New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about?

Chambers, Becky. A Psalm for the Wild-Built [Tordotcom Publishing]
Publisher's Description

In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers's delightful new Monk & Robot series gives us hope for the future.

It's been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered.

But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.

They're going to need to ask it a lot.

Becky Chambers's new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

Why We Want It: You're a fan of the Wayfarers novels, right? They are collectively excellent and, generally quiet and personal about family (found or otherwise). A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a step away from that series and is a standalone novella that may be the first in a new series and it's about a monk going on a journey with a robot and that's the whole thing. It's quiet and peaceful and a balm for today.

Kuhn, Sarah. Hollywood Heroine [DAW]
Publisher's Description

The fifth book in the smart, snarky, and action-packed Heroine series continues the adventures of Asian-American superheroines Evie Tanaka, Aveda Jupiter, and Bea Tanaka in a demon-infested San Francisco.

Over the years, the adventures of superheroines Aveda Jupiter and Evie Tanaka have become the stuff of legend–and now they’ll be immortalized in their very own TV show!

The pair head to LA for filming, but Aveda struggles to get truly excited. Instead, she’s preoccupied wondering about the fate of the world and her role in it. You know, the usual. Now that Otherworld activity has been detected outside the Bay Area, Aveda can’t help but wonder if the demon threat will ever be eradicated.

When the drama on set takes a turn for the supernatural, Evie and Aveda must balance their celebrity commitments with donning their superhero capes again to investigate. And when the evil they battle reveals a larger, more nefarious plot, it’s time for the indomitable Aveda Jupiter to rise to the occasion and become the leader she was meant to be on a more global scale–and hopefully keep some semblance of a personal life while doing so.

Why We Want It: This is the year I'm looking to get back into reading Sarah Kuhn. As noted in my Summer Reading List, I read Heroine Complex back in 2018 and am looking to continue with the series this year and I expect to push right on to Hollywood Heroine.

Nguyen, Lena. We Have Always Been Here [DAW]
Publisher's Description

This psychological sci-fi thriller from a debut author follows one doctor who must discover the source of her crew’s madness… or risk succumbing to it herself.

Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship—all specialists in their own fields—as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility.

Shortly after landing, the crew finds themselves trapped on the ship by a radiation storm, with no means of communication or escape until it passes—and that’s when things begin to fall apart. Park’s patients are falling prey to waking nightmares of helpless, tongueless insanity. The androids are behaving strangely. There are no windows aboard the ship. Paranoia is closing in, and soon Park is forced to confront the fact that nothing—neither her crew, nor their mission, nor the mysterious Eos itself—is as it seems.

Why We Want It: I do like a good sci-fi thriller set on a ship in deep space and this one sounds absolutely exceptional.

Parker-Chan, Shelley. She Who Became the Sun [Tor]
Publisher's Description

Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan's She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy.

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…”

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

Why We Want It: I can be a sucker for pre-release hype and everything I have heard about She Who Became the Sun has told me *this* is the debut to watch in 2021. This is the book to pay attention to. Adri reviewed it in June.

Wagers, K.B. Hold Fast Through the Fire [Harper Voyager]
Publisher's Description

The Near-Earth Orbital Guard (Neo-G)—inspired by the real-life mission of the Coast Guard—patrols and protects the solar system. Now the crew of Zuma’s Ghost must contend with personnel changes and a powerful cabal hellbent on dominating the trade lanes in this fast-paced, action-packed follow-up to A Pale Light in the Black.

Zuma’s Ghost has won the Boarding Games for the second straight year. The crew—led by the unparalleled ability of Jenks in the cage, the brilliant pairing of Ma and Max in the pilot seats, the technical savvy of Sapphi, and the sword skills of Tamago and Rosa—has all come together to form an unstoppable team. Until it all comes apart.

Their commander and Master Chief are both retiring. Which means Jenks is getting promoted, a new commander is joining them, and a fresh-faced spacer is arriving to shake up their perfect dynamics. And while not being able to threepeat is on their minds, the more important thing is how they’re going to fulfill their mission in the black.

After a plea deal transforms a twenty-year ore-mining sentence into NeoG service, Spacer Chae Ho-ki earns a spot on the team. But there’s more to Chae that the crew doesn’t know, and they must hide a secret that could endanger everyone they love—as well as their new teammates—if it got out. At the same time, a seemingly untouchable coalition is attempting to take over trade with the Trappist colonies and start a war with the NeoG. When the crew of Zuma’s Ghost gets involved, they end up as targets of this ruthless enemy.

With new members aboard, will the team grow stronger this time around? Will they be able to win the games? And, more important, will they be able to surmount threats from both without and within?

Why We Want It: Wagers is one of my favorite science fiction writers working today and it should be no surprise that I loved her first NeoG novel A Pale Light in the Black, so I'm super pumped for Hold Fast Through the Fire.

Wallace, Matt. Savage Bounty [Saga]
Publisher's Description

The sequel to the acclaimed, spellbinding epic fantasy Savage Legion by Hugo Award–winning author Matt Wallace about a utopian city with a dark secret…and the underdogs who will expose it—or die trying.

The call them Savages. Brutal. Efficient. Expendable.

The empire relies on them. The greatest weapon they ever developed. Culled from the streets of their cities, they take the ones no one will miss and throw them, by the thousands, at the empire’s enemies. If they live, they fight again. If they die, well, there are always more.

Why We Want It: I didn't have the opportunity to write the NoaF review of Savage Legion, but I did rank it among the best novels published in 2020 and then convinced Adri to read and love it. So, so good. I'm a Matt Wallace partisan but he delivers each and every time and I know he's going to bring the goods with Savage Bounty because that's what he does.

Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 5x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him

Microreview [book]: The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

The final Wayfarers novel is the opposite of a big finale number, and that's more than OK

I'll level with you, dear readers: somehow I haven't written a full length book review in a month, and I forgot how reviews start. So I'm just going to start by going "what IS reviewing?" and then follow up with "why have I had some books on my review pile for over a month without writing about them" and then we'll see where we go from there. One such book is The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, the last in Becky Chambers' Hugo Award winning Wayfarers series of spacefaring novels starring people who, despite the challenges of the world they live in, choose to be fundamentally kind and generous with each other and see where that gets them. In another series, I'd have gone into a final instalment expecting something on a grander scale than the lead-up: a big budget finale episode of a book featuring More! of Everything! with high stakes and happy tied-up plots for everyone involved. This being the Wayfarers, I went in with no such expectations and it's a good thing I didn't, because in scale this is the smallest of the Wayfarers books: a tiny, isolated story in a small part of the galaxy, featuring a few transient characters who intersect for a few days and then go their separate ways once more. It defies all concepts of what a finale should be, and I have had no idea how to write about it, or, really, how I feel about it. 

The book takes place on Gora, a planet whose economy is entirely built around being a rest stop for people passing through its various space gates to other parts of the galaxy. As Gora itself is an airless rock, those rest stops all take the form of various domes on the planet's surface, where travellers come down for the kind of hospitality experience one would expect at a transit hotel: a clean room, a decent meal, some supplies for their ship and maybe a weird souvenir from the gift shop. One such generic rest stop is owned by Laru (think the Mystics from Dark Crystal but fuzzier) Ouloo and her child Tupo, and on what is supposed to be a completely average day they have three guests arrive: Pei, an Aeluon on her way to visit her partner (Ashby of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet),  Roveg, an insect-like Quelin trying to keep a mysterious urgent appointment, and Speaker, an Akarak whose role within her otherwise insular species is to interact and trade with outsiders. Unfortunately for all, this very average day is disrupted by a disaster that takes out much of the satellite network around Gora, leaving everyone stranded in the rest stop with nothing to do but rely on each other and wait for better news.

With the inciting incident set up, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within proceeds to do absolutely nothing to invoke any significant tension for the majority of its remaining length. Nothing bad happens to any of the characters or in their immediate vicinity as a result of the disaster, and the satellites are fixed offscreen with some cheerful official network updates serving as interludes between sections. Instead, the substance of the book revolves around the way these aliens interact with each other: from endless snacks (you will not forget that Ouloo is in the hospitality industry for a single second!) to dance parties to heartfelt conversations with teenagers about following their passions, the book lets these five aliens tell the story of why they have found themselves in this transit point, and where they're going next. The shared strand among the adults is that all are in some way exiled or distant from their species' expectations and communities. Pei, as readers of A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet will know, is from a species which considers inter-species romance a taboo and reproduction a responsibility, but wants to arrange her life in a very different way. Roveg's species are notoriously xenophobic and only those exiled are free to travel, meaning that his existence among the group means that he has been ostracised from his family and home for reasons that are explored through the book. Perhaps the book's most interesting strand is that involving Speaker and her species, the Akarak, methane-breathers whose planet was terraformed out of being habitable and who have never been offered just reparations or acknowledgement by a galaxy which continues to find them too inconvenient to accommodate. Because the Wayfarers books don't deal at the scale of political change, Speaker's story gets the least satisfying resolution of the lot, but it's an interesting wrinkle to add to the other background injustices and legacies which form the backdrop of Chambers' otherwise rather benign galaxy.

So yes, there's a reason for everyone to stay in one place and get to know each other longer than they otherwise would, and they eat some interesting snacks and have a dance party and tell stories, and then a bad accident does happen (as a result of the different forms of life support the different species need to survive) and everyone is kind of sobered and made to consider what they Really Want after this as a result of the accident, and then things are resolved with no lasting consequences and everyone goes off to live a slightly better version of the life they would have lived anyway. Which is to say, there's a way in which reading The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is a rather underwhelming experience. Becky Chambers has written enough books at this point (and I have read them) that it's obnoxious to go into them expecting something to happen in the traditional sense, but even by that metric, there's not much going on here: just a small story in a small corner of the galaxy, where individuals come up against overwhelming cultural dilemmas and encourage each other to solve them through some combination of being true to oneself and making good art. 

And yet, you know what? It works. It works because the idea of solving problems through individual empathy, while not a replacement for science fiction that grapples with wider systemic change, is just as radical an idea to explore, and it's also an extremely enjoyable wish fulfilment fantasy. It's hard to put into words what Chambers pulls off, and I can't shake the feeling that it would be even better in a video game or another interactive medium where gentle, character-driven exploration can feel more natural - but Chambers definitely pulls off the intended effect here, and I greatly enjoyed the experience of reading this book even as the "how" of its engaging me kind of didn't make sense.

The Galaxy and the Ground Within won't win over anyone who doesn't already like what Chambers does, and it's not your average series finale. But, as confused as my poor rusty reviewer brain might be, I can't imagine this series going out any other way.

The Math

Baseline Score: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 An entertaining cast of aliens with (mostly) fun interspecies shenanigans; +1 Nails the "transit hotel that is trying really hard to be the best it can be" feeling; +1 balances the conflict of focusing on small scale stories involving intractable-at-that-level political problems 

Penalties: -1 Despite the above bonus, I did want more for Speaker...

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Reference: Chambers, Becky. The Galaxy and the Ground Within [Hodder & Staughton, 2021]

New Books Spotlight: March 2021

Welcome to another (slightly belated) edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about?

Chambers, Becky. The Galaxy and the Ground Within [Harper Voyager]
Publisher's Description:

Return to the sprawling, Hugo Award-winning universe of the Galactic Commons to explore another corner of the cosmos—one often mentioned, but not yet explored—in this absorbing entry in the Wayfarers series, which blends heart-warming characters and imaginative adventure.

With no water, no air, and no native life, the planet Gora is unremarkable. The only thing it has going for it is a chance proximity to more popular worlds, making it a decent stopover for ships traveling between the wormholes that keep the Galactic Commons connected. If deep space is a highway, Gora is just your average truck stop.

At the Five-Hop One-Stop, long-haul spacers can stretch their legs (if they have legs, that is), and get fuel, transit permits, and assorted supplies. The Five-Hop is run by an enterprising alien and her sometimes helpful child, who work hard to provide a little piece of home to everyone passing through.

When a freak technological failure halts all traffic to and from Gora, three strangers—all different species with different aims—are thrown together at the Five-Hop. Grounded, with nothing to do but wait, the trio—an exiled artist with an appointment to keep, a cargo runner at a personal crossroads, and a mysterious individual doing her best to help those on the fringes—are compelled to confront where they’ve been, where they might go, and what they are, or could be, to each other.

