Novel
The Fractured Dark, Megan E. O'Keefe (5 of 5 stars, full review here). (This second book in the Devoured Worlds trilogy has thought-provoking technology, a refreshingly adult romance, and is a high-stakes space opera of the first order. The only thing this second volume suffers from is if the reader hasn't yet read the first book, as it won't make much sense otherwise. But hey! You now have no excuse not to dip into the first book!)
The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (5 of 5 stars, full review here). (This is the first book in a new trilogy by the author of the Founders trilogy, one of my favorite works of the past few years. This book layers a juicy murder mystery over an absolutely fascinating fantasy world.)
The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (5 of 5 stars, full review here). (This fantastic exploration of slowly encroaching fascism, devotion and worship, from the viewpoint of an aging, once faithful warrior rejected by her "god" and cast down, is one of the best books I have read this year.)
Service Model, Adrian Tchaikovsky (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This author usually writes door-knocker-size, wide-scale space opera with galaxy-spanning stakes. This book is not that: it's his version of a robopocalypse, complete with a great deal of wry, understated, often black, very very British, and frequently laugh-out-loud humor. Frankly, I had no idea the author had it in him.)
Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This is the second of three books published this year by this incredibly prolific author, and unlike Service Model, it concentrates on Big Ideas rather than character and whimsy. Because of that, the characters and voice do suffer a bit. Still, the alien ecology extrapolated here is fascinating. If you like your SF to have that old-fashioned "sensawunda," you can't go wrong with this one.)
A Sorceress Comes To Call, T. Kingfisher (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This is another of the author's somewhat loose fairy-tale-reworkings, turned inside out and made her own. This book has some delightful older protagonists, pragmatic ordinary people who don't know what they're doing and muddle through anyway. It also has a "horse" that will haunt your dreams.)
Ghost Station, S.A. Barnes (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This author seems to be making a career of sci-fi/horror novels; this is her second, and having read the first, I can see how she has improved as a writer. This book has tighter pacing, a more careful setup, and better worldbuilding and characterization. The "horror" part of this story is scientific rather than supernatural, and the steadily rising terror of the situation is very well done.)
Short Stories
"Lonely Ghosts," Megan Feldman, from Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 209 February 2024. (This fairly short story emphasizes the need for companionship and connection, even between machines. It has some lovely characters.)
"A Recipe for Hope and Honeycake," Jordan Taylor, Uncanny Magazine Jan/Feb 2024. (This is a gentle story about an outcast fairy who brings hope to the humans around them.)
"Do Houses Dream of Scraping the Sky?" Jana Bianchi, Uncanny Magazine Jan/Feb 2024. (This is a tale of an intelligent house, a granddaughter dealing with her grandmother's death, and how both of them work through their grief.)
"A Contract of Ink and Skin," Angela Liu, Uncanny Magazine Jan/Feb 2024. (This is a beautifully written, eerie little horror story of death and tattoos and ghosts.)
The Sunday Morning Transport is publishing some free stories online this year. This one, "Agni" by Nibedita Sen, is the first of them, and it's tight, powerful and gorgeous.
"Rude Litterbox Space," Mary Robinette Kowal. (Another of the Sunday Morning Transport's free stories, this is based on the author's real-life communication-board-using cat.)
"Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole," Isabel J. Kim, Clarkesworld Magazine February 2024.
Isabel J. Kim is one of our best short story writers, and she outdoes herself here, in this answer to the Le Guin original that vibrates with fury. She takes apart the original premise and applies it to the world today, with devastating effect. Wow.
From the January issue of Clarkesworld Magazine, an outstanding issue:
"Nothing of Value" by Aimee Ogden starts us out, a short, creepy and ultimately horrifying story about a future version of space travel, Skip2, that copies a person's DNA and memories and sends their information to other planets to be reprinted into a fresh new body.
"Down the Waterfall," by Cecile Cristofari, is a time travel story that doesn't fall into the usual time-travel tropes. The protagonist doesn't want to change the past--she just wants to briefly travel down "the road not taken" and visit a person who died all too soon.
