Moms for Liberty did not prevail in most of their plans to take over school boards. Most of their 130 candidates across the nation were soundly rejected by local voters, but 50 did win. The group, founded originally to protest Covid-19 responses in schools, has now broadened their platform to an anti-history and pro-discrimination stance.
A pod of orcas sank a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar earlier this week. (I didn’t know that over the last three years they have sunk two others, making this their third. I’m also not sure if this is one pod or several.)
I try to cover awards here, and this is one I know you’ve all been awaiting breathlessly. The Toy Hall of Fame inductees were announced this week.
Yes, I am emotionally an adolescent and yes, I do snicker every year when I post this one: The Golden Joystick awards were announced. C’mon! It’s for video games.
Writers Brian Keene and Mary Sangiovanni announce the opening of their brick-and-mortar bookshop, early in 2024. (Thanks to File 770.)
Tor.com offers a poetic story by Kathleen Jennings, about a subject we’re all familiar with; retelling fairy tales.
Nerds of a Feather quite possibly give you more about Doctor Who than you wanted to know.
The trailblazing feminist newssite Jezebel has been shuttered by its owners, who say they couldn’t figure out how to make it profitable. For sixteen years Jezebel was one of the few places you could get accurate stories about political and commercial changes, especially ones affecting women.
For Publishers Weekly, indie publisher Dia Michels talks about the role of small presses in bringing new voices to the marketplace.
In honor of Veterans’ Day, Baen Books offers discounts on specific books through the end of November.
Hachette lists these Orbit new releases on their page, but honestly I’m not sure how “new” they are.
Next week’s column will be single-issue, and include a giveaway.
I updated the column with news about next week’s post.
In more (but very minor) bad news, Goodreads is listing its Choice Award finalists in Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Young Adult Fantasy, and…Romantasy. Yes, that ugly portmanteau marketing term has propagated outside the Tor petri dish. There’s also a separate Romance category, and you can bet 90% of the Young Adult Fantasy and sizable percentages of Fantasy and Horror as currently marketed are also romance-focused. Why? Because corporate profits favor low investment with potential high reward, and formulaic romance has been a winner on those counts for quite some time. But do we need to invent a new fake genre for even more of this?