Would anyone else like to talk about Silksong because I would like to talk about Silksong

I think saying "if you see a trans woman in a women's bathroom you should punch her in the balls" is an obvious incitement to violence. What are we doing here? These are not complex, unanswerable questions. This shit is obvious.

So after three weeks, the "apology" from the Seattle Hugo hosts involves explanations contradict the literal video evidence. Two highly experienced and respected professionals claiming they "didn't know" they'd need a rehearsal before going on stage to deliver a high profile award ceremony. Please.

Playing Tony Bookshop amd it's exactly the reset my poor sad brain needed, but some of the rec requirements are a bit of a mess 😅 just had someone get upset because Othello wasn't "antiquated" enough for the brief of "a classic play"

Herdling! Sword of the Sea! Strange Antiquities! Windstorm! This year is absolutely CRAMMED with great indie games and Ghosts of Yōtei is around the corner!

I’m hoping Split Fiction will get a nod.

I'm trying to predict what will be in the Game/Interactive Experience Hugo next year and it has the potential to be SO STACKED again. Blue Prince and Citizen Sleeper 2 are definitely on my ballot, I fully expect Clair Obscur will be once I catch up with it, but then there's so much still to come out

This is an excellent piece about what happened last weekend:

OK so is @ktempestbradford.com ever going to personally apologise for her part in that disrespectful shitshow of a Hugo ceremony or You butchered names and laughed about it. You skipped finalists and made people cry on what should have been a career highlight. And you have nothing to say?

I've got a ticket for R.F Kuang at Cambridge Guildhall on Thursday but I can no longer go. Do I know anyone in that area who is interested in going instead? It's £35 including book, and totally sold out otherwise.

I've got a ticket for R.F Kuang at Cambridge Guildhall on Thursday but I can no longer go. Do I know anyone in that area who is interested in going instead? It's £35 including book, and totally sold out otherwise.

Best Fanzine Black Nerd Problems, editors William Evans and Omar Holmon #HugoAwards

Being a host or announcer at an awards is an honor If you’re up there not trying with folks names You don’t deserve the honor

Hey, I have had a largely great experience at Worldcon, but the #Hugos owe @wordsiren.bsky.social an apology for forgetting to include her in the announced Lodestar nominees during the award ceremony. Kamilah deserved celebration, not this blatant disrespect.

Experiencing the Hugos over aeroplane wifi. Good luck to the Good Shit!

This talk around recommendations reminds me of the excellent question by the excellent @ldlewiswrites.com -- 'Are you a fan, or were you a fan?' If you can't recommend a favorite book written in the last five years, maybe bow out of the making recommendations to young people conversation.

A blog experiment the things that caught my eye online this week to share www.runalongtheshelves.net/blog/2025/8/...

I almost never want to play as a male character when character creation is an option. But I made an exception for Dragon Age Inquisition so I could pursue Lavellan/Dorian romance and I am now VERY invested in this relationship.

I would honestly love for reporters to actually push back on Julie Soto when she says that fanfic is an act of resistance, because what is her nazi sex slave fanfic resisting? Also extremely disappointed that you didn't mention JKR funding the court case that ruled transwomen aren't women

Here's Gothenburg, Sweden, scoring very high on the "best bookshops while travelling" list because not only do they have a dedicated SFF bookshop, but the first thing that caught my eye facing out was @brentclambert.bsky.social's A NECESSARY CHAOS from @neonhemlock.bsky.social! An excellent choice!

Intergalactic Mixtape is out and this week it's a blast from the past with tons of reviews and discussions of older titles (we love to see it)! PLUS: I share my eight favorite books so far in 2025 AND there's a U.S. giveaway for a copy of The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott. :D

Not sure where to start with romantasy? My starter pack for the NYT Book Review has you covered! We've got origin points, predecessors, and digressions into related genres! Also, dragons. Also, a stern defense of Demeter. (gift link)

32 hours to go, and the fungi issue is funded! We need another $2500 to fund our 25th anniversary issue … which would be pretty sweet, no? ($5000 for the working-class SF special. Just saying.)

"But if we professionalized Worldcon instead of it being a chaotic mess of volunteers then it wouldn't feel like Worldcon anymore." Yeah. That's the point. What Worldcon feels like to a lot of us right now sucks. It feels exclusionary, reactionary, and too wedded to problematic traditions.

If you need a reminder that what you're doing is worth doing, or a kick in the ass to start doing something you can be proud of, read @ldlewiswrites.com's write up on the Locus Award-winning Ignyte Awards. www.ldlewiswrites.com/news-updates...

Everything about this phenomenon is so embarrassing for the romance community.

