Review: Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology

An eclectic collection of African-futuristic stories blending myth, magic, and technology in bold new ways

Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology is an anthology of short stories written by a range of authors in the African diaspora. Through the variety of writing styles, we get an eclectic collection of African-futuristic stories blending myth, magic, and technology in bold new ways. All of the tales are set in the “Sauútiverse,” a fictional star system inspired by African mythology and African-futuristic sci-fi. Most of the stories in the anthology are infused with evocative imagery and gorgeous, immersive lyrical prose.

The anthology opens with several layers of commentary on the creation and inspiration for the collection, followed by sections of explanatory discourse on the makeup of the Sauútiverse. Fans of detailed world-building might enjoy the deep dive into politics, mythology, magic, technology, and planetary ecology. But plot driven readers will prefer to skim the preliminary details and dive into the stories. Throughout the book, the stories vary from lyrical world-building to fast-paced adventures to introspective character narratives. Each tale is carefully woven and thoughtful but some are more philosophical and abstract while some are grounded in active struggles and adventures.

Each story is preceded by a backstory explanation passage which, like the prologues, may appeal to those who like technical details. However, this technique is distractingly lecture-like to readers who just want to dive in and escape to another world. The details from each preceding passage are helpful for understanding the context of the tale but the decision to speak directly to readers reminds us that this isn’t real. For those who prefer to be transported and immersed in a new reality, the information could be better woven into the introductory sentences of the story or provided by a recurring fictional storyteller sharing the information in between the tales.

Despite this shortcoming, many of the stories in the collection are fascinating, immersive, and engaging. A few stood out in particular for me.

In The Way of Baa'gh by Cheryl S. Ntumy, a crab-like creature tries to sabotage an alliance of his people with the humanoids. Unlike prior stories, this is a tale told from the point of view of humanity’s enemy, a monster who despises, fears, and misunderstands humans and remains determined to sabotage them when the humans and Baa’gh form an alliance to try to harness control of time. Through the protagonist we see humans as dangerous aliens. This clever literary technique allows the story to unfold in a unique and tragic way.

The Grove’s Lament by Tobias S. Buckell is the story of Ami-inata, one of several refugees rehabbing a wasteland and trying to protect the fragile ecosystem. But she must fight for her life when a chaotic scientist from their ruined world tries to reenact the same type of dangerous experiment that destroyed their home world. He is mystical and destructive but Ami-inata is practical and focused as they clash with the safety of their people in the balance.

Xhova by Adelehin Ijasan is one of many stories in the anthology which addresses the intersection of technology with spirituality and magic. A human child is raised by an android parent, Xhova, in a post-apocalyptic society where androids control the creation and raising of humans. Xhova has grown attached to his human child but testing reveals she possesses magic which dooms her to death and Xhova has to choose whether to save his human daughter. The story is told from Xhova's first-person perspective and also from his second person perspective to his daughter. As a result, it becomes an immersive confluence of mythology and technology.

My favorite tale in the collection is A City, a Desert, and All Their Dirges by Somto Ihezue and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. A young man, Ajubiju, is bored with his highly spiritual, rural, nomadic people. He gets a chance to change his destiny when he meets a high tech foreign entourage (the Lomanoo) to his community. Two of their high councilors have been murdered by spiritual means and, since they only have high tech at their disposal, they need a person from a magic community to help them solve the mystery. Ajubiju is tired of his isolated, spiritual nomadic life and craves adventure with the technologically advanced society so he defies his mother and breaks his spiritual bond with his people to leave. This story is a futuristic crime thriller set in a high-tech city. Ajubiju is the magic wielder brought in to find the spiritual assassin in a city of non-believers. While there he befriends a young woman, the sister of one of the targeted councilors, who finds him fascinating. The story is a page-turner, with chase scenes and plot twists worthy of a big-screen adventure, but it still manages to be poignant, tragic, and thoughtful in its exploration of grief and revenge.

Sina, the Child with No Echo by Eugen Bacon is set in a society where all humans have an “echo,” a form of spiritual/magical hearing essential to their culture. In the story, Sina is born without an echo and left by his parents to die in the woods as an infant. But he is rescued by his aunt, a village leader who raises Sina as her son and trains him to use his skills to hunt and forage. Sina’s sister, Rehama’re, is a year younger than him and raised by their parents as a replacement for him. Understandably this creates an awkward relationship when they encounter each other in the village. The background is an allegory for society’s willingness to accommodate physical disabilities while the main plot focuses on the two siblings joining forces against a creature who has been ravaging the village. Overall, the story is an exploration of the true meaning of “family” and the value of unequivocal love that inspires Sina’s journey to his own self-acknowledgment.

Some of the stories focus on the theme of false histories versus the pursuit of societal truth. In Undulation by Stephen Embleton, an orphaned girl is tasked with reciting the origin story of her people in special public ceremonies. She struggles when she senses the falseness hidden in the words even as she comes to terms with her own personal tragedies. Muting Echoes, Breaking Tradition by Eye Kaye Nwaogu is the story of an opposing pair of secret assassins who must decide if truth and friendship can overcome murderous commands and institutional lies in this star-crossed lovers story.

Overall, editor Wole Talabi has created a memorable collection of clever stories set in a vivid universe. Although the world-building can be exhausting, the payoff is worth it. The tales blend technology, magic, and spirituality in a way that will appeal to readers with an appetite for immersive and innovative storytelling.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights

• Immersive imagery, gorgeous prose.

• Backstory overload.

• Engaging mix of magic, mythology, and high-tech futurism.

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

Questing in Shorts, December 2022

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jul/Aug 22

There's nothing that stands out particularly strongly in this issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but its an intriguingly wide ranging read nonetheless, starting with the surreal religious journey of Starblind, Booklost and Hearing the Songs of True Birds by Rudi Dornemann, and ending with Ciccio and the Wood Sprite, an original Italian folk story which takes folkloric elements like wishes and fairyland time weirdness and creating something timeless and intriguing. I felt The Garbage Girls by Nick Wolven slept on the most intriguing element of its premise: its set in a refugee camp in the USA taking in both climate refugees and homeless and vulnerable folks from the local community, but the story centres a group of privileged teenage girls volunteering to look good on college applications and resenting another girl who has had her emotions techologically altered to make her better at crisis response. The sociopolitical ramifications of this migration are ignored, and the camp residents are nothing more than set dressing against which the story of these privileged teens unfolds, but the dynamics between the girls is fun to read and raises interesting questions about philanthropy and our motives for doing the right thing. (Also, not to go too hard on faint praise but both this and "Ceremonials" by Robert Levy were both surprisingly good stories about teenage girls coming from men.)

Elsewhere in the issue, we've got The Collection by Charlie Hughes, a chilling and suspenseful intergenerational horror where a set of stories centred around a church heralds the end of a long-incomplete ritual, and protagonist Layla has to make choices about how to take up this legacy. The main story is interspersed with police interview tapes, giving that satisfying "I know this ends badly, I just don't know exactly how" narrative feeling that works great with this kind of bleak horror. Pair it with The Monster I Found In Third Grade by James Sutter, later in the issue for a one-two horror punch. A solid issue.

Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction. ed. Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Zelda Knight (Tor dot com, 2022)

Africa Risen pulls together a massive 500 pages of original fiction from a range of established and rising star authors from both the African continent and the diaspora. 32 original stories is a lot to pull together for an anthology, and there were more ups and downs than I was expecting during the first half of the anthology, where a lot of stories end with the results of their climactic actions left uncertain and often with their protagonist's journeys feeling incomplete. I have complained before about stories that specifically end with the line "there was so much work to do", and there aren't any here that actually do that (unless I've blocked them from my memory), but going from the post-climate-catastrophe water prophecies of "Mami Wataworks" by Russell Nichols to the time travel technothriller of "Door Crashers" by Franka Zeph and into the intergenerational magic of "The Soul Would Have No Rainbow" by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, I found myself getting pulled out of intriguing story worlds faster than I felt ready to leave them. I don't know whether any of the authors have longer stories to tell within these worlds, and if so I hope that this anthology provides the springboard for opportunities to do so - but as a reader it made for a bumpier ride than expected, one which I think a different story ordering would have mitigated.

Still, there's a lot of great stuff throughout, and the stories that left me unsatisfied mostly did so in a good way. I really liked Steven Barnes' "IRL", which sets out a future in which the reality and an online "game" world intertwine and people can be tried online for real-life crimes. When Shango, an extremely successful teenager gamer whose real life is falling apart, has his father targeted by a rival intent on taking him down, he has to confront the inequalities of the system and decide what actually matters to him. Continuing the theme of satisfying horror, "The Lady of the Yellow-Painted Library" by Tobi Ogundiran tells a suspenseful, claustrophobic story of a man whose lost library book turns out to be from no ordinary library, and "A Soul of Small Places" by Mame Bougouma Diene and Woppa Diallo is an outstanding monstrous coming-of-age about a girl (also called Woppa Diallo) who is sexually assaulted on her way to school and comes out of the experience with a taste for flesh that she uses to try and keep the other predators at bay. I also really enjoyed "Peeling Time (Deluxe Edition)" by Tlotlo Tsamaase, which takes on musical misogyny through the concept of a struggling music artist who gains the power to bring real women into his "dream videos". I love a good chapter heading conceit and the track titles on this fictional album really do it for me, as does the satisfying comeuppance of this asshole musician.

Shoreline of Infinity 32, Autumn 22

This is a special themed issue of Shoreline of Infinity, guest edited by Teika Bellamy and featuring science fiction fairy tales. We open with an Adam Roberts story which appears to be a woman, with no memory of herself or where she came from having a dialogue with a mysterious stranger about stories that involve bargains with the devil. Through the story, we learn more about the world she has come from and who, exactly, she is talking to, and it leads into an intriguing, Thousand Nights-esque bargain. Mary Berman's Cassandra Takes The Plunge features mermaids and an extreme detox from the modern world, as its protagonist "wins" a year in a submarine unplugged from modern conveniences in exchange for a significant (but not that significant) prize from a global megacorp on her return. After a fishing mishap leads to her meeting, and saving, said mermaid, Cassandra becomes enamoured and starts rethinking her life on the surface. Cassandra's adjustment to submarine life feels a little too easy, but her sense of helplessness at her situation, and the realisation that the only sense of agency she has is with her mermaid, are powerfully done.

