Raven perched in a tree cawing.The Hugo winners were announced on September 4. Arkady Martine took home Best Novel for A Desolation Called Peace, Becky Chambers gathered up the Best Novella award for A Psalm for the Wild-Built, and Sarah Pinsker won Best Short Story for “Where Oaken Hearts do Gather. Best Series went to Seanan McGuire for THE WAYWARD CHILDREN, and Charlie Jane Anders won Best Related Work for Never Say You Can’t Survive.

Here is a link to the event.

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel, The Rings of Power, premiered last week. Entertainment Weekly thinks they did a bad job. Hollywood Reporter liked it better. You’re probably watching it, so tell me what you think.

Speaking of prequels, there’s showrunner turnover at House of the Dragon.

The Bookish Mom shares October new releases in the speculative genres.

Tor.com and Tamsyn Muir offer up a short story in the world of The Ninth.

Glasglow, Scotland got the bid for WorldCon 2024. This isn’t about the details; I just love their video. Here it is.

Cloudflare, a hosting service (among other services) has always tried to walk the precarious tightrope of just being a “platform,” not a curator of content, but it has blocked a site because the degree of violent rhetoric veered into actual threats against people. Cloudflare did not host the site, it provided DDOS security. (Fantasy Literature also uses Cloudflare services.) Vice has more on the details. Thanks to File770.

Rings that look more like rounded squares than circles, just one more glorious mystery the James Webb telescope brings us.

The Mary Sue shares its picks for the September book club reads.

UPDATE: Peter Straub, influential horror and fantasy writer, passed away at age 79.

Next week’s column will be a single topic, but it might feature a giveaway. This week’s image is from my visit up the California coast to the village of Mendocino, home to two large clans of ravens.

Author

  • Marion Deeds

    Marion Deeds, with us since March, 2011, is the author of the fantasy novella ALUMINUM LEAVES. Her short fiction has appeared in the anthologies BEYOND THE STARS, THE WAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, STRANGE CALIFORNIA, and in Podcastle, The Noyo River Review, Daily Science Fiction and Flash Fiction Online. She’s retired from 35 years in county government, and spends some of her free time volunteering at a second-hand bookstore in her home town.

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