The Imaginary Singular Project: A Review of Trace Elements by Jo Walton and Ada Palmer

 A view on SFF that gets a little too tangled in its own specific perspective

Back in April last year, I reviewed Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction by Paul Kincaid. While I had a lot to get to grips with in my reading of it, one of the things I uncomplicatedly appreciated was its stance on the "project" of science fiction, the idea of the singular whole of the thing. Or, specifically, the absence of such a monolith. Kincaid constantly comes back to the idea of the multiplicity of the genre, and that multiplicity, the titular colourfield, is important. And I concur; every person's path into the genre - both genres, because this applies just as truly to Fantasy - and their context, their reading habits, their tastes, their friends' tastes, their location in the world, all of it, feeds into what SFF looks like for them. We are all of us overlapping genre sets, growing and shifting through time.

I came back to this thought often while reading Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy (hereafter simply Trace Elements) by Jo Walton and Ada Palmer. Like Kincaid, their volume is drawn from a selection of previously published pieces from different venues (though augmented with some new essays for this publication). But, unlike Kincaid, this variety is not particularly reflected in the way they approach genre. I have two overarching thoughts, upon completion of the book, and the first is a sort of estrangement from the science fiction that they seem to be implying throughout the work exists as a singular, coherent beast. It is at once familiar and unfamiliar to me, and, more importantly, as the second thought, never tackled up front. I'll get into a lot more meat of discussing the content, but truly, the core of my argument is that the whole of this thing, this product of years of reading and writing about SFF, sits atop a pile of assumptions that implied to me a singular way of performing a genre I wholeheartedly believe is anything but single. When that implication is conveyed, as it is here, with casual authority, with easy certainty, and never once given pause or thought or the interrogation it needs as a foundational assumption of this type of work... nothing built upon it can stand quite aright either.

To step back slightly, Trace Elements is a collection of essays, predominantly drawn from their previous work in a number of venues of genre discussion, like Reactor (tor.com as was), Strange Horizons and more. These are supplemented with some essays new for the piece, along with some of the authors' poetry. The essays cover a broad swathe of topics, but they all circle around foundational questions about the nature, value, purpose and process of science fiction and fantasy, with some side quests into associated topics along the way, as well as some more personal pieces about the authors and their life experiences. It's a fairly wide-ranging set of subject matter, and one that is divided up into sections, starting at the front with the more big, general pieces and then progressing into the more specific, niche or intimate towards the end.

As per the title, these are conversations on the project of science fiction and fantasy. Who are those conversations with, though? Between the authors, certainly, but many of these pieces were published individually, by only one of them, in another place not intended for collection in this book. Who were they addressing, in those pieces then? And to what extent was it a true conversation, with the understanding of a response, possible disagreement, the collective development of an evolving understanding? I find this important too, when considering the tone of the piece. The majority of the essays are written in a declarative, definitive tone of voice, and convey a sense of certainty about the subject matter. The author(s) have the answer, and they'll tell it to you. There is very little hedging to be found here, not much doubt, and rarely a pause to talk through assumptions as though they are personal ones, things which could be matters of opinion, or only one of a variety of options on how to look at things. This is a common tone to find in pop non-fiction, so I'm not surprised to find it here, but I do think, when collecting your work under the label of conversation, it is something that ought to be questioned. Some of these posts were in venues that had open comment sections, but some were not. The new pieces, crafted only for a book, have no such openness. The other half of the conversation has been removed (unlike Walton's previous work drawn from her posts, in which some of the comments in response are retained, preserving that sense of back and forth), or never opened in the first place. What is a conversation without its other half? A lecture. But a lecture can still leave an open space for an imagined interlocutor, someone to ask the right questions, know and not know the right pieces of information, and for whom the premises must be clarified or grappled with, but no such interlocutor lives here either.

If this is a conversation, then, it's a conversation with oneself, in a quiet room. With an imagined audience whose agreement is certain. They hold the right premises, they occupy the same position, in the SFFnal ecosphere, but lack the knowledge that the authors can provide. That's a very specific audience indeed.

This is, for me, exemplified by the use nearly-universally in the book of "we". Not "I", and certainly not a pseudo-academic passive (something that Palmer gets into in one of the personal essays in fact, talking about the absence of the first person in academic writing). Now, this is a book by two authors, so naturally any appeal to personal experiences will default to the plural. But it seems, at times, more than that. There's the we of the personal, yes, but the pieces often, to my mind, strayed into the we of the crowd, the group that draws the reader in and says, you are with us on this point, we are a community of one mind. It's a perfectly normal writing tactic for creating that kind of shared sense of understanding. But it is a flawed one when the reader doesn't agree, and doesn't occupy that same position (as I often did not). Any tool that crafts community in that way naturally imposes a border that excludes everyone else. And, lest you think I'm pinning an awful lot on a pronoun that could simply be a reflection of a multi-authored book, I did go hunt down some of the original blog posts that fed into it and did, indeed, find the plural-of-community lurking there too. For example, this piece from 2010 in Reactor by Jo Walton, from which the following while talking about techniques for worldbuilding (which is included in the book reworked somewhat, though still with the crowd-we):

Because there’s a lot of information to get across and you don’t want to stop the story more than you can help, we have techniques for doing it. We have signals for what you can take for granted, we have signals for what’s important. We’re used to seeing people’s names and placenames and product-names as information. We know what needs to be explained and what doesn’t. In exactly the same way as Trollope didn’t explain that a hansom cab was a horse-drawn vehicle for hire on the streets of London that would take you about the city but not out into the countryside, and Byatt doesn’t explain that the Northern Line is an underground railroad running north south through London and dug in the early twentieth century, SF characters casually hail pedicabs and ornithopters and tip when they get out.

She slips between I and we (and occasional third person) throughout the essay, but when the plural comes up there are conclusions to be drawn from it who the audience is expected to be, and how they interact with fiction - "we" here are frequent SFF readers who have the genre-reading protocols she expects of them. Which is fine, singly. That is probably a very reasonable assumption. But those reasonable assumptions keep on piling up, until eventually there is a quite specific intersection of the person who fits into all of those "we". They have a specific background of reading, a specific history with genre, a specific set of touchstone books they have read, and a specific set of opinions about genre more broadly. Every slice of that cuts out another chunk of the potential audience from that community of we. I say this, of course, because I certainly felt myself not a part of it.