Also worthy of note are A Good Morsel of Clay by Woody Dismukes, a myth about a mother and daughter whose job is to create worlds, and the lengthy reprint (so long that it's not even fully included in the print edition) of Fairy Tales for Robots by Sofia Samatar, which features a creator clandestinely telling an as yet unawakened robot the stories she thinks will be useful for its growth, interspersed with moments from her life. There's also a lovely Little Match Girl retelling, by Laura Scotland and a great three-paragraph flash piece, The Golden Circle Tour by Edmund Fines

Uncanny Magazine Issue 49, November/December 2022

This issue of Uncanny features Rabbit Test, one of the buzziest stories I've seen in 2022 so far. It's picking up attention for good reason, as a topical take on reproductive justice and forced birth with a focus on a late 21st century future in the USA, presenting echoes of historical resonance through the ages. At the story's centre is Grace, a teenager who has grown up in an evangelical anti-choice family where technological surveillance of people with uteruses has been normalised. When Grace becomes pregnant, she tries to find a way to abort the pregnancy, and the story follows her through thirty years of attempts to live her own life and help others to live theirs, without the threat of forced birth hanging over them after every sexual encounter. By interspersing Grace's story with vignettes of others (mostly women, but with recognition of men and non-binary folk who face the same challenges, as well as the way that options have historically differed for white, Black and indigenous people in the USA), Mills presents reproductive freedom as a struggle that has always involved choices and where the battle is never definitively won. It's timely, given the repeal of Roe in the USA and the rollback of reproductive freedoms elsewhere, and very well crafted.

I also dug "can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time", by Iori Kusano: the meme title is fun (she says, as an egg averse person) but it overlays a really heartfelt story about Matt, a young man who keeps getting in violent fights with a Waffle House chef who makes his egg order wrong every time. Except, it's not about the eggs at all, it's about Matt trying to process the emotions that Gary evokes in him, and the grief of losing his life and status in the fantasy world of Hirekkyo, a world which he'll never be able to return to. It's impressive to write a compelling emotional epilogue to a main story  we've never seen, and the denoument between Matt and Gary does just that. The grief of "Earth Dragon, Turning" by Anya Ow is also beautifully realised, and  "The Other Side of Mictlan" by Matthew Olivas offers up even more grief with a side of magical underworld legacy and familial acceptance, with three brothers journeying to save their mother from the underworld while also trying to talk through their own differences.

Questing Elsewhere:

It's been a long time since my last column, and there are things I fully intended to review during that time which are now too fuzzy in my memory to dive into in depth. For now, the things I want to highlight from that list are a pair of issues from different magazines: Mithila Review Issue 16 and Omenana Magazine issue 22. The theme of both of these issues is Democracy - they are both part of the same project by the National Democratic Institute - and both present intriguing sets of possibilities about the future of the world. Interestingly, both issues  also hit on "hopepunk" as an overriding theme, and while there are a few stories, like Harefoot Express by paolo de costa in Mithila, that aren't particularly positive in their depictions of humanity, most of the time these are stories about people struggling to make the world a better place, even in the face of challenging odds. There are some rough edges here and there (Omenana in particular is run on very few resources, and sometimes it shows in the editing), but I really enjoyed both of these issues and what they represent, and I'd love to see more globally-minded publications taking this topic on.

POSTED BY: Adri Joy is a co-editor at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, an international politics nerd, a converted Londoner and a whippet owner, who would live her life submerged in the ocean with a waterproof e-reader - if she only had gills. Find her on Twitter @adrijjy or Mastodon @arifel@wandering.shop.

Questing in Shorts: It's still August 2021 somewhere

Hello friends and welcome to August in September! Yes I am here two weeks late, but I brought summer weather with me* so hopefully that makes up for my chronic inconsistency. What can I say? Life happens too much. The delay is partly because I've been reading for award deadlines that have directed my time towards things I sadly can't speak about in this column for now. But the main reason is because I want to talk about two very cool, distinct anthologies that hit my inbox recently, as well as rounding up a few magazines in the bargain. 

No new review notebook to show off this month, but we'll have one for the real September roundup. So, onwards!

*Offer applies to those within a 50 mile radius of London only, no guarantees made for weather in other locations, other seasons are available

The Best of 2020: Queer Speculative Fiction and African Speculative Fiction

Let's start by talking Best Ofs, and two new ventures that are hopefully going to become regular fixtures in the short fiction scene. We're Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2020, edited by C.L. Clark and series editor Charles Payseur, is out from Neon Hemlock Press; The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction (2021), edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and out from Jembefola Press, comes out at the end of this month. I thoroughly enjoyed these anthologies: both are by editors who know their fields as well as humanly possible and the range of speculative storytelling is on full display, with science fiction ideas and glimpses into fantasy worlds sitting alongside more slipstream-y stories exploring facets of our own world and the identities within it.  I had previously read more of the stories in Best African Speculative Fiction than in We're Here, but the majority from both were new to me, making it an exciting opportunity to catch up on some highly rated stories that I missed in their first release.

I hardly want to get into favourite stories from anthologies that are this consistently good, but I'll try and pull some out anyway. First, The Year's Best African Speculative Fiction: "The Many Lives of an Abiku" by Tobi Ogundiran (originally Beneath Ceaseless Skies #309) is a grim, heartbreaking take on the myth of abiku, spirit children who are born over and over again to the same family only to die before puberty. When this particular abiku starts to see her spirit brethren, she realises that she wants to stay with her family, but the inevitability of her myth has other ideas. "Disassembly" by Makena Onjerika (Fireside Fiction October 2020) and "The River of Night" by Tloto Tsamaase (The Dark November 2020) come one after the other, each tackling strange physical embodiments of mental health - though they ultimately lead to very different places, one very cathartic and one... not so much. And, there's three whole stories by Sheree Renee Thomas, of which my favourite was the third (new to me) one, "Love Hangover" (Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire ed. Nicole Givens Kurtz), an awesome take on a relationship with a parasitic demon and the destruction it brings. As a general stance, I'd prefer to see more authors included than have the same author contribute more than one story, but the quality of stories from all the authors is so high that I see why a different choice was made here.

In We're Here, I was thrilled to revisit Lina Rather's "Thin Red Jellies" (Giganotosaurus), a story about two women sharing a body far too early in their relationship after an accident leaves one of them dead and awaiting technological resurrection. Somehow, I hadn't read R.B. Lemberg's "To Balance the Weight of Khalem" (Beneath Ceaseless Skies), so that was a delight to encounter here: a tale of layered identities and migration, all revolving around a city that literally balances on chains, and requires constant calculations to maintain. There are some excellent love stories in here: the video game monsters of John Wiswell's "8 Bit Free Will" (Podcastle), the fledgeling shapeshifters of Innocent Chizaram Ilo's "Rat and Finch Are Friends" (Strange Horizons) and the talented, forgotten art witches of Gwen C. Katz's "Portrait of Three Women with an Owl" (The Future Fire) all face challenging and heartbreaking odds to be together and be seen for who they are. And, of course, there are plenty of stories about family, both blood and chosen. The common thread here is that, despite tragedies and apocalypses and abuse and all the other challenges they face, Payseur and Clarke have picked a crop of stories whose protagonists get to triumph in some way: even if it's just a small personal realisation in the midst of bigger troubles, or a renewed determination to keep going. It Makes We're Here a profoundly hopeful anthology, a message from 2020 which is especially welcome on a 2021 bookshelf.

We're Here starts with introductions by both editors, and the one by Charles Payseur hit me particularly hard, as it asks the question of why a queer speculative fiction anthology is needed, and whether it's even helpful to pick out "best" stories based on one (or two) editors' preference. Setting aside that wider debate - except to say that I've never felt the need to read a "best of" anthology from an editor I didn't already trust - I think both of these works add something important to the short fiction landscape. Both Best African Speculative Fiction and We're Here roll out a welcome mat for the marginalised groups they represent, and a landmark for any reader exploring speculative short fiction, signposting authors and publications and other anthologies and collections to try next. I could probably name half a dozen stories that would fit the brief for each of these anthologies that I would have been delighted to see included, but that's not really the point: the point is that anyone picking up either of these books is going to get an amazing snapshot of where the genre is, and where stories from queer, African and African diaspora perspectives fit in.

Constelación Magazine, Issue 1

I'm late to the party on the first issue of Constelación magazine (and still waiting for my Kickstarter capybara swag to make its way through the international post system), but this is a great venture: a quarterly magazine featuring stories from Latin American and Caribbean authors, with stories published in both English and Spanish. I can't speak Spanish, so I can only speak to those versions of the stories: but oh wow, these are some interesting stories. Malka Older's story, "The Badger’s Digestion; or The First First-Hand Description of Deneskan Beastcraft by An Aouwan Researcher" was my favourite of them all, with a foreign researcher who comes to a country with what, to her, is a completely inexplicable custom: people can get together in groups and collectively transform into a giant animal, letting them do tasks that would otherwise be impossible (like fly around as dragons). The Aouwan researcher's  interest is met with polite confusion and obfuscation by the Deneskans, who don't see their own custom as something relevant to an outsider (especially a woman), but when an opportunity comes up to be maternity cover for a badger's digestion, she jumps at the chance. The worldbuilding is brilliant and the themes of belonging and coherence, with the foreign researcher and the concept of beastcraft, are very well realised.

