Murderbot, the Show, premiered on Apple+ last week. Here is Reactor’s reaction to it.

Looking for a news editing job? Reactor is hiring.

Also from Reactor, five books with imposters or con artists.

The 2025 Eisner Award candidates are announced. (Thanks to File770.)

The Guardian has some thoughts on the candidates for the International Booker Prize.

Nerds of a Feather reviews an epic fantasy novel, Birth of a Dynasty,

Marvel unveils their Pride Variant covers.

This is a well-written article, as the UK Guardian questions Marvel’s logic in adding a mentally unstable god to the Thunderbolts* Team.

Reactor shares an excerpt of Tochi Onyebuchi’s new hard-boiled detective novel, Harmattan Season.

Molly Templeton contemplates SF books that play with narrative form.

“Magicians guard an empty safe:” A delightful interview with a stage magician.

Looking for the box office for Sinners, I found this article about Thunderbolts*,

Sir Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch, the first “Watch” book in his DISCWORLD series, is now being published as a Penguin Modern Classic.

Roseanna shares her struggles with the critical work Colourfields; Writing About Writing About Science Fiction, over at Nerds of a Feather.

Conquest of Space was meant to be the most realistic “outer space” film ever made. Did the 70+ year old classic fall short? (Thanks to File770.)

From last month,

Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day.  The ABA has provided a map and a guide to bookstores with events, by state. A bookstore crawl might be fun to organize.

From 2023, Bookbub provides a list of books with magic houses. A few recent releases aren’t included, and at least one of these, The Little Stranger, is not a magic house but a haunted one. (I won’t die on that hill, but I’m at least willing to take some damage on it.) The list is still worth checking out.

The National Space Society is awarding its inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Award to Joe Haldeman.

The link takes you to the list of books pulled by the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy in response to the administration’s policies. Titles include: What Are We Fighting For? By Joanna Russ(nonfiction); Light from Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki (fiction); A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers (fiction); The Last White Man, Mohsin Hamid (fiction); Sorrowland, by Rivers Solomona (fiction),

The Story Hour has migrated from Facebook, which is owned by Meta, to YouTube. The live-story-reading site is hosted by writers Laura Blackwell and Daniel Marcus. You can read their statement about what led to this decision here.

Here is a review category I don’t see every day: Bulgarian fiction. I want to read the first one!

More in the saga of scraping and data-mining; Society of Authors published an article about the findings of their survey about proposed changes in copyright that privilege tech companies over the authors and creators.

Here is a nice website with statistics and facts you might find useful.

Judith Tarr considers a “river monster” from West Africa.

After the Army removed articles about the 442nd Regiment, World War II’s most decorated regiment, they reacted to public outcry and restored the articles. The 442nd was comprised mostly of Japanese American soldiers, many of whom had family members left behind in camps.

I read several paragraphs into this article, drawn in by the sprightly tone, before I realized it was a “Five Books…” list.

Since the CDC cannot release information about the avian flu and other contagious diseases, the American Medical Association is providing updates. Here is their Youtube channel.

Reactor is offering new fiction by Elizabeth Bear.

Nerds of a Feather reviews Gareth Powell’s latest.

Here’s an interesting article about one of the things NOAA does.

The U.K. Guardian shares fantastical sketches by Victor Hugo.

File770 provides the Australian Romance Award short list.

Uncanny Magazine launches issue 63 on March 4, 2025.

The Bram Stoker final ballot has been released. I thought I’d been reading a lot of horror lately but I recognize almost none of these.

The NAACP Image awards were announced last weekend, with several of genre interest, including Wicked.

File 770 shared a New York Times link on faux books. Neat photos! (The link bypasses the paywall.)

“You already have three strikes against you,” Raye Montague’s mother told her.

Nationally, scientists are gathering to determine how to publish the comprehensive Nature Assessment report, which was ready for publication earlier this month before the current administration stalled it.

The U.K. Guardian reports that Julianne Moore’s kids’ book Freckleface Strawberry, has been included in a wave of books censored due to an executive order signed by the president. The order bans certain books banned during a “compliance review” in schools that serve children of military families. The book is about a little girl who hates her freckles,

This American Medical Association site is a good resource for information on avian flu. Currently at least three reports scheduled for publication by the CDC are being stalled by the administration, and the Centers’ most recent weekly report had avian flu data removed from it.