It doesn't help, structurally, that the opening essays (new for the volume) are by far the most didactic and positional, the ones most likely to include or exclude on opinion. The authors lay down some groundwork in "Integral to the Plot: the Author-Reader Contract" and "The Science Fiction Conversation: Imprint SF" which set the scene for what they envision genre to be, which is then bolstered by "Genre Pacing and Protocols, or What Is Genre?" which draws from Walton's linked essay above and 2018 Goodreads posts. These opening, generalising sections were where, predominantly, they lost me. It became clear that the SFF they envisaged was from a certain place (majority US), a certain time (a fairly wide span that peters out slightly before I came into the majority of my adult reading) and a certain opinion ("imprint SFF" is a distinct thing with a singular identity, whose authors' relationship with the existing corpus of work can be intuited by the reader and their relationship with it judged accordingly), none of which I occupy. And it's not that I need to see myself in this kind of work, but that the work speaks as if I am, throwing up a distorted mirror when I'd have been perfectly happy with a window into somewhere else. It's those assumptions again.

But not just assumptions. There are moments where the text comes out and does, in fact, dismiss positions outside of its own. One example stood out most to me, when discussing the history of SF publishing, and the difference between the markets in different countries. They write:

Canny British writers who understood the realities of the US market wrote short books, but less savvy ones wrote books at whatever length and had them published in Britain, but they could not break the US market. Christopher Priest and Keith Roberts had US hardcover releases of their 1970s science fiction books, but not paperbacks.

Now, I never met Christopher Priest, but my understanding of his character from those who have, from his writing and the stories about him... does not, let us say, particularly support this dismissal of his awareness of the field. There's no sense, in this little aside, that perhaps there might exist authors who, for whatever their own reasons, could value something more than breaking the US market. Maybe they felt the length they published at was more critical than the sales they might garner in another market. Maybe they just didn't care. I don't know. But I'm open to the possibility that people can have approached something in different ways, with their opinions shaped by their own particular perspectives. They may well have been just as savvy as anyone trying to break the US market, but with entirely different priorities. The writing here, as throughout the book, excludes such possibilities. Alternative approaches are simply "less savvy".

When the authors progress of out the general and into the specific, things do improve. The highpoint, for me, of the volume are Ada Palmer's essays about writing with chronic pain, and the following section "Writing/Realizing Disability + Power". These essays are deeply personal, bedded into her own experience of her work and her life, and are incredibly moving for that intimacy. They acknowledge throughout the uniqueness of the perspective being given, and that uniqueness is its value. No one else could write about this as Palmer does. Likewise, Walton's piece on how her first book was published. They both shine because they are so intensely from and about the perspective of their authors. 

There are also chapters that delve into specific topics, though I found flaws that rhymed with my overarching concerns in these too. It is difficult, in a single chapter, to capture the whole of, for instance, Japanese fiction norms post WW2, or the scope of genre romance or the history of publishing across the whole of time. Generalisations naturally arise. Those generalisations are given mixed treatment, sometimes highlighted (though only briefly, in the main) and sometimes skimmed over as authoritative. The one I found most frustrating is a chapter that begins in broad terms about translated fiction that talks about the difference between Japanese SFF and horror and western perspectives and assumptions. Both "western" and "Anglophone" are used as terms in the opening, but the essay proceeds to limit itself only to comparisons with the US, and to talking about fiction in terms of US, Christian-influenced ideas about Providence. The comparison is still interesting, still useful, and I still learnt plenty from it. But by conflating Anglophone/Western and the US, it tells on itself. Had Palmer written "US" throughout, I would not have batted an eye. But she did not. She speaks in authoritative, general tones and I, in reading, have my mind caught on "but this isn't general". And that knowledge when I do spot the holes and issues makes me wary of the chapters where my knowledge is insufficient to do likewise. I don't know enough about genre romance to judge whether the piece by Jo Walton is 100% accurate in its sweeping claims or not, but because I can spot holes and assumptions elsewhere, I cannot help but think there must be some lurking here too. And so those skips over complexity undermine the whole. I find I cannot trust the casual authority of the authors, because they seem unable to acknowledge specificity when needed.

There is a sense, throughout the whole piece, that there are clear answers available in all things genre. We can make a single story out of the history of anime, we can make a single truth in how to read genre, in who writes it and how. Leaving aside my own feelings on this ("bollocks" is the word I used frequently in my notes), this is undermined even by the text itself. Walton and Palmer at various points cite authors as examples of people who do and do not write from within genre or knowing genre (Ishiguro was the one who stands out), only to later put the same author in a different pot. Of course, these essays are drawn from two authors writing across a wide span of time, maybe they changed their minds? Or differed in opinion? But I don't know. No notice is ever drawn to these discrepencies, and, well... they collected all this for a single work. People are going to sit down and read it cover to cover. They're going to spot them. The text marks out that the pieces have been edited and changed to become this single work... I feel like that effort needed to continue into taking about of things like this. Individually small, but with large implications when taken into account alongside the sweeping claims about genre.

And then, as my final criticism, because I have made such a focus on highlighting the specific and the personal - my own specific and personal. I was, when this book was announced, very excited to read it. I have come to find I really enjoy non-fiction on speculative subjects, and this seemed a potentially substantial entry into the genre, not least because of its enthusiastic marketing which declared:

Now, in Trace Elements, Walton and Palmer have come together to write a book-length and supremely entertaining look at modern science fiction and fantasy, at how our genre is written and how it is read, that will join nonfiction works like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Language of the Night, Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud on the short shelf of titles essential to all readers of our genre.

While one can never hold an author to account for effulgent marketing copy over which they have no control, it is the context through which I came to this book, that was to be "essential to all readers of our genre". And I am disappointed by how very small that "all" seems to be understood to be, how specific is "our", throughout the work. I am not in them. I don't have the right opinions (and the possibility of alternative takes seems to be consistently precluded by the way the authors discuss their topics); I haven't read the right things; I am not in the right place. I find the book, for the most part, to be casually, unthinkingly exclusionary of people who do not fit into a rather traditionally-shaped mould of what an SFF reader might be - updated to move past the limitations of gender, race and sexuality of the truly old-school, but preserving a certain sort of understanding of the shape of the genre that I do not think holds true any longer, nor has for much of my own lifetime. 