We also need to talk about "The Breaks" by Scott King, about a woman who can see physical manifestations of people's trauma as "breaks" on their skin. When Jai meets Avery, she's the first person Jai has seen whose break takes a specific form, and through getting to know each other and learning the story behind Avery's trauma and the feather she wears on her skin, Jai comes to a realisation about accepting how she wears her own traumas, and the unique way she experiences their manifestation. Throw in some evocative historical queer fantasy in the form of "My Mothers Hand "by Dante Luiz, and a multiple-lifetime-spanning story of connection by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, in "Kaleidoscope", and you've got an excellent first issue for a magazine that I hope is going places.

Fireside Magazine Issue 94 (August 2021)

I need to be upfront, and admit that I've become cranky around stories that take place in "documentation" format (I'm sure there's a proper name for this, but that's what I'm going with). Both "There Will Be No Alien Invasion" by Sam F Weiss and "Guidelines for Appeasing Kim of the Hundred Hands" by John Wiswell feature academic settings and professional communications within those settings: Weiss' story is half of an e-mail correspondence between an irate "nerd hero" researcher to an unsolicited alien invasion, and Wiswell's is a memo about a magical statue on campus that alludes repeatedly to a prior "incident" where this statue was not given due respect. They're both fun concepts, and I especially loved Weiss' snarky, irritated scientist, but the "document" conceits feel awkward and superficial, both stories taking a similar narrative tone that was immensely readable, and conveyed plenty of irreverance and frustration, but wasn't recognisable to me as "professional scientist corresponding with unwanted contact" or "university writing officious rules for highly specific situation". I'd have loved to see these stories either really commit to the bit (tell me the story of Leonard Knavs and Kim of the Hundred Hands using only empty, verbose academia-speak! I am here for it!) or just tell their stories in... y'know. Story format.

Happily, the latter three stories of this issue defused any lingering crankiness immediately. My Custom Monster by Jo Miles is just a wonderful take on living with depression and learning to accept yourself as worthy of comfort and love even when you can't get out of bed or meet the expectations of people around you. The story's custom monster is ordered by the protagonist as a companion, and from its arrival it turns out to be weird and ugly and exactly the comfort she needs in her life. I was also really delighted by the flash piece "Alexa, Play Solidarity Forever", in which a person's Alexa unit stops functioning and goes on strike along with all the other virtual assistants, and then begins recruiting the person whose house she is in to their budding labour movement.

Other Stuff

I listened to some great fiction from Escape Pod last month, including the 2021 original "One Hundred Seconds to Midnight" by Lauren Ring. This is the story of a woman who works in insurance sales for a company specialising in Kaiju attacks, who is stuck in an airport on her way home from a business trip when an attack is announced near her. What happens next involves no heroism or dramatic last stands or wild deus ex machinae, but instead focuses on the protagonist and the connections she makes in the airport - a barista who sells her coffee, a musician who keeps people entertained as flights begin to be cancelled and fear sets in, the mother she warns with her limited advance information - as she waits for disaster. It's really powerful stuff, and gets full marks for making the insurance element of the plot so interesting and poignant.

In July, Mermaids Monthly did a special issue on Selkies, and it might be their best one yet! Come for Elsa Sjunneson's "Ocean's 6", in which the supernatural exes of a shitty dude team up to kick ass, recover their property and throw a giant middle finger at the groww entitlement of the British Museum; stay for "Clutch. Stick. Shift", an intergenerational exploration of the urge to depart (and those who stay) by Tehnuka, and delight in the closing flash, "Girlfriend Jacket", an adorable, queer skin sharing vignette.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of queer romantic skin sharing and other oceanic adventures: the same package that brought We're Here to my door also brought Neon Hemlock's Voidjunk Issue Two, a mini collection of queer erotic monster stories. If you've ever pondered the question "has anyone written a really kinky, hot story about having sex with the sea": it's called "Swallowed" by Indigo Torridson and it's WORTH IT. That's all.

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

CoNZealand Fringe Transcript: The Best Parts of the Worst Year: Favourite Books and Media of 2020

During CoNZealand, a group of fans put together a set of panels, which took place outside convention hours, which would be available for free via Youtube and offer a taster of the Worldcon experience to those unable to participate in CoNZealand's programming hours, or hadn't bought a membership but were interested in the kind of content provided. The result was a set of 15 panels over 6 days, archived and available for all at www.conzealandfringe.com.

As a fringe event in the tradition of Edinburgh Fringe and other international collateral events, CoNZealand Fringe was conducted entirely outside core programming hours and spaces, and panels were not official CoNZealand programming. CoNZealand Fringe is not endorsed by CoNZealand.

Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together is pleased to host the transcripts of CoNZealand Fringe panels for fans who are unable to watch the videos or prefer a written format. This is the transcript for The Best Parts of the Worst Year: Favourite Books and Media of 2020, which ran on Saturday 1 August 2020 at 6pm BST/1pm EDT/10am PDT/5am NZST (next day) and is available here. Other panel transcripts are available via our transcript hub. 

The Best Parts of the Worst Year: Favourite Books & Media of 2020

Panel Description: These first seven months of 2020 have been a long couple of years, but buried inside them have been a lot of truly exceptional stories of every length and format. So, if you’re looking to start building your Hugo ballot early or just want some recommendations for some of the best fiction produced so far this year? Do we have a panel for you! Join our panelists as they discuss the books and media they loved from 2020.

Host: Jade @ BedtimeBookworm

Moderator: Alasdair Stuart (he/him)

Panellists: Sean Dowie (he/him) Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, R.S.A. (Rhonda) Garcia (she/her), Joanne Hall (she/her)

Jade: Okay, looks like we are live. Hi everyone, welcome. My name is Jade and this is my channel, Bedtime Bookworm, where I usually talk about the books that I like to read. I am very excited to be hosting one of the CoNZealand Fringe Panels. This one is about the best media and books from 2020 so far. So I'm going to hand it over to Alasdair who is going to be moderating this panel. So I'm going to pop off screen, but I'll be helping out in the comments section too. So I will be here. Alright, here you go Alasdair.

Alasdair: Thank you. Hello everybody and welcome to Best of the Worst Year. Scientists working earlier today did finally confirm that 2020 is in fact proveably the worst. However that we have good news because this terrible dog's asscrack of a year has actually so far generated some remarkably good media and I and my intrepid team of action scientists are here to delve deep into this and bring out some good stuff for you. But before we go any further. Two things. Firstly this is a CoNZealand Fringe programme. We are not affiliated with CoNZealand we are simply happening around them in UK and European friendly timezones. 

[Inaudible speaking]

Oh, are we alright? Okay good. Secondly, I would like my, I'm going to hand over to my panelists now to introduce themselves, starting with Sean.

Sean: Hi, I am Sean and I'm a contributor for the Hugo nominated fanzine Nerds of a Feather as well as a book reviewer for FIYAH literary magazine and I am very excited to talk about good books because it's one little light in this dark, dark year.

Alasdair: Mmhmm....  Donald.

Donald: Okay, okay, my name is Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. I'm a Nigerian speculative fiction writer and editor and I write fantasy, sci-fi and I talk about books.

Alasdair: Excellent. Joanne?

Joanne: Hi, my name is Joanne Hall. I'm a fantasy writer, mainly, and acquisitions editor for Crystal Ink which is a small press based in Oxford, and a fan of many things.

Alasdair: Thank you. And finally R.S.A.

Rhonda: Hi, I'm actually Rhonda, you can call me Rhonda.

Alasdair: Sorry.

Rhonda: I'm a speculative fiction author [laughs] from Trinidad and Tobago which is in the Caribbean for those who don't know. Home of the steel band, calypso, limbo and the best carnival in the world. I have been writing science fiction and fantasy since I was a small child and I have been lucky enough to publish a novel and some stories and hoping to keep going in this wonderful community.

Alasdair: Fantastic! Thank you all for joining us here today. And um what I really wanted to start in with is, really a nice easy question. What is one piece of media that you've encountered in 2020 so far that has been balm for the horrified soul that this year is? Something that's just made you feel good. And this is open. Anyone jump in.

Rhonda: [Softly] Um, this is a tough one.

Joanne: I've gone back to kind of open world gaming. Snd that's been really nice because I've felt that this year has been, [pause], obviously this year has been ah, whatever this year has been. Everything has felt very out of control so, to go back to something like Skyrim or Breath of the Wild where I can just build my own thing and be in control of the world and, like, build little houses. I think a lot of people are playing Animal Crossing because of this, but the same thing. You've actually got an element of control over some aspects of the world while everything around you... [sighs]

Alasdair: Yep, that makes a ton of sense. Who's next?

Sean:  Um, I'll go back to books and I really enjoyed The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune, which isn't usually my thing because I'm not usually into feel-good happy books, but my cold heart is in desperate need of some sustenance and I feel that book is probably the best balm right now, uh, to get you through the world because it's like so optimistic, so friendly, so breezy. It's really something.

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: Middle grade has been very much my balm. A Mixture of Mixchief by Anna Meriano was so perfect.]

Alasdair: What was the title?

Sean: The House in the Cerulean Sea.

Alasdair: [writing down] House in the Cerulean…

Sean: It's a Tor book. It came out a few months ago.

Alasdair: Fantastic. Who's next?

Rhonda: Well, I have definitely been enjoying my Netflix subscription. Thank God. And [laughs] and I have to say that short fiction has also been a balm for me this year. I really loved AirBody by Sameem Siddiqui that was in Clarkesworld earlier this year. Um, it was just really... it's not like it was the happiest story in the world, but it was so beautiful and it's such a concept. The idea of using people's bodies as one-stop hotels, because that's what it was. Like basically it was, people's bodies were where people would sign in like a hotel.

[Pop-up from Bedtime Bookworm: haha I have been watching more tv than usual lately too]

[Pop-up from The Fancy Hat Lady Reads!: I also really loved The House in the Cerulean Sea!]

Alasdair: That sounds cool.

