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Articles by Brit Mandelo
I Made Her From Clay: Broken Places & Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor
Following her compelling talk, “Scifi stories that imagine a future Africa” (2017), the TED Books series now presents Nnedi Okorafor’s Broken Places & Outer Spaces. Part memoir, part craft text, the book is a personal narrative of the route Okorafor took to arrive at her career as a writer of science fiction.
All Else We Left Behind: Air Logic by Laurie J. Marks
Just shy of eighteen years since the publication of Marks’ first Elemental Logic novel, the story of Shaftal—of Karis and Zanja and Emil, their spouses and children and loved ones—reaches its conclusion in Air Logic. In the previous volume, an assassination attempt was made on Karis’s government and her person.
To Make Ethical Decisions, Be An Ethical Person: Water Logic by Laurie J. Marks
Time and water share characteristics, moving in currents, eddies, flows—and that fluid, continual circulation animates the third novel in Marks’s Elemental Logic series. In a similar vein to its namesake, Water Logic is a subtler book than the crackling Fire Logic, yet more capriciously changeable than Earth Logic.
We all have choices, don’t we? Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
Ivy Gamble is an almost-solvent private investigator based out of the gentrifying Bay Area, working from her basement office to resolve insurance disputes and prove marital infidelities. She’s making do, at least, until an unwanted client brings her a case she can’t refuse (or, chooses not to refuse): there has been a violent death among the staff at the Osthorne Academy for Young Mages and the headmaster believes it was murder.
Rather Than Defeat the Enemies, You Must Change Them: Earth Logic by Laurie J. Marks
At the close of Fire Logic, Karis has confronted Councilor Mabin and driven a spike into her heart—without killing her—as a symbolic display of authority and earth-elemental magics. In so doing, surrounded by her found family and allies, she declares herself known as the successor to Harald G’deon and the leader of their nation. However, Karis and her councilors-slash-kin aren’t necessarily prepared emotionally or personally to take over the ruling of a country.
Beasts that Feed on War: The Red-Stained Wings by Elizabeth Bear
Second in the Lotus Kingdoms trilogy and fifth novel set in the world of the Eternal Sky, The Red-Stained Wings kicks off immediately following the last scene of The Stone in the Skull (2017). At the opening of the novel, the Gage sets off across a poisoned desert to seek the solution to a Wizard’s riddle and the Dead Man remains behind with the rajni Mrithuri in a kingdom under siege. Meanwhile, Sayeh rajni is captive to one prince while her toddler son is captive to a second.
Living in Hope is a Discipline: Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks
Seventeen years after Tor’s original publication of the first Elemental Logic novel, Fire Logic, the fourth and final installment in the series is due out from Small Beer Press on June 4th. In the lead-up, the press has also released handsome reprint editions of the prior books, inviting a fresh base of readers to discover them—including me. Fire Logic was released in 2002 and won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Novel the following year.
Love, War, and Bodies: Catching Up With Saga by Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples
While I’m a regular reader of comics, I’ve been tending toward short series or single-volume graphic novels for the past few years. Almost all of them have been queer, the majority of them also coming from small presses, so I’ve been out of the loop on mainstream series. However, a few months ago a friend of mine was reading Saga and gushing about their appreciation for it. Nonplussed, I asked for some details, teasers perhaps, a bit of information to tempt my palate.
Folded Spaces: Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
Haimey Dz is a salvage tug operator with a small crew—Connla the pilot, Singer the shipmind AI, and two cats—who stumbles onto astounding ancient technology and the evidence of a monstrous crime during the recovery of a wrecked ship at the edges of inhabited space. Pirates, corrupt outpost officials, and an ever-tightening web of old secrets lead to a chase across the vast expanse of space where Haimey’s life as well as the current galactic social order hang in the balance.
I Must Be Writing for Both of Us: Wild Life by Molly Gloss
Set in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the twentieth century, Wild Life takes the narrative frame of a journal, written across a period of weeks, by Charlotte Bridger Drummond—single mother of five boys, ardent public feminist, professional adventure-romance writer—wherein she has a wilderness experience of her own. Her housekeeper’s granddaughter has gone missing on a trip with her father to the logging camp where he works.
