Latest

Celebration-bound!

The long view

This story about nuclear physics has stuck with me for decades

Galactic roadmap

Some takeaways from Vanity Fair's big feature article

The latest trailer for For All Mankind shows off a race to Mars

Being first is what it's all about

Destination: Mars

How we imagined the Red Planet

Here are the winners of the 2021 Bram Stoker Awards

Congratulations to all of the winners!

New approaches to rewilding the world

Lev Grossman's The Golden Swift is a delightful climate-focused book for younger readers

Here are the finalists for the 2022 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award

Some of the best shorter genre works from 2021

How to order signed copies of Cosplay: A History

Partnering with Woodstock's Yankee Bookshop

Here are the finalists for this year’s Locus Awards!

An excellent crop of books from 2021

Let's round up some trailers

J. Michael Straczynski's Last Dangerous Visions finds a publisher

The book will reportedly come out in 2023

25 new SF/F books to check out this May

Battles for the galaxy, haunted places, and more to add to your TBR pile

Peter V. Brett's The Warded Man is getting a TV adaptation

A potential streaming franchise to stand up alongside The Witcher, Game of Thrones, and more

Dune: The Sisterhood gets a new director

Booklist loved Cosplay: A History!

A brief book update

New ways of war

Adam Roberts' 2010 novel New Model Army holds some interesting lessons about the future of warfare

Karen Traviss’ Wess’Har Wars series is an essential environmental SF saga

The series is an engrossing dive into colonization, environmentalism, and destruction

Anticipations

Hey, we finally have a trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder

Here are the finalists for this year's Ignyte Awards

It's a good list of books to add to your TBR

Here are the winners of 2022 British Science Fiction Association Awards

Kali Wallace wins the 2022 Philip K. Dick Award

P. Djèlí Clark earns 2022 Compton Crook Award for A Master of Djinn

A worthy winner in a solid crop of finalists

The first full trailer for Stranger Things Season 4 teases a coming war

Are we the baddies?

AMC's Moonhaven will debut on June 30th

Coming June 30th

For All Mankind takes us to Mars in debut Season 3 teaser

The show returns on June 10th

Here are the finalists for this year’s Hugo Awards

A good selection of nominees!

Moral ambiguities

How does a good person stray from the path?

The sounds of war

HBO Max to adapt Emily St. John Mandel's new book, Sea of Tranquility

21 new SF/F books to check out this April

A new pile o’ books to add to your to-read list

Apple’s adapting Blake Crouch’s novel Dark Matter

The nine-episode series will star Joel Edgerton

Marking pages and places

Bookmarks as memory capture devices

A new illustrated edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion is coming

Kaiju sugar rush

John Scalzi's latest is a monster-filled blockbuster of a novel

Chilling effect

J.R.R. Tolkien's estate refreshed its website with some stringent guidelines for how to use the author's works

Plan your SF/F TV viewing schedule this spring

Here are the 2022 Lammy Finalists SF/F nominees

Mid-March book list!

6 additional March books to check out

It takes a village

The wild success of Brandon Sanderson's Kickstarter holds lessons for building a resilient fan community

HBO Max greenlights Penguin-focused Batman series

A spinoff that expands the world of The Batman

Amazon is adapting God of War with the writers of Children of Men

Another genre series to add to the To Watch pile

Some Westeros updates from George R.R. Martin

The future of Martin's fantasy world is alive and well on HBO

The stuff of science fiction stories

The first teaser for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has touched down

"Jedi can't help what they are"

Here's the first trailer for Obi-Wan Kenobi

Here are the finalists for the 2021 Nebula Awards

The winners will be announced on May 22nd during this year's Nebula Conference

Irradiating SF

MIT Press is reissuing Joshua Glenn's The Radium Age series

HBO's DMZ OTW

All four episodes of the limited series drop on HBO Max on March 17th

There's a new Alien film in the works

Coming from Don't Breathe's Fede Alvarez

Will Smith is Legend, Part 2

A sequel to the 2007 post apocalyptic film I Am Legend

Clarkesworld's Readers Choice selections

Fan favorites from 2021

Fireside Magazine is shutting down

The magazine will end its 10 year run this summer

Amazon is shuttering its physical bookstores

All 68 in-person store are set to close down as the company focuses on other efforts

Apple picks up Sam Esmail's Metropolis series

A new take on the classic, foundational film from the creator of Mr. Robot

We all have monsters within us

Morbius drops on April 1st

16 new sci-fi and fantasy books to check out this March

Stories about alternate worlds, fantastical maps, space empires, and quite a bit more to distract you from the world

T.L. Huchu's Library of the Dead introduces us to a grim, magical Edinburgh

A slick urban fantasy mystery

Publishers Weekly loved Cosplay: A History!

