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As a member of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, I get to vote on the Nebula Awards. Here’s my vote for best novella (17,500 to 40,000 words). The awards will be presented at the Nebula Conference on June 7 in Kansas City.

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom) — A woman ventures into a dangerous forest to save two children from a monster. A grim story told with urgency.

The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler (Tordotcom) — Elephants and newly-revived mammoths face extinction from ivory poachers, but they have protectors. The story explores its ideas back and forth in time to dramatize a contest between greed and survival.

Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Tordotcom) — An ancient power arises in a post-apocalypse dystopia, and three very different people in a literally stratified society must try to survive.

Countess by Suzan Palumbo (ECW) — A story inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo, but in space.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar (Tordotcom) — The chain is about an ex-slave, the practice is about the chance to become something better, and the horizon the chance to get it. A lot of social justice, told with the distance of spaceships.

My vote: The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock) — A former lover, now an enemy, conspires to bring down an empire. I was impressed by the tight storytelling, emotional tension, and frequent reversals.

The name STEVLAND spelled out in pictures of land features, such as the curve of a river in the shape of an S

NASA/USGS’s Landsat program has compiled the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. The data is used to make informed decisions about Earth’s resources and environment.

Just for fun, Landsat created a tool by which you can enter your name — or any other word — and see it spelled out in images of Earth. Hovering over the picture tells you where in the world the picture is from with a link to more information.

I made it spell out Stevland: S is Rio Chapare, Bolivia; T is Lena River Delta, Russia; E is Breiðamerkurjökull Glacier, Iceland; V is Padma River, Bangladesh; L is Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada; A is Lake Guakhmaz, Azerbaijan; N is Yapacani, Bolivia; D is Lake Tandou, Australia.

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If you’re looking for a rock-hard science fiction novel, The Mary Sue has ten suggestions. One of them is Semiosis:

“Do you ever feel like your houseplants could be watching you? That maybe they’re more aware of their surroundings than their innocent, leafy, seemingly helpless without you watering them bodies would have you believe? Sue Burke’s Semiosis will justify all of your paranoid plant musings, turning them into scientific reality! The novel concerns a group of crash-landed astronauts, who begin to believe that the plants on their new alien planet home have more to them than meets the eye. The novel is a deep down dig into the roots of botanical science, and is chloro-filled with all the real life ways that plants are evil psychopaths. Seriously, Earth’s plants are murdery enough, but sentient planet-ruling plants from beyond the stars? Diabolical.”

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Dragonfly.eco calls itself “an exploration of eco-fiction, blowing your mind with wild words and worlds.” It just interviewed Cristina Jurado about her novella ChloroPhilia, which I translated from Spanish into English. Cristina currently lives in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and she explains how living there with its “insidious, powerful” sandstorms and hostile heat helped her create the story’s setting.

Sonja Arntzen and Ito Moriyuki, trans., The Sarashina Diary: A Woman's Life in Eleventh-Century Japan (by Sugawara no Takasue no Musume). This is brief but delightful. Its author is one of the most relatable historical figures I have ever encountered, book-obsessed and delighted by the written word.

Franny Choi, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On. The modern world, the Korean-American experience, a dozen other things in a score of emotional ranges. Sometimes I find it interesting to contemplate which volumes of poetry resonate me and which with similar descriptions leave me cold. This one resonated.

Christopher Hale, A Brief History of Singapore and Malaysia: Multiculturalism and Prosperity: The Shared History of Two Southeast Asian Tigers. A bit too much Singapore in the balance for my taste--I have no objection to Singapore, but if you're putting both Singapore and Malaysia on the cover, I want both. This is more a starting point than an ending point in the history of this region, but that's valuable too.

Reginald Hill, An Advancement of Learning, An April Shroud, Bones and Silence, Child's Play, A Clubbable Woman, Deadheads, Exit Lines, A Killing Kindness, A Pinch of Snuff, Recalled to Life, Ruling Passion, Underworld, and The Wood Beyond. Rereads. And here we come to the reason this is one of the easiest book posts I've written in ages: I'm 2/3ish of the way through rereading the Dalziel and Pascoe series, and I find them more or less where I left them--the early ones are fine, and now I'm into the part of the series that's quite good, with the best yet to come. Gosh I'm glad I read them out of order originally. The exception to finding them where I left them is that three times through is enough for me on A Pinch of Snuff, I do not expect to find it worth my time for a fourth go-round.

Natalie Shapero, Popular Longing. This is also poetry engaging with the current moment. Like the Franny Choi collection, it is frequently angry. For some reason it doesn't resonate for me nearly so well--I find it more grating in places but most often it's just that Shapero's gears and mine don't mesh. Ah well.