For a work which includes a chapter - taken from a 2021 essay by Palmer in Uncanny magazine - on the necessity of expanding our empathy sphere, I find it strangely lacking in awareness of quite how far that sphere needs to be extended.

My experience with the book was predominantly one of argument. I took eleven pages of notes as I read, wanting to mark my disagreement with this or that statement, this or that assumption. There was no space assumed for conversation, but I made my own one anyway, because it made me cross. Had there been a comment section, I would undoubtedly be in it with questions.

And so, my conclusion is that this work is interesting in conception, but flawed in execution. Through lack of interrogation of assumptions and position, Walton and Palmer make sweeping statements that snag on the complexity of reality, that represent only a single view of the many that make up SFF today while never quite acknowledging that truth. If it is a conversation on the project of science fiction and fantasy, the project has its tightly drawn boundaries, and the conversation assumes only a certain sort of interlocutor.

I am, of course, not asking for the authors to step away from their selves, the space and place they occupy in the genre ecosystem. No one can. But I think it is critical, when talking in the sort of general, authoritative tones that they take in this volume to be ever conscious of it. To know that your own view is a shimmering, ephemeral thing, intangible to anyone else who seeks to grasp it, but also a vital one. Work like this is intensely valuable when it acknowledges its vantage point, and ties itself to its own specifics and positionality. There is nothing more useful than being able to see the world - whatever world - through the eyes of someone standing somewhere you have not, and cannot. But its value is severely undermined when universality is assumed, and specificity is never interrogated. No single one of us can say we have a clear grasp of the whole of the thing, when it comes to genre, because I firmly believe there is no single whole of the thing. 

The unquestioned universality to which both authors speak throughout this volume dooms it to incompleteness. In a time of ever-blurring genre boundaries, ever-shifting sub-genres and a growing scope of what it might mean to be a fan of SFF, it is vital to grapple with what science fiction, and whose, you are talking about, and to remember that there are always others out there, across the porous, increasingly traversible borders into the wider vista. 

--

The Math

Highlights: 

Nerd Coefficient: 4/10

Reference: Ada Palmer, Jo Walton, Trace Elements: Conversations on the Project of Science Fiction and Fantasy, [Tor Books, 2026].

POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social

Book Review: Anti-State, by Allen Stroud

Cold war space opera done right

Cover Artist: Nick Wells

There’s a real resurgence of space opera right now and I’m here for it. I love a good adventure out in the stars and I’m easy as to whether it’s hard science or full of space wizards. 

Space opera, like epic fantasy, allows us to entirely transpose our experience into one functionally and practically distinct from the real world. In so doing we get the freedom to ask questions via metaphor, world building and fantastical elements about hard real-world issues. In the last couple of years we’ve seen space operas talk about AI, consciousness, the nature of work, meaning and purpose. We’ve seen them address fascism, resistance, representation, the complicity of capitalism with authoritarianism and unpack the nature of sexuality and gender. 

 

Into this mix comes Allen Stroud’s Anti-State, a stand-alone novel in an Expanse-like setting in which Stroud has already written a whole shelf of entries. No real prior knowledge is needed to read this one although it does refer to events in other books and feature many of those characters in greater or lesser roles. 

 

Stroud’s main character is disabled in the sense that she is missing limbs and that is presented as exactly what it is – factually and without fuss. It’s an interesting choice both in terms of representation and in how it’s handled by a character who spends much of the story in a low gravity environment. There’s technology to help solve her challenges, but they aren’t there to heal her or to ‘make her complete’. This approach is good to see, not simply for representative purposes but because there’s some interesting commentary around what it means to have a body in a low gravity environment vs. Earth standard gravity. 

 

The story itself is in deep cold war territory with the overall structure owing as much to Smiley’s People as it does to spaceships flashing through the void to blow one another up. The most obvious comparison is with James S. A. Corey’s The Expanse series – set as both are within the solar system and concerned as they are with the politics of earth extending to the rest of the system. There’s no proto-molecule in this but it does share the same concern with being at least moderately faithful to proper physics. It’s hard science fiction as far as that ever goes and there’s plenty of text highlighting just how much space will kill you at every opportunity. 

 

We have allusions to Martian politics, independence, rebellions and there are, lurking in the background, rogue billionaires with tech that can rival the militaries of space faring states. 

 

This isn’t novel – this could be a story about submarines fighting it out in the North Atlantic without too much changing with the talking heads in London, Berlin and Washington instead of on spaceships and asteroids and lunar colonies. 

 

That’s not necessarily bad – you know what you’re going to get, and it delivers on that competently without rocking the boat. It’s a somewhat nostalgic approach to space opera with strong golden age vibes intersecting with more modern concerns such as where it explores what it means to be human in the context of advanced technological systems. 

 

What worked for me was the layered world, the sense that there were politics and people and stuff happening of which the events in this story are only a part. I like that feeling of being in a wider world. I liked the focus on space being deadly and low gravity being a thing that impacts every single aspect of a life lived within its grasp.

 

I also largely liked the overall story of secret plots unravelling, of people with torn loyalties discovering where they truly want to put their faith and, most of all, I liked the small scale of it. Sure, the stakes are high, adventuring in space will do that, but at the same time they concern a small group of people in a set of tin cans adrift in an ocean of nothing. They might travel millions of miles but they remain determinedly fixed in a locked room whose seals keep them alive as much as trap them. 

 

The ideas here are small too – not all in a bad way. Stroud explores the little impacts of technology, distance and logistics that conventional space travel (i.e. without the fantasies of FTL or warp drives or anti-gravity) have on people. Loss of bone density, the lack of decent food, shortages of power, the challenge of changing direction when you’re travelling at thousands of kilometres an hour. 

 

I’d like to have had some larger ideas here around what it means for human society to be out there and these are there a little, but are also largely subsumed within the context of a military hierarchy that gives the book the occasional feel of mil-SF (although without any of the fetishization of guns and violence).