Why We Want It: Chambers has said this will be the final Wayfarers novel and we can't pass up one last opportunity to visit this galaxy full of very different people trying to do right by each other.

Gailey, Sarah. The Echo Wife [Tor]
Publisher's Description:

I’m embarrassed, still, by how long it took me to notice. Everything was right there in the open, right there in front of me, but it still took me so long to see the person I had married.

It took me so long to hate him.

Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be.

And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband. Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up.

Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.

Why We Want It: Well, first and foremost, it's Sarah Gailey. It's also one of the best sci fi thriller concepts I've seen in years. Did I mention that it's Sarah Gailey? There's no way we'd be passing this one up.

Martine, Arkady. A Desolation Called Peace [Tor]
Publisher's Description:

A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to Arkady Martine's genre-reinventing, Hugo Award-winning debut, A Memory Called Empire.

An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.

In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.

Their failure will guarantee millions of deaths in an endless war. Their success might prevent Teixcalaan’s destruction—and allow the empire to continue its rapacious expansion.

Or it might create something far stranger . . .

Why We Want It: A Memory Called Empire was an incredible debut (see Adri's review), winning the Hugo Award for Best Novel - it's a significant science fiction novel that will be read for years. There was a larger story set up in that first novel, plus the hope that Martine could write a follow up that lived up to the promise of A Memory Called Empire. Spoilers, it does. Adri has reviewed A Desolation Called Peace here and I've read it as well. It's excellent.

Polk, C.L. Soulstar [Tor.com Publishing]
Publisher's Description:

With Soulstar, C. L. Polk concludes her riveting Kingston Cycle, a whirlwind of magic, politics, romance, and intrigue that began with the World Fantasy Award-winning Witchmark. Assassinations, deadly storms, and long-lost love haunt the pages of this thrilling final volume.

For years, Robin Thorpe has kept her head down, staying among her people in the Riverside neighborhood and hiding the magic that would have her imprisoned by the state. But when Grace Hensley comes knocking on Clan Thorpe’s door, Robin’s days of hiding are at an end. As freed witches flood the streets of Kingston, scrambling to reintegrate with a kingdom that destroyed their lives, Robin begins to plot a course that will ensure a freer, juster Aeland. At the same time, she has to face her long-bottled feelings for the childhood love that vanished into an asylum twenty years ago.

Can Robin find happiness among the rising tides of revolution? Can Kingston survive the blizzards that threaten, the desperate monarchy, and the birth throes of democracy? Find out as the Kingston Cycle comes to an end.

Why We Want It: After Stormsong, we'll follow Polk anywhere (and Witchmark was pretty darn good as well!) and Robin's story is one we're excited to read.

Wagers, K.B. Out Past the Stars [Orbit]
Publisher's Description:

Gunrunner empress Hail Bristol must navigate alien politics and deadly plots to prevent an interspecies war, in the explosive finale to the Farian War space opera trilogy.

When Hail finally confronts the Farian gods, she makes a stunning discovery. There are no gods—only the Hiervet, an alien race with devastating powers who once spread war throughout the galaxy long before humanity’s ancestors crawled out of the sludge of Earth’s oceans.

But this knowledge carries with it dire news: the Hiervet have returned, eager to take revenge on those of their kind who escaped. And they don’t care who gets caught in the middle of the battle—Shen, Farian, or Indranan.

Once again, the fate of the galaxy is on the line and Hail will have to make one final gamble to leverage chaos into peace.

Why We Want It: Wagers is a particular favorite of several of our writers and we have adored her Indranan War and Farian War novels. Out Past the Stars wraps up the story of Hail Bristol. We've been following Hail since Behind the Throne and this has been a killer series.

Yu, E. Lily. On Fragile Waves [Erewhon]
Publisher's Description:

The haunting story of a family of dreamers and tale-tellers looking for home in an unwelcoming world.

Firuzeh and her brother Nour are children of fire, born in an Afghanistan fractured by war. When their parents, their Atay and Abay, decide to leave, they spin fairy tales of their destination, the mythical land and opportunities of Australia.

As the family journeys from Pakistan to Indonesia to Nauru, heading toward a hope of home, they must rely on fragile and temporary shelters, strangers both mercenary and kind, and friends who vanish as quickly as they’re found.

When they arrive in Australia, what seemed like a stable shore gives way to treacherous currents. Neighbors, classmates, and the government seek their own ends, indifferent to the family’s fate. For Firuzeh, her fantasy worlds provide some relief, but as her family and home splinter, she must surface from these imaginings and find a new way.

This exquisite and unusual magic realist debut, told in intensely lyrical prose by an award winning author, traces one girl’s migration from war to peace, loss to loss, home to home.

Why We Want It: On the strength of "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" Yu won the John W. Campbell Award (now Astounding) for Best New Writer back in 2012 and we've been reading her ever since. We're particularly excited to read her debut novel.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.

Microreview [book]: To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

Science, aliens, and optimism in the face of an overwhelming universe.

It's hard to know when to pick up a high-concept Becky Chambers book, even one as short as this. On the one hand, To Be Taught, If Fortunate (named after a quote from UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim's speech on the Golden Record sent with Voyager) is a novella that's being lauded for its big ideas: in particular, the way in which humans might adapt themselves for future interstellar space travel, and that suggests that it's a novella that will require careful attention to get the most out of it. On the other hand, Becky Chambers is an author most known for bringing radical comfort fiction to space, delivering a series in The Wayfarers that rejects ideas of necessary conflict or drama between diverse people while offering some great adventures and characterisation. To Be Taught, If Fortunate definitely delivers on both sides of that equation and requires engagement from its reader at the same time as it offers a fundamentally optimistic outlook in the face of the universe's many challenges.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate focuses on the voyage of four humans, sent to explore a set of four habitable worlds fifteen light-years from earth. The narrator, Ariadne, is the flight engineer for the Lawki 6 mission, part of an ecological survey sent to various exoplanets in the early 22nd century, joined by xenobiologist Elena, geologist Jack, and botanist Chikondi. The novella wastes no time in establishing the context in which Ari's mission has been launched: humans spent most of the 21st century confined to Earth as global problems increased, but never stopped sending probes to explore the wider solar system, and by the time of Ariadne's birth, the fact of life outside that on earth has been well established. The narrative, told in the form of a communication back to earth by Ari, details the crew's mission to each of the planets in the system: icy Aecor, life-rich Miribalis, ocean-covered Opera and extreme, tidally-locked Votum. Although she's not a scientist first, Ari is utterly devoted to the scientific value of the mission and eager to fold in both the technical and scientific elements of the mission to her narrative; it soon becomes clear that the reason she's doing that, and the underlying tension in the book, is the lack of communication from Earth for much of the mission, and the fear that their home planet has lost the ability or the will to respond to their work.