A Politics of Synthesis: The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
Ecological disaster and social collapse loom on the horizon for the inhabitants of January, human descendants of a generation ship whose advanced technologies have long since failed. Political and economic tensions ride high in both of the planet’s most populous cities, separated by a deadly tract of wilderness and segregated by past conflicts, while trouble also brews outside human habitation in the massive section of the planet that exists in total darkness.
A Politics of Synthesis: The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
Ecological disaster and social collapse loom on the horizon for the inhabitants of January, human descendants of a generation ship whose advanced technologies have long since failed. Political and economic tensions ride high in both of the planet’s most populous cities, separated by a deadly tract of wilderness and segregated by past conflicts, while trouble also brews outside human habitation in the massive section of the planet that exists in total darkness.
Holding the Hill: The Wicked King by Holly Black
The Wicked King is the second novel in Holly Black’s Folk of the Air series, set five months after the close of last year’s much-discussed The Cruel Prince (reviewed here). Jude has placed Cardan on the throne with herself as seneschal in an attempt to preserve her youngest sibling’s freedom from the crown for at least a year and a day.
Queering SFF: The Art of Collecting Short Fiction
Lethe Press has been a consistent source of queer speculative fiction for more than a decade now, with an ever-expanding catalogue of writers from diverse and engaging backgrounds. In fact, some of the earliest Queering SFF posts I wrote for Tor.com included an interview with the owner of the press, Steve Berman—and a review of Wilde Stories 2010, his annual best-of gay sff collection.
Blood Relations: My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Korede has her fair share of concerns in life: a declining familial fortune and social position, a frustrating job as a nurse in a large hospital with an irresponsible staff, a lack of romantic prospects, and a gorgeous but immature younger sister who has an unsavory habit of murdering her boyfriends.
Disaster Management: The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross
Mhari Murphy has been stepping delicately through often-capricious, often-brutal matters of state under the New Management until she’s tasked with the creation of an organization resembling the unfettered Laundry of decades past. The United States has, apparently, wholesale forgotten its President; furthermore, their diplomatic channels have gone eerily, threateningly dark. Not for the first time, something rotten is afoot across the pond.
An Important Thing to Learn: Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Friday Black is the debut collection of Syracuse-based writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, gathering twelve pieces of short fiction spanning from 2014 to now. These stories mingle the mundane and the extraordinary, the exaggerated and the surreal, all for the purpose of commenting on pivotal, often horrible moments in contemporary American culture. The collection is cutting from start to finish, a deep stare into the sociocultural abyss shot through with bleak humor.
Whatever Walked There, Walked Alone: Revisiting Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House is perhaps the most-researched, most-written-about of Jackson’s longform works. Published in 1959, the novel follows four people—Dr. Montague, Luke, Theodora, and our protagonist Eleanor—as they attempt to summer at Hill House for the purpose of doing research on its reported supernatural phenomena.
40 Years of Women’s SF: The Future is Female! edited by Lisa Yaszek
The Future is Female! is a historically-oriented anthology collecting sf written by women that spans from the early pulps to the cusp of the New Wave. All but one of the stories included were originally published in contemporary magazines, an editorial choice emphasizing the fact that women have from the start been major commentators, taste-makers, and artists within genre fiction.
Growing Older, Growing Wiser: On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
Originally published as a webcomic (2016-2017), Tillie Walden’s On a Sunbeam is a fantastical queer coming of age tale. The dual narrative follows Mia across two significant portions of her life, first during her freshman year at the boarding school where she meets Grace, and second, five years later, when she begins her first adult job out of school.