"Rail Meat," by Marie Vibbert, is a yacht race with a twist--the yachts are skimming the stratosphere. Our protagonist, Ernestine, a thief, grifter and con artist, signs on to the races as "living ballast." This is another short, action-packed story, where the other main character, Rico, who joins the yacht races to win the heart of a millionaire yacht owner, discovers attaining his heart's desire may not be such a good thing after all.
"You Dream of the Hive," by C.M. Fields, another story that is not long but packs a helluva punch. This story uses the uncommon and tricky second-person narration in its depiction of a person trapped by an interdimensional hive mind, just rescued--and who wants to go back. For Star Trek fans, it's comparable to a drone wishing to return to the Borg.
“We Will Teach You How To Read/We Will Teach You How To Read,” Caroline M. Yoachim, Lightspeed Magazine May 2024
I prefer to have physical copies of my magazines, but in this case, the e-book formatting is essential to this story’s atmosphere and impact. This tale of a dying race of aliens trying to communicate their language and culture–their story–to humans is unforgettable.
"Five Views of the Planet Tartarus," Rachael K. Jones, Lightspeed Magazine January 2024. (This story is only 549 words, but hoo boy. It's a two-minute read, but you'll be thinking about it for days.)
"The Weight of Your Own Ashes," Carlie St. George, Clarkesworld Magazine May 2024. (This is a tale of a fascinating alien species--one consciousness spread across four bodies on as many planets--but it's really a story of grief, acceptance, and demanding to be met on one's own terms.)
"Fishing the Intergalactic Stream," Louis Inglis Hall, Clarkesworld Magazine October 2024. (Ever wondered what it would be like to go fly-fishing on other planets? This story will show you.)
Novelette
"Stars Don't Dream," by Chi Hui, translated by John Chu, was published in a Chinese SF magazine in 2022 and translated into English for the January issue of Clarkesworld. The Chinese authors I've read in the past are often pretty thin on characterization, but thankfully that isn't the case with this story. This tells of a future where space exploration has been abandoned, and everyone on Earth spends their time in a virtual reality "dream tower" while their physical bodies are being cared for and carted around in robots.
"Kardashev's Palimpsest," by David Goodman, from Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 209 February 2024. (This is a love story that spans billions of years, and is proof that you need characters, not just high-concept ideas.)
Novella
The Tusks of Extinction, Ray Nayler (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This novella, with its fascinating ideas of cloned mammoths and the uploaded human tasked to lead them, should have been a full length book. But it's still worth reading, even if it is a bit overstuffed.)
Lost Ark Dreaming, Suyi Davies Okungbowa (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This is a near future post climate change novella that gradually changes from straight science fiction to more horror and mythology. It could easily have been a full length novel, but for this story, it's just as long as it needs to be, with an unusual but emotionally resonant ending.)
The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, P. Djeli Clark (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This is the first of Clark's books that I've read to take place in a secondary fantasy world, which is fascinating. The most interesting part of the worldbuilding is the history and stories of the city of Tal Abisi, which play a pivotal role in the plot.)
Young Adult
Moonstorm, Yoon Ha Lee (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (The author's best-known work is probably the complex and ambitious Machineries of Empire trilogy, and this is not that: it's more understandable from the get-go, for one thing. That's not to say it's light reading; its themes include the exploitation of child soldiers and the terrible decisions made when at war. But it's a little more accessible, given its intended audience.)
Red in Tooth and Claw, Lish McBride (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This weird young-adult Western mashes several genres into its own unique thing, including giant rosette-marked cave cats that bond to the protagonist Faolan Kelley in a manner similar to Anne McCaffrey's dragons.)
Comics/Graphic Novels
Army of One, Vol. 1, Tony Lee/Yishan Li/Brian Valenza (3 of 5 stars, full review here). (This graphic novel pleasantly surprised me, and I've been thinking about it ever since I read it. It's somewhat similar to Paper Girls, but instead of several different characters we have multiversal variants of just one. It's a very intriguing setup, with a plot twist towards the end that is pretty shocking, but fits into the story's larger mythos.)
A Haunted Girl, Ethan Sacks/Naomi Sacks/Marco Lorenzana (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (This slender graphic novel packs a lot of elements into its story of a young woman with major depression who nevertheless has to fight a Japanese death goddess, perfectly balancing the horror/mental health aspects.)