 

The one place where the politics/world building doesn’t quite work for me is in this military context and hence the larger ideas also don’t quite connect. The reason for this is my own view that the idea that ‘governments have the best tech’ is not just outdated but permanently in the rear-view mirror. This is where the book’s Cold War vibe is least convincing, although most consistent because I think that’s the last time governments could reasonably be said to have tech not available to the general public. 

 

These days it is entirely private companies developing that tech and selling it to our governments and it is almost entirely private companies exploring space. The question of how polities here on earth could extend their ‘national’ boundaries into space is just assumed rather than explored and the same for the corporate elements. The private companies in the novel are nefarious which isn’t hard to believe but they aren’t well realised which is a shame. 

 

Still, Anti-State is a decently executed and complex political thriller set in space. Its tight scope delivers a compelling story despite its other flaws.

--

The Math

Highlights:

• Spaceships
• Proper orbital mechanics
• Politics and plots

Nerd coefficient: 6/10, a layered political thriller as at home in space as it would be in the 1970s North Atlantic

Reference: Stroud, Allen, Anti-State [Flame Tree Press, 2026].

STEWART HOTSTON is an author of all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. He's also a keen Larper (he owns the UK Fest system, Curious Pastimes). He's a sometime physicist and currently a banker in the City of London. A Subjective Chaos, BSFA and BFA finalist he's also Chair of the British Science Fiction Association and Treasurer for the British Fantasy Society. He is on bluesky at: @stewarthotston.com.

Anime of the Year Finalists 2026

A strong year for drama yields an intriguing collection of finalists for Crunchyroll’s 2026 Anime of the Year.

2025 was a big year for intense dramas and powerful character explorations in the anime world. The finalists for Anime of the Year, for the most part, reflect this change of focus through an eclectic collection of nominees. Three returning popular series: 2025 nominee The Apothecary Diaries (Season 2), 2025 nominee Dandadan (Season 2), and the long awaited finale of My Hero Academia (The Final Season) face off against three very unique and intense newcomer stories: Gachiakuta, The Summer Hikaru Died, and Takopi’s Original Sin, all competing for the 2026 title of Anime of the Year.

The Apothecary Diaries - Season Two

In its second straight year of being nominated in the top category, The Apothecary Diaries had another strong year building on the momentum of the first season. In an ancient China inspired setting, seventeen year old apothecary Maomao is kidnapped and sold into indentured servitude in the rear palace, the residence for the emperor’s various concubines. Although she decides to keep a low profile and serve out her time, her high intelligence and curiosity get noticed by the gorgeous head eunuch, nineteen year old Jinshi, who promotes Maomao and gets her help to solve a string of palace mysteries and murders. In season two we get the long awaited official revelation of Jinshi’s true identity as well as the culmination of a major political upheaval along with some disturbing family history. There is a faster pace in this season’s storytelling with plenty of action added to the puzzle box mysteries for Maomao to solve, and the season turns up the heat on the continuing slow burn romance between the lead characters.

Dandadan - Season Two

Dandadan Season Two is a slight change of pace from Season One, giving us a single cohesive action story arc and less of the strange sexual humor. Season One of this supernatural comedy adventure explored the origin stories of nerdy teen Ken, nicknamed Okarun, who gets possessed by supernatural powers that create an alter ego super version of himself when needed. And we meet his new friend, outgoing Momo who learns the secrets of her very youthful grandma’s supernatural talents and her family’s connection to the spirit world. Together Okarun and Momo work to fight curses and demons while still making time for school and their awkward budding romance. Eventually, another classmate, the self absorbed Aira, and later Momo’s kindhearted childhood friend Jiji join them in their demon fighting adventures, creating a more defined supernatural squad. Season two involves the group’s attempt to deal with an evil possession in Jiji’s home. The season long story arc has great fight scenes, a poignant backstory for the antagonist, and a very creepy villainous demon/ghost family. While season one alternated jarringly between outrageous slapstick comedy and the profound, tragic backstories of the various demons, Season Two has more even pacing with a single direct adventure, along with lots of teambuilding and character introspection woven into the action. Overall, it’s an enjoyable adventure (in many ways more enjoyable than season one) but less intensely philosophical compared the rest of the nominees for Anime of the Year.

My Hero Academia – Final Season

The long running anime, My Hero Academia, came to a satisfying end in 2025. After starting out as a kid-friendly, colorful, optimistic, sometimes silly, action-adventure, the series gradually became more intense and powerful in the later seasons with plenty of onscreen tragedy, moral gray areas, family drama, and deep societal questions. After years of increasing tension between the heroes and the villains and the rest of society, the final season of MHA did not disappoint. The ending story arc featured an intense and gorgeously animated dual showdown between idealistic Deku and the tragic villain Tomura, as well as the angry, loudmouth young hero Bakugo versus the sociopathic villain, All For One. Additionally, the final episode of the series delivered an unexpectedly thoughtful and powerful message on what it means to truly be a hero in everyday life. The final season was the total package of action, sacrifice, camaraderie, and meaningful messaging, making it a sentimental favorite as the long-running story comes to an end.

Gachiakuta

Newcomer Gachiakuta was the breakout new show of the year. The debut anime featured familiar story elements reimagined through a unique setting with stylish animation, heavy social symbolism, and diverse characters. Gachiakuta is the story of Rudo an outcast orphan from an elevated world, who is unjustly sentenced to death for murder and thrown to his death into the deadly, garbage covered surface world below. However, he unexpectedly survives the fall into the toxic atmosphere and is rescued by the charismatic Enjin who convinces Rudo to grudgingly joins a group of specially gifted people who destroy monsters and fight raiders in the world’s wasteland and allow communities to be created in the dismal surface landscape. The debut season of Gachiakuta, had lots of action, likeable found-family dynamics, stylish character design, and outrageously appealing characters including the antagonists. The story balances traditional shonen action with intense and tragic stories, along with diverse characters and plenty of real world symbolism. The grunge vibe and edgy visuals made it no surprise that Gachiakuta landed an Anime of the Year nomination.