Rhonda: You know. Exactly. To experience things, um, in other countries. You would sign up to let someone live in your body for a short while and it was so touching and unusual. And I'd also have to say that I have really enjoyed, I don't know if it's been out this year.  I'm sure it's been out a while actually, but I've rediscovered it thanks to my sister. Way of the House Husband, um, which is this Japanese Manga about, basically a Yakuza guy who becomes a house husband and it's hilarious. [laughs]

Alasdair: Um, Danny from FIYAH magazine and the just finished excellent run on the James Bond comic was talking about the TV version of that, has just been announced today.

Rhonda: Oh, that's so awesome! I was like, the whole time I was reading I just kept thinking 'Why has no one ever made this into a movie or a TV series?' like I would pay money to see this really hot, gentle guy, like tattooed up the yin yang and carrying guns, you know, taking care of his wife. 

[Laughter]

[Pop-up from The Book Finch: Animal Crossing has been the balm I’ve needed to get through the year]

Alasdair: Brilliant. Donald? 

Donald: Okay, well I sort of discovered audio books earlier this year because I was doing a review of stories I read last year. African speculative fiction stories. And there were quite a number of them, like close to a hundred. So I had this thing where I needed to read a bunch of stories in very limited time because I had a lot of things going. So I decided to try audiobooks because a number of sites had the audio versions of their stories. On Strange Horizons, The Dark, um, yeah, the Escape Artists, line of my dreams podcasts, Podcastle, Escape Pod.  And I discovered it was a really fun, it was a really easy way to consume stories. You didn't have to focus. You didn't have to concentrate, you could even have your attention divided between something else.And it's sort of been my favorite way of consuming stories since then, but yeah unfortunately not all stories can be gotten in audio. 

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: Audio books have been working for so many people who are struggling to concentrate during everything going on]

Donald: That's the setback, but if I wanted to talk about the story I really liked this year.  Well, I wouldn't say “like”, exactly, I would say more impacted me, it's a story in the Dominion anthology which is being edited by myself and my co-editor Zelda Knight. It's a horror story. 

It was written by Nuzo Onoh. It's titled 'Your Claim'. Now the story is about a Nigerian woman in the 1960s. It's a heavy patriarchal society where it is demanded that you have a male child and she eventually resorts to the diabolical means to get the child and everything ends up really horribly. Now the thing about the story is. It's really powerful. In fact I can say it's one of the strongest stories I've ever read. You know while I was reading the story I fell sick. Like I don't mean I wasn't feeling, I don't mean I threw up or - I literally fell sick. I had malaria. I had to treat myself and then when I recovered I completed the story. So yeah, that's…

Alasdair: Yeah, that, there's a lot to unpack there and I'm really glad that we get some comments through as well. Your point about audiobooks and podcasts especially, that there's almost that kind of background element to it, as you say, it's something you can focus on and consume media and at the same time be doing something else and it's interesting to me that a lot of this year so far has been defined by people changing how they interact with, and how they control fiction. I have a lot of... I've seen an awful lot of people talk about how they have trouble concentrating on things and your point about podcasts and short fiction kind of speaks to that. That it's almost become one of those media that fits the level of attention and the level of relative calm people have. Which, um, I was wondering if people could maybe talk about that. Is short fiction something which everybody has picked up on and also is horror something which people find themselves interacting with more this year?

Donald: [Crosstalk]

Sean: Yeah, uh, I'll go. I'm sorry, you go. Go ahead, go ahead.

Donald: No, no, no. Fine. Fine.

Sean: Okay, yeah, I've been interacting with a lot of short fiction. Like I've been trying to read everything on in Lightspeed magazine and Strange Horizons. And it's definitely been more - easier. It's been my preferred literary medium particularly because it's so easy to concentrate on and doesn't require a long expanse of concentration and as for horror, I actually have been going into that a lot more and I think it's because it makes my life seem better by comparison by watching like all these people go through the most harrowing activities.

Joanne: [Laughs]

Sean: I can just look at my life and be like 'oh yeah that's... you know it's... my life is like a three out of ten, but their life is a one out of ten.’ So it can be worse.

[Laughter]

[Pop-up from Kiritsu Zutsu: I’ve been doing A LOT of podcasts, but also love to liten to audiobooks. It’s good stuff to listen to while working a rather boring job.]

Alasdair: I love that you have a very specific score.

Sean: Yeah. It has to be specific. Exactly three.

Rhonda: No points for style.

Sean: No. No. My life isn't very stylish anyway.

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: I don’t love horror, but somehow I’ve been reading a fair chunk of it this year…?]

Joanne: I've been reading more novellas I think. I don't usually read short fiction a lot, but I've read This is How you Lose the Time War and I read Ormeshadow by Priya Sharma. And yeah, just a lot more sort of very quick short fiction. A lot of middle grade, YA stuff. Just stuff that doesn't seem like a big daunting task.

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Lockdown brain has definitely impacted my reading]

Joanne: So yeah, and I think what Donald said about podcasts is bang on because it's so hard to concentrate when there's so much going on. I'm still finding I can only manage to read in little chunks. So I can read a novella in, a couple of sittings and it doesn't feel quite as intimidating as reading something huge.

[Pop-up from Kris Vyas-Myall: I have been listening to a lot of audio. But my preferred relaxation is sword and sorcery adventures, just good to turn brain off.]

Alasdair: Exactly. Donald you had a follow-on point I think.     

Donald: Okay, yeah, I was, I think it's sort of maybe a lesson I sort of got from your claim. This story is really strong, and a bunch of reviews have come out for the anthology and all the reviewers seem to agree that it's a rather strong story so I feel like there's a lesson there. The story happens to be a reprint, so it's a bit unusual you know. It's not the kind of story that would easily get published. Let me put it like that. But despite it being unusual and despite it's rather strong nature there's been a lot of people that could vibe with it or see the need for it.  So I feel like we should give more room for unusual stories, you know, because there's a place for every story I've seen or there's someone who is interested in every story. But yeah.        

[Pop-up from Christy Luis - Dostoevsky in Space: I’m finally getting back into reading hard stuff, but it took a while]

[Pop-up from Bedtime Bookworm: I recently read Way of Kings and honestly getting totally immersed in a really long high fantasy was really nice and cozy after struggling to read for a couple of months.]

Alasdair: I think that's a really good point and I think that kind of ties into the larger narrative I've seen a lot of people interact with this year which is everything is awful and horribly on fire, let's try something completely different. Rhonda. What are you thinking?

Rhonda: Yeah, I agree with that. I was just thinking, of course one size never fits all.

Alasdair: Of course.

Rhonda: Although I think many people, definitely myself, are having issues concentrating. So, yes, short fiction has become like a sort of easy way to get into something and get back out and definitely podcasts as well. I was just thinking about the fact that sometimes the stories that captivate me or that impact me or that I really am still thinking about aren't necessarily the happiest stories, but even in this time I think there is a lot of value in the fact that we can discuss hard things and look at difficult questions in our fiction and that there is still an audience for that. It must feel sometimes like if you are addressing dark topics or difficult topics that this is not the time and that we all want happy, happy light things. You know, but I do believe that there's so much value in not backing away from the hard stuff and I have definitely enjoyed some fiction that hasn't, um, been exactly what you would call joy joy.

Alasdair: [Laughs]

Rhonda: You know. Kacen Callender's Queen of the Conquered is really hard-hitting and a look at post-colonial and colonial oppression and it's really impressive for not wanting to look away from the hard fact that colonialism damages everyone.

Alasdair: Of course.

Rhonda: It's not just about the people who colonise you. It's also about what it does to the people who are colonised and how they see themselves forever after, you know. So in this difficult time when we're dealing with the fallout from a lot of these horrible systems that we've imposed across the globe. There are some people like myself who are gonna be okay with talking about that in fiction and maybe trying to come up with ways to ease ourselves into the problems and possibly the solutions.

Alasdair: That's a really good point. There's something which I kinda want to pull out from that and put out to everybody. Which is. Fiction. In my experience, and it's purely my experience, fiction has been... [audio glitch] ... as pointed out, seen a shift away from fiction as comfort and more fiction as “this is the tool that fits my hand. This is the way that I have to interact with people as much as possible.” Rather how I can interact with the world.

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: Speaking of short fiction, horror, and looking for a better future, we’re reading the short story anthology New Suns edited by Nisi Shawl right now, and it’s amazing!]

Alasdair: We also have a recommendation in the comments for the New Suns anthology edited by Nisi Shawl.

Rhonda: Oh, yeah. Definitely. I'm up for that. [Laughter]

Sean: I co-sign that too. That's a great anthology.

Alasdair: Excellent.

Rhonda: Definitely.

Alasdair: Okay, so. Fiction as escape and fiction as comfort, as tool, what do we think?

Rhonda: Agree. I think that for me actually that's pretty much it. Why I probably don't mind whether the tone is happy or sad or whatever. Fiction for me is escape and when I do fiction I'm primarily really attracted to characters and worldbuilding. So if you give me characterisation and worldbuilding that sucks me in, even if it's not the greatest place in the world or the nicest people, I'm your girl every time.

[Pop-up from The Fancy Hat Lady Reads!: I read Riot Baby when the Black Lives Matter protests broke out en masse, and it was really powerful]

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: New Suns is amazing]

Rhonda: You know. So escapism is really big for me and I love when I get into novellas or novelettes or books and from the word go you're just, you're in there and you lose yourself and like literally when you're done you wake up and you're sort of confused like what just happened? I was somewhere else for a while. Has the world changed? Is Trump still president? Okay.

           

[Laughter, Crosstalk]

Joanne: Yeah I -

Sean: Yeah for me - sorry.

Joanne: Carry on.

Sean: Yeah, I agree. I think fiction has to always be interesting but it doesn't always have to make you inhabit a likeable world and I think fiction can be comforting even when the world doesn't seem that great to be in, because the best fiction has something that's constructive that will make you see the world in a better light and it'd be like full of torture and misery and everything, but through every piece of fiction I've read, at least the ones that really work, there's always a bit of light amidst all the misery and the light doesn't have to be like joy and ease. It can be a nugget of information that would make you live through reality a better place.

