Thursday Morning Superhero

I am very excited to check out Captain Marvel this weekend, but was alerted to this upcoming "superhero" film that is flipping the script a little bit. It reminds me of Joe Hill's "The Cape" in some ways, and I am very intrigued.  The trailer is not for the feint of heart so consider yourself warned.

Pick of the Week:
Black Hammer '45 #1 - The incredible team of Jeff Lemire, Ray Fawkes, Matt Kindt, Sharlene Kindt and Marie Enger are bringing us all back into the Golden Age of superheroes thanks to this new title from Darkhorse.  The Black Hammer Squad spent their time making the world hell for the Nazi's. They stopped them in the air, on the ground, and in the sea. Despite some of the supernatural creations of the Nazi's, The Black Hammer Squad had little to fear.  The book opens with with members of the team, now in their 90's, getting together because of something significant about the date. We are treated to some thrilling flash-backs, but an ominous final mission seems to be at the heart of this series. This book jumps off the pages thanks to the incredible work by the Kindts and it is always easy to get on board when it comes to superheroes defeating the Nazi's. The creative team behind this series is a powerhouse and I cannot wait to see what went wrong in the final mission and what the team is getting back together for on that fateful day.

The Rest:
Paper Girls #26 - The four girls have been sent to the four corners of the "cube" and find themselves in different timelines all posing their own problems. One of the highlights for me was the Michael Jackson zing that must have been a last minute add that was particular timely. As this time-traveling sci-fi wave of nostalgia races towards its conclusion (it is ending in a double-sized issue #30) the girls appear to have one last chance to return to 1988 and save the world. I am curious if the issues will continue to feature all of the girls or if we will have one issue per girl and the second half of the finale brings it all together. Brian K. Vaughan appears to set the stage for each girl to have their own mission in their current whereabouts and an ally to assist. I fail at revisiting this series when new issues drop and I really owe it to myself to start this series over. Vaughan weaves a complex tale that spans multiple timelines with competing factions that has me scratching my head trying to understand how it all fits together.

Star Wars: Vader - Dark Visions #1 - Marvel unveiled a new mini-series that focuses on some of Vader's side quests. In this on-off, Vader finds himself on a planet that has seen better days. The people of this world live underground after their planet was ravaged by a shark looking Kaiju known as the Ender. People will scavenge the surface for food, but always have a quick route underground should the Ender awaken. Vader's Tie-Fighter crash landing on the planet has awakened the great beast and the sole individual who remained on the surface is treated to quite the epic duel. This felt pretty mindless and cheesy, but entertaining.  It is like a direct to DVD film that is worth checking out on Netflix, but you understand why it didn't make it to the big screen. I will likely check out the other issues in this series if they are as entertaining as this book was.

Batman #66 - Batman remains trapped inside his own nightmares, and his current plan of escaping isn't going to well thanks to the stubborn nature of the woman being interrogated. For some reason Batman feels if he can understand truly why Catwoman, Selina Kyle, truly loves him he will be able to escape.  This issue is an interrogation of Ms. Kyle as we walk through the complicated history the two have and try to gain a sense of their attraction to one another. I find it funny how intense the covers feels compared to the walk down memory lane Catwoman provides throughout this issue. Reading this right after Black Hammer made it feel even more retro than intended. I remain impressed with Tom King's current arc for the Dark Knight and am happy to be back on the Batman Train.  Choo-choo!


POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

Microreview [Book]: The Ingenious by Darius Hinks

The Ingenious never quite capitalises on the promise of its worldbuilding, but it offers a fun, fast-paced adventure with a surprisingly sympathetic antihero. 

Art by John Coulthart

I'm considering adding "secondary world fantasy cities" to my list of "favourite genres that aren't really genres". Cities that go beyond just being a spot on the map surrounding whatever medieval-ish castle the kingdom's monarchs live in; cities with their own magic, with recognisable neighbourhoods, with immigration patterns and multifaceted politics and secrets known only to kids who pay attention (but don't spend enough time in school). From Bulikov to Sharakhai to Janloon, there's a ton of great epic fantasy whose urban settings are just as much characters as the people within them.

