Author name: trishmatson

Educated as a physicist yet living as a journalist, Trish Matson is an award-winning writer and editor whose ever-expanding list of interests includes a lifelong love of SF/F, plus wordplay, libraries, games, music, dancing, audio drama, and podcasting. She’s listed as TrishEM on various fora, but you can find her most easily on Twitter.

Cover of The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar, featuring colorful flowers springing from a very winding green-and-brown stylized river.
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Reviews: Hugo finalists for Best Novella

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I have previously reviewed three of the Best Novella finalists for the 2026 Hugo Awards: What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher; Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite; and The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. The other finalists are Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz, Cinder House by Freya Marske, and The Summer War by Naomi Novik. This is a really strong list of contenders, and I’m still undecided how to vote for my second, third, and fourth choices for Best Novella, because they’re all great in different ways. Although I do have a favorite, I wouldn’t be unhappy with any of them winning. Also, these are my own thoughts and do not indicate a Skiffy and Fanty endorsement. (Spoiler warnings: My summaries below reveal that all the novellas have happy-ish endings.)

Skiffy and Fanty logo
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Reviews: Shorter fiction Hugo Award finalists

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In a previous review here, Stephen Geigen-Miller discussed all the finalists for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic. Paul Weimer and I, between us, had reviewed all six Best Novel finalists before they were announced, and I posted links to all those reviews here. I have now finished all the finalists for Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story, and I’m going to share some thoughts here. However, these are my own thoughts and not any endorsement of Skiffy and Fanty as a whole. For any readers who are still undecided about any of these categories, maybe my perceptions will help.

Poster image for Star City; in gray, red, and black, a dark-haired woman in a trench coat carrying a briefcase walks up stone steps in the foreground; behind her, a rocket takes off into space; in the background, in shades of red, yellow, and gray, the Chief Designer listens on headphones.
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Review: Star City series (S1)

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The three episodes of For All Mankind that I watched last summer during Apple TV’s free weekend were great, but I never found time to dive into the four (now five) seasons of that acclaimed alt-history science fiction series (based on the idea that the USSR got to the moon before the US). However, when the spinoff series Star City started this May, and some people whose judgment I trust said you didn’t have to have watch FAM to understand this show, I gave it a try. It turns out they were right, that was a great decision, and this is a great show! It definitely helps if you’ve read or watched some Cold War spy fiction previously, but I think I’d have been fine even if I hadn’t watched S1 E1-3 of FAM. I absolutely love the character developments and the plot convolutions in this 8-episode show, even if a few circumstances seemed slightly unlikely/sentimental. It’s unknown so far whether there will be a second season, but I can see it ending as is, without feeling dissatisfied, even though several people’s fates are left hanging. However, I do hope for at least one more season.

Cover of A Plagued Sea, by Kim Bo-Young, featuring lots of dead, rotting fish piled on a beach in front of a small village clinging to a mountainside.
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Book Review: A Plagued Sea, by Kim Bo-Young

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I devoured A Plagued Sea, by Kim Bo-Young, translated by Sophie Bowman, in one sitting, just a couple of hours. It’s fairly short, but it packs in a lot of emotion, events, and (mostly local) worldbuilding. It’s a Korean horror story that combines illness, body horror, and the things that people do to each other, with family love and guilt.

Cover of Godfestation, by Jendia Gammon, featuring a car driving with headlights down a dark mountain road, with a bird skeleton and morning glories at the lower edges and large eyes watching from a purple fog above.
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Book Review: Godfestation, by Jendia Gammon

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Godfestation, by Jendia Gammon, is an interesting combination of vibes, from creepiness to revulsion to scariness, but also including homely home comforts, a long journey, a wonderful diner, familial and other kinds of love, cryptic admonitions, and unexpected delights. It’s definitely not a novella for someone who demands complete answers and explanations, but if you can put that desire aside, it ends up being rather comforting.

Cover of Titanium Noir, by Nick Harkaway, featuring a white silhouette of a man's head under a black fedora, against a lime-green background, with spires of a cityscape against the white face.
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Book Review: Titanium Noir, by Nick Harkaway

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Ever since I listened to an episode about mystery novels on The Incomparable podcast last fall, the library holds that I’d placed have been intermittently coming through and inserting themselves onto my TBR queue. Since I’d waited eight months for Titanium Noir (2023) by Nick Harkaway, recommended by Jason Snell, I delayed my self-assigned reading (Hugo finalists and upcoming novels) a little longer to start this one. I’m glad I did (even if I feel a little guilty). I enjoy the noir subgenre, and this is a good noir plot; the science fictional elements here are also interesting, but what really raises this book to a remarkable level for me are the very human and sympathetic reasons for the way people act here, even the ones becoming transhuman or arguably posthuman.

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