The Summer Hikaru Died

In a complete change of pace, The Summer Hikaru Died forgoes the usual action adventure and delivers a slow paced physical and psychological horror. The Summer Hikaru Died tells the story of Yoshiki, a quiet teen boy whose outgoing best friend Hikaru disappears from their rural community. When his friend returns some time later, Yoshiki is the only one who realizes that the returned person is not the same Hikaru. The story leans into quiet horror elements with sleek, hypnotic animation, as well as the creepy elements of a small village which is isolated and surrounded by supernatural vibes. The series uses thoughtful storytelling and unusual visual symbolism to explore psychological terror as well as the growing, intimate but dysfunctional connection between the two boys. The Summer Hikaru Died is a standout series for its uniquely creepy plot, unusual animation, and quietly clever story execution.

Takopi’s Original Sin

The last finalist for Anime of the Year is the very bleak and disturbing Takopi’s Original Sin. This short series packs a lot of emotional damage into only six episodes. It joins shows like The Promised Neverland that are cute-looking and child-centered but are not appropriate for young children due to the anime’s violent nature. Takopi is a round, pink, bouncy, cheerful, naïve alien who believes its mission is to bring “happiness” through its various magical gadgets. It encounters Shizuka, a physically bullied and meek grade schooler. Takopi’s superficial attempts to cheer her up lead to an unexpectedly tragic outcome. Confused, Takopi rewinds time to change the outcome which leads to more unexpected occurrences. Through the course of the series, we learn more about the backstory of the bullied girl Shizuka, her cruel abuser classmate Marina, and about Azuma, a stressed out young boy who is a mutual acquaintance. As the title implies, there is also another layer of culpability on the part of the irritatingly cheerful and naïve Takopi that is eventually revealed. All of the child characters experience various forms of cruelty from their parents and from each other and gradually descend into increasing physically and psychologically tragic behavior despite their own victimization. Despite moments of redemption and hope, the story is intense, bleak, and full of trigger warnings and is a surprise finalist given its unusual content.

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The nominees for Crunchyroll’s Anime of the Year are, for the most part, a surprising change of pace from the usual shonen adventures. Noticeably absent from the nominations are two of last year’s nominees, including Kaiju No. 8, which had an entertaining but less strong second season, and last year’s winner, Solo Leveling which delivered more of the same escalating adventure in its second season. A perfect fit for this year’s drama-focused collection would have been the always evocative Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, but Frieren’s second season released in 2026, past the cut off point for this category. Overall, this year’s nominees, for the most part, represent a general shift towards intense drama and philosophical explorations rather than primarily action adventure. The collection provides anime fans looking for something more psychologically intense with some solid choices for their future viewing.

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POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Festival View: Matti Like

There is a long history of music videos commenting on the history of film. Welcome to the Jungle and Dancing on the Ceiling come to mind. There is a long history of genre music videos. The Blackeyed Peas and Janelle Monae play there. There is a long history of genre music videos commenting on the history of film, like Smashing Pumpkins' Tonight Tonight fits that perfectly. The Italian music video Matti Like, a wonderful video that played at Cinequest in 2026, is one of the best of all those I’ve seen.

Let me start with the basic idea: it’s been 50 years since Young Frankenstein was released and director/songwriter Federico Cavallini has decided an homage was due. Not only an homage to the original masterpiece, but a fan and funky short film that plays in the music video form. The closest thing I can think of is the Paula Abdul classic Rush, Rush with Keanu Reeves that plays with the Rebel Without a Cause story within the music video form without making the song about it at all.

The thing is that it’s not a shot-for-shot re-make, for one thing it’s only 4 minutes long, and it tells another story within the visual aesthetic that defined Mel Brooks’ genius work, while also nodding the head at the classic Universal Frankenstein in much the same way that Brooks did... mostly.  It’s gorgeous, but I tend to think that anything playing in the realm of the classic high-contrast, Expressionist stuff of Arthur Edason deserves positive attention! The look works, and Director of Photography Rui Dias deserves a lot of the credit.  

To really make good understanding of a music video, one must find the appreciable portions of both the music and the video. Now, the song is written and performed by Cavallini, who is one of a growing number of musicians also making their own videos (Kate Bush’s Little Shrew played Cinequest this year, for example) and it’s a fun little bop. It’s exactly the kind of thing you’d hear as a mid-pack Eurovision entry from a middle-European country. The song is sweet, but the video is even better.

The idea is pretty much that the Frankenstein that is created (and it is named Frankenstein, just like an astronomer gets to name an asteroid after themselves!) is a woman without the neck bolts or the scars (or the vegetal appearance of Charles Ogle’s first monster in 1910) and she goes on to become an influencer and when the villagers storm the castle, she turns their fear-filled rage into a sweet castle dance party.

Now, let me break this down in a weird way; this is a love story about filmmakers and Mel Brooks.

If you wanted to pay homage to Mel, typically you’d choose Spaceballs or The Producers, but Young Frankenstein is something even more special; it’s Mel’s unseen hand. It is exactly the movie that Mel Brooks could do that exposed his very real love of classic literature (he apparently once wrote a script, very early on, for a Golem picture) and an understanding of the genre film and how its roots mingle with comedy. Don’t believe me?  Look at the evolution of humor and genre fiction magazines. They mirror each other, though a big part of that is the general advance of printing technologies. He is tying so many of the moments and characters that populated 1930s genre film and amped them up in an incredibly intelligent way. The greatest example of why it's about the unseen hand is that he's not in it, and it's working in a field where he was not well known. While his hand (and face) is absolutely seen in the comedy science fiction masterpiece Spaceballs, in Young Frankenstein he was working more slyly. 

Brooks wasn’t just making a funny science fiction film based on a horror film (that's another debate that needs to be had; remember, there was no Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation to require that debate at the time), but a specific reference to the way that 1930s science fiction worked.  The way that he approached the material, and especially the famed Me and My Shadow performance, which was exactly the kind of thing you'd see in 1930s and 40s MGM flicks, is entirely based on one of Mel’s more impressive ideas: that comedy must reflect something back at the viewer. Brooks was not merely reflecting the individual film Frankenstein, but everything from The Island of Lost Souls, The Invisible Man, and Things to Come, and to a lesser degree Laurel and Hardy, the Keystone Cops, Buster Keaton and many many more. Brooks got all that, and incorporated the ideas without being showy when paying tribute. Cavallini works with that idea as well. Even when it breaks down into a modern dance party, headphoned DJ groovin' and all, it feels less like responding by presenting a music video dance party, but more like the ones you might have caught a glimpse of in 30s films… or perhaps more like retro-30s comedic things like the ending of The Imposters.

