2022’s Locus Awards winners include A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine) for Best Science Fiction Novel, My Heart is a Chainsaw (Stephen Graham Jones) for Best Horror Novel; Jade Legacy (Fonda Lee) for best fantasy novel; Victories Greater Than Death (Charlie Jane Anders) for best YA novel. While I was posting this link, I looked over the list and remembered what a great year 2021 was for speculative fiction.
Watchdogs and guard dogs are different functions, but this article lists breeds that succeed at either or both. Why post this? Because I thought it was interesting.
Scientists discovered a bacterium that, so far, is the biggest in the world.
Remember that great horror movie where the family is trapped in their “smart house” when all of their devices fail at once—oh, wait. That wasn’t a movie. Insteon shut down its cloud computing without warning last April, “bricking” homeowners’ smart devices—and by “devices” I think we mean things that controlled the refrigerator temperature, thermostats and so on. Now the company has a new buyer and plans to rise from its ashes (or bricks, or whatever).
Gizmodo provides morning spoilers (not really) for ongoing and upcoming films, streaming and TV.
Tor.com (Locus award winner for best magazine) offers up five novels that look like fantasy but are science fiction.
Nerds of a Feather take a look at Laura J. Mixon’s Up Against It.
Is the first paragraph of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle the best one of all time? Probably not, but it’s a great paragraph, and this is great article dissecting it.
Elias Eells has a Youtube channel called Barcart Bookshelf. He gives a capsule review of the book, and creates a signature cocktail. Here, he discusses The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu.
I prefer Jackson’s opening paragraph for “The Haunting of Hill House,” but that’s just me. The one detailed in the article is a great one, too….
For opening lines, it’s hard to beat Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but that was nonfiction. Well…maybe?
;-)
Shall we say “marketed as nonfiction?”