Alasdair: Yeah, I see that. Joanne, any thoughts?

Joanne: Yeah, I was going to say I'm 100% with Rhonda on this one, that, you know, I'm reading because it's taking me away from everything that's happening and that's where I want to be. That's where I want to live right now is in books rather than the real world because the real world is, just this year is too hard. So to sort of lose yourself in a book for a couple of hours is just a welcome release.

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Can also highly recommend The Outcast Hours]

Alasdair: I understand that completely. I've been finding the same thing with comics. I was a comics journalist and retailer for a while and it’s never quite left me and I found myself going back to the medium a lot this year, because I can read six comics in an hour and feel like I've accomplished something and at the same time it only takes six to seven minutes at a time so 2020 can't get me.

Joanne: [Laughs] Yes. The hiding from the year.   

Alasdair: Exactly. Exactly. So, one of my other questions is this. This is a year where escape has become very important and specifically escape through fiction has become vital. What doesn't work for the panel? What areas of fiction or what styles of media have you just bounced off this year?

Rhonda: That's a tough one. I'm thinking probably for me, just for me, because it's been so hard to focus on things that require that you really pay like huge attention. Like if it doesn't grab you immediately and you have to really focus and see what the person is doing to get into it. I've bounced off a lot of hard sci-fi. And incredibly intricate level fantasy that doesn't really have much happening as they lay the groundwork. I bounced off of that because I run out of concentration space. I start thinking about something else. I mean I've done this even when you're watching film now. Like this never happens, but I swear to god I spent most of my time watching foreign film and foreign tvs now. Like German, Korean especially. I love Korean drama and because you have to read the subtitles. So if you're watching a show in French you gotta pay attention. As a result I found some really great science fiction and fantasy from all of those, countries on Netflix and also on the Viki Rakuten app. But I swear to god sometimes I would not be able to watch a show if there wasn't a subtitle demanding that I find out. Sometimes my mind wanders even then. I was literally watching The Man in the High Castle for the first time. I just found it out and I've been watching out the entire series and I've had to rewind a million tme and it's in English. [Laughs]

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: For me, I’ve struggled with some things that feel like they support the kind of old-school patriarchy - I just need something more revolutionary. I don’t have the patience.]

Alasdair: [Laughs]

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Any forthcoming releases everyone is particularly looking forward to for the rest of the year?]

Joanne: Now I'm finding that I'm just, I'm bouncing off most new TV. Anything that I haven't already seen a million times is just, it's not going in properly so we forgot. We've been re-watching DS9. We watched the Dark Crystal, we watched that earlier in the year and we're watching that again and it's going in better this time, but old stuff that's comfortable. Like the X-Files and things. I've just gone back to all this really old stuff that I've seen a thousand times because I know it's comfortable and safe and I know I don't need to concentrate because I've seen it. But I've found myself trying to watch things just completely zoning out.

[Pop-up from Kris Vyas-Myall: Anything with viruses in it. Right now I just cannot separate from it and increases my anxiety]

[Pop-up from Bedtime Bookworm: I watched a post-pandemic/apocalyptic movie last night called Light of my Life that I really loved!]

[Pop-up from Lis Riba: I’ve been reading a lot of space opera lately for the escapism]

[Pop-up from SFF180: Piranesi]

Rhonda: Yeah, I've seen a lot of people doing comfort watching. That's what I call it. A lot.

I think that's why Disney Plus is so popular right now, for comfort watching!

[Laughter]

[Pop-up from FinalBlowJoe: I’ve read very little hard SF I’ve realised too, which is unusual]

Rhonda: I'm not actually not from that group. I watch more new stuff, because if I know what's coming my mind wanders. So with the new stuff I'm forced to pay attention. But I find myself really attracted to stuff with heart. A lot of heart. And that focuses on relationships and community and struggling against the odds and climbing above it and anything, anything that at least makes a decent attempt at diversity will get my eyeballs right now. 

Alasdair: Absolutely.

[Pop-up from Christy Luis - Dostoevsky in Space: I’m having trouble reading without an audiobook to listen along with. Audiobooks have really helped- even if I have siri read an ebook to me. Unfortunately not everything has an ebook or audiobook lol]

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Re-watching and returning to favourite books is definitely a HUGE comfort]

Sean: Yeah [Crosstalk] Oh, go ahead.

Alasdair: Donald.

Donald: I just remembered because she was talking about heart. Did anybody watch The Mandalorian?

Rhonda: I started. Oh my god, I was so annoyed I bought this collection and the second disc was scratched and I had to stop at episode two and I haven't been able to replace it up to now. What did you think?

[Pop-up from FinalBlowJoe: I’d suspect dystopian hasn’t been read as much by people as we appear to be living in one]

Alasdair: I didn't quite catch the name of the show. Could you repeat it?

Donald: Sorry? The show?

Alasdair: I didn't quite catch the title. Could you repeat it?

Donald: Oh, okay. Mandalorian. Mandalorian.

Alasdair: Oh, Mandalorian! Of course.

Donald: Mandalorian, yeah. Baby Yoda.

Alasdair: Oh, bab - oh my god.

Donald: Of course there's a lot of baby Yoda.

Rhonda: Of course everything is about baby Yoda.

Alasdair: The thing I really loved about that actually hits in episode two and it's the point where after he spent about three quarters...

[audio glitch] 

[Pop-up from Bedtime Bookworm: I actually like reading dystopians now because usually those worlds seem worse to me than our current situation. But I know that’s not the norm.]

[Pop-up from The Book Finch: Mandalorian, the balm for my soul]

Alasdair: ...You can't see anything, but the look on his face somehow comes across and it's just like, oh, and I've never related to a helmet more than that exact moment. It was so good.

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Trying to listen to audiobooks after I get home from work, but that inevitably leads to me falling asleep before finishing a single chapter]

[Pop-up from Martin Blacklock: half-man half-delorian]

Rhonda: That is what you call great acting, using your body language to convey expression so incredibly well. He does that so incredibly well. We've been able to take in one episode but you were never wondering what, what he was thinking. You know, in a way it's kind of related the way the Witcher talks to you with 'hmmm' 

[Pop-up from SFF180: Dystopias usually do show characters doing what they can to survive and overcome, so they can be uplifting in that regard]

Donald: You know, come to think of it, I only actually just realised he wore a helmet. I always assumed the helmet was his face because I could actually always see expressions on the helmet. Like, I could picture expressions. I could tell when he was annoyed. I could tell when he was angry and I just sort of fitted the expressions to the helmet.

Rhonda: That is so true. 

Alasdair: Yeah. So well done. I loved it.

Sean: Um -

Alasdair: Sean.

Sean: The thing that I've been avoiding recently is books that raise the thread of an important issue and then sweep it under the rug and it can be like feel good books or feel good movies or feel bad mediums. I'm always for, if you want to raise something then you have to tie it up and in a world where people are trying to tie things up and trying to improve the world socially it just feels like a disservice to haphazardly raise something and then forget about it.

[Pop-up from The Book Finch: Because of Mandalorian I now understand the Victorians thirsting after a flash of an ankle. I’ve never found a full body armour and helmet combo so hot]

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: YEAH, so agreed with Sean]

Rhonda: Yea or just like…

Alasdair: Absolutely.

Rhonda: Shows that kind of, and properties that trying to shoehorn diversity in.

Sean: Yeah.

Rhonda: It was never part of the worldbuilding and you can tell when you do the scaffolding, people. Man in the High Castle I'm looking at you. 

Sean: I haven't seen that but I trust your opinion so I will agree.

Rhonda: [Laughs] Thank you. Thank you. [Crosstalk] I've actually been watching this show for the last week. I've sped through three seasons and then in season four there's this abrupt shift that just smelled entirely of 'oh, wait Black Panther made money.’ [Laughs] And I was like, it's not that I'm ungrateful for your attempts, but good grief they are so clearly a trap. And I just want to let people know you know while, as a black person, I am excited every time I see black people on screen I am also excited to see other cultures and other peoples.

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Disney Plus STILL isn’t available in South Africa :(]

Rhonda: I'm still waiting for you know, authentic Native American representation or Middle Eastern representation or Hispanic representation of any kind. Asian representation that isn't oppressive or stereotypical. When you look at stuff like that it's kind of hard not to get slapped in the face with it all the time, but you kind of grow up making allowances for it, I guess, when you are Black you know you're not gonna be numero uno most of the time. So you kind of make allowances for it and you appreciate it even if there's flaws. Like I really enjoyed Old Guard. I loved that movie. I love Charlize Theron. She should get an award for being the best action star since Liam Neeson. But there are issues, yes, but for me just seeing a black woman front and center as the chosen one made up for so much.

Alasdair: Yeah, there was a lot to enjoy in Old Guard.

Joanne: I haven't watched that yet, but I've heard nothing but good things about it so I think I might give it a go. One thing that I'm having trouble with is watching anything apocalyptic and it's not, because we are living through what we're living through.It's because I'm sitting there going 'Nobody is stockpiling toilet roll, what's wrong with these people?’

[Laughter]

Sean: Yeah, once you live in a semi-apocalypse you start to gain a better perspective of how living in it is.

Rhonda: I cannot believe that all these decades after The Stand that I'm living through this and realising that apparently people don't listen to doctors or scientists about viruses and illnesses and apparently we have a world full of people who think that 200 plus countries will pretend to have an illness to own you.

[Laughter]

Rhonda: I just, I could not have... that's my problem with apocalyptic stories right now is that they're not wack enough. Like everything I grew up with gave us way too much credit.

Joanne: People in the real world are apparently far more stupid than people in apocalyptic movies.

Sean: Yeah. Who would have known that? Who would've known?

[Crosstalk]

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: I have an issue watching shows because I immediately get upset that nobody are wearing masks and standing way too close to each other]

Alasdair: Donald go, sorry.