Now, here’s the ultimate question: is it genre?

Well, yes, or I put it in the wrong category at Cinequest. No matter how you slice it, it’s telling a science fiction story. It’s still giving us Frankenstein, just told in reflection of Young Frankenstein which just happens to be in reflection of 1930s genre film and fiction and so on. That is incredibly smart short filmmaking.

While there’s still some festival life in Matti Like, you can actually watch it on Vimeo! 

--

Chris Garcia - Archivist, curator, festival programmer, and professional wrestling enthusiast. @johnnyeponymous

6 Books with R.J. Barker

R.J. Barker is a critically acclaimed and award-winning author of fantasy fiction. He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel for his fourth novel, The Bone Ships, and his debut trilogy The Wounded Kingdom was nominated for the David Gemmel Award, the Kitschie Golden Tentacle, the Compton Crook, and the BFS Best Debut and Best Novel awards. R.J. lives in Leeds with his wife, son, and a collection of questionable taxidermy, odd art, scary music, and more books than they have room for.

Today he tells us about his six books:

1. What book are you currently reading?

I am currently reading Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which is the fourth if his ‘Children of…’ books. I am quite a slow reader now so I am not a long way into it but it is just wonderful so far. I think Adrian is probably one of the best writers working in SFF right now. The breadth of his imagination is extraordinary, as is how quickly he manages to work which should probably be illegal (I have tried writing to my local Member of Parliament about this but they were strangely uninterested.) I love the way that he makes everything interlock and how work often calls back on itself and the depth of his creations is just wonderful. You can tell he’s done the work, which is always quite impressive to me as I try to do very little work.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

This was a really hard question for me as I am a very live in the moment person I don’t tend to be thinking about what’s coming or what has gone by much. I’m always too busy enjoying what I am doing now and writing is such a precarious occupation I think it’s often best not to think too much about the future. So I don’t. However, because of this question I found out that James Lee Burke released a new Dave Robicheaux book on the 12^th of February so now I know about that I am looking forward to it immensely. His writing is absolutely beautiful and the way he balances a sense of  impending violence and (often but not always) very subtle supernatural themes with the nature and environment of the deep south is incredible. The book is called The Hadacol Boogie. I have no idea what a Hadacol is but I am looking forward to finding out.

3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to re-read?

Not really. Life is way too short to re-read things (with one exception but we’ll get to that below) and I’m always in search of something new. I don’t really like nostalgia and I think, for me anyway, every type of art I’ve consumed has its enjoyment tied to a place and a situation that I can never go back to. And wouldn’t want to really, so often going back to things I’ve loved is just an exercise in disappointment. I will never reclaim the sense of awe in the new I had when I first read Iain M Banks Culture books. Or find again the joy of C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine cycle revealing to me what was really going on. So instead I want to find new things that will wow me in new ways.

4. A book that you love and wish that you yourself had written.

There are so many but RECENTLY that is Pagans by James Alastair Henry. It’s a police procedural set in a modern day England where Christianity never happened in the same way it did in ours. (I don’t think it’s ever underlined why but it doesn’t seem the Roman Empire never happened either). It’s an incredible book, not just because I love a crime novel, but the world just works. It’s a great bit of creation and feels entirely possible. The UK is very much a backwater, America never existed, and Africa and the Mughal empire of India are the main superpowers. There’s never a moment in the book where it doesn’t feel real.

But, bit of bad news if you are in the US, I don’t think you can get Pagans yet and you are really missing out. Sorry.

5. What’s one book, which you read as a child or a young adult, that has had a lasting influence on your writing?

Watership Down. I think some aspect of Watership Down is in everything I write and it remains the only book that I go back to and each time I find something new. Richard Adams was quite dismissive about the book, and thought it was for children but I think that just shows the author never quite knows what they are writing. On one level it is just an adventure with some rabbits for kids. But it’s also a deep and complex political allegory and a book full of lessons on how we treat each other. It’s just a wonderful thing and I love it dearly.

 6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome?

My latest book is Mortedant’s Peril and it comes out in May of this year. It’s always hard as Brit when someone says ‘what makes this thing you did Brilliant.’ As you’re kind of first instinct is to go, 'well, it’s alright' then deflect off as we don’t do self congratulation particularly well. Having said that, I think people will love Irody and his friends. Even though Irody at first approach is not that loveable, I think readers will see past his mask to what’s within. Then there’s the world, I’ve created quite a few worlds and they are often hard to approach, and require a lot of patience in the reader where this isn’t that. The world has all the complexity I enjoy giving a place but you can more or less step straight in to Elbay. It’s a city and we understand cities, even if it is one like no other you’ve ever come across. There’s also no build up, the danger (or peril!), is there right from the start, you’re thrown right in to the murder mystery that puts Irody’s life in danger..

And it’s funny. Not in a jokes way, but in the way people are, when they hide from themselves or don’t see the truth that you, the reader, can see from your lofty position above the page. It’s just all something very enjoyable, I loved writing it, and I hope you will love reading it.

Thank you, R.J!

--

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Silver and Lead, by Seanan McGuire

Silver and Lead is the novel I wanted The Innocent Sleep to be, which is to say that after a book spent in Tybalt’s head in a parallel novel we are pushing forward narratively and back with Toby as the protagonist / viewpoint character. *Now* we can begin to deal with the fallout of Sleep No More and Titania’s world altering spell on that region of Faerie. This is honestly what I’ve been waiting for since Be the Serpent, which seems weird to say because it’s only been two books and three years, but McGuire is so prolific that the wait has felt longer. That’s a “me” problem.

Toby is 8 months pregnant at the start at of the novel, and we can reasonably expect that nothing will go smoothly because this is Toby, Faerie, and well, this is Seanan McGuire telling the story. The Luidaeg wants to be the baby’s fairy godmother (apparently this is a thing) and says there will be other requests for this, but someone should be designated to protect the child if something should happen to Toby and Tybalt given that former Kings of Cats often do not live long, nor do Heroes such as Toby.

Meanwhile, the Royal Vault of the Mists has been raided during the Titania Spell Interregnum and rare / dangerous magical artifacts have been taken, including a Hope Chest (which, if we remember, can change the blood quotient of anyone without their permission). Since then there have been attacks in the Mists suggesting the usage of some of those artifacts.