Life for Death for Life: Strange Grace by Tessa Gratton
Strange Grace is a standalone young adult novel from Tessa Gratton (also author of recently-released The Queens of Innis Lear) set in a town that knows no lasting hardship due to a pact with the devil. Illnesses pass in a night; wounds heal without infection; babies are born healthy with safe mothers; crops thrive under perfectly timed rains. However, the pact is upheld by the sacrifice of a young man every seven years to run the devil’s forest and see if he comes out victorious.
Dig to the Insides: Alien Virus Love Disaster by Abbey Mei Otis
Abbey Mei Otis’s first long-form collection, Alien Virus Love Disaster: Stories, is a powerful debut volume published by the perennially impressive Small Beer Press. The book contains twelve stories with publication dates spanning the past eight years, including “Sweetheart” which appeared on Tor.com in 2010. Otis’s fiction has a dynamic blend of contemporary and speculative approaches, diamond-edged and furious in her exploration of power, oppression, and grief.
The Book as Archive: An Informal History of the Hugos by Jo Walton
Collecting the column series that ran from 2010-2013 on Tor.com, An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, 1953-2000 contains Jo Walton’s original year-by-year exploration posts, brief essays on select nominee novels, and occasional threaded comments from regular contributors such as Gardner Dozois, David G. Hartwell, and Rich Horton. The result is a hefty, handsome hardcover that physically archives a digital experience.
This is a Call to Arms: The Descent of Monsters by JY Yang
Third in the Tensorate Series, The Descent of Monsters is the record of an investigation conducted by Chuwan Sariman into the gruesome destruction of the Rewar Teng research facility by one of its captive creatures. Sariman is a foul-mouthed Tensor of foreign background whose role in the Protectorate has never been secure. Married to a pirate and motivated via an internal sense of justice rather than an external set of politics, she’s not cut out to conduct a cover-up.
Every Day was Another Body: Apocalypse Nyx by Kameron Hurley
Nyxnissa so Dasheem—ex-soldier, ex-assassin—is a disreputable and legally questionable bounty hunter, hurtling toward her own demise by way of as much whiskey and as many poor choices as she can manage. Apocalypse Nyx collects five original stories about her, four of which were previously published on Hurley’s Patreon for subscribers.
Dear Joanna Russ: A Letter for an Inimitable Writer
While researching for We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-Telling, I developed a passionate engagement with Russ’s astounding, provocative body of work—and I had intended, at the time, to write her a letter upon completion of the project to thank her for her contributions to feminism, science fiction, and queer scholarship. Unfortunately, on April 29th 2011, Joanna Russ passed away; I had not written or sent that letter.
Stories to Live Within: The Gone Away Place by Christopher Barzak
A sudden outbreak of tornadoes devastates Ellie Frame’s small Ohio town one spring morning, killing more than ninety people—including her best friends and her boyfriend who were trapped at the high school while she was skipping classes. However, those who were lost in the storm still linger, their ghosts haunting the town and their loved ones, unable to move past the liminal space Newfoundland has become.
Anybody Could Write a True Story: Black Helicopters by Caitlin R. Kiernan
The sea off the coast of New England has gone foul with the poison of a fallen star. Ptolema, an agent of the same sort as the Signalman but employed on a different shore, must unravel the chess game in action around her to resolve a potential apocalypse. The pieces in motion include a pair of psychokinetically gifted twins separated by a sinister doctor at the behest of a rival agency, the devouring filth of the tainted sea, attempted assassinations and misplaced pawns.
Out of Many: Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller
Blackfish City is Sam J. Miller’s second novel, the first for adult readers. In a post-climate-collapse world, the floating city of Qaanaaq is a social and technological marvel marked by vast disparities in wealth amongst its populace, ruled in large part by artificial intelligences and mysterious shareholders. The city is on the cusp of upheaval, though, as a viral disease ravages its population without control and the availability of real estate continues to cramp tighter and tighter.
Glam/Heart: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
With the delightfully garish neon tagline “In space, everyone can hear you sing” emblazoned across its cover, Catherynne M. Valente’s newest novel Space Opera is a marked shift from the seriousness of Deathless (2011) or Palimpsest (2009). It is, in fact, nothing less than intergalactic Eurovision in the fine stylistic tradition of Douglas Adams—madcap, bizarre, comedic, and shot through with a certain wholesome kindness.
