S&L Podcast - #491 - Next Month, Trauma!
/It's awards season and we cover them all, including a Martha Wells sweep! We wrap up our thoughts on Sword of Kaigen and get excited (read: trigger warnings) for Cursed Bunny, our July pick.
WHAT ARE WE NOMMING?
Tom: Garlic and Herb Salmon
Veronica: Lobster Mashed Potatoes
QUICK BURNS
Seth: The Nebula Awards are announced:
Nebula Award for Novel: The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
The Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey)
Nebula Award for Novella: Linghun by Ai Jiang (Dark Matter Ink)
Nebula Award for Novelette: The Year Without Sunshine by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny 11-12/23)
Nebula Award for Short Story: Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200 by R.S.A. Garcia (Uncanny 7-8/23)
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Jan: I don't know if it's of interest, but the Indie Book Awards for 2024 have been announced. The winner in the Fiction category is genre author (and... uhm... Hugos excludee) R.F. Kuang for her non-genre novel Yellowface.
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Chris K. and Jason: Locus Award Winners
Science Fiction Novel:
WINNER: System Collapse by Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu (Tordotcom)
A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz; JAB Books)
Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Tor; Ad Astra)
Furious Heaven by Kate Elliott (Ad Astra; Tor)
Translation State by Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)
Starter Villain by John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK)
Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit US; Tor UK)
The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis (Del Rey)
Fantasy Novel:
WINNER: Witch King by Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey)
The Keeper’s Six by Kate Elliott (Tordotcom)
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (Del Rey; Orbit UK)
Dead Country by Max Gladstone (Tordotcom)
The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang (Tordotcom; Solaris UK)
Paladin’s Faith by T. Kingfisher (Argyll)
He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan (Tor; Mantle)
My Brother’s Keeper by Tim Powers (Baen; Ad Astra)
City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Ad Astra)
Jan: From Locus Mag: The Chinese Science Fiction Planet Awards for 2024 have been announced. Winner in the Best Novel Category is Once Upon a Time in Nanjing by Tianrui Shuofu
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Jan: From Locus Mag: The 36th Annual Lambda Literary Awards (the “Lammys”), celebrating “the best lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender books,” have been announced. Winner in the LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction category is I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane
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CrochetChristie and Trike: More details about the film adaptation of Project Hail Mary:
The screenplay was adapted by Drew Goddard, who also adapted The Martian.
It stars Ryan Gosling and Milana Vayntrub.
It’s being directed (and one assumes they had writing input) by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who’ve made The Lego Movie, both Jump Street flicks, and both Spider-verse films, among others.
CountZeroOr: Seiun Award winners are in:
Winners of note:
Best Japanese Long Story: Fumio Takano's Graf Zeppelin Ano Natsu no Hikōsen (Graf Zeppelin That Summer's Airship)
Best Japanese Short Story: Mikihiko Hisanaga's Watashitachi no Kaijū (Kaiju Within)
Best Translated Long Story: John Scalzi's The Kaiju Preservation Society (translated by Masayuki Uchida)
Best Translated Short Story: Greg Egan's Solidity (translated by Makoto Yamagishi)
Best Comic: Delicious In Dungeon (Animated adaptation currently streaming on Netflix)
Best Visual Media: Godzilla Minus One (Also currently streaming on Netflix)
Best Artist: Kia Asamiya (Silent Mobius, Steam Detectives)
Best Non-Fiction: Tokyo Sōgensha Editorial Team's Sōgen SF Bunko Sōkaisetsu (Sōgen SF Bunko Imprint: A General Commentary)
Best Related Work: Giant Robots: The Core of Japanese Mecha Anime exhibit
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Clyde: John Scalzi has won another Seiun Award. Seems the Japanese like his writing.
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Seth: Barnes and Noble have released their best of 2024 (so far), in some pretty interesting categorical groupings. The most SFF is included in the category: The Cutting Edge: Eight Spredges We're Obsessed With - with spredge apparently being a portmanteau of 'sprayed-edge.' It includes:
Heavenbreaker by Sara Wolf
The Night Ends with Fire by K. X. Song
A Fate Inked in Blood by Danielle Jensen
Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland
Gothikana by RuNyx
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Joanna: New Hunger Games novel, Sunrise on the Reaping, announced for March 18th, 2025. It will tell the story of the Second Quarter Quell, which means Haymitch's victory. Also, a movie is already in the works (early stages).
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Tamhome: The Ye Wengie actress Rosalind Chao from the Three Body Problem Netflix Show (also Keiko from Deep Space 9) did a Three Body Problem audiobook. Wow, Klinger proposed to her in MASH*.
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Spriggana: Piranesi animated adaptation?
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TRP: The latest edition of the Backlisted podcast (co-hosted by John Mitchinson, publisher of Unbound) features The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts by Douglas Adams. This is the Douglas Adams book that I want Sword and Laser to read. It contains material not in any other version of the Hitch-Hiker's story and fascinating annotations about the production of the series.
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CrochetChristie: Get it girl. V.E. Schwab has a new book coming out next year. Big $ book deal.
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Mantissa: Robin Sloan, the author of Sourdough and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, has a new book Moonbound coming out on June 10th, 2024.
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BARE YOUR SWORD
terpkristin:
You might say it’s a Maas Effect? 😜 I’m fully on that train, currently in ACOTAR #3.
terpkristin: On the topic of local indie bookstores, yay! I definitely recommend checking them out. Many have stuff other than books like cards (birthday, thank you, etc.), puzzles, and book-adjacent things. My favorite store also has stickers and chocolate creations from a local candy maker. If you don't want to buy a physical book, maybe those other things would appeal. My local stores also work with Kobo for ebooks and Libro.fm for audiobooks. When I buy books on those, my local store gets credit.
Boox Palma
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Ruth: What I always do when I go to an independent bookshop is buy a bookmark (I did this today in fact). I don’t read as many physical books these days as I would like, but I’m always happy to acquire a pretty new bookmark. I have quite a collection of them so I can choose one that fits the aesthetic of my latest read.
Geoff: My local independent bookstore has a cafe attached, so I try to frequent that. I also try to buy one physical book per month, even though I prefer reading on Kindle. I find I end up buying a lot of novellas so I can minimize the actual amount of small font reading I have to do. :-)
I'm fortunate enough to have enough money that this won't break the bank, and I like having the bookstore in town!
Tamahome: Bookstores should have a system where you buy a drink, and then you can read ebooks on an app in the store wifi. They can track what gets read and those authors get some money.
John (Taloni): Regarding Scalzi's latest, a good example of the fixup novel/sequential story is our recent read China Mountain Zhang. Related stories tell a full novel's worth of material, different characters and events in each story/chapter.
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION
ANNOUNCEMENT
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
Biroso | Bookshop | Amazon
WRAP UP
The Sword of Kaigen: A Theonite War Story by M. L. Wang.
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Discussion Links:
ADDENDUMS
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