S&L Podcast - #518 - Hugo Bump Yourself
/We talk about our thoughts on the Hugo Award winners and the Dragon Award winner and devise a fiendish plan to win a Hugo. Also, Tom buys a ticket to see Matt Dinniman while doing the show.
WHAT ARE WE NOMMING?
Tom: Pork and Noodles
Veronica: Fresh garden tomatoes!
QUICK BURNS
Any news or announcements
Iain: The Hugos have been announced
The winners are:
BEST NOVEL
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey, Hodderscape UK)
BEST NOVELLA
The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler (Tordotcom)
BEST NOVELETTE
“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer (Asimov’s, September/October 2024)
BEST SHORT STORY
“Stitched to Skin Like Family Is” by Nghi Vo (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 57)
BEST SERIES
Between Earth and Sky by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga Press)
And then Mark chimed in: Wait! The most astounding Hugo is the one for best graphic novel by Ryan North and Chris Fenoglio…
LOWER DECKS! LOWER DECKS! LOWER DECKS!
Mark also pointed out:
We read City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett.
We read Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse.
We read The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.
The Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book was awarded to Darcie Little Badger for Sheine Lende, a prequel to a book we read, Elatsoe.
Paul: Attention Martha Wells fans / Murderbot fans or people curious about what the fuss is all about:
Martha Wells has a HumbleBundle fundraiser going for the World Central Kitchen. You can get All Systems Red for $1, the first three novellas for $10, or 14 titles including The Witch King and some of her pre-Murderbot fantasies for $19 or so.
That’s a pretty amazing deal, so I bought the set even though I’ve read 3 of the 14 books already. Plus, considering the man-made famine going on (not to mention the genocide), I couldn’t think of a better cause. Martha Wells rules!
You can also donate extra and/or reallocate more of your money to go to the charity, for those interested.
(Warning: I don’t actually know if my dollar values are accurate, because my values are in Canadian dollars, but for me it’s 14 titles for $24.83.)
Seth: It’s Fourth Wing night at Fenway Park. (written September 3)
Rebecca Yarros will throw out the first pitch at a Red Sox game tonight! Sorry to all those in the Boston area, it’s already sold out. Besides the game, other fantasy features include cosplay, themed concessions and giveaways (including a “flight jacket” that looks pretty cool).
News reports indicate it’s the largest promotion ever at Fenway Park and that more than half of tickets purchased for the event come from people who have never bought a baseball ticket before.
Calvey: Join us on Monday, September 22nd at 6:30 pm as we welcome Matt Dinniman to the Wilshire Ebell Theater to discuss and sign This Inevitable Ruin. Joining him in conversation will be Felicia Day.
(4401 West 8th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90005, Wilshire Ebell Theatre)
THIS IS A TICKETED OFF-SITE EVENT. A copy of This Inevitable Ruin must be purchased from DIESEL to be granted entry to the event. There are 3 ticket options for this event. Please look carefully at all of the options before purchasing.
jasonb: For those of us in NC next month, John Scalzi will be here signing his new book Shattering Peace! Guess where I’m going to be Saturday, September 27. If any Sword and Shielders are in the area – cocktails later that evening, IM me!
Mark: Coming May 2026… the eighth installment of the Murderbot Diaries, Platform Decay by Martha Wells.
CountZeroOr: The novel adaptations of the first season of Robotech (the Macross Saga) are getting an unabridged audiobook release.
As a quick reminder for those unfamiliar – Robotech was a fix-up of three anime series: Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeda. The three series had a general common thread of “Vehicles that transform into Mecha (generally designed by Shoji Kawamori)” and (in the case of the first and third series) “Major characters who were pop singers,” but little else. For their US releases as part of Robotech, they had some adjustments (Macross, Mospeda) to full rewrites (Southern Cross) done by the producer of Robotech, Carl Macek, to get them to fit together, and at a combined length that could be sold to local stations for syndication.
These novels were created to adapt the series for English-speaking audiences at a time when home video releases for television generally were not yet a thing. The novels had been out of print for years, and even when they were in print, they hadn’t received an audiobook release.
Mark: 2025 Dragon Awards Winners:
Best Science Fiction Novel
This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman
Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)
The Devils by Joe Abercrombie
Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel
Sunrise of the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Best Alternate History Novel
The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal
Best Horror Novel
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
BARE YOUR SWORD
Silvana: Another GR group did a Q&A with Shelley a few years back and she/they confirmed that the fantasy bit was added later.
Ruth: Interesting! Do you have a link to the discussion you could share or was it private?
Silvana: It’s public but maybe you need to become a member of the group to read the posts? Here’s the link: Goodreads interview
Ruth: Silvana, very interesting interview, I would recommend other Shields to check it out (although you do need to join the group first).
Also you are far too modest – “Another GR group did a Q&A” it was YOU who did the interview! And it’s a really good interview – well done!