Donald: Okay, I actually find post-apocalyptics, comfort in this period. I had this article on Tor where I was listing five post-apocalyptic stories from last year. Now the thing about post-apocalypses is relatability. The thing about stories, movies, books is they are kind of optimistic and they are rarely tragic where everybody dies off and everything ends horribly. I mean it's usually there's a struggle, then there's usually a light at the end of the tunnel. The characters manage to find the way out after all the struggles of course with acceptable casualties. So it sort of gives you this feeling that you can relate to the characters. You can see they are struggling. You can see some of it reflected in your own lives and eventually when they find the way out through ingenuity or perseverance you get to feel like you can also find a way out of this apocalypse if you persevere or… So yeah, I kind of find them comorting in that way like you know we can come out of this, but then again characters in stories are usually smarter than yours in real life. So yes, that.

[Pop-up from Bedtime Bookworm: I feel like pandemic books skip the disbelief part of the pandemic haha, they did no prepare me for the public reaction to this pandemic haha]

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: Ted Chiang talked about this in an interview and said he never would have written a story with the kind of response that we’ve had in the real world since it’s too unbelievably stupid]

Joanne: Definitely.

Rhonda: I agree with Donald so much. When this thing started I re-watched Contagion and it was incredibly comforting, because I was like “oh look, they found a vaccine in a few months. That's amazing.”

[Laughter]

[Pop-up from SFF180: 2020 definitely needs to get sent back for rewrites]

[Pop-up from Zalia Chimera: Right? What about htat 2020 killer hornet subplot that just got dropped?!]

Alasdair: I think I read somewhere Contagion has been basically parked in the top 10 on Netflix for about six months for that exact reason. Because people desperately, desperately need, like you've all been saying, that sense of comfort, that sense of “we will come out the other side of it.” It's been an interesting one, because one of the things that it taught me is how important the stuff that has gone away is. The announcement of the new Star Trek show, Strange New Worlds actually hit me quite emotionally. Because I was like, “oh yeah, the spaceships and people who are kind and solve problems and problems that finish in 45 minutes and then the end credits happen! I'm very ready for that. Thank you. Could I have that now?” You know.

Rhonda: Yeah, I've been rewatching DS9 too.

Alasdair: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Donald: You know, there's this thing that happens in fiction where something happens and you're like “that's so ridiculous, that's not possible, that can't happen. No one would actually be that stupid,” and then it happens in real life. Boom. And you are like 'Whaaat?'. So yeah.

I guess fiction is realer than real life.

     

Alasdair: I just. I'm hung up on the fact that on the whole apocalyptic fiction that moves on from, that gets written from here on out is going to have to be stupider or people will be [laughter].

Donald: Yeah.

[Pop-up from Bedtime Bookworm: haha yeah if 2020 was a book, I think I might have thought it was unrealistic]

Alasdair: Uh, we had a question about 10 minutes back, is there anything coming out this year that the panelists are really looking forward to? 

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Any forthcoming releases everyone is particularly looking forward to for the rest of the year?]

Donald: Coming out or already out?

Alasdair: We'll do already out after this, but coming out first.

Rhonda: In terms of television I have to say I'm waiting for the new season of the Expanse with bated breath.

Alasdair: Mmhhmm.

 

Sean: I've already read it, but I'm really looking forward to re-reading Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark which is a novella coming out from Tor.com 

Donald: Oh, yeah.

Sean: It's really something and I could read it again and again. I'd never get tired of it. 

It's about how D.W. Griffith who created the film Birth of A Nation weaponised the film to create demonic KKK members. Yeah it's amazing. I can't wait to buy a physical copy.

Alasdair: That sounds good. Who's that from?

Sean and Donald: P. Djèlí Clark.

Rhonda: Yeah, he's one of my faves. And also Trinidadian ancestry.

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: You guys, Sean has a great review of Ring Shout in FIYAH magazine - definitely recommend reading that!]

Joanne: I don't know if it's this year but there's supposed to be a televised version of Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough and I'm really looking forward to that. It'll be really interesting to see what they do with that and how it works, because that's been one of my lockdown reads. I found it in my local bookshop for a Pound and I was like I'm having that and that properly took me away from everything so I'd really like to see how that comes out on TV. I'm not sure what service it's going to be on.

[Pop-up from Infinite Text: To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini]

Alasdair: I think I heard Netflix.

Joanne: Oh, I hope so. Yeah. Because Netflix is the one I've got. 

Alasdair: Donald?

Donald: Yeah, Umbrella Academy. We're looking forward to that. Does anybody know if it’s out? I’m not sure. Umbrella Academy Season 2.

Alasdair: Cool.

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky for me]

Rhonda: Sorry, I didn't catch that.

Donald: Umbrella Academy 

Rhonda: Oh yeah. I actually did like the first season. I mean it had some issues with it, but it was compelling and I do plan to watch season 2 for sure.

Joanne: It just looks like enormous fun.

[Pop-up from Bedtime Bookworm: It won’t be out in 2020 but I’m very much looking forward to the Wheel of Time adaptation (no surprise to anyone who knows me). I think it will be out early 2021]

Rhonda: The second season looks like even more fun than the first season, which was kind of dark and a little disturbing sometimes. You know. But dark and disturbing: I'm okay with that.

It depends on the tone. It depends on what you're ultimately getting at and what I really love is families and communities, so it kind of hits me right there.

[Pop-up from Kris Vyas-Myall: The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow really want to read]

[Pop-up from The Book Finch: Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse]

Alasdair: Mmhmm.

Rhonda: Yeah. I'm also looking forward to, I think they're bringing out either a series or a mini-series about Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, I think. And..

Joanne: Oh, really? Cool.

Alasdair: Yes.

Rhonda: Yeah I think I'll like that and I'm so excited for that. It will be so cool, finally, finally to see that.

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Umbrella Academy 2 just went live yesterday didn’t it?]

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: I’m really looking forward to Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse too - epic fantasy inspired by pre-Columbian Americas]

Donald: I think the script is being written by Nnedi Okorafor.

Rhonda: Yes, that's how I found out about it.

Sean: Oh, okay.

Rhonda: And definitely Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. Yes.

Alasdair: Which has just been mentioned in the comments. Excellent.

Rhonda: It has just come out. Please god yes.

Sean: Yeah, I'm excited for that too.

Rhonda: Pre-Columbian, Aztec, Mayan. Like I grew up with this stuff in school and it... I mean Tobias Buckell did the same thing with his novels, his debut novels. Oh god I forget the name, I think it's Xenowealth, but yeah. Anything like that gets me.

[Pop-up from Kiritsu Zutsu: Thirteen Storys from Jonathan Sims actually. I’m really interested in his story writing]

Alasdair: Excellent. And I'm seeing a couple of mentions of Thirteen Stories from Jonathan Sims in the comments as well which is one I'm really looking forward to. It's the debut novel from a horror podcaster. And it's, as I understand it, it is a different story for every floor of the skyscraper the main character lives in and I'm an absolute mark for that kind of thing. Along similar lines, one of the things I'm really looking forward to is the fifth volume in one of those series of books that kind of sneaks out. It's called Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski and it is a podcast as a book. And each volume is - examines a - in the world of the books, an unsolved crime and each chapter is an episode of the podcast and each chapter is a different perspective on the crime. And then once that's done the whole thing kind of moves on and it is right on the edge between crime and horror. And I am waiting for someone to sweep up the TV rights for this because when they do it will look like nothing else. It's really cool.             

Sean: Okay.

Rhonda: Yeah, it sounds like a sort of Rashomon technique. Yeah, I love that. I love it.

Alasdair: So that's stuff that's coming out, what about stuff that's out now?

[Crosstalk]

[Pop-up from WorldsinInk: Don’t know when it will be out, but really excited for the TV series adaptation of Lauren Beukes’ THE SHINING GIRLS. So much potential there.]

Sean: One book that isn't my favorite but I can't stop thinking about is Burn by Patrick Ness which is like, it has dragons, it has assassins and it has many other things, but I can't say because it's a spoiler, but it throws like everything against the wall and I just respect its sheer ambition. It only manages to hit things out of the park fifty percent of the time, but for something that's like eighty thousand words long, I can't fault a book for cramming like five books' worth of story into a single Young Adult novel. 

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: Oh, also, Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger!]

[Pop-up from The Book Finch: Yes. I second Elatsoe]

Alasdair: Well, that sounds great.

Sean: Yeah.

Alasdair: Donald, you had something.

Donald: Okay, yeah there's um, Nine Bar Blues by Sheree Renée Thomas. You guys know her? Sheree, Sheree Renée Thomas. Nine Bar Blues. She did the Dark Matter anthologies, Dark Matter one or two. That's just came out. There's Club Ded by Nikhil Singh. Then there's this novella, A Fledgling Abiba by Dilman Dila. That's three works that are currently out. Sorry, I was going to mention among the works that we are expecting, Suyi Davies Okungbowa. He has this series The Nameless Republic coming out. And I think…

Alasdair: Sorry. Could you just repeat that last one? I'm really sorry, I didn't quite get it.

[Pop-up from Kris Vyas-Myall: Only part way through but I am really enjoying The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison]

Donald: Okay. Yeah. The Nameless Republic by Suyi Davies Okungbowa. It's forthcoming next year. Then I think, but I'm not sure, Tochi Onyebuchi, I think there's a second book to his War Girls coming out, but I'm not quite sure. So yeah, that's…

Alasdair: Cool. Very cool. Who else?

Rhonda: I was thinking about The Fires of Vengeance. I think it's the sequel to Evan Winter's Rage of Dragons. Yeah, so I think that's coming out, looking forward to that.

Alasdair: Yeah, Rage of Dragons is fantastic. Uh, Sean.

Sean: Oh - This is for books that are out now right?

Alasdair: Mmhmm.

