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Announcements and Errata, Podcast Updates

Welcome to 2019: A Year of New Things (Podcastery, a Month of Joy, and Jen’s Delicious Tears)

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2019! We’re finally here. Like you, we’re hoping it will be a good one. 2016 ended rough. 2017 was even worse. And 2018 was sort of like getting kicked in the teeth by the high school bully every single day. Whether you lost a loved one, your government lost its damn mind, or you tried desperately to keep your hopes up in yet another year of trashfires and horror, we know this last year has been just as tough on you as it has been on each of us. That’s why we tried to make 2018 a “Year of Hope.” Hopefully, our podcast was a little beacon of light in an otherwise dark abyss. Of course, 2018 wasn’t all bad. U.S.-Americans sent a message to the alt-right that y’all ain’t gonna keep this country for long. We got a new Star Wars movie (which Shaun says was absolutely kickass). There were some amazing books by old friends, new friends, and folks we haven’t met yet. Heck, 2019 was a year of phenomenal writing of all kinds. Plus, N.K. Jemisin won another Hugo Award (we’re temporarily renaming it the Jemisin is Awesomesauce Award). In a lot of ways, 2018 was a good year.

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Korean Drama Review: W – Two Worlds

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Stories can be about many things. There are stories about love, revolution, trauma, or all of these things at once. And then there are stories that are about, well, stories. Storyception, if you will. Often, these stories are about creators and their work, and they force us to think about the very process it takes to make the books, movies, and comics that we consume. Where do the ideas come from? What does it cost to bring them to life? What are the consequences? I really enjoy these kinds of meta stories, so of course I was immediately drawn to W: Two Worlds. W: Two Worlds originally aired from July 2016 to September 2016. As the title suggests, it’s about two different worlds: the real world, where the main character Oh Yeon Joo lives, and the fictional world of a famous webtoon named W, where our other main character Kang Chul is the protagonist. W (the webtoon, not the drama), is written and drawn by Yeon Joo’s father and follows rich boy vigilante Chul as he attempts to find the culprit who murdered his family one fateful night.

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Book Review: The Disasters by M. K. England

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The Disasters is an enthusiastic exploration of teenage underdogs trying to find their place in a universe that is intent on discarding the rejects. Add a diverse cast of characters, tense action scenes, high stakes, and the complicated mess of emotions that are teenage hormones, and you’ve got a perfect young adult sci-fi adventure. M. K. England sets up a unique and brilliant world of Earth and space in the year 2194. Space travel is a constant, there are hundreds of fully-functioning colonies, and Earth has a strict no-return policy. Hotshot Earth boy, Nax Hall, has a history of poor life choices and a shoddy criminal record, but he’s ready to rule the school—until he’s rejected from the Academy in less than 24 hours. But when his one-way trip back to Earth is cut short by a surprise terrorist attack on the Academy, Nax must get the word out about the biggest crime in the universe—alongside three other washouts. This ramshackle team are the only witnesses to wholesale slaughter—and the perfect troublemakers to pin the whole thing on. On the run from the government, Nax and the rest of his unfortunate crew must stay alive long enough to get the word out to the rest of the universe, and it’ll take the biggest heist any of them have ever pulled to get through it.

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Best of 2018 and Award Eligibility Post – Paul Weimer

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2018: Yeah, well THAT was a year. I am eligible for BEST FAN WRITER, for my work at BN Sci Fi, Tor.com, Skiffy and Fanty and Nerds of a Feather. I write and publish in a number of places, I do wonder sometimes that no one realizes my prolific output because it is all over the place. And of course, quantity does NOT have a quality all of its own. And there are people who do more, and are more. Me, I just plod along here. Anyway, besides blog posts, reviews and the like, I also do podcast like things. I am of course a central member of the Skiffy and Fanty Show, a central member of SFF Audio and also participate in Juliette Wade’s Dive Into Worldbuilding. All three of those are eligible in the BEST FANCAST category. I would be grateful if you chose to nominate me in either the Best Fancast or Best Fan Writer categories. So now that I’ve discussed my 2018 and my award eligibility, let’s talk about books. I read some this year, not quite as many as last year, sadly, but that’s how things go.

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Beautiful Dystopias: ‘The Belles’ and ‘Uglies’

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Since the launch of The Belles earlier this year, Dhonielle Clayton has been very open about taking inspiration from Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. The two books form an interesting dialogue, with The Belles building on the foundation formed by Uglies while bringing a somewhat more nuanced and feminine perspective. The two books share a focus on beauty, with each building a different culture around it. The Belles takes a fantasy angle: the people of Orleans are cursed by the gods to look ugly—with grey skin, red eyes and hair like rotten straw. They rely on the Belles to magically change their appearance into something beautiful. Exactly what that looks like changes from season to season, and these treatments eventually wear off, needing to be renewed. Camellia Beauregard hopes to be chosen as the Favourite of the Queen of Orleans and serve as the foremost Belle in the kingdom. However, she soon finds the reality of the dream is not quite what she expected.

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Book Review: The Alehouse at the End of the World, by Stevan Allred

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I’ll admit it, what initially drew me to this almost uncategorizably cool novel was this cover, evoking as it does a Renaissance playbill in Technicolor. It didn’t actually show me much of what the story was about, but it sure made me want to know. Plus, anything at the end of the world is probably pretty interesting. And what’s up with that bird?

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