With that in mind, it's easy to see why the blurb of The Ingenious, a book about Exiles trapped in the city of Athanor. Unfortunately for them, Athanor operates on inequality and deeply creepy magic, and leaving is a far from certain proposition. Rather than staying in one place, it moves through space and time using that magic, apparently leaving a path of wholesale slaughter and destruction everywhere it goes. Brought into the city years ago, Isten and her group are Exiles from a land called Rukon, where they were on the verge of revolution against their emperor. Now, they're unable to leave the city let alone return to the land which rejected them. Isten herself has been raised up to be a saviour for her people, and is still looked to as a leader by the rest of the Exiles despite being an addict, a criminal and a general mess of a human.

Enter Alzen, an elite mage (or "Curious Man") who, even by the deeply creepy standards of the city, really pushes creepy to a new, murderous, self-serving level. Alzen realises that Isten can be manipulated to his own ends, which involve introducing widespread drug addiction into the city and then pulling people's souls out through a weird skin monster, all in pursuit of power. Although his partnership with Isten is initially reluctant, he quickly discovers that despite being a commoner and an outsider, Isten may have power of her own that complements his ambitions. In return, Alzen offers Isten a chance to refocus her people's efforts around improving their position within the city - where they are outsiders surviving on the criminal margins - albeit at the cost of her long-term plans for escape.

I see from Hinks' bibliography that his previous work has been Warhammer tie-in fiction, and although my experience with that franchise is limited, I know enough to see the influences here. It's echoed in some of the plot beats, and in the grimdark elements of the setting, especially the ageless, quasi-religious aspects of the city's leadership. That said, The Ingenious definitely feels first and foremost like its own thing, though the worldbuilding is probably best described as serviceable: it gives Athanor depth and history, and the set-up of the Curious Men and the city's wandering nature adds a decent amount of novelty, but there's nothing that really leaps out upon reading. In theory, Athanor is full of various unique fantasy races, but these only turn up in passing, which feels like a missed opportunity. Instead, we get a laser focus on the two specific groups the novel comes into contact with - the exiles and the Curious Men - and while both do interact with (and sometimes murder) people from other groups in the city, the trials of the rest of this enormous city aren't explored outside a general "inequality is bad, overthrow tyrants" message that winds up being interchangeable for both Rukon and Athanor.

Likewise the personalities of the exiles, and their own troubles in the city - there's machinations around gang warfare, but none of the characters on either side were particularly memorable, and Isten spends so much time focused on running errands for Alzen that the elements with her family fade into the background at times. It doesn't help that it's hard, as a reader, to believe that Isten really wants to retrench as a drug lord: it's a trope that's so often used to distinguish "actually bad" criminals from "noble" ones, so it's a tall order to slot a sympathetic character in that role, and despite her many shortcomings Isten remains sympathetic throughout. The issue here is not so much the predictability of Isten's change of heart - the narrative wouldn't be at all satisfying without it - but my struggle to suspend my disbelief in what the character thinks she wants. It's a small niggle, but it was enough to underscore my indifference in these plot elements, which becomes a problem when we pivot back to the fate of the Exiles, and Isten's integrity as a leader, in the final act.

What The Ingenious does do well is managing its action and tension, particularly the relationship between Isten and Alzen, helped by the fact that the latter literally sits in the former's head for their missions together. Isten's growing understanding of how the city works outside her limited outsider perspective, coupled with the taste of power her deal with Alzen brings, makes for a solid character arc that kept me rooting for her even through the messiness and  flirtations with drug-pushing supremacy. The action sequences are all well done - a highlight is the segment in which Isten disguises herself and sneaks onto a boat leaving the city, all while being mentally directed by Alzen and trying to avoid suspicion despite the fact that neither of them are very good at the subterfuge.