Toby has been asked, despite her advanced pregnancy and the expected objections of her family, to investigate. She’s a Hero, y’all. We know where this is going.

The sentencing of the False Queen of the Mists (still no name given) takes place, damn near the entire realm is able to speak against her and Arden passes sentence (two consecutive hundred year terms of elf shot, then we’ll see) BUT GASP at the very end the False Queen has disappeared, someone previously attacked was magicked to take her place and that person when freed points the finger at Simon.

We know what comes next: the call comes in to the bullpen, bring in the right hander and Toby’s on the mound to provide some long relief. Actually, I have no idea whether Toby is a rightie or a lefty, I’ve just been watching a lot of baseball lately and since it’s taken me a surprising amount of time to get around to writing about Silver and Lead.

Silver and Lead is the 19th October Daye Novel, which is to say that it’s built on a LOT of history, absolutely does not stand on its own, and will not convince a non-reader that this is a good place to start with the series or with Seanan McGuire. There may be a few entrance points to the series, but this is not it. 

Long term readers, however, will have plenty to appreciate with the lore and continued world building that McGuire employs. One of the more interesting bits is that Titania’s world altering spell wasn’t just a perfect casting, it was just the latest of numerous attempts that was run and rerun and rerun over and over again because even the mighty Titania just couldn’t get it right for what she wanted. That’s *interesting* because it shows a limitation.

What I’m perpetually most interested in is the potential true identity of Marcia, the changeling, and whether she is Maeve. I speculated about this most recently in my re-read of the fourteenth book, A Killing Frost, and it seems even more possible now. There are so many little bits of things to question - Toby not being able to tell Marcia’s heritage, a blood spell being done with Marcia’s blood but weirdly not actually including her blood, Marcia not wanting to be included in the Luidaeg’s protection spell, the once again presence of Maeve’s magic near the end of the novel, not to mention a conversation between Simon and Marcia in the “Seas and Shores” novella about Marcia’s children and lack of discussion about them - it’s all circumstantial and probably speculation better left to a re-read than a first reader but it’s a big deal and we *have* to be close to Maeve’s return. Obviously, we don’t actually have to be that close but it feels like we’re slow walking to an end game.

There’s also a weird moment where I wondered if Toby’s baby is going to be Maeve reborn, but I don’t know what to do with that thought.

The negative is that I didn’t love the pregnant Toby questing - not that a pregnant Toby shouldn’t quest, but something about the storytelling of that and how it was all described didn’t fully jive with me. Of course, I’m a dude who’s approaching 50 years old and even though I have kids with an incredibly capable woman, I haven’t actually carried or birthed those kids so take a vague sense of not loving a more limited Toby storyline with a grain of whichever your preferred type of salt happens to be. Part of that is how Tybalt responds to Toby’s pregnancy and his perception of her being in danger and how out of line he acts on the regular. It’s tiresome.

I expect I’ll have more specific criticisms the time I get to a re-read essay, but I’m also baffled by the choice of Miranda for Toby’s baby name given all of the issues she’s had with Janet / Miranda. 

As a reader who was fairly frustrated with Sleep No More and The Innocent Sleep for, in some ways, pausing the forward motion of the narrative; Silver and Lead is significantly more satisfying. Stuff happens! Toby’s baby is born! There’s questing with action and drama! It’s all generally fun! Silver and Lead is so much of the stuff we look for in an October Daye novel.



PUBLISHED BY: Joe Sherry - Senior Editor of Nerds of a Feather. Hugo and Ignyte Winner. Minnesotan.

Film Review: Scarlet

Something is rotten in the state of human hearts

If I had known in advance how the anime film Scarlet would handle its topic of obsessive revenge, I would have made this post a Double Feature with Redux Redux, because both stories use the devices of their respective genres in a visceral manner to demonstrate the self-destructive poison that is revenge.

Scarlet is a gender-flipped retelling of Hamlet that sends the princess of Denmark to an endless limbo when she accidentally drinks a cup of poison sent by her treacherous uncle before she had a chance to avenge the late king. In that barren landscape of sorrow and regret, she learns that her uncle has also died, so she embarks on a quest to walk across the vast land of the dead to find him and make him pay.

If you’ve ever wondered whether Prince Hamlet should have been more decisive in carrying out his revenge plan, Scarlet answers that that was never the issue. Being quicker to punish his uncle would still have played into the narrative conventions of a tragedy, and the thing about tragedies is that the only person you succeed at punishing is yourself. In that intermediate realm between Earth and the Great Beyond, Princess Scarlet fights waves of assassins sent to make her spirit dissolve into nothing. By willingly adopting the role of tragic heroine, by refusing to abandon her one-woman war, Scarlet has built her own hell.

Interestingly, there’s an element of cosmic retribution at play too, a remote, speechless character who takes the form of a celestial dragon and imparts punishment without the distortion of human passions. This addition to Hamlet lore makes Scarlet resemble the Greek Oresteia, where the impartial, impersonal judgment of the state is introduced to put an end to the self-perpetuating cycle of bloodshed that always results from private vendettas. However, in the case of Scarlet, this replacement is not associated with the state but with a more universal sense of justice, with death as the great equalizer.

Learning this lesson takes Scarlet a long, painful journey over beautifully designed scenery that almost steals the spotlight from the story’s heavy themes. We follow Scarlet through deserts and mountains and oceans that take the breath away with their sublime immensity. Even if the plot’s structure sometimes feels too streamlined and easy, the level of visual artistry more than makes up.

Because the other side has a loose relationship with time, Scarlet is joined by a random newcomer: a recently dead paramedic from present-day Japan, who strangely insists on bandaging every lost soul he meets, including Scarlet’s enemies. Even as she slashes and stabs her way through the land of the dead, he follows close behind, providing comfort to those you’d think are beyond hope. His example turns out to be crucial to her choices at the end of the film: the thing at stake is not only the punishment for the usurper king, but the fate of Denmark. Through this paramedic, Scarlet gets a glimpse of a time (which from her standpoint is the future) when people no longer butcher each other in eternal spirals of hatred. This being a Japanese production, it’s easy to perceive a subtextual allusion to the discussion on the remilitarization of the Japanese state. Can we have a future without more bloodshed? Can we escape this interminable journey between corpses and vengeful spirits?