Because of all the science, the novella ends up being slow and almost meditative, and there's plenty of pages which are pure worldbuilding: from the scene-setting history of the first pages to a long discussion of molecular chirality and its implication for the origin of life at the end, there's a lot of descriptive content here, and it's not always obvious what purpose this information is serving. The blurb of the text makes a lot out of one particular technological feature, which are the genomic adaptations the crew undergo at each planet to adapt them to it, from general adaptations like increased radiation tolerance to world-specific changes such as increasing muscle mass on a high gravity world. This idea doesn't go anywhere direct, but it provides a compelling background, albeit one which never explores the ethical complexities behind it, particularly when it comes to the "baseline" corrections almost all of the characters receive - there's a lot of eugenic implications to unpack here which this narrative simply doesn't have the space for. That aside, there's clearly a lot of love and interest that's gone into the scientific elements, which are made narratively relevant by having a protagonist who is equally engaged. I'd suggest that the real highlight here is the weird and wonderful non-sentient life on each planet visited and the writing does a brilliant job of transferring the excitement of the crew with most of their discoveries - be it a garden of otherworldly vertebrates or a confirmation of microscopic life - onto the page and offering it to the reader.

The interpersonal relationships also very much as you'd expect from a Chambers novel, which is to say they're a completely refreshing delight. Because the novella spends its time focused on a small crew, Ari, Jack, Elena and Chikondi all feel fleshed out and nuanced, and Ari narrates the challenges of being in close proximity with just three other humans while being matter-of-fact about how they accept each others' quirks and give each other both the support and space they all need. It's impressive how convincing this claustrophobic group's interactions are, and while I definitely did not come away from it feeling that I would want to hop in a spaceship with three other people for years on end, this nevertheless feels like a very real crew. The elements of connection with Earth and with other missions are brief but also believable.

Even with so many individual ingredients available, I have somewhat mixed feelings about what To Be Taught, If Fortunate adds up to. The overt plot is simple and episodic, as the quartet travel to each planet on their list in turn and then consider their next move in the face of an uncommunicative Earth. Different challenges on each planet affect the group more or less - a "contamination" incident on Miribalis, for example, is given huge weight while it's happening but then doesn't affect anything further, and there's also a lot of tension around the departure from Opera that is resolved as "actually it was all fine". On one level, this constant release of tension from individual incidents is quite nice - no need to worry about Chekov's gun on the mantlepiece, in this universe it's going to stay right where it is. However, it also means that the link between individual incidents and the emotional arc of the novella - as the characters grapple with their place in the universe, without a link to Earth calling them back - is either subtle or non-existent, depending on how generous one feels. The discussion of chirality (whether a molecule is "right handed" or "left handed" and why it matters in biological terms) that almost closes out the novella is a big example of this: on an overt level, the connection between Lawki 6's molecular discovery and their decisions about whether to return to a possibly-dead earth are tenuous, but it adds an interesting data point as the characters consider their position in the universe. There's just so much going on that I found the lack of explicit connections and resolutions to be slightly frustrating, even as the individual elements as delightful as expected.

Ultimately, I suspect that To Be Taught, If Fortunate, is going to delight most of Becky Chamber's existing fans, while probably continuing to confuse anyone who isn't on board with her writing. Regardless of how you feel it adds up, it's a novella that packs a huge punch in a relatively small space, and it certainly delivers on the big ideas in spades without compromising on any of what Chambers' writing is known for. Whether those two elements totally work together will be a matter of personal taste, but there's certainly plenty here to keep a reader thinking.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 Packed with brilliant ideas folded into a strong epistolary narrative

Penalties: -1 mileage may vary on whether this is more than the sum of its parts

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

Reference: Chambers, Becky. To Be Taught, If Fortunate [Hodder & Staughton (UK)/Harper Voyager (US), 2019].

Reading the Hugos: Series

There are a few Hugo Award categories for which I like to look up the actual category description in the WSFS Constitution. Best Series isn’t so much a weird category like Related Work, but it does have a particular set of requirements that cause it to operate differently than the other fiction categories. In general, a short story only has one shot at winning a Hugo – the year after it is published. The exception is when a shorter work is expanded into a longer work and is “substantially modified”. For example, “Beggars in Spain” (Nancy Kress) won a Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1992 and was a finalist for Best Novel in 1994. Best Series is a different animal altogether because long running series may have multiple opportunities at the ballot provided the new material meets the wordcount of an additional 240,000 words (and at least two new installments, but that part seems to be the easier to achieve).

3.3.5: A multi-Installment science fiction or fantasy story, unified by elements such as plot, characters, setting, and presentation, appearing in at least three (3) installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words by the close of the previous calendar year, at least one (1) installment of which was published in the previous calendar year, and which has not previously won under 3.3.5.

3.3.5.1: Previous losing finalists in the Best Series category shall be eligible only upon the publication of at least two (2) additional installments consisting in total of at least 240,000 words after they qualified for their last appearance on the final ballot and by the close of the previous calendar year.

This is worth mentioning now because 2019 is the third year of the Best Series category and the second appearance of Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series because McGuire has published two additional novels (The Brightest Fell, Night and Silence) as well as some short fiction set in that universe. I wouldn’t be shocked to see McGuire’s InCryptid make a second appearance next year, and I also expect to see The Expanse to have its own second crack at the ballot, though with The Expanse I hope readers wait one more year for the ninth (and final?) volume to be published so that The Expanse can be considered as a completed work.

I’m curious what this says about the long term future and health of the category if we see some of the same series make repeat appearances. Of course, we can (and do) say the same thing about a number of “down the ballot” categories like Fanzine (we do appreciate being on the ballot for the third year in a row!), Semiprozine, and the Editor categories.