Silvana: Aww thanks Ruth, hope it’s useful.
John (Nevets): That really is awesome @silvana. That had to be a very cool experience, and possibly a bit nerve-wracking as well.
By the way, while there were many reasons I wanted to attend Worldcon this year, your experience in attending a few years ago was definitely one of the influences. And I’m so glad I did, I had a great time and got to meet up with some other Shields.
BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION
Book Kickoff
Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft (Amazon)
Bookshop link
Book Wrap Up
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan (Amazon)
Bookshop link
terpkristin: I really appreciated Tom telling the actual history that forms She Who Became the Sun. I wonder if it’s more historical fiction with magical realism or fantasy elements (not that I think it’s not a 100% good and valid S&L pick). But I wonder if people thought of more of it as historical fiction of real things if it would be easier for some to get into.
stephen: I finished the book and truly enjoyed it. The flow of the book was pitch perfect. I had a few long Skytrain trips to the Big Bad Wolf Book Fair where I found a graphic novel series based on Chinese history translated into Thai with 25 volumes. I was looking for something like this to help me in my goal of reading Thai quicker than I presently do.
SeréTW: Well how did you feel about the selection? What surprised you? Do you intend to continue the duology?
I’m still gathering my thoughts about the way the main character developed. While I wasn’t surprised at the fate of the Prince of Radiance, it was so heartbreaking that I don’t know if I want to continue the duology. I may change my mind about that and I’m really interested to hear other people’s take on the reimagining of this period of time in China’s history.
What surprised me was the introduction to the concept/euphemism of the business of rain and clouds (or clouds and rain). I went on quite the side quest trying to get the cultural significance that I was sure I was missing out on. It was giving me Demolition Man, The 3 Shells vibes.
CountZeroOr:
I finished the book, and I enjoyed it for most of it, except for everything related to the politics of the Mongol Court. It had a real “We only pay the Iron Price” vibe that frustrated me, as that’s something that didn’t work for me in Game of Thrones (and actively threw me from those books), and didn’t work here, as all the cultures are based on real world cultures – made worse by, well, having watched the Crash Course on the Mongols.
Crash Course on the Mongols (YouTube)
After thinking about it while reading, I came to the realization that part of my discomfort was because a real world culture was being depicted as one of the big archetypes for Orcs, and if someone wrote Orcs like that now, there would be Asian audiences that would be legitimately upset.
My next thought was maybe I’m supposed to be uncomfortable – this is playing off of genre conventions to comment on them and get the reader to rethink those stereotypes – except it didn’t do anything with them, it just played them straight. When I reached the end of the book, and the afterword mentioned influences from Wuxia novels and wanting to write something in that style, I had to stop and think: “Is this just playing a genre convention of Wuxia fiction, either past or present, straight? Perhaps perpetuating an internal, likely unexamined racial prejudice of those authors (and the historians they were referencing) that the author was perpetuating because they were more interested in sticking with genre conventions than examining potentially toxic tropes that could date back to the turn of the 20th century?”
In short, I found myself in a position where I didn’t want to move on to the next book because I found myself needing to know where this unexamined prejudice came from – the genre itself, official histories (that likely would have been written after the Mongols and were meant to depict them badly), existing cultural prejudices, or something added by the author based on their own internalized, likely unexamined (and not necessarily malicious, depending on the circumstances) bias about the history of Mongolian culture.
Iain Bertram:
I have just finished.
It is definitely SFF. The fantastic element is subtle and woven through real history but is there at all times.
It’s not often we get such an amoral protagonist. That first, brutal chapter is some of the most evocative writing about starvation and poverty I have ever read. That is the foundation that supports the development of the main character.
ScottM:
I wanted to start a topic because I was surprised that the novel actually included sex-favorable asexual representation. Ace representation itself isn’t especially common, but when it is included, it tends to be on the sex averse/repulsed side. My youngest falls firmly in that part of the ace/aro spectrum wheel and they describe it as the most important part of her queer identity. (Though as the first label they ever embraced, “bi” also holds a special place.)
But when I read this line in particular from Zhu’s perspective, I was stopped in my tracks:
“Desire, but another’s desire running through her body, until she was as breathless as if it’s been her own.”
I had to search for interviews and discussions with the author to see if I was reading too much into that larger section or if that was what they had intended. And it was exactly what they had meant. Long before I had any label for it, it’s an experience I remember trying to describe on numerous occasions to different people.
I also found the exploration of gender both through Zhu and Ouyang very interesting and in a manner that felt like it fit the setting, context, and culture. Given my own relationship with gender is … complicated, that was a compelling part of the storyline for me.
And the romantic tension between both the main perspectives and their complicated partner – Ouyang with Esen and Zhu with Ma – was well developed. I’m intrigued to see how Ma’s path plays out in the next novel.
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