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The 2025 Hugo Awards: You Win Some, You Lose Some

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Specifically, at least night's Hugo award ceremony held at the Seattle convention center, my book, Track Changes , did not win the Hugo for Best Related Work, but I did win—for the second time—the Hugo for Best Fan Writer. This last development was a total and delightful surprise, and as I expressed in my speech I had prepared no remarks against what seemed like an impossibly remote eventuality. As a result, I can't recreate my acceptance speech the way I did after winning Best Fan Writer in Helsinki in 2017 (though you can hear what I said in the official Hugo award ceremony stream , around the 40-minute mark). But the general gist of it was: I am grateful to the award's administrators and everyone who voted, deeply appreciative of my fellow nominees, and take this award as recognition of the importance of SFF criticism to the ongoing health and vitality of the field. I was disappointed not to win Best Related Work for a book that I am incredibly proud of, but I think its ...
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Recent Movie: Superman

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James Gunn's Superman begins in its second act. Halfway through that act, in fact, with Superman (David Corenswet), having just been trounced by an opponent, taking a breather to recharge his strength in the Fortress of Solitude, and then rejoining the fray in Metropolis. In quick succession over the next few scenes, we learn: that Superman has been active on Earth for several years; that his triumphant opponent is the representative superhero of Boravia, a cod-post-Soviet nation angry over Superman's unilateral decision to prevent them from invading their neighbor Jarhanpur, a cod-Middle-Eastern nation; that the person actually pulling the strings—literally, he calls out alphanumerically-coded plays to the Boravian superhero (who, it turns out, is not actually Boravian) like an overinvolved football coach—is Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult); that the US government, angry over Superman's interference with their Boravian allies, has given Luthor at least its tacit approval to ta...
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Review: The Incandescent by Emily Tesh at Strange Horizons

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Readers with an encyclopedia memory of my work may recall that I already wrote about Emily Tesh's second novel, in brief, in a Guardian reviews roundup in May. Strange Horizons were good enough to offer me space to give the novel a more extended view .  In her Hugo-winning novel Some Desperate Glory (2023), Emily Tesh tore through many of the conventions that govern modern, popular SF. Barrelling through a trilogy's worth of plot in a single novel, playing merry hell with time and space, nodding at the familiar structure of the YA novel of self-discovery and self-actualization before thoroughly upending it, the novel seemed determined to confound the reader's expectations at every turn. In one respect, however, Some Desperate Glory hewed closely to the familiar form of a YA adventure. As its heroine, Kyr, uncovered the lies she had been raised on and rebelled against them, the teachers who promulgated those lies inevitably took a background role: sometimes villainous, som...
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Podcast: Talking About Excession by Iain M. Banks on A Meal of Thorns

A Meal of Thorns , from the fanzine Ancillary Review of Books , is one of the most exciting new podcasts of the last few years. A bimonthly critical book club in which host Jake Casella Brookins discusses a work of science fiction, fantasy, or something harder to define with a rotating cast of guests, it's not just an opportunity to go deep into a single work and how it reflects on the genre around it, but an impetus to discover (or rediscover) some great books. In a critical landscape that tends to focus only on the most recent (I'll hold my hand up in that respect), A Meal of Thorns is a great chance to dig into the foundations of the fantastical genres, whether famous or little-known. I was thrilled to be invited to appear on A Meal of Thorns , and after a bit of thought about what I'd like to discuss, realized that it presented a perfect opportunity to revisit a book that I've long felt deserved a second look, Iain M. Banks's Excession . Published in 1996, it r...
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Recent Reading Roundup 63

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The process of putting these posts together is fairly unscientific. When I read a book that seems worth commenting on, I start writing, and if what I end up with is less than a thousand words or thereabouts, it gets placed in a post like this until enough commentaries accumulate that the post feels ready for public consumption. And yet somehow, this recent reading roundup has a surprising thematic unity. These are all books published in the first half of 2025, all science fiction (albeit in some cases a very slipstreamy version of it), and all weird and experimental in either their form or ideas. They're also all books I recommend, especially if you're looking for a sense of what the genre is doing in 2025 that's a little off the beaten path. The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien - Fleeing persecution in their native China, Lina and her father arrive at The Sea, a floating structure moored outside space and time, where every inhabitant looks out and sees a different geogr...
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Review: Meet Me At the Crossroads by Megan Giddings, at Locus

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As June wraps up, the third of my reviews from the May issue of Locus appears on the magazine's website. This review discusses Megan Giddings's third novel, Meet Me At the Crossroads . I reviewed Giddings's previous novel, The Women Could Fly , in the Guardian a few years ago, and was very impressed by what I found. Meet Me At the Crossroads , in which mysterious doors appear at various points on the planet, and reveal a strange, simultaneously dangerous and wondrous landscape when they open, is very similar in both its vibe and its quality. Like its predecessor, it is a gentle, slyly humorous fantasy that is primarily interested in how people live in a world where the numinous is possible. [Giddings's] focus in Meet Me at the Crossroads is faith, and how people grapple with the numinous and unexplainable. And sometimes, how they do not grapple with it. Many of the people Ayanna encounters seek to explain and systematize the doors. A faith healer who claims to have ...
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Review: A Letter From the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall at Locus

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If the first of my reviews in the May 2025 issue of Locus was a bit of a downer, the second now comes along to offer a bit of consolation. A Letter From the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cathrall completes the duology begun in last year's A Letter to the Luminous Deep . Set among a society of scientists and academics who live on islands and atolls on a water planet, the two novels are both an investigation of this setting's genesis, and a charming epistolary romance. One of the chief pleasures of these books is their use of language. Among the recent trend for tales about cod-Victorian scientists in fantasyland (a group that includes Heather Fawcett's Emily Wilde series and Malka Older's Mossa and Pleiti novellas), Cathrall stands apart for her ability to capture both the mannered formality of her characters' diction, and the charming earnestness that shines through it. "I brought only my scientific journal with me, and I hate to sully it with anxious ramblings o...
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