the attention of this group, nor do I endorse it. I was not asked if Tea & Jeopardy could be included and I am told that requests to be taken off the list will be ignored. That said, I’d like Tea & Jeopardy to be taken off the Sad Puppies 4 list.

(12) SCHMIDT ASKS OUT. Bryan Thomas Schmidt tells Facebook readers he’s unhappy to find himself on the Rabid Puppies slate.

So apparently the abominable Vox Day put me on his Hugo list this year. First I heard if it. I have paid NO attention this year to lists, etc. I would demand removal but he clearly cares not what people think and states flat out he will not entertain removal requests. I “No Awarded” him last year and would again. I do not approve of this and see it as his attempt to do me further harm. Just going to ignore.

He’s also got an asterisk next to his name on the Sad Puppies 4 List now, too.

In fact, Schmidt says he would rather not be considered for the Hugo at all.

Although I am flattered when friends say they nominated me for the Hugo, please do not waste votes on me this year. I do not want to participate in this broken, biased process, at least until perhaps people of all creeds and levels can be fairly considered without politics ruling the day. I would decline a nomination if offered, though I highly suspect there will be no need. Instead, please consider MISSION: TOMORROW for the Locus Awards. Thanks.

(13) LIMITING DAMAGE. David D. Levine also got his short story “Damage” asterisked by asking to be removed from the Sad Puppies 4 List in a comment.

(14) SUPPORT FOR KATE PAULK. Amanda S. Green in “Cranky Writer is, well, cranky” said —

As for those who don’t want to be associated with SP4, I suggest you go back and look at what Kate has done throughout the year. The list is not something she pulled out of thin air. This is a list that is based solely on recommendations made by anyone who wanted to take part. By telling Kate you don’t want to be associated with the list, you are basically telling your readers — your fans and the people who buy your work — that you don’t value their support. You are letting fear of what a few in the industry might think of you override what should be important: keeping your fans happy. Unless, of course, you don’t give a flip what your fans think and you like slapping them in the face for daring to support your work and recommend it for what has been one of the most prestigious prizes in the industry.

(15) BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARDSHELL. Alexandra Erin brings back the field’s most insightful reviewer, John Z. Upjohn, USMC (Aspired) – “Sad Puppies Review Books: Yertle the Turtle”.

The villain of the piece is a turtle named Mack who is so dissatisfied with his place in the world that rather than climbing the ladder and making something of himself, he instead blames society for such petty things as the pain in his back and his lack of food. Not content to merely complain, he uses his extraordinary power and privilege to impose his will upon all other turtles. Lacking the gumption and will to raise himself up, he instead only tears down, and will not be satisfied until all other turtles have been brought down to his level.

(16) DELVING. Alexandra Erin’s “Nineteen Puppy Four” contains her opinion of the Sad Puppy worldview and motivations.

Well, so much for the notion that this year’s litter of Sad Puppies were kinder, gentler, or even more moderate than last year’s. Over the past weekend, when the initial reactions to their new list were still more initial, Sarah Hoyt posted a response that was… well, we’ll say “typically hyperbolic”, but also quite telling.

A lot of it follows the “BUT MOM, I’m NOT Touching Him!” school of legalism that sprouts up whenever reactionaries try to argue with or by what they think is progressive logic, but as she goes on, she eventually compares Puppy critics to such nuanced things as German citizens whipped into a frenzy of anti-Semitism by the Nazi party, only “worse” because those who disagree with the Pups are doing it of our own free will. In the same piece, she refers to those who dissent from her party line as being slaves bound in chains.

(17) NOT THE DOG IN THE NIGHT. Paul Cornell can still hear them.

https://twitter.com/Paul_Cornell/status/712270507727572992

(18) AND NOW ABOUT SOME BOOKS. Book Smugglers Publishing thinks you will be interested in Superheroes in Space.

Broken by Susan Jane Bigelow has earned a Starred Review by Publishers Weekly, a super great review by Foz Meadows over at Hugo Award winner A Dribble of Ink and has sold TV rights. Broken is Book Smugglers Publishing’s first novel and the opening act in The Extrahuman Union Series….

Introducing readers to Susan Jane Bigelow’s sprawling series in which Extrahumans will fight wars, overthrow governments, fall in and out of love, have life-changing adventures and travel the stars in search of a home—and their promised freedom—Broken is out now and is available as a trade paperback and ebook (EPUB & MOBI) from all major retailers online. The print book contains the novel, two illustrations from Kirbi Fagan, and a sneak peek at Sky Ranger, the second book in the series (published this June). The ebook edition also contains a prequel short story, Crimson Cadet, as well as an essay from the author and a Q&A with the artist.

(19) ET TU PENTAWERE? Scanners do not live in vain when it comes to extracting secrets from the mummies of Pharoahs.

The New Kingdom Pharaoh Ramesses III was assassinated by multiple assailants — and given postmortem cosmetic surgery to improve his mummy’s appearance.

Those are some of the new tidbits on ancient Egyptian royalty detailed in a new book by Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and Cairo University radiologist Sahar Saleem, “Scanning the Pharaohs: CT Imaging of the New Kingdom Royal Mummies” (American University in Cairo Press, 2016).

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Darren Garrison, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peace Is My Middle Name.]