I'm extremely pleased to report that my upcoming book Cosplay: A History has received its second trade review, this time from Publishers Weekly! It's a glowing one, too: > "...Liptak’s study is an inspiring one, underscored by the community’s efforts to spread “magical moment[s]” with organizations such as

Here's the final ballot for this year's Bram Stoker Awards

The winners will be announced in May

Here are the finalists for the LA Times Book Award Ray Bradbury Prize

The winner will be announced in April

Nnedi Okorafor's Noor is a vivid work of Africanfuturism cyberpunk

A science fiction novel that feels eminently true to the nature of the contradictions of the real world

Aidan Moher announces Fight, Magic, Items

Asimov's Science Fiction announces its Reader Award Finalists

The 36th annual awards

Stranger Things 4 arrives in May, and Netflix has renewed the show for one final season

The beginning of the end

Star Trek 4 is in once again in the works

The film is expected to bring back the Kelvin cast, and begin shooting in 2022

Paramount renewed Halo for a second season

The video game adaptation debuts on March 24th

Bloom County is headed to TV

FOX is adapting the classic comic strip as an animated series

Netflix is making a BioShock movie

Another video game adaptation for the streaming service

Nostalgia's limits

The Book of Boba Fett was a nice bit of worldbuilding, but that's about it

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim will hit theaters in April 2024

Another Middle-earth project to watch

Here's the shortlist for the 2022 Compton Crook Awards

The award will be handed out during this year's Balticon in May

Hello, Middle-earth

Our first look at Rings of Power shows off a familiar and very pretty world

Amazon has scooped up Ridley Scott's live-action Blade Runner series

Set 50 years after Blade Runner 2049

Here are the winners of the 2021 r/Fantasy Stabby Awards

Congratulations to the winners and nominees!

Jurassic World: Dominion brings in some old friends to save the world

Coming June 10th

The trailer for The Adam Project teases a throwback blockbuster

The film drops on March 11th

A first look at Amazon's The Rings of Power

The bedrock media rights to Tolkien's works are also up for grabs

Obi-Wan Kenobi: the series will debut on Disney+ on May 25th

On the anniversary of A New Hope's release in 1977

Hulu is resurrecting Futurama

Shut up and take my money!

Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon rounds out its cast

The film is slated to start shooting in April 2022

Imagining green futures

Christopher Brown on climate change, apocalyptic narratives, and eco-fiction

Douglas Trumbull brought science fiction to life

The famed special effects supervisor died on February 7th

A cat joins Buzz Lightyear in the full trailer for Pixar's Lightyear

The film comes out on June 17th

Recap: Detours, part 2

Apple's Shining Girls looks like a creepy, time-traveling thriller

The series debuts on April 29th

Roundup: workspace blockage

What is standing in the way of your process?

J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 reboot gets a stay of execution

It looks like we'll have to wait a bit longer before the series moves forward

Sony's Spider-verse film Madame Web gets a lead

Sony is slowly building out its Spider-verse

Raymond Feist's Riftwar Cycle is getting an adaptation

Another big epic fantasy to add to the adaptation pipeline

Galactic diversions

Paramount is developing a Starfleet Academy series

Star Trek isn't slowing down

Apple's Foundation expands its cast for season 2

Hints of what to expect in the next season

23 new SF/F books to check out this February

New reads about fantastic worlds, disastrous missions, and quite a bit more

Hello, Master Chief

Paramount+'s series debuts on March 24th

Catching up with the Fetts

Recaps for Chapters 3 and 4

Terry Pratchett to get official biography

Due out in September

Disney+ greenlights Percy Jackson series

A do-over for the franchise

Kirkus Reviews liked Cosplay: A History!

The first trade review for Cosplay: A History is in! It comes from Kirkus Reviews, and it's a good one! Here are the big quotes: "An entertaining look at a vibrant, “interactive, interpretive, and immersive” pop-culture community...A wonderfully fun book showing that the art of having a good time

Apple has greenlit a live-action Godzilla series

The series will be set in Legendary’s Monsterverse franchise

Remembering author David Farland

The author of The Courtship of Princess Leia died earlier this week at the age of 64

And we finally have a title for Amazon's Middle-earth series

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Halo Infinite delivers on a long-standing promise

Exploring the Zeta Halo ring

The Star Trek Universe moves forward

Renewals for Star Trek: Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and Lower Decks along with a schedule for 2022

Here's the first trailer for Marvel's Moon Knight

Coming on March 30