This doesn’t speak against any particular finalist on this or any other year. As you’ll see when you read through my commentary, October Daye is my pick for Best Series this year and may well be my pick if it doesn’t win this year and makes another appearance in two or three years. What is interesting to me is that the rules for Best Series allow for a really solid cross section of the sort of series work being published each year. There are completed trilogies, a very loose series of shorter stories, and ongoing series for which the author may not have a fixed end point in mind. I am very interested to see how Best Series may evolve in the coming years.

Before that evolution happens, though, let’s take a look at this year’s finalists for Best Series.

The Centenal Cycle, by Malka Older (Tor.com publishing)
The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross (most recently Tor.com publishing/Orbit)
Machineries of Empire, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)
The October Daye Series, by Seanan McGuire (most recently DAW)
The Universe of Xuya, by Aliette de Bodard (most recently Subterranean Press)
Wayfarers, by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager)

The Laundry Files: I’m in an interesting position with The Laundry Files. I read the first two novels (The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue) as they were published and generally enjoyed them, as I did the novellas published around that time. I had a copy of the third volume, The Fuller Memorandum, for a number of years and I could never quite muster up the interest to actually pick the book up and read it. I’m curious about the progression of the series, the shifting viewpoint character moving off of Bob Howard.

Charles Stross is a writer I’ve long struggled with. The works for which he is most recognized for in regards to the Hugo Awards (Accelerando, Saturn’s Children, Halting State) are also the works I bounce the hardest off of. The Laundry Files bridges the gap between his Merchant Princes series which I generally enjoy and the harder science fiction which I generally do not. Though I can’t speak to how the series evolves over the course of the nine main sequence novels, those first two novels did feature some of those stylistic choices which grate on me. When discussing cases or things of a military nature with codenames, we get CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN in all caps, which on its own is fine, but when coming up in a conversation about multiple missions we get pages laced with phrases in all capital letters. It’s a small thing, but it’s a small thing that makes me cringe as a reader. As a whole, The Laundry Files has story beats and ideas that I think are fascinating, but they are laced with aspects of Stross’s writing that I just don’t appreciate.

It is worth noting that two of Stross’s three Hugo Award wins have come from Laundry Files novellas (“The Concrete Jungle” and “Equoid”).

The Universe of Xuya: There is nothing on the ballot quite like Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe, nor has there been in the relatively short three year existence of the Best Series category. The fiction of The Xuya Universe is an alternate history leading into an alternate future where Xuya (a significant Chinese colony in North America) and Dai Viet (Vietnam) are major players in interstellar colonization (what a gross simplification) and all of the Xuya stories are set within that Chinese and Vietnamese influenced universe. Xuya is comprised of a small number of novellas and a larger number of short stories, but unlike the other ongoing series on this year’s Hugo ballot, Xuya is telling discrete stories within a larger universe that doesn’t necessarily have any connections to each other than being part of that larger universe. Aliette de Bodard is building a past and future history of the world and the galaxy and these stories are the building blocks.

What that means is that there is much less of a sense of a unified story being told because this isn’t that sort of universe. The events of On a Red Station, Drifting have nothing to do with those of The Citadel of Weeping Pearls which have nothing to do with The Tea Master and the Detective, let alone the shorter stories. Some of those stories are available online for free, others are spread across magazines and anthologies – which does mean that a reader needs to be reading widely in the field (or actively following Aliette de Bodard) to have a chance at reading them all. A sampling of works were included in the Voter Packet. Individually, the stories have the high quality readers have come to expect from de Bodard. Taken together as the foundation for a wider universe alternate history / future, this is an impressive feat of worldbuilding. Taken as a “series” in comparison to the other “series” on the Hugo ballot, I’m not sure it stands up quite as well – but that may just be my personal bias for more tightly connected series speaking.

The Centenal Cycle: The idea of being hopeful about democracy and elections is refreshing and has only become more so since the publication of Infomocracy in 2016, but Malka Older presents a vision of a global “microdemocracy” with the world divided into “centenals”, groupings of approximately 100,000 people. Nations are (mostly) no longer a thing. There are still political parties, but many of them are global parties striving for the most centenals in order to gain a “super majority” for the world government. There is still corruption and shady dealings, but the idea of Information (think Google on steroids, and truly operating with “don’t be evil” as a core tenant) as a force for knowledge and election security is a welcome one. Of course, what Older introduces in Infomocracy gets subverted and suborned by the events of Null States and State Tectonics. As with anything presumably utopian, the question should always be “utopian for whom?” and it is worth interrogating if that utopia is built on the back of something else or what gets left out of that utopia, whether by choice or force.

Older plays with some of those ideas while still maintaining the hopeful aspect of microdemocracy and elections throughout the three volumes of the Centenal Cycle. Infomocracy was one of my favorite novels published in 2016, with the perfect melding of set up and execution. If all three novels hit me in just the same way as Infomocracy, this would be a nearly perfect trilogy. As it stands, I was disappointed with Null States. This may be more to do with my particular expectations going into Null States and Older told a much different story than I might have expected. Realistically, I should re-read the trilogy (and Null States in particular), but so much of what worked for me in Infomocracy was missing in Null States. Legitimately, the novel focuses on what happens in those regions which choose not to engage in microdemocracy and are left out of Information. State Tectonics brings the story back inside of Information, and considers whether Information and the current centenal system is perhaps only a step in a process towards a more equitable future and not the end goal itself. There are threats (both internal and external), conspiracies (likewise) and it is a thrilling look at one possible future of democracy.

Each volume of the Centenal Cycle is quite different from the others, but together they work to form a fairly coherent whole that in some ways is greater than the individual parts (as great as I found two of those parts). If nothing else, these novels offer hope in the echoes of a contemporary political arena that seems to offer none. Older offers a way forward, and that is something valuable and worth holding on to.

Machineries of Empire: Machineries of Empire is one of two completed series in this category (the other being The Centenal Cycle, of course) which both makes it easier and more difficult to consider in comparison to the other finalists because unlike previous years, the other four finalists are true ongoing / episodic series rather than a part of an unfinished whole (see The Expanse in 2017 and The Stormlight Archive in 2018). Also notable, each of the three novels comprising Machineries of Empire have been Hugo Award finalists for Best Novel.