I'm allowed to be fat in Pokemon Go now?!?

STRANGE HORIZONS REACHED BASE GOAL! GOOD JOB EVERYBODY! now, to reach the $22,500 stretch goal for a 🍄FUNGI ISSUE🍄, they need $2353

The great NewCon Press are having a summer sale this week. A whole bunch of great SF and F bundles and heavily discounted limited ed HBs. www.newconpress.co.uk/info/books.a...

If you’re interested in weird trans femme poetry in these trying times, I have a few ebooks for you. This is a long epic adeniro.itch.io/the-shanty-i...

SH are so close to funding another year of amazing reviews, stories, poetry, essays and podcasts in 2026. And then we can get them to some AMAZING stretch goals (Class and SFF! 25th anniversary extravaganza!!) These are some of the best people doing some of the best work in SFF. Let's do this.

We've got a week to go in the Strange Horizons Fund Drive to keep us publishing in 2025! If you haven't had a chance to donate yet, it's not too late to pledge over on our Kickstarter. Thank you to everyone who has donated so far!

If you ever lived under any kind of oppressive regime, Vajra really helps figuring out the language of how things seem insurmountable and at the end are just very ordinary and petty and how they seem timeless and at the end are very new ways of being really recent. How there are other ways to live.

You've heard of "this meeting could have been an email", now it's time for... ✨This discourse could have been a "keep scrolling" moment!!✨ Coming soon to a timeline nea... Oh who am I kidding, we're in hell forever, and I'm as responsible for it as anyone.

"The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality." - James Baldwin

Now just $2.5k from being baseline funded for next year. Everything the magazine does relies on reaching this goal. C’mon. If you’re able, you want to be one of the donations that makes it happen, right?

🚨🚨LAST 9 DAYS 🚨🚨 of the annual Strange Horizons fund-raiser! Still a host of rewards up for offer (see link), and we need around $4.4K more to hit our base goal. If you’ve been intending to support us this year, then the time is now! Donate here: www.kickstarter.com/projects/str...

Ebook sale! For the next ten days, Solaris is selling (giving away, really) an excellent selection of modern SFF titles at 0.99p in the UK, including both of my novels, THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS and RAKESFALL. See geni.us/Solarissale! Some titles are available outside the UK, too.

Intergalactic Mixtape is live! This week: my June reading recap, July book lists, and the first open call for book recs. If there's an SFF book published in 2025 that you've loved and want more people to know about, hit up the form linked at the top of this issue. :D buttondown.com/intergalacti...

Links for the link gods! I very much enjoy blearily reading these on a Friday morning while the caffeine kicks in and finding more reviews I should get round to reading.

There's a new issue of Kaleidotrope today! kaleidotrope.net

So why are we hoping to create a queer SFF lit mag (which would be the UK's first to pay pro rates)? (1) Because queer SFF is cool AF. (2) Because queer voices deserve to be heard. Queer artists deserve to be paid. Queer people deserve to have our stories told without censorship or dilution. (1/4)

For this week’s Afrosurrealist special at SH, Reviews are looking at three nonfiction works which aim to open up Afrofuturism’s varied potentials. First up, Joy Sanchez-Taylor on Dismantling The Master’s Clock (@akpress.org), a book that’s “working on a whole different mental and temporal level.”

Six for six from first half of this year: The Sentence by Gautam Bhatia The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko Meanwhile, Elsewhere ed. Cat Fitzpatrick and Casey Plett The Rider, the Ride, the Rich Man's Wife by Premee Mohamed Dark River by Rym Kechacha

Very little time left to get this kickstarter to its most exciting final form, in which we will get a NEW QUEER LITERARY MAGAZINE based in the UK and paying professional rates! It's still possible! Can we make it happen!

Squeezing in some promo while I stuff a sandwich in my face and do day job things: My new novella THE DEAD WITHHELD is out today! Because why wait for Tuesdays for good book news right? www.neonhemlock.com/books/the-de...

Why donate in the last 2 weeks of the SH fund drive? —You’ll unlock a review from @theignyteawards.bsky.social nominated Archita Mittra of @amalelmohtar.com’s latest! —You’ll enable us to keep publishing three long-form reviews every week! —You’ll nurture a venue crucial (imo) to the health of SFF!

If they made a muppets version of your favourite SFF book, who would the one human character be?

✨ THE DEAD WITHHELD by @ldlewiswrites.com is here ✨ Order it wherever books are sold or directly from us: PAPERBACK: www.neonhemlock.com/books/the-de... EBOOK: www.neonhemlock.com/ebooks/the-d...