Tom Stoppard, Plays: 5 (Arcadia, The Real Thing, Night and Day, Indian Ink, Hapgood). Rereads. I'm passing this on to a young theater-lover in my life and read it on the way out. One masterwork, one mid-century adultery play (YAWN), two attempts at reckoning with colonialism very much from a colonizer viewpoint, and a spy thing that is less clever than he thinks about quantum mechanics. I have another copy of Arcadia, I'm not sorry I read the others, but I'm also not sorry to hand them on.

Merc Fenn Wolfmoor writing as A. Merc Rustad, So You Want to Be a Robot. Reread. Remains varied, wrenching, and brilliant, one of the best debut collections of our generation, yay.

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Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Location: Neverland
Current Music: CAN I say no?

New story out today in ebook format! Print copy to follow for those who want that. "The Things You Know, The Things You Trust" appears in If There's Anyone Left, vol. 5. It's a look at life's constants in the face of great change, which are sometimes where we hope they are and sometimes...other places.

As a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, I get to vote for the Nebula Awards. Here is my vote in the category of novelette (7,500 to 17,500 words). The award will be presented at the Nebula Conference on June 7 in Kansas City.

Overall, the stories amounted to a satisfying little anthology. I based my vote on the strength of the storytelling, not an easy metric to apply since they’re all good, but I thought one in particular was slightly better. Of course, your opinion may differ.

“Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being” by A.W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld 11/24) — A doctor finds herself limited by bureaucracy when an unusual alien comes seeking her care. Your heartstrings will be tugged.

“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 5-6/24) — Friends try to meet, but they can’t find each other even though they’re in the same place. Then things get more eerie (no spoilers). Not quite horror but very unsettling.

“Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka” by Christine Hanolsy (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 4/18/24) — Romantasy, sweet and fulfilling. All fairy tales (or rather, tales about vengeful river spirits) should be like this.

“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 5/24) — The accidental discovery of a book printed on paper triggers an existential crisis in an electronic world with constant volatility. The understated storytelling style effectively delivers growing horror.

“What Any Dead Thing Wants” by Aimee Ogden (Psychopomp 2/24) — Terraforming by magic leaves behind ghosts that want something. The cool, deadpan narration makes the fantastic feel real, but the magic system seems inconsistent to me.

“Joanna’s Bodies” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Psychopomp 7/1/24) — A teenage girl finds a supernatural means to bring a dead friend back. Although this is an obviously bad idea, it’s made worse by resentment, manipulation, immaturity, and guilt. Told with a gripping voice.

My vote: “Another Girl Under the Iron Bell” by Angela Liu (Uncanny 9-10/24) — A demon will do anything to get freedom from an evil master. Which one, the demon or the master, is the most evil? Which one is in love? Every word is measured and every detail impeccable.

You know, you guys are really lucky that I discovered Asian dramas after I discovered K-pop or I'd be bending your ear constantly about all the tropes and stories I had to take on board in order to make sense of them. I did some of that, admittedly, but soon realized only three of my friends also like Asian dramas and already know all that so it need not be explained. And that's why I don't bother keeping you informed of what I'm watching all the time. But I am always watching something, mostly Chinese historical dramas this year.

But this week it's all 2025 Korean dramas. There's Spring of Youth, a college/idol rom-com that thinks it's cuter than it is. It does have cute young actors in it, but it's very winky face about the storyline. Still being broadcast so it has some time to win me over.

There's The Haunted Palace about a government official who is a childhood friend (a trope I find tiresome) of the female lead who is a shaman; they become entangled with the royal palace politics and he becomes possessed by an Imugi (a snake demon) who has some kind of fixation on the shaman. It didn't really keep my attention for most of the first episode until the Imugi switched bodies and the actor completely wowed me by visibly changing personalities. Also, I'm a sucker for the pettiness of vengeful spirits in ancient Joseon.

And last night I started Second Shot at Love which is an adult rom-com set in the main characters' quirky rural home town. It's addressing the Korean problem with alcohol as a social blunt weapon, so the female lead has a problem with alcohol and her former best friend is vehemently anti-alcohol. It's played for wry, rueful, self-aware laughs. I really like the cast, so I will keep watching it, but I do wonder how no one in Seoul ever wears colorful clothes and everyone in rural towns only wears colorful, clashing patterned clothing.

In my novel Dual Memory, the main character, Antonio, is always polite to the AIs that operate machines on the hunch that they appreciate it.

From Chapter 7:

I take a deep breath, stretch tense back muscles, pick up the pad, and get on the elevator. “Ground floor, please.” Maybe machines really don’t care if you’re polite. Maybe I’m fooling myself. But I say “Thank you” as I enter the house. I’m going to need all the friends here I can get.

Some readers scoffed at his weird precaution, but it turns out that one of our own here-and-now AIs does seem to appreciate politeness.

I stopped saying thanks to ChatGPT – here’s what happened | TechRadar

ChatGPT spends tens of millions of dollars on people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ but Sam Altman says it’s worth it | TechRadar