All in all, this is a solidly crafted read which could easily fill a spare evening; fans of dark but not entirely amoral fiction, of well-built fantasy cities, and of the kind of elite vs. underdog political machinations found in books like Bradley P. Beaulieu's "Song of Shattered Sands", should find elements here that appeal. While it never rose above the level of diversion for me, and I miss the opportunity to have really dug down into the genuinely diverse fantasy city that's glimpsed in the background of this narrative, I think The Ingenious does what it sets out to do, and that's plenty.

The Math
Baseline Assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 Isten is quite likeable for an aspiring all-powerful drug lord; +1 Entertaining action scenes

Penalties: -1 Diversity of the main characters never quite reflects the promise of the city's worldbuilding

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Math:

Baseline Score: 8/10

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

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

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

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

Microreview [book]: JUDGES Volume 1 by Michael Carroll, Charles J. Eskew, and George Mann

Breakin' the Law

 
How does the world get from the police we know today to Judge Dredd? JUDGES Volume 1 brings us closer to the answer with a trio of short stories set in the Judge Dredd universe. It doesn't quite reach the bombast of that source material though.

The three stories take place in the early day of the Judges program, where newly trained judges are paired up with the normal police force between the police are eliminated entirely. Each story seemingly takes us closer to that complete replacement, with the first one starting with a group of judges walking into a police station for integration and takeover. The stories are a murder mystery, a race against the clock to find a killer's last victim, and a battle against an unusually armed gang and they're serviceable plots.

But if you're not familiar with the Judges program or the Judge Dredd world, these stories aren't going to do you a lot of favors in the way of building this world. I came into them only knowing what I learned from the Judge Dredd movie (awful) and the later Dredd (AWESOME) and JUDGES Volume 1 didn't exactly expand my knowledge of this world. It talks plenty about the Law Ranger motorcycle as an object or the judge's helmets without describing any of them. I'm told the Judges program is law now, but what brought it about or why isn't elaborated on. I guess it assumes anyone going into these stories would know this stuff from the start and that's a false assumption. Something that's pitched as the early days of the Judges should make a minimum effort to bring new readers into this world.

I also found the stories themselves to be lacking in Judge Dredd-esque action. There's no lack of action in either movie, but these stories are largely about police work. They have plenty to say about class and race, but it's all a little pedestrian. The third story in the trio, When the Light Lay Still, at least has the most fleshed out characters but it also suffers from some timeline confusion as each chapter jumps around in time. I don't want to reveal myself as an idiot but I didn't feel like I caught the whole story between these skips back and forth in time and mixed up uses of criminal aliases. Even a relationship between the main character and a love interest is a mixed bag of implied wrongings and stated actions.

While the first two stories are okay if plodding, the third is a real rollercoaster. It's both excitingly ambitious and overly complex. JUDGES Volume 1, between the okay stories and lack of world-building, is for fans of the source material only.

---

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 5/10

Bonuses: +1 Judge Poet and Judge Jones from When the Light Lay Still are written like real human characters

Penalties: -1 Next to no world-building for Dredd newbies

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10 (problematic, but has redeeming qualities)

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: Carroll, Michael, Eskew, Charles J., and Mann, George. JUDGES Volume 1 (Rebellion, 2019)

New Books Spotlight

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

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? Is there something we should consider spotlighting in the future? Let us know in the comments!

Bear, Elizabeth. Ancestral Night [Saga]
Publisher's Description

A space salvager and her partner make the discovery of a lifetime that just might change the universe in this wild, big-ideas space opera from multi award-winning author Elizabeth Bear. 

Halmey Dz and her partner Connla Kurucz are salvage operators, living just on the inside of the law...usually. Theirs is the perilous and marginal existence—with barely enough chance of striking it fantastically big—just once—to keep them coming back for more. They pilot their tiny ship into the scars left by unsuccessful White Transitions, searching for the relics of lost human and alien vessels. But when they make a shocking discovery about an alien species that has been long thought dead, it may be the thing that could tip the perilous peace mankind has found into full-out war.