What I find interesting is my reaction to Machineries of Empire in this category. Each of the three novels are superb, one of the best of their respective publications years. And yet…I don’t get the feeling that the novels truly coalesce into a whole series, though each novel is informed by the one before and it builds as does any series. It does build an overall story of Kel Cheris and Shuos Jedeo and the working against the calendrical system of the Hexarchate, but I wouldn’t recommend Machineries of Empire to someone as a series. I’d tell them to go read Ninefox Gambit right away because it’s awesome, though give it a bit of time to get your mind right reading it. All three novels are fantastic, and strangely it feels as loose of a series as Wayfarers.

Wayfarers:  One of the things I find interesting about the Wayfarers series is that, like Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya Universe, Becky Chambers is building a universe rather than building a particular story arc for characters. Seanan McGuire’s October Daye novels are focused on the character of October Daye, and while McGuire expands our understanding of that setting and of various backstories and relationships, the series moves Toby Daye forward. Becky Chambers does not do that, though we’re comparing a series of three novels so far to Seanan McGuire’s twelve October Daye novels. Things could change down the line and Chambers may well elect to return to the crew of the Wayfarer. Until then, each of the three (so far) Wayfarers novels features a different set of characters in a different part of that universe, though A Closed and Common Orbit spins off one character from The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. Record of a Spaceborn Few, however, takes something only previously mentioned (The Exodus Fleet) and expands on that hint as a standalone story.

Chambers has been rightfully lauded for her positive science fiction. That’s not really a sub genre classification, but does get to the lighter tone of the novels and while Chambers is not attempting to tell a utopian story, the protagonists are generally good people trying to do their best and live decent lives. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet has been described as reminiscent of Firefly with perhaps less dickishness in the crew. The novel does have the feel of the show, only with yet more optimism. The other two novels tell very different sorts of stories, but the overall light touch of Becky Chambers is welcome and refreshing. Two of the three published novels in this series have been finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel (and I suspect The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet would have been a finalist had it not been previously been self published and lost its eligibility window by the time it was published by Harper Voyager and gained wider visibility).

October Daye: When I read Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue in 2013 I was not impressed. It was fine, but something about it just wasn’t for me and I didn’t put anymore thought into the series except that McGuire was writing some really great books that I loved as Mira Grant (the Newsflesh novels) and under her own name (Every Heart a Doorway) and I thought maybe I should give October Daye another chance. The series was first a Hugo Award finalist for Best Series in 2017, the first year of the category, and that solidified my plan to make a serious push on the series (as did winning the first nine novels in a giveaway and having them sit on my shelf and taunt me). I was told that I needed to read at least the second, if not the third novel, because *then* the October Daye novels get really good and if I’m not hooked by that point, I might as well let them go. So, five years after reading the first book, I read A Local Habitation. Readers, I was hooked, though it took me *another* year to read An Artificial Night because I took a detour into McGuire’s excellent InCryptid novels when *they* made it onto the ballot for Best Series (and I love InCryptid dearly), but now I’m back, I’m in, and I’m going to read a lot of October Daye this year.

At this point, I’ve read through the first four novels of the series having recently finished Late Eclipses and I am here and I am ready. I find it interesting that Toby Daye is explicitly described as a “hero” in these novels, suggesting that it might almost be a formal role in faerie (her liege, Sylvester, noted that he was once a hero himself). Four novels into the series, McGuire seems to be exploring what it means to be a hero and what it costs. Toby’s job, her responsibility is to be a knight in Sylvester’s court, accomplishing tasks he sets for her. But “hero” is also a state of mind that has nothing to do with purity of body or necessarily being inherently special. Here, it is a driving desire to do the job, to save those who need saving no matter what the personal cost. October Daye isn’t a hero who rides in on a horse, and she seldom truly goes it alone to solve what needs solving, but she is a hero who almost recklessly risks herself. It’s what heroes do.

The October Daye novels are exactly the sort of thing the Best Series category can and should recognize. As good as they are, any individual novel in this series is extraordinarily unlikely to make the final ballot for Best Novel. The Hugo Awards tend not to recognize this sort of urban fantasy for Best Novel. The series as a whole, however, is where October Daye shines. The novels are fantastic and they build a world readers want to come back to time and time again without any slacking off on the part of Seanan McGuire. This is top notch fiction and I hope to see McGuire bring home the rocket for October Daye.


My Vote
1. October Daye
2. Wayfarers
3. Machineries of Empire
4. The Centenal Cycle
5. Universe of Xuya
6. The Laundry Files


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Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

Reading the Hugos: Novel

Welcome to the first article in our Reading the Hugos series, 2019 edition! I often joke that the Hugo Award Season is eternal and that is only half of a joke because there is only a small breath between the announcement of the winners in August and the end of the year when we start thinking about what the best books of the year may have been, and that leads directly into submitting our nominating ballots and the cycle begins anew.

Today we are going to take a look at the six finalists for Best Novel. This year three of the finalists were on my nominating ballot and I had named The Calculating Stars my top novel of 2018.  This is also a rare year in which I have already read all of the novels on the ballot before the finalists were announced, which is awfully convenient for me to put together my own Hugo ballot.

In a sense, this year's Hugo race is wide open because after N.K. Jemisin's Best Novel trifecta, she does not have a novel on the ballot, though everyone except Mary Robinette Kowal and Rebecca Roanhorse have been Best Novel finalists before. Kowal, of course, has three Hugo Awards in other categories, Roanhorse has one, and both Kowal and Roanhorse are previous winners of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Suffice it to say that this category is stacked.

Let's take a look at the finalists, shall we?


The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager)
Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)
Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente (Saga)
Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey / Macmillan)
Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga)

Record of a Spaceborn Few: I dig that each of Becky Chambers' three novels have reasonably been standalone stories. Record of a Spaceborn Few focuses on that segment of humanity that took to the stars, but then never left the ships when so many then spread to new stars. A tightly contained story, Record of a Spaceborn Few deals with the responsibility of the individual to a community. This is slice-of-life science fiction. It could be set anywhere, but is far more interesting when in a more austere environment, especially one which failure for everyone to do meaningful work could cause the failure of a system.