Tongayi Charisa (Crispin) and Alyssa Jirells (Moira) talk about their characters in Mayfair Witches, Season Two, on AMC. Variety has some images from the new season.

Reactor offered a nice column on why we need fantasy forests.

Here are some downloadable datasets from NOAA.

File770 has an article about new Marvel variant covers which features the brand’s heroes in traditional Japanese clothing. I don’t know what I think about all of them, but Venom in a kimono is eye-catching.

Locus’s always-useful Recommended Reading list is out.

I’m getting ready to read Opacity by Sofia Samatar, so this article in Reactor about reading writing about writing was timely and interesting.

More fallout from the sexual abuse allegations against Neil Gaiman,

I will read two short fiction works on The Story Hour tonight, at 7 PM Pacific Time. The readings are store on the Facebook page, if you want to catch up later.

The Centers for Disease Control have downloadable data available to the public. Check their site here.

In Reactor’s List of Five column, James Driscoll shares five books about gods causing trouble for humans.

Award Season! Speculative fiction is well represented on the ALA’s Alex award list this year.

Reactormag shares a couple of forthcoming 2025 releases, among them the latest by Charlie Jane Anders and a dragon book by Cherie Radke.

They also shared an excerpt from T.J Klune’s latest, The Bones Beneath my Skin.

Best Of Lists, Recommended Reading lists, nomination suggestions… it’s that time of year. Nerds of a Feather starts with their recommended list of fiction and visual work categories.

John Scalzi announced completion of The Shattering Peace,

The New York Times profiles Nnedi Okorafor and her forthcoming autobiographical novel. (This article may be behind a paywall.)

Thanks, File770, for introducing me to yet another “—punk” category: Incensepunk. Also, you can click on their submission guidelines if this is a market where your short fiction would fit.

At Reactor, Molly Templeton takes a thoughtful look at the nature of “escapism” in fiction.

Speaking of thing I wish I could escape… because I do cover stories of genre interest, I’m including a link to this week’s Variety article about the allegations about Neil Gaiman.

John Scalzi announced some changes at Whatever, his venerable blog site.

Rosalind Franklin provided remarkable and invaluable data in the discovery of DNA, but Watson and Crick didn’t exactly steal her work—they were just clueless sexists. From 2015.

While reading The Spite House, I got interested and found a couple of interesting articles about the residences.  Here’s one.

The BAFTA longlist for 2025 is out, with Emelia Perez and Conclave at the top. Wicked and Dune II also drew nods.

The Unkillable Princess is the second book in a series, but it sounds fun and Nerds of a Feather’s review did it justice.

Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth discuss E. Catherine Tobler’s moody story, “To Drive the Cold Winter Away,” over at Reactor.

File770 had this link to a Doc Savage; Man of Bronze action figure. A belated Christmas present for Sandy?

This is an idiosyncratic list but had some names that were new to me—and a preview of a new Heather Fawcett I didn’t know was coming!

Happy Christmas and Happy Hanukkah if you celebrate. Happy Wednesday if you do not.

The Prometheus Society narrowed the finalists for its 2024 award to four diverse works (and creators) who excellently modeled libertarianism. The short list includes Rudyard Kipling, Poul Anderson, Charles Stross and the musical group Rush.

The Christmas tree is an integral part of the Christmas season for many folks. It has its roots in the Yule celebration, from the Nordic lands.

This article in Reform Judaism discusses the origin of the holy day Hanukkah,

The Horror Writers Association has announced its scholarship winners.

Bruce Sterling was, and still is, an influential writer in the field of SF, most notably in the days of futurism and cyberpunk. What’s he doing now? This interview with Worldbuilding Agency gives us an idea.

Gamergate lurches on, this time in a lawsuit reaching the Brooklyn, New York courts last week. A woman who was forced to resign from game-review site Kotaku is suing a self-styled “gamergate” gamer in California. She alleges he led a concerted hate campaign against her and made false statements.

Ruthana Amrys and Anne M. Pillsworth review “The Only Writing Advice You’ll Ever Need to Survive Eldritch Horrors.” This article is funny!

These “22 Chilling Winter Reads” are literally chilly, it turns out—books set during winter.

According to File770, Montreal is now the only contender for WorldCon 2027. Tel Aviv withdrew its id due to the situation in Isreal.

Dorothy’s ruby slippers recently sold at auction for $28 million. After all, they are the first known portkey.

The Guardian UK lists its candidates for Best Graphic Novel of 2024.