Energetic and electrifying, Ancestral Night is a dazzling new space opera, sure to delight fans of Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, and Peter F. Hamilton. 

Why We Want It: I don't pre-order many novels because I still do have to pay the mortgage, but Ancestral Night is one of this year's pre-orders. Really, anything by Elizabeth Bear is essential reading. I've loved her fantasy novels (urban or epic), but Bear's return to space opera is one to watch.

Cho, Zen. The True Queen [Ace]
Publisher's Description

In the follow-up to the “delightful” Regency fantasy novel (NPR.org) Sorcerer to the Crown, a young woman with no memories of her past finds herself embroiled in dangerous politics in England and the land of the fae. 

When sisters Muna and Sakti wake up on the peaceful beach of the island of Janda Baik, they can’t remember anything, except that they are bound as only sisters can be. They have been cursed by an unknown enchanter, and slowly Sakti starts to fade away. The only hope of saving her is to go to distant Britain, where the Sorceress Royal has established an academy to train women in magic.

If Muna is to save her sister, she must learn to navigate high society, and trick the English magicians into believing she is a magical prodigy. As she’s drawn into their intrigues, she must uncover the secrets of her past, and journey into a world with more magic than she had ever dreamed. 

Why We Want It: It's been almost four years since Sorcerer to the Crown announced Zen Cho as a major new writer to watch and I'm sure I'm not alone in my eager anticipation for The True Queen.

Corey, James S.A. Tiamat's Wrath [Orbit]
Publisher's Description

Thirteen hundred gates have opened to solar systems around the galaxy. But as humanity builds its interstellar empire in the alien ruins, the mysteries and threats grow deeper.

In the dead systems where gates lead to stranger things than alien planets, Elvi Okoye begins a desperate search to discover the nature of a genocide that happened before the first human beings existed, and to find weapons to fight a war against forces at the edge of the imaginable. But the price of that knowledge may be higher than she can pay.

At the heart of the empire, Teresa Duarte prepares to take on the burden of her father’s godlike ambition. The sociopathic scientist Paolo Cortázar and the Mephistophelian prisoner James Holden are only two of the dangers in a palace thick with intrigue, but Teresa has a mind of her own and secrets even her father the emperor doesn’t guess.

And throughout the wide human empire, the scattered crew of the Rocinante fights a brave rear-guard action against Duarte’s authoritarian regime. Memory of the old order falls away, and a future under Laconia’s eternal rule — and with it, a battle that humanity can only lose — seems more and more certain. Because against the terrors that lie between worlds, courage and ambition will not be enough… 

Why We Want It: If you don't know about The Expanse by now, I'm not sure what to tell you. Now eight volumes into a nine book series, The Expanse just keeps getting better.  With the previous volume, Persepolis Rising, James S.A. Corey jumped the narrative thirty years into the future and it revitalized a series that was already vital.

Hurley, Kameron The Light Brigade [Saga]
Publisher's Description

From the Hugo Award­­–winning author of The Stars Are Legion comes a brand-new science fiction thriller about a futuristic war during which soldiers are broken down into light in order to get them to the front lines on Mars. 

They said the war would turn us into light. 
I wanted to be counted among the heroes who gave us this better world. 

The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back…different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief—no matter what actually happens during combat.

Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on.

Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero—or maybe a villain; in war it’s hard to tell the difference.

A worthy successor to classic stories like Downbelow Station, Starship Troopers, and The Forever War, The Light Brigade is award-winning author Kameron Hurley’s gritty time-bending take on the future of war. 

Why We Want It: Check out the short story, then come back. Kameron Hurley is one hell of a writer and if The Stars Are Legion (my review) marked Hurley leveling up again in her skill and craft of storytelling excellence, The Light Brigade promises to raise the bar yet again. There's nobody quite like Hurley out there and each novel is a must read experience.