Shift and Stance: Susurrus on Mars by Hal Duncan
Susurrus on Mars, published in late 2017 by Lethe Press, follows the flirtations and observations of Susurrus—the god of small breezes, a child of Zephyros and Ares. In large part the novella revolves around the courtship of Jaq and Puk, two young men who meet in Erehwyna, a terraformed Martian settlement.
And They Found Us: Monster Portraits by Del and Sofia Samatar
Written by Sofia Samatar and illustrated by her brother Del Samatar, Monster Portraits is a short art-object of hybrid fiction/autobiography—about as interstitial as it gets—that “offers the fictional record of a writer in the realms of the fantastic shot through with the memories of a pair of Somali-American children growing up in the 1980s.” The text for this collaborative work was a prior finalist for the 2013 Calvino Prize; Rose Metal Press brings it to readers for the first time, filled...
Oneness through Time: Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories by Vandana Singh
Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories is the first North American collection from physicist and writer Vandana Singh, published by Small Beer Press. Of the fourteen stories, all but one are reprints collected from across the past several years; the final piece, “Requiem,” is a novella original to this book. The effect of this collection is something like a tessellation.
An Inkling of the Strange: Karin Tidbeck’s Jagannath
Swedish writer Karin Tidbeck’s short fiction collection, Jagannath, is getting a new edition from Vintage. Originally published in English by the tiny press Cheeky Frawg—the passion project of Ann and Jeff VanderMeer—the collection contains thirteen pieces of short fiction that range from whimsical to intensely discomfiting, all having a distinct touch of the surreal or the weird.
Announcing the Nominees for the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award
The nominees for 2018’s Philip K. Dick Award have been announced–congratulations to all! Here are the nominees: The Book of Etta by Meg Elison (47North) Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (Orbit) After the Flare by Deji Bryce Olukotun (The Unnamed Press) The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt (Angry Robot) Revenger by Alastair Reynolds (Orbit) Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Tor.com) The Philip K.
Everything You Need to Know about Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams
Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams is a US/UK produced anthology series adapting ten of Dick’s short stories for the big screen. It’s very much in the Black Mirror style, presenting standalone episodes with strongly individual visual identities under a single banner. It starts airing in the US today (January 12th)) on Amazon Video—but thanks to some, shall we say, eccentric scheduling decisions, the first six episodes aired in the UK last year.
Charles Stross’s Dark State (Audio Excerpt)
We’re excited to share an audio excerpt from Charles Stross’ Dark State, a sleek and provocative techno-thriller set in The Merchant Princes multi-verse. Dark State ups the ante on the already volatile situations laid out in Empire Games, as Stross dives deep into the underbelly of paratime espionage, nuclear warfare, and state surveillance. Listen to Chapter 2 below, read by Kate Reading. (You can read Chapter 1 here.) Dark State is available from Tor Books and Tor Books UK.
The First Sisters: Naondel by Maria Turtschaninoff
In Maresi, translated and released last winter by Amulet Books, readers came to know the Red Abbey: a separatist women’s island, full to the brim of magic, sisterhood, and strength. Turtschaninoff returns us to that world with Naondel, a powerful, brutal prequel that reveals the origin of the Abbey and the trials of the First Sisters.
“There’s More Here Than You’re Willing to See”: Watch the Altered Carbon Trailer
With just a handful of weeks until the premiere of Altered Carbon, Netflix has released a full trailer for its adaptation of Richard K. Morgan’s cyberpunk noir novel. In the trailer, soldier-turned-revolutionary Takeshi Kovacs is resurrected against his will, to solve the murder of a rich man, in a future where humans can transfer their consciousness between bodies, or “sleeves,” in order to attain immortality.
Bookending Realism with Fairy Tale: The Vanishing Princess by Jenny Diski
Before her death from lung cancer in 2016, Jenny Diski was perhaps best known as an essayist and travel writer, with a gift for combining travel writing with memoir, as in her 1997 work, Skating to Antarctica.
Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon Makes the Alien Seem Familiar
When I think of a first-contact story, I think of a comfortable status quo shattered by the arrival of alien invaders. But when I began reading Okorafor’s Lagoon, there was no comfort zone to violate. The dialects, the backdrops, and the attitudes of the people of Lagos were not an invisible “default” for me, not the American template that Hollywood writers gleefully and predictably invite aliens to devastate.
The Twerking Stormtroopers You Didn’t Even Know You Were Looking For
It’s hard out there for a Trooper, with all the Jedi masters tricking you and Vader threatening to Force-choke you for the slightest infraction. Luckily these guys have found a way to blow off the stress of working on a Death Star—they’ve unlocked a talent for twerking! Too bad an unwelcome audience member shows up and ruins the party.
Where Your Own Talents Lie: The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
The Cruel Prince is the first of a fresh trilogy from lauded young adult author Holly Black. Raised in faerie as Gentry by her adoptive father though she herself is mortal, Jude is on the cusp of adulthood and has lost her patience for powerlessness. Her sister Taryn has decided to wed into the Court; Jude, on the other hand, has set out to become a knight.
Black Mirror Uses Star Trek Tropes to Critique Male Nerd Fantasies
The worst part about Black Mirror’s Star Trek homage “USS Callister” is that for ten minutes, I felt sorry for Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons). Despite being CTO of a major company making the best in immersive space adventures through the game Infinity, he is nonetheless recognized as neither a leader nor any sort of admirable man. Softspoken, awkward, downtrodden, he inspires no small measure of pity, and enough sympathy that we viewers don’t begrudge him his forays into simulated space.
Child of a Mad God
When Aoleyn loses her parents, she is left to fend for herself among a tribe of vicious barbarians. Bound by rigid traditions, she dreams of escaping to the world beyond her mountain home. The only hopefor achieving the kind of freedom she searches for is to learn how to wield the mysterious power used by the tribe’s coven known as the Song of Usgar. Thankfully, Aoleyn may be the strongest witch to have ever lived, but magic comes at price.
Enter the Silmarils! (U Can’t Touch Them)
In Which the Prize Jewels of the Noldor Are Made, Everyone Gawks, and Melkor Is—Surprise!—Outed As A Big, Big Jerk In “Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor,” we see, at last, the pièce de résistance of all Elvendom. The Silmarils are the reason for the treason and the best excuse for this book’s kick-ass title. How and why they come to be made is a bit mysterious, but then we move right along to see the reactions they elicit in all who behold them—their maker, other Elves, the Valar.
Binti: The Night Masquerade
Binti has returned to her home planet, believing that the violence of the Meduse has been left behind. Unfortunately, although her people are peaceful on the whole, the same cannot be said for the Khoush, who fan the flames of their ancient rivalry with the Meduse. Far from her village when the conflicts start, Binti hurries home, but anger and resentment has already claimed the lives of many close to her.
Lessons in Chivalry (and Chauvinism): Have Space Suit-Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement. There are many gateways into science fiction—books that are our first encounter with a world of limitless possibilities.
Delirious Stars and Fungous Scarecrows: Thomas Ligotti’s “The Shadow at the Bottom of the World”
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn. Today we’re looking at Thomas Ligotti’s “The Shadow at the Bottom of the World,” first published in his 1991 collection Grimscribe: His Lives and Works. Spoilers ahead. In a certain small town, this autumn is not the calendar-perfect month of fruitfulness and foliage the people have known before.
Swan and Girl Souls: The Sisters of the Crescent Empress by Leena Likitalo
The second half of Leena Likitalo’s Waning Moon Duology, The Sisters of the Crescent Empress, picks up directly from the close of the prior book (reviewed here). The five sisters have been sent to Angefort, confined to an isolated estate where exiled royals often find their ends in the Empire—and the house is as haunted as its new charges are.
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