Nonfiction/SFF Related
The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982, Chris Nashawaty (4 of 5 stars). (The author examines eight SFF films that came out within weeks of each other in 1982: E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Tron, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing, and The Road Warrior. He makes the argument that these films, and the fannish zeitgeist they tapped into, changed the culture of Hollywood forever. This volume is a bit too slender to delve deeply into his thesis or discuss the movies in any great depth, but the book was entertaining enough.)
Series
Mercy Thompson urban fantasy series, Patricia Briggs, latest book: Winter Lost (4 of 5 stars, full review here). (Mercy Thompson is still around; she's just about the last urban fantasy heroine still standing, along with Seanan McGuire's October Daye. This series is not as complex plot-wise as Toby's, but the characters are well drawn and compelling.)
The Devoured Worlds science fiction/space opera series, Megan E. O'Keefe, latest book: The Bound Worlds (3 of 5 stars, full review here). (I made no secret of the fact that the final book in this trilogy disappointed me more than a little, as it introduced what I thought was a completely unnecessary tacked-on plot twist. However, the first two books were fantastic, and the strength of those is enough to make the series as a whole worth recommending.)
The Divide science fiction/space opera series, J.S. Dewes, latest book: The Relentless Legion. (This series, on the other hand, did not disappoint, and most definitely stuck the landing.)
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The Apple TV series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is unexpectedly excellent. The series finale, "Beyond Logic," ties together everything that happened this season and sets the stage for the second season I fervently hope this show receives. [Edit: It's been renewed! Yessssss!] Its success is due to the fact it firmly centers the story on its human characters instead of the monsters. The Kurt/Wyatt Russell dual character portrayal (same person, different ages) doesn't sound like it would work, but it absolutely does.
Also on Apple TV (which is fast becoming my go-to streaming service for good SF series) the series finale of the fourth season of For All Mankind, "Perestroika," while rather long (an hour and 20 minutes, more of a mini-movie) was very suspenseful regarding what was coming to a head both on Mars and on Earth. The only nitpick about this is, if there is a fifth season, I think they will be forced to get rid of Joel Kinneman's Ed Baldwin, as that season would be set in (an alternate history) 2012 and he would be in his late 80's by then. [Edit: Yes, it is getting a fifth season. So we shall see what they do with Ed.]
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, AMC, season 1 episode 4, "What We." (I've never been a particular fan of zombie stories; they get boring after a while. Fortunately, this series--as well as another Walking Dead spinoff, Daryl Dixon, that I recently watched and enjoyed as well--concentrates on the characters and their reaction to the monsters, not the monsters themselves. It also highlights the love story of Rick and Michonne, and never more than in this pivotal episode [written by star Danai Gurira, who is apparently also a playwright]. There is some excellent character work here, and an almost unbearably tense scene where Rick and Michonne are trapped in a stairway trying to fend off the zombies while Rick works to free Michonne from a fallen chandelier.)
3 Body Problem, Netflix, season 1 episode 5, "Judgment Day." (I read Cixin Liu's entire Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy years ago, the first book of which is covered by this Netflix adaptation. I grew increasingly less enamored if it with each volume, as it became bogged down with bloated science, excruciatingly slow pacing, and "characters" that, to put it mildly, had all the depth and color of a blank sheet of paper. But this adaptation seems to have pruned away a lot of the bloat, and this pivotal episode is jaw-dropping--not only for the repurposed oil tanker [and its passengers] that gets carved up by nanofibers, but for the way the writers manage to explain Liu's concept of "sophons" in less than 20 pages [which certainly didn't happen in the novel]. Judgment Day, indeed. The season finale, "Wallfacer," introduced one of the most important concepts of the books, and also cemented why I found myself liking this series more than I expected to: this adaptation has actual characters, instead of the book's cardboard cutouts.)
Fallout, Amazon Prime, Season 1 episode 8, "The Beginning." (This adaptation of the video game is equal parts affecting, absurd, and over-the-top gory. The first few episodes careened wildly between those three elements, but the finale successfully brings everything together and whets one's appetite for a season two, which I hope we will get. [Edit: Yes, we are going to. Apparently it's Amazon's most streamed show ever.])