McGuire, Seanan. That Ain't Witchcraft [DAW]

Publisher's Description
The eighth book in the funny and fast-paced InCryptid urban fantasy series returns to the mishaps of the Price family, eccentric cryptozoologists who safeguard the world of magical creatures living in secret among humans. 

Crossroads, noun:

1. A place where two roads cross.
2. A place where bargains can be made.
3. See also “places to avoid.”

Antimony Price has never done well without a support system. As the youngest of her generation, she has always been able to depend on her parents, siblings, and cousins to help her out when she’s in a pinch—until now. After fleeing from the Covenant of St. George, she’s found herself in debt to the crossroads and running for her life. No family. No mice. No way out.

Lucky for her, she’s always been resourceful, and she’s been gathering allies as she travels: Sam, fūri trapeze artist turned boyfriend; Cylia, jink roller derby captain and designated driver; Fern, sylph friend, confidant, and maker of breakfasts; even Mary, ghost babysitter to the Price family. Annie’s actually starting to feel like they might be able to figure things out—which is probably why things start going wrong again.

New Gravesend, Maine is a nice place to raise a family…or make a binding contract with the crossroads. For James Smith, whose best friend disappeared when she tried to do precisely that, it’s also an excellent place to plot revenge. Now the crossroads want him dead and they want Annie to do the dirty deed. She owes them, after all.

And that’s before Leonard Cunningham, aka, “the next leader of the Covenant,” shows up…

It’s going to take everything Annie has and a little bit more to get out of this one. If she succeeds, she gets to go home. If she fails, she becomes one more cautionary tale about the dangers of bargaining with the crossroads.

But no pressure. 

Why We Want It: I am hooked on Seanan McGuire's Incryptid series. I had meant to spend much of the last year reading through McGuire's October Daye novels, but Incryptid's Hugo nomination for Best Series shifted my focus and I haven't looked back. These are addictively good novels.

Pinsker, Sarah. Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea [Small Beer]
Publisher's Description

Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea is one of the most anticipated sf&f collections of recent years. Pinsker has shot like a star across the firmament with stories multiply nominated for awards as well as Sturgeon and Nebula award wins.

The baker’s dozen stories gathered here (including a new, previously unpublished story) turn readers into travelers to the past, the future, and explorers of the weirder points of the present. The journey is the thing as Pinsker weaves music, memory, technology, history, mystery, love, loss, and even multiple selves on generation ships and cruise ships, on highways and high seas, in murder houses and treehouses. They feature runaways, fiddle-playing astronauts, and retired time travelers; they are weird, wired, hopeful, haunting, and deeply human. They are often described as beautiful but Pinsker also knows that the heart wants what the heart wants and that is not always right, or easy. 

Why We Want It: Sarah Pinsker has twice been nominated for the Hugo Award and is a six time finalist for the Nebula Award (winning once) for her short fiction. Pinsker's name on a story is enough to grab my attention and interest. She's damn good. Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea is her debut collection of short stories and I am here for it.



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

Thursday Morning Superhero

This week has not been the best in terms of my New Year's resolutions. I have failed at watching any new DC movies (or even their new show Doom Patrol) and am bringing you all a trio of Marvel reviews including two major titles.  I will admit that I feel a bit intimidated hopping into the Valiant Universe, but will make an effort to improve moving forward.

Pick of the Week:
Daredevil #2 - Chip Zdarsky is not wasting any time bringing us a thrilling new arc for Daredevil.  After being framed for a murder, Daredevil is struggling to figure out who set him up.  He investigates a couple of leads, but not even Foggy believes that he is innocent.  Grasping at straws, he finds himself back at the scene of the crime and runs into a pair of detectives who are looking for him. If there is one thing you don't do when you meet a pair of cops looking for you is attack them.  Daredevil goes on the offensive and suffers some major repercussions. There is a lot to unfold, including the new detective who is on the case and his conversation with Fisk, and it appears that once again this series has done a great job passing the torch to a new creative team.