We don’t have to renounce the entire idea of justice. But if death comes for all, it doesn’t need our help. We can face evil, even punish evil, without punishing ourselves.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Thank You

The finalists for the 2026 Hugo Awards have been announced and for an eighth time nerds of a feather, flock together is listed among the shortlisted fanzines.

Friends, we’re not sure that words are adequate to truly convey just how touched and honored we are to be recognized again by our community for the work this team does every day. This is not something we have ever taken for granted because we recognize that we are part of a much larger community of fans who make genre conversation something vital. The shape of that conversation takes place across blogs, zines, podcasts, booktube, social media, or just any time fans get together and talk about what they love. We are forever honored to be recognized for our contributions to that conversation.

Nerds of a Feather exists and is what it is solely because of the work of our flock of editors and writers: Alex Wallace, Ann Michelle Harris, Arturo Serrano, Chris Garcia, Christine D. Baker, Clara Cohen, Dean E.S. Richard, The G, Haley Zapal, Joe DelFranco, Joe Sherry, Phoebe Wagner, Paul Weimer, Roseanna Pendlebury, Stewart Hotston, and Vance Kotrla. Not to mention our newest flock members who joined in 2026: Eddie Clark, Gabrielle Harbowy, and Maya Barbara. This collective has, day in and day out, delivered excellence in genre writing and we could not be prouder of this team. They are Nerds of a Feather.

We would also like to congratulate every one of the other nominees, but in particular our own Roseanna Pendlebury for her second nomination for Fan Writer and Chris Garcia and the team at Journey Planet for what we believe is their fourteenth time as a fanzine finalist. We are honored to share the ballot with both of you. You make the genre better.  

We would also like to give a special thanks to our readers, supporters, and cheerleaders within the community. Without you, we never make it here. Not once, and we would certainly never have been a two time Hugo Award winning fanzine. Thank you. Thank you for nominating nerds of a feather, flock together. It means so much more than we can possibly express. Saying thank you does not seem like it is enough, but since it would be cost prohibitive and deeply inappropriate to send everyone a gift basket of their favorite cheeses, meats, fine confections, or other preferred snacks it will have to be enough.

Thank you.

-Joe, Roseanna, Arturo, Paul, Vance, & The G. 

Interview: S.L. Huang

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award finalist S. L. Huang's next book is The Language of Liars (Tordotcom), a pulse-pounding sci-fi that explores the power of language and identity and how the two intersect! Huang’s worldbuilding and bold, complex characters are brought to life in vivid detail from the first page. The Language of Liars was included in “Most Anticipated” lists from Literary Hub, BookRiot, and Shelf Awareness, and has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. 

S. L. Huang is a Hollywood stunt performer, firearms expert, and Hugo Award winner who has been a finalist for a Nebula, Locus, and BSFA Awards as well as the ALA Carnegie Medal. Huang has a math degree from MIT and credits in productions like Battlestar Galactica and Top Shot. The author of The Water Outlaws, Burning Roses, and the Cas Russell novels, Huang’s short fiction has also appeared in Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Nature, Reactor, and more, including numerous best-of anthologies.

Nerds of a Feather: Congratulations on your forthcoming book,The Language of Liars! What do you think is the heart of the intersection between language, colonization and cultural identity?

S.L. Huang: Thank you! And wow, starting with a doozy of a question...

To be honest, I would say the heart of these issues is "complexity." On one side, building cultural bridges and seeking out intellectual understanding -- and on the other, stealing or overwriting the voices and traditions of living people -- it's a tangle that can turn heartbreakingly tragic even when everyone involved has the best of intentions, even before individual greed or cultural arrogance enters the picture.

It's an exploration that's close to my heart given my own family background, and there's so much there that I wouldn't be able to fit in an interview answer...but I suppose that's why I wrote a book!

NoaF: Is writing a character similar to absorbing another identity, in a way?

S.L. Huang: I've never thought of it that way, but now that you've said it, I sort of love it. It tickles me that as an author I'll become akin to the Borg -- ALL WILL BE ASSIMILATED!

 

NoaF: How does your math degree inform your writing, and your understanding of linguistics?

S.L. Huang: I think the biggest impact of my math background is correlative -- that is, in the same way I enjoy math, I enjoy other types of nitty-gritty riddle-solving, whether that's worldbuilding or linguistics or making a finely-tuned plot fit together precisely. It can be terribly difficult at times, but often results in the satisfaction of a solved problem, which is one of my favorite feelings in the world.

 

NoaF: How about your training as a firearms expert and Hollywood stunt performer? How does that inform your writing?

S.L. Huang: Fight design for movies is remarkably like choreographing action for books. You never want it to be about the individual moves -- instead, you want the emotions and stakes to drive it all. That's what I think needs to push any type of action, from sword fighting to romantic intimacy.

I think that's also the secret to what can make a particular type of action "interesting" even to readers who don't usually like that type of book.

 

NoaF: Who are some of your favorite spies in history and media?

S.L. Huang: Garak from Star Trek: Deep Space 9 is not just a favorite spy, but hands-down one of my favorite characters in media. Sassy bisexual space lizard whose motives keep us constantly guessing -- he might not be the most moral character, but he's by far one of the most interesting!

In The Language of Liars I went with a cinnamon-roll spy, but I aspire to someday write a book starring a protagonist as deliciously complex as "plain, simple Garak."

 

NoaF: What are you reading and enjoying now? Who are some other writers that Nerds of a Feather readers should have on their radar?

S.L. Huang: The 2026 book that I've already read a copy of and want to shout from the rooftops is Yoon Ha Lee's Code and Codex -- if you like linguistics or space opera or math or, well, literally any of the things my own book is about, you'll love Yoon's! It's like nothing else I've ever read.

And I haven't read these two yet, but other books I'm super stoked for this year include The Subtle Art of Folding Space, by John Chu -- out this month as well! -- and The Fist of Memory, by Wole Talabi, whose other works I've loved. Check them out with me!

--

Gabrielle Harbowy is an editor, writer, and literary agent based in Southern California. She can be found at gabrielle-h.bsky.social or gabrielleharbowy.com