I thought this was a much stronger novel than A Closed and Common Orbit (A Hugo Award finalist in 2016) and a pure delight to read. The only thing Record of a Spaceborn Few has working against it is that this is an incredibly stacked ballot.

Space Opera: Space Opera has been described as Eurovision in Space and as a spiritual successor to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is a hell of a lot of expectation to live up to. For the most part, Catherynne Valente hits her mark. In some ways, I admired Space Opera more than I loved it. It's been a while, but I remember the opening of the novel to be a touch longer to get going than I was looking for. Once it does and we get to that Intergalactic Grand Prix, though, Space Opera is a pure delight through and through. (my review)

Revenant Gun: Yoon Ha Lee's Hexarchate novels are a looser trilogy than I would have expected. There is a larger story in play, but Revenant Gun picks up some nine years after the events of Raven Stratagem and shifts the viewpoint to Shuos Jedeo (the infamous dead general) reborn as a seventeen year old with no memories of who he would become - which is interesting because it raises a question about whether inherent genius is enough to accomplish a goal or whether it is the sum or later experiences that exploits and develops that genius.

Revenant Gun is a strong ending to a truly unique series. In some ways the closest comparison I have is Ann Leckie's Ancillary novels, but that doesn't line up exactly. This is a fascinating novel and extremely strong conclusion to the trilogy. I'd be curious how well Revenant Gun would stand on it's own. It's one of two third novels in a series, but the only one that is not a true standalone (Record of a Spaceborn Few is a standalone in a series). It may not fully standalone, but Revenant Gun is a standout. (Adri's review)

Trail of Lightning: I've mentioned this before, but if "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience" was the announcement of Roanhorse's emergence on the scene (it did win all of the awards after all), Trail of Lightning was the exclamation point confirming that she was a major talent. It also marks a rare appearance of urban fantasy on the Hugo ballot and a well deserved one.

Trail of Lightning is a badass novel, full of driving energy and it was a raw delight to discover Roanhorse's Sixth World. (Paul's review)

Spinning Silver: Despite being a fairy tale retelling written by Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver shares almost nothing in common with Uprooted. Tonally, thematically, and stylistically, these are distinct novels as different from each other as they can be. The one thing they truly share is that they are excellent and one of the best novels of their respective years.

As part of her review, Adri wrote "As a technical accomplishment, it's excellent (except for the awkwardly stereotyped autistic-presenting character), hitting a perfect fairytale tone that weaves multiple character's lives together in a compelling way. There's plenty of kindness and positive relationships, especially between women and across cultures, to keep a reader company even during the story's darker turns. I recommend picking up Spinning Silver with eyes open and critical faculties engaged: much like that dark forest at the edge of the town, its not a place to be taken lightly, no matter how lovely it may look from the outside." (Adri's review)

The Calculating Stars: When I wrote about The Calculating Stars last year, I said that "More than just achieving a sense of wonder, the science of The Calculating Stars is magic. Kowal brings the dream of spaceflight beyond the page and into readers' hearts." There were plenty of excellent novels published last year and every novel on this ballot is worthy of recognition and are among the best of the year. For me, for my money, The Calculating Stars is the class of the field.

Also from my review, "It's not just Elma overcoming everything stacked against her that makes The Calculating Stars such a fantastic read, it's the completely thrilling mundanity of a countdown towards a launch. It's the checklists and the waiting. It's tremendous and exhilarating. We've been on this journey with Elma for some four hundred pages and The Calculating Stars is beyond a sense of wonder. I'd say that it's magic, but it's science. It's near perfection." (my review)


My Vote:
1. The Calculating Stars
2. Spinning Silver
3. Trail of Lightning
4. Revenant Gun
5. Space Opera
6. Record of a Spaceborn Few


Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

Microreview [Book]: The Vela, by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, Rivers Solomon and S.L. Huang

Serial Box's new space opera is an action-packed, politically-driven adventure written by an impressive author lineup.

The Vela, the latest exercise in collaborative serialised fiction from Serial Box, brings together an all-star quartet of science fiction writers: Yoon Ha Lee, creator of the mindbending mathemagical Hexarchate series; Becky Chambers, who brought the best kind of slice-of-life into space with the Wayfarers series; Rivers Solomon, Campbell nominee and creator of An Unkindness of Ghosts; and S.L Huang, whose action-packed Cas Russell series is being republished by Tor after an initial self-published run. Together, they take on a space opera that touches on the strengths of all four of these works, while being something very different. Welcome to the system home to Khayyam, Gan-de and Hypatia, where the careless extraction of hydrogen by wealthy inner planets is causing the slow collapse of the sun and the death, over centuries, of all inhabitable worlds - beginning, of course, with the blameless, impoverished outer worlds. Mix in a hardened soldier-for-hire who is herself an escapee from the dying worlds, and her naive non-binary sidekick, and you've got an indisputable recipe for success, right?

Pretty much. The Vela is written to be read in short novella-sized chunks over a period of time (although I managed to devour most of it in one sitting without losing interest) and the pattern of tension and plotting that goes with that style makes for a compelling, twisty experience that is more reminiscent of good quality TV than conventional literature. This should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the model - Serial Box releases its titles in "seasons" for a reason - but it's still an initial adjustment when reading, and those new to the format might have to experiment a little with how best to engage. The plot kicks off with Asala Sikou, the aforementioned refugee soldier, who is brought in by the leader of the wealthy, still-comfortable world of Khayyam to take on an unusual mission: locate the Vela, a ship carrying the last refugees from the latest world on the system's outskirts to have become uninhabitable, and do it with his child, Niko, in tow. Given that the slow extinction crisis has produced a ton of ships full of refugees, the mission to find one particular set of them is odd from the outset, but it soon becomes clear that this is more than a token gesture for a politician's election campaign. Khayyam is not the only political force interested in the Vela and what it carries, and soon the militaristic leader of Gan-De - the closed-off world closest to the refugees - and rebels from the barely-habitable orbiting stations which said refugees are forced into are all involved in a struggle for the system's already tenuous future.