The Rest:
Doctor Aphra #29 - In a very Running Man-esque plot, Aphra must remain close to Triple-Zero to prevent their proximity bombs from exploding. Doctor Cornelius Evazan is broadcasting the entire event as they race to find the one specialist in the galaxy that can remove the bombs in time. The audience remains captivated as the two appear to grow as friends through their trials and tribulations, but a bounty hunter has an effective trap that might ruin the entire gambit.  The witty dialog between Aphra, Triple-Zero, and BeeTee (who makes a late appearance) brings me back to the early days of the comic when the trio was working with Vader. This has been a fun arc.


Captain America #8 - Speaking of super heroes with legal troubles, Steve Rogers finds himself locked up in a prison designed for people with super powers after being framed for, wait for it, a murder he didn't commit.  Rogers was framed because a man who looked like him installed a Hydra regime that didn't earn him any fans. That regime has been overthrown, but Rogers has a lot of enemies and is currently locked up with a lot of them. Fisk is mayor in this scenario and it makes me wonder where this fits with what is happening to Daredevil.  Is Marvel possibly setting up this year's summer event?  Doubtful, but fun to think about.




POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

Adventures in Short Fiction: February 2019

I've been on holiday in Costa Rica for the last couple of weeks, armed with my trusty e-reader and a mountain of reading intentions (and obviously some paperbacks as well for "just in case"). In between animal encounters of land and sea, I got a lot of reading done and tons of that was short fiction, filling spare moments with brief journeys into fantasy worlds and far future concepts. Along the way, I feel like I've gained more of an appreciation of what good short fiction brings to the table that longer lengths can't, hitting whatever emotional or intellectual centres it needs to with a carefully chosen balance of character, plot and world. Plus, while not every story is equally memorable - though many which I have read and forgotten from are no doubt the ones which have provoked other people to muse on and reread - the investment for reading short stories that miss the mark is much lower than for a novel, which makes a reading list of anthologies and magazines a great counterweight if, for example, you've also decided to also commit to some challenging longer stuff on the side. (Marlon James, I'm looking at you. And no, it wasn't even that Marlon James novel.)

New Suns ed. Nisi Shawl (2019).

This anthology of original speculative fiction by writers of colour has been put together by the magnificent Nisi Shawl, which is an early indication we're all going to be in for a great time. The seventeen stories within are varied and interesting and there's a good proportion of authors I already love, including Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Rebecca Roanhorse, and new-to-me names. The breadth of stories, tones and styles on display here is entertaining and, I think, important, making it abundantly clear that the work of authors of colour can't be reduced to a single set of issues or sub-genre or to the ever-shifting label of "message fiction".

There was so much interesting stuff in here that it's tricky to pick favourites: "The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex" by Tobias Buckell hit some great notes on the theme of intergalactic inequality and dependency, casting Earth as an "undiscovered" tourist spot for aliens, and the exploration of humans trying to live their lives and maintain their own culture against the constant stream of visitors is very well done. "The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations" by Minsoo Kang, told through the form of a historical text examining a war averted between a mad emperor and an ambitious sea captain, is beautifully written and contains a well-crafted sting in the tail of what could otherwise have been a romance for the ages. Rebecca Roanhorse's "Harvest" tells of a fling between Tansi, an aspiring chef, and a deer woman with murder on her mind, and is told with Roanhorse's talent for slow burning entrapment and horror even within the space of fifteen pages. And while it was a bit left-field, I have a real soft spot for "One Easy Trick" by Hiromi Goto, about a woman who finds a way to magic her own belly fat away and learns that it was a more important part of herself than she ever imagined. This is a great anthology to dip into, either story-by-story or in one super varied read, and I'm happy that it's put some great new authors on my radar.


Rating: 8/10

If This Goes On, Ed. Cat Rambo (2019).