Agatha All Along, Disney Plus, Season 1 episode 7, "Death's Hand in Mine." (I enjoyed this far more than I expected to. A show focusing on witches and featuring older women is apparently my catnip. Each character gets an episode as they face individual trials along the Witches' Road, and this one dives into the mysterious Lilia Calderu. It ends tragically, but Patti LuPone, as Lilia, just nails it.)
Star Trek: Lower Decks, Season 5 episode 4, "A Farewell to Farms." and episode 9, "Fissure Quest." (This is Lower Decks' final season, and if episode 4 is anything to judge by, it's going out on a high note. I laughed out loud several times during this episode, which takes place on a Klingon farm. Bet you didn't know Klingons even had such a thing, did you? And if the finale holds to the delightful standards set in episode 9, we're in for a treat.)
Star Trek: Discovery, Paramount Plus, season 5 episode 3, "Jinaal." (This is Discovery's final season, and they are going on a quest--a quest that ties in rather neatly with a Next Generation episode involving the Progenitors, the aliens who seeded the galaxy with life billions of years ago. The search for clues leads Burnham and her crew to Trill. There is a great deal of good character work in this episode, especially for Tilly, and a darling scene where President T'Rina of Ni'Var reduces her fiancee Saru and his misguided urge to "protect" her to a quivering bowl of jelly in one sentence.)
Star Trek: Prodigy, Season 2, Netflix. (After the completed second season of this kids' show was canceled by Paramount, Netflix picked it up. This season, with its 20 episodes, is basically a very long movie with an overarching storyline, despite a few episodes that serve as one-off side trips. Don't let the episode count put you off: this supposed "kids' show" has a lot of adult themes snuck into it, the new characters show satisfying character growth, and we see several old faces, including a character from The Next Generation that surprised me. This character is not there as just a cameo, either; he plays an integral part in the plot.)
Interview With the Vampire, AMC/Netflix, Season 2 Ep 5, "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape." and Ep 7, "I Could Not Prevent It." (This series of angsty violent vampire love really tears apart its core characters here, as secrets from fifty years ago are revealed. The three principals--Eric Bogosian, Jacob Anderson and Assad Zaman, as well as Luke Brandon Field as a younger version of a main character--give excellent performances. In ep 7, which is even better, Lestat returns and we see Claudia's ultimate fate. Sam Reid, Jacob Anderson and Delainey Hayles are riveting.)
House of the Dragon, Season 2 Ep 4, "The Red Dragon and the Gold," Max. (The Dance of the Dragons truly begins in this episode, which balances spectacular dragon fights with engrossing court intrigue.)
Dune Part 2, written/directed by Dennis Villeneuve. (I saw this on an Imax screen, and after I got used to people's faces towering several stories high, I thought it was really good. This second movie drills down into Paul's messiah complex, the Fremen culture, savior worship, the schemes and plans of the Bene Gesserit, and how they all meet on Dune in an unholy [pardon the pun] mess. I know this will sound old hat to those who have read the books, but I haven't. Nevertheless, I was able to follow the plot well enough. Also, the sandworms were awesome.)
The Substance, written/directed by Coralie Fargeat. (Let's get this out of the way right now: this movie is gory, goopy, bloody, and full of body horror, so if you can't watch stuff like that, you should steer clear. Having said that, this is a savage takedown of Hollywood/societal beauty standards for women, and also explores how many women internalize those unrealistic standards without being aware of it. Demi Moore, as the aging [supposedly; for fifty, the age she turns in this movie, she looks absolutely great] star Elisabeth Sparkle, is outstanding. The ending is more than a little depressing, but the movie deserves credit for following its horrifying hypothesis through to its inevitable end.)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, directed by George Miller, written by George Miller and Nick Lathouris. (This isn't as good as Mad Max: Fury Road--but then again, what is? Fury Road is a masterpiece--but I think it's a worthy prequel, even though I'm sure some people viewed it as unnecessary.)
Godzilla Minus One, Netflix, directed by Takashi Yamazaki. (I couldn't see this in the theater, so thank goodness it landed on Netflix. This is not only a good Godzilla movie, it's a very good movie, period. By focusing on the human characters and the themes of survivors' guilt, PTSD, and the search for redemption, it becomes far more than a monster movie with a person in a silly suit.)
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