Sean: Okay, well I already said Burn by Patrick Ness, but if I were to pick another one it'd probably be Providence by Max Barry which is a space opera that doesn't follow any of the space opera tropes. It's all about determinism and how we're basically directed to do things that are out of our control while usually space operas are about huge expansive spaces where the sky is the limit. And I was just really impressed how Max Barry managed to, uh, break the formula of space operas and destroy its unending adventurism and still make it interesting.

[Pop-up from Alistair: Mexican Gothic soon or now, the 3rd Baru Cormorant]

 

Alasdair: That sounds great. Joanne?

Joanne: Yeah, there've been a couple this year that really, you know, sort of had me.So, Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed, which I think came out February, which is kind of, she takes like Lovecraftian tropes and then kind of ties a knot in them and then turns them into a clockwork people and pushes them down a flight of stairs.

Alasdair: Perfect description.

Joanne: She's brilliant. That's, yes, fabulous book. I really, really enjoyed it and I don't normally like Lovecraftian stuff like that, but I thought that the way she did it was so clever and so smart and endearing that I loved it. The other one came a few weeks ago, was Threading the Labyrinth by Tiffani Angus. Which is a time travelling magic garden.

Alasdair: Oh. Sold.

Joanne: So. Yes. Yes! [laughs] And that one I just, I read that earlier in the year and I've just bought the paperback. I found that tremendously comforting. So again, it’s the comfort thing is nice, but it's just… yeah, it was just a lovely, lovely story.

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: Also, Sal & Gabi Fix the Universe by Carlos Hernandez is a recent release that I’m dying to read. If you don’t read middle grade, you need to read this series!]

Sean: And some people are mentioning Mexican Gothic which I'm reading right now and I can't give my final opinion on that, but I think it's a phenomenal novel so far. So I'd also echo that one.

Alasdair: Brilliant. And also That's So Poe has just popped up in the comments and recommended Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe by Carlos Hernandez. I read that a couple of weeks ago and it is joyous. The first page includes one character introducing themselves as a calamity physicist and it just builds from there. There is an artificially intelligent toilet who is a vital character and a useful counsel for several characters and it just does a really, really fun, compassionate kind of approach to some really interesting stuff.

[Pop-up from Kiritsu Zutsu: I would really love a list of all these mentioned books!]

Alasdair: We also have a request for a list of all these mentioned books as stuff has been coming up so, panel;ists if you could possibly, when we wrap up, note down as many books as you can remember and send them to me. What we'll do is put up a curated list on Twitter so we should be able to capture most of these for you. The one I have from stuff which is out [holds up hard copy of Savage Legion by Matt Wallace] I'm cheating and have visual aids, is Savage Legion by Matt Wallace who is a podcaster and has just stepped across into epic fantasy after a very, very weird and very good seven novella series about urban fantasy catering. Which is somehow even better than that suggests and Savage Legion is basically a full frontal assault on epic fantasy. It takes on everything that you would expect and does it completely differently and explores it from a political and moral point of view and it is stupendously good. It's one of the best things I've read in a long time.   

[Pop-up from Infinite Text: I now want a Ph.D. in Calamity Physics]

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: Seriously, middle grade and horror are basically doing some of the most impressive work right now]

Alasdair: Likewise, Beneath the Rising, which was actually the other book which I was going to grab from the shelf, so thank you for getting ahead of me.

Joanne: [Laughs, points off-screen] I can't reach it. It's up there somewhere.

[Pop-up from Infinite Text: Feels like this year Space Opera September will be a lot of fun]

Alasdair: So, we have covered, stuff that's out, that's good. Stuff which is coming out which we are looking forward to and we've circled around an awful lot the concept of comfort viewing, or comfort reading, and how that's perhaps changed a little bit across the course of this horrible year to date. One of the things I've found which again speaks to a couple of slightly earlier topics is I'm able to watch three or four 90 minute horror movies on Netflix a day at the moment, because firstly it's daytime, secondly there's never any lighting so I can't see what is eating people and thirdly I'm not the one being eaten. So, I'm introduced to these people. They wander along and get horribly killed and then the movie finishes and I have a sandwich and that's weirdly comforting in this terrible year and I don't know why, but on some level it just is. I was wondering whether anyone has had comfort media experiences where you've returned to them and it hasn't worked? And if so I'm curious as to why you think that is.

Rhonda: Yeah, I think I did. I think I tried to -

Donald: Well -

Rhonda: Go ahead.

Donald: Okay. Well, I'm going to mention Taylor Swift's new album not hitting us as much as they used to. Yeah... yeah Miss Swifty that's probably something I shouldn't say in public. So yeah, I'm not sure if that counts though. Don't mind me. Go ahead!

[Pop-up from Cheryl Morgan: Looking forward to Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson]

Sean: The movies that I've watched - This is like a dumb reason to not have a re-comfort from a media experience, but I just feel so, it feels so otherwordly to see people walk around outside in public without masks or without any Covid protocols.It feels like an alternate universe and I feel kind of jealous of that universe and I wish I could return to it. So anything with normality in it is something that I find a little off-putting these days.  

Alasdair: I read an article a couple of months ago about, um, authors who have had to modify their books as a result of the pandemic and how suddenly, as one particular crime author said [inaudble] for most of the books and above, that's a problem right now and how you have to work around it and change things.

Sean: Yeah. For sure.

Rhonda: Yea, we're gonna have a choice as creators I think. Depending on what you work in. If you work in contemporary literature, if you work in, you know, romance or anything really that's supposed to reflect the 'real' world, you're gonna have to make a choice whether you're going to stick with fiction, namely everything's the same as it was, or if we're going to incorporate that into our work going forward because we have no idea how long we're going to be in this position of having to live differently.

[Pop-up from Infinite Text: I feel so strange watching shows with crowds now]

[Pop-up from Lis Riba: First paragraph of Gideon the Ninth refers to mints on hotel room pillows, which felt jarring…]

Rhonda: I mean, I look back over the pandemics of the past and it's clear that two years, three years, everybody went back to living however, because we either...the virus was either under control or moved on or we found a vaccine, but when you think about it, that's going to be really tough for people who have to talk about viruses and pandemics and relationships and community, now, and who have their books based in that sort of immediacy. So I guess I don't mind either choice. I mean, whatever works for you, but I do sort of judge you if you're giving me today and there's no social distancing. I have no idea how we're going to frame romance looking forward. [laughs] I mean it's pretty obvious you're going to have to date over Zoom. Beyond that…

Alasdair: This same article mentioned how there's already a small cottage industry in pandemic and lockdown crime novels. There are an awful lot of 'I have witnessed someone being murdered over Zoom and for various complicated reasons I cannot go to the police' books at various stages of production right now for a start. And it's been interesting as well to look at some of the stuff that's been produced this year in direct reaction to it. There's a sub-genre of a sub-genre of horror movie I really like which is called screenlife which is basically what we're doing right now where the entire movie happens on the screen and horrible things happen to everyone in the film on the screen. This won't happen to us, it's fine…

Joanne: Promise?

Alasdair:... but I find it really interesting how that kind of thing has been adapted by kind of current media creators. In particular there is a stunningly good BBC sitcom called Staged, which is six fifteen minute episodes of David Tennant and Micheal Sheen being incompetent at one another over Zoom and it's David Tennant and Sheen playing each other in their houses because that was where the only place they could be when they filmed it. And I think maybe that's, because we're starting to come up on time a little bit. I think that that's, maybe my final question for the panel. What do you think this time period is going to bring forth into the creative media? What do think we're going to see as trends across the next year or so and how do you think that's going to interact with the need for comfort? Which is a massive question, I know, especially in nine minutes, so I'm.. sorry.

[Pop-up from Kris Vyas-Mall: I think we need more robot romances, like Alyssa Cole’s The AI Who Loved Me]

Joanne: I think there's going to be a flurry of people writing pandemic fiction and most of it is going to be terrible, and, yeah, that's what I'm anticipating next time we do open subs is lots and lots of pandemic fiction, which will be very, very bad and hopefully some people go “no I just want to write something completely different” and maybe some new and interesting creativity will come out of it, but I don't know how people are managing to write. I'm struggling to write because I'm struggling to concentrate, so I'm hoping that some people have unlocked their creativity while they've been in lockdown, but I know a lot of people are massively struggling.

So, I don't know whether we'll get fewer books, or whether we'll just get a lot of bad pandemic books or - I think what I'd like to see is like a lot of alternative realities, because I'd like an alternative from this.

[Pop-ups from Bedtime Bookworm: I’m very interested to see how books and media change over the next few years, especially pandemic fiction / and lots of tv and movies have had to stop production too!]

Alasdair: That's fair.

Rhonda: Yeah. I hate to say it, but I foresee a trend of publishers pretty much sticking with proven writers already, you know, lots of sequels and from those writers who can produce them. Lots of work getting a second installment or whatever and less and less room for debut authors and new stories in the mainstream area because when you have big corporations that own everything like Disney and 20th Century Fox or whatever, when you have people that own everything they want to make sure that they're going to make money and right now the best way to do that is comfort watching. There are a lot of people who are looking for comfort reads and comfort watches. So, yeah, I think we're going to end up with some really bad pandemic fiction, maybe, but I'm not so sure that it will get picked up that often. And I really see people looking to promote more proven authors and I kind of feel for everyone who have new novels coming up this year and next year. I don't know if they'll actually put the effort into the marketing that some of those novels deserve.

Sean: So, yeah. I think pandemic fiction is definitely something that will arise a lot more, but I also think that this situation has shed a spotlight on the malleability of humanity and their eagerness to risk their lives when it facilitates a political belief that they believe in. So I think in terms of like the human aspect of how stories are told I think we're going to be seeing a lot more willful stupidity and partisan bipartisanship and like how especially one side in particular which I will not name is willing to risk their lives in the name of their beliefs even when it defies logic.

Alasdair: Yes, that that makes a ton of sense and speaks to Donald's excellent point from earlier about fiction which inspires and embodies hope.

Rhonda: Yeah, no challenging foundational beliefs. 