This collection, kickstarted last year by the small Parvus Press, sets itself an interesting goal: encompassing the sense of disaster and impending doom that current political and environmental factors evoke (mainly focused on the USA) while also incorporating notes of hope. The result is slightly uneven, as some stories contain little more than a grimly extrapolated premise, but others do shine. Of these, it was the stories with a feeling of historical weight to them which really grabbed me. "Mr. Percy's Shortcut", by Andy Duncan, recounts the tale of an Appalachian miner - one of the few in his version of the future who hasn't switched to data mining - who spends his life digging through a mountain in order to reach the other side. It's a story of almost nonsensical triumph, but it feels "lived in" and the speculative elements are compelling but understated. On the much grimmer side, the stories "A Gardener's Guide to the Apocalypse" and "Free Wifi" present very different testimonials which we have reason to suspect would never be canonically read - the former, by Lynette Mejia, is a diary charting a year in the life of a gardener recording the growth around her despite the destruction which has taken all but her and her partner; the latter, by Marie L. Vibbert, a story of young rebellion in a corporatised world which is crushed in actuality but not in spirit. Both have strong character voices, underscored by the modes of telling, which really underscore the premises and stop them from being too grim despite the subject matter.

Some other gems in here include "Welcome to Gray", by Cyd Athens, a superhero origin story with notes of Henrietta Lacks and a great subversive take on representing dialect, and E. Lily Yu's story, "Green Glass: A Love Story", a no-expense-spared romance in very late capitalism which manages to keep the protagonist's wish - to have real ice cream served at her wedding - naively sympathetic, without flinching from showing the widespread destruction and misery which surrounds those without the means to keep themselves insulated. All in all, this is a neat little collection despite its ups and downs, and while it's very tied to the political moment, if you're interested in on-the-pulse speculative fiction this is one to consider.

Rating: 6/10

How Long 'Til Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin (2018).

This is the first collection (i.e. a set of stories by a single author, whereas an anthology is a set by a group of authors brought together by a particular editor) I've covered in this roundup so far, and it's going to be a hard act to follow. I've read a couple of N.K. Jemisin's shorts before - notably, "The City Born Great", her Hugo-nominated urban fantasy of a couple of years ago, as well as some fiction around the Inheritance Trilogy (which is notably absent here). Lack of god-politics aside, if you're a fan of N.K. Jemisin then this is definitely a collection you will want to read. Spanning well over a decade of Jemisin's writing career, and running the genre gamut from space-faring science fiction ("Cloud Dragon Skies", "The Evaluators") to alternate history ("The Effluent Engine") to dystopian realism ("The Elevator Dancer") and urban fantasy ("The City Born Great", "Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters"). The worlds of the Broken Earth and of Dreamblood both put in appearances, in "proof of concept" stories which predate their respective novels, and there's a pair of stories, "The Trojan Girl" and "Valedictorian", set in the same post-singularity reality from very different perspectives.

There's so much good stuff in here, but I particularly want to highlight one which most represents the volume as a whole: the opening story, the "The Ones who Stay and Fight". As the title suggests, this is a response to Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", set in Um-Helat, a city of generally kind people living sustainably and harmoniously, and actively working to correct the injustices of the past and maintain their society as it is. In introducing this society, the narrator holds a dialogue with a fictionalised version of the reader, challenging their inability to suspend disbelief for a society bent towards compassionate progress without any dark "catch". Why is it so hard to believe that a kinder, better society is possible - and even if it isn't, what value is there in insisting, angrily, that hatred and suffering must always be present? It's a theme taken up in so many ways, big and small, by Jemisin's stories in this collection and beyond: where protagonists are often trying to exercise agency and dream of better things in the most imbalanced, hopeless of situations, and those who stand in their way are often not the characters who do incomprehensibly awful things - who are often complex, sympathetic and sometimes even redeemable - but who uphold and insist on the status quo which brought those "evil" acts about. "The Ones who Stay and Fight" explicitly challenges us to question where our suspension of disbelief kicks in, and why, and while that self-examination isn't strictly necessary to enjoy the rest of this collection, it's an exercise that we can only benefit from.