As you'd expect, what follows is a mixture of fast-paced action, fundamentally irreconcilable political showdowns, and some highly entertaining twists and reversals, as Asala and Niko find their way in and out of trouble, make their way across the system, and uncover the true reasons behind the Vela's importance and what it means for their future. The lead pair have a great dynamic and there's plenty of other interesting characters too, representing a diverse, ethically messy version of humanity which contrasts individual capacity for kindness with a hopeless lack of positive collective action. The cultural differences between the different worlds are understated compared to the inequality and political tensions between them, but the touches are there to make these worlds feel lived in. The text also uses its science fictional elements to underscore the sense of inequality between the haves and the have-nots: interplanetary travel is technically accessible to most, but for ordinary people it depends on once-a-decade planetary alignments which allow ships to use gravity rather than burning expensive fuel; only the very wealthy can afford to transport themselves directly under normal circumstances.

In its treatment of interplanetary politics, there's a strong comparison to be drawn between The Vela and The Expanse, which takes place on a similar scale and with similar questions about privilege and inequality. Indeed, while I'm a big fan of The Expanse's current trajectory, The Vela comes stronger out of the gate with its political machinations and its representation, in contrast to the somewhat less inspiring "hardboiled bros in space" feel of Leviathan Wakes. Like The Expanse, The Vela manages to satisfyingly balance the sense of huge, irreconcilable political realities that the refugee crisis is creating, which is beyond the power of Gan-de and Khayyam to solve, and the individual personalities at the helm of some of those forces. I do enjoy stories which push hard on the tension between "good people" and "people working towards good things" (some of whom are terrible), and there's plenty of that here without descending into outright misanthropy.

That said, there were times when I was expecting a little more from The Vela, in terms of its plot and characterisation. In particular, I was frustrated by the tight focus on a few, relatively privileged characters. Asala's presence as the main character should, of course, be the counterweight to that, but despite the exploration of her past as a refugee, her characterisation is strongly shaped by an early display of indifference towards a ship of illegal refugees, which underlines the position of power that she has reached in a way that makes it uncomfortable to view her as representative of the powerless masses at the heart of The Vela's universe. Other than Asala, and a couple of characters who turn up in individual chapters, ordinary people are seen only in nameless glimpses, and that feels like an odd decision for the authors to make in a story of this kind. Additionally, while there's a cracking couple of climactic chapters here, which really blow the possibilities for future instalments wide open, the closing moments of the story leave things on a frustratingly massive end-of-season cliffhanger, and I'm already nervous about the lack of announcement for a sequel. There is enough thematic closure to still make this season a satisfying investment on its own, however, and if you're bothered by excessive cliffhangers then Serial Box's model may not be the one for you anyway.

All in all, The Vela has got a lot going for it, and I do want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that a space opera collectively written by an author team that is mostly queer and mostly people of colour not only exists, but is being published as a headline event with an objectively all-star creative team. If I'm being truly honest, I have to admit I'm a victim of my own high expectations for this title: I feel like this team could produce an Indisputable Best Book Of The Year for me, which this doesn't quite live up to despite its strengths. However, taken with realistic expectations, The Vela is a wonderful adventure, and this is, I hope, just the start of our adventures with Asala, Niko and their broken, beautiful world. I'll definitely be signing up for future instalments.

The Math:

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 Satisfying interplanetary political machinations without an easy answer in sight.

Penalties: -1 A frustratingly elite cast for a story based on a refugee crisis.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke.

6 Books with Becky Chambers

Becky Chambers is the author of the science fiction novels The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, and the upcoming Record of a Spaceborn Few (July 2018). Her books have been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, among others. She also writes essays and short stories, which can be found here and there around the internet.

Today she shares her six books with us...

1. What book are you currently reading? 

The Glass Universe, by Dava Sobel. It’s a nonfiction book about the women “computers” at Harvard who studied the stars. I love books about the history and humanity of science, and this one is scratching that itch so hard. It’s got a great (and real!) cast of characters, and anybody who’s interested in astronomy should learn about this brilliant team who shaped our view of the cosmos.





2. What upcoming book you are really excited about? 

This is going to be a terrible answer: I can’t tell you, because it hasn’t been formally announced yet. And I know, I should just tell you about something else instead, but now I’m on the spot and it’s all I can think of. That’s so annoying of me, I’m sorry.

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

My to-read pile is a constant source of guilt and despair, so I doubt I’ll have the luxury of re-reading anything anytime soon. But: Changing Planes, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Her work, and that book in particular, were cornerstones of me going on to write science fiction at all. I went back and read a little bit of it when I learned of her death, but I would like to sit down and properly go on that journey again.

4. How about a book you've changed your mind about over time--either positively or negatively? 

This hurts me to admit this, but Dune. Dune rocked my world when I was a teenager. I ravaged my paperback copy with dog ears. I memorized the Bene Gesserit litany against fear. I adored Alia, the tiny all-knowing girl who scared the high holy hell out of everyone she met. It’s a tremendously important story in science fiction as a whole, and I still think a lot of its elements are great. But wow, the gender politics in that book are a hot mess, and the fact that its lone gay character is both a super evil villain and a disgusting pedophile does not sit well with adult!me at all. Oof.

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

I’ve got a bunch, but since I have to pick one: Contact, by Carl Sagan. I saw the movie in my tweens, when it was in theaters. I bought the book soon after, and I read it until it started to fall apart. Ellie Arroway taught me that women could be brilliant heroes who go on space adventures (Jadzia Dax and Princess Leia were big parts of my life then, too, but Ellie was a contemporary character in a realistic story, and that mattered big time). The extraterrestrial welcome party she finds taught me that alien contact could result in something other than war. Carl Sagan taught me that the universe is poetry, and that learning about it makes us humble and inspired and afraid and at peace all at once. I carry those ideas with me in everything I write. As Ellie learns: “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”

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

Record of a Spaceborn Few is the third book in my Wayfarers series, and it’ll be out in July. It takes place in the Exodus Fleet, the collection of generation ships that carried the last humans away from Earth hundreds of years before our story starts. The crux of the book is this: if the point of the Fleet was to find humanity a new home, and plenty of new homes have been found…why are people still living there? How has their culture changed due to alien influence? How can they preserve their traditions, and are those traditions worth saving at all? I had a lot of fun tackling those questions, and I hope readers will dig it, too.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.