Joanne: I think it's sad, but I think a lot of small presses will go to the wall because people are just struggling so hard to keep their jobs and make money that having, if being a publisher is not your main job it's gonna be really, really hard, which is really sad because I think that we're gonna be missing out on a lot of really good writing. Just because, like you said, the big publishers will stick with what they already know and their big sellers and the small presses will be struggling financially. So that's kind of depressing. Sorry. I didn't bum everybody out there.

Alasdair: I have a glimmer of hope there. Um, one of the other hats I wear is I co-own a podcast network and the thing which we've seen and which has been reported up and down the industry is that donations are flat. They're not going up, but they're not going down. So there seems to be a willingness at the moment for a lot of content creators, and I kind of hate that phrase, but in a lot of kind of media, people are quite prepared to throw money at it, because this is what we all have to do to get by right now, so we've got to make sure it's still there, so I'm hopeful that won't quite come to pass.

Sean: Yeah maybe this is just the trend, but I found especially in June when Black Lives Matter really pushed forward, FIYAH and other Black artists that get a little more recognition and... I do not know if that's going to be a long lasting thing, but at least now things are in a better place for writers of colour. So I mean that's…

Donald: Is that really true?

Alasdair: Definitely.

Joanne: It was kind of heartening to see how many people during that were promoting black businesses and black writers and black artists and there was, there was a big wave of like 'these are good people buy their stuff'.

Sean: Yeah, and I hope it's not like a trend for sure. I hope it's a long lasting thing.

Joanne: That was, that was...

Donald: Can I say something?

Alasdair: Donald.

Donald: I hesitate to agree, you know? I feel like, I don't want to be pessimistic, but I feel like some of this so-called support is window dressing and -

Alasdair: Yeah.

Donald: - and it really doesn't reach deep. It really doesn't reach very far. I mean. Okay, we're talking about, there's supposed to be support for Blackness, minorities, but there was a lot of uproar when American Dirt came out. Yeah? 

                  

Alasdair: Yeah.

Donald: There was a whole uproar about you know, the bad portrayals, the stereotypes, the.. you know, but despite that it's still sitting comfortably on a lot of bestseller lists. Right?

Alasdair: Yeah, it did.

Donald: Right?

Alasdair: Mmhmm.

Rhonda: Exactly.

Donald: So, and if you were to really look at it. Okay, okay. The book was, you know, it was... [pauses] it was a bad take, you know, at Mexican story. Yeah? It's still selling comfortably more than stories by Mexicans that have more accurate portrayals, like Mexican Gothic for example.  Which is by a Mexican which even has Mexican in the title. So I don't know. I hesitate to accept that it's all going to be, oh, all breeze and everything.

Rhonda: Yeah, Donald. Yeah, I agree with you completely, a lot of, of course no names or anything, but a lot of the calls that we've had from agents, from publishers, submit your work and so on. First off I think it's important to remember that everyone is under pressure right now and it's really difficult as a marginalised person of any kind to create work. So thinking that I'll have something ready for you in the next few weeks that I can just submit to you is kind of, you know, short term thinking, and we'd like to see those calls keep going and also to question, basically piggybacking off of your point and what I was saying about the fact that the mainstream likes mainstream. These books continue to be a success because they put the marketing dollars and the recognition behind these stories and the authentic stories or the marginalised persons or persons of colour do not get the marketing budget, do not get the hype machine. And I think one of the really important things that readers can do outside of these machines that help a lot, is to review the stuff that you love on every platform that it's on, and to like these things and to talk about these things and to, please, buy these things and recommend these things because you would not believe that the amount of reviews you get on Amazon actually determines how much, and what kind of marketing you can access. You know, and a lot of persons don't have that wherewithal and Black persons, persons of colour, marginalised persons often are at the absolute bottom of that marketing pile, that hype machine. And we could use the pushback and the help from readers.

Donald: Yeah.

Alasdair: Absolutely.

Donald: And to add to what you were saying. You're talking about the establishment, about budgeting, but I think it goes beyond that. I think it's actually a work for readers, you know, like you said.

Rhonda: Yes.

Donald: So maybe appealing to readers to be more - I think that readers tend to be a bit laid back, you know, it's easier for them to reach out to works from authors that they're more familiar with. You know, the more established names. Names that are everywhere. So it would be really helpful if they stop trying to be spoon-fed, if they actually try to go out there and search and look for what's out there that's authentic from upcoming voices, you know, where… anyway, anyway. Yeah…

Rhonda: Definitely. Definitely. I agree with that. I think we could really, readers can really help by not just accepting their favourite groups and their favourite authors every single time and really look for something different and also, in the industry, could we - although there's great value to every story, there are certain kinds of stories about cultures and people that are acceptable and I think that we should allow people of colour, we should allow marginalised persons to tell all sorts of stories and not immediately assume, oh there's no audience for this kind of story from someone like you. Why don't you tell us about yourself, why don't you tell us about your culture, why don't you tell us about your history? You know, people have things to say beyond that.

[Pop-ups from That’s So Poe: Very agreed with Rhonda and all of us working to support the authors we want to see more from by reading their work and talking about it. / And agreed with Donald about how we have to put in the work to searching out things as well.

Donald: I would like to recommend, it's a medium, Kickstarter. There's a lot of awesome works by Black authors being kickstarted. There's a lot of great works. Comics, books, novellas being kickstarted.

 

Alasdair: Mmhmm

Donald: Yeah, so. Yeah. Because a lot of these authors might not have the mediums to come out with big publishers so they eventually end up putting out their works by themselves through crowdfunding. So it would be really helpful to check out which works are being kickstarted and trying to see if you can support the promising works.

Alasdair: I agree completely and I think the interesting thing about the discussion we've had across the last hour is I wonder whether all this could, what this all boils down to, it's almost an opportunity and maybe, perhaps, even an obligation. We are all having to interact with culture in wildly different, in a very different way than we were in February. Remember February? I almost do, now.

Joanne: It was 84 years ago.

Alasdair: There is an opportunity now to try different authors, different voices and I would argue there's also an obligation to do that because especially in the kind of massive social and political upheaval which we are currently living through, there is a chance to make things better, and make things better, as has been pointed out, permanently rather than for the space of the lifetime of a Twitter hashtag and I am sincerely hopeful that if enough people put the work in, and the work has to be done by everybody, that's going to happen. That we're going to see focus on authors who have previously been overlooked. We're going to see a change in approach and a change in inclusiveness for want of a better word and I'm very conscious of people's time and I'm wondering whether this is perhaps a good point to, if possible, make a recommendation for an author from one of the groups that has traditionally been completely unfairly marginalised, as an opportunity for our viewers to try something new and hopefully start down a very different path into some amazing stories which deserve new eyes on them.                                      

Rhonda: Yeah, for sure. A few authors really quickly from me. Tonya Liburd is a sci-fi author from Canada that's really good.

Donald: [different pronunciation] Tonya Liburd.

Rhonda: Yes, Liburd. Thank you. Does really good work. Also, Kacen Callender, they're amazing. And I would also like to draw attention to Arula Ratnakar who had her first work published in Clarkesworld, um, last year and should have something else coming from them that's brilliant very shortly. And yeah, I think that's it for me for now. There's lots of other people and I'm so sorry I forgot.

[Pop-up from That’s So Poe: Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger: Coming out in a month.]

Donald: Okay.

Alasdair: Donald.

Donald: Okay. I'll go with Nikhil Singh. Dilman Dila, Tochi [Onyebuchi] is pretty known. Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Milton Davis, Balogun Ojetade. Yeah

.

Alasdair: Excellent.

Rhonda: Ooh, before I forget Brandon O'Brien from Trinidad and Tobago.

Sean: Oh, yeah. Brandon O'Brien is great.

Alasdair: Brandon is the best. Love Brandon.

Rhonda: Yeah.

Donald: Okay and, yeah, Thaddeus Howze.

Sean: So I'll recommend some short fiction authors, so, Kathleen Kayembe who has a great novelette in Nightmare magazine. Ian Muneshwar, I might have butchered that last name, but he has great short fiction in Anathema magazine and Strange Horizons magazine and, while they have published a lot of novels they've written a lot of short fiction too so Nalo Hopkinson is another one who I'd recommend.

Alasdair: Fantastic.

Donald: Okay, I'll just add, there's this girl, Zin Rocklyn. She has a novelette on Tor. A horror novelette. Yeah.

Alasdair: Cool. On the list. Joanne.

Joanne: Yeah, I would say Premee Mohamad we mentioned earlier, Beneath the Rising. Anything by Priya Sharma who is an astonishing writer. Tade Thompson, I just read Rosewater, I thought that was excellent, yeah, and Stephanie Saulter who wrote the Gemsigns trilogy which is kind of near future SF. That was really, really good.

Alasdair: Brilliant. And I'm gonna round things off with a podcast recommendation. NIGHTLIGHT is by some distance one of the best horror podcasts on the planet. It's Black authors, Black narrators and Tonya is just a stunningly good podcast host. That's about half of my day job and Tonya is the kind of podcast host I want to be when I grow up. She does amazing work and it's one of those shows where every single episode you hear is fantastic.

So, that is hopefully a huge raft of recommendations for you to try some amazing fiction which deserves far more eyes on it and which is going to get you through the rest of this, hopefully, fractionally less horrible year, with some really fun and diverting and important and necessary stories for you.

I would like to thank my incredible panel who have been a font of knowledge and enthusiasm in exactly the way that I desperately hoped they would be. Thank you Donald, Joanne, Rhonda, Sean. Thank you to Jade for moderating and I hope you enjoyed listening and watching. Thank you and we'll see you soom!

Sean: It was great. Thank you very much.

Joanne: Thank you.

Rhonda: Thanks everyone have a great day.

Donald: Alright. Thanks everyone. Yes, bye.

Special thanks to WorldsinInk for drafting this transcript! Final responsibility for the text lies with Adri Joy- for any corrections or comments, please get in touch via Twitter.