Rating: 9/10

Tor.com Jan/Feb 2019 (Download for free)

Tor.com's short fiction output hardly needs any introduction, but what might have escaped some peoples' attention is that there's now a free subscription service where they will send you a bimonthly ebook of stories published on the site for your e-reading pleasure. While this doesn't seem to be every single one, getting a free collection like this is still a no-brainer for me, and there's a range of fascinating stuff here by some great writers. "Deriving Life", by Elizabeth Bear, is a story of life and love in a world where people can guarantee a reduced but painless term of life by becoming a host to an alien parasite, explores its concept through the lens of a relationship between a dying host and the lover they are leaving behind. It's a deeply nuanced look at autonomy and the choices we make now and for our own futures, and while it doesn't offer any easy answers it maintains a huge amount of compassion towards its (queer) characters. Another favourite was "Circus Girl, the Hunter and Mirror Boy", about a woman who used to have the ghost of a drowned boy as her reflection, who reappears in her life right as he's being hunted down. The themes of identity are particularly interesting in JY Yang's atmospheric ghostly tale.

For fans of Mary Robinette Kowal's Lady Astronaut stories, there's another piece of punch card punk history here: "Articulated Restraint", a story of Elma York's colleague Ruby working a training mission that suddenly becomes much more serious and painful than expected. Ruby's voice and drive wasn't distinct enough from Elma's to really invest me in this as a standalone story, but taken with the rest of the series it's another interesting window into the ambition and fortitude expected of women trying to break through a militarised patriarchy in this high stakes world. There's also a piece from Analee Newitz's Autonomous world, "Old Media", which follows a couple of the characters from that piece in a sweet slice-of-life story about recovery, anime and naps. Worthy stories by Mimi Mondal and John Chu round out an overall very strong set of stories with lots of variety and food for thought.

Rating: 7/10

Anathema Magazine, Issue 6 (2019) (Read Online for Free)

Anathema's tagline is "Spec from the Margins", publishing queer speculative fiction from POC/aboriginal/indigenous creators, and this is the second issue of theirs I've read. Based on my experiences so far, I can confirm it's a magazine that's well worth your time, but one which requires a particular mindset to sit down and enjoy; in this issue in particular, every single story bursts off the page with loss and grief and while it's an exquisite, well-crafted sort of pain which never feels gratuitous, it's still a hard thing to get through. Among the best, most painful experiences in here are those dealing with families going to unimaginable lengths to hold together. In "There Are Ghosts Here" by Dominique Dickey, a young boy's life cut short under violent circumstances begets a similarly grim sacrifice from his sister and cousins, held together with magic that is simultaneously mundane and extremely creepy.

"The Plague House" by Maria Chhabra follows Catia, one of the few people immune from a deadly, unpleasant plague that is sweeping through her city, as she nurses the sick, watches those around her succumb and tries to save the life of one particular girl left in her care. It's a story which handles its body horror extremely well, driving home the awfulness of the plague without dwelling too deeply on the physical horror at the expense of the wider pain that people are going through as a result. The issue closes with "Pale Blue Dot", by Kai Hudson, an understated but equally powerful story about a family's survival in the face of economic uncertainty, even with the promise of the stars on their doorstep. Also of note is "This is the Nightmare", by Aysha U. Farah, which is a compelling futuristic Sherlock Holmes riff whose eventual direction left me guessing until quite near the end. The use of technology here - and particularly the "personality" that the Sherlock character ends up giving her unwanted robot pall - will make any reader who remembers their angsty teenhood wince in sympathy, but the relationships and setting make it so much more than an exercise in vicarious teen nostalgia. All in all, Anathema is a publication that's worth giving your heart to, even when you know its going to crush it with every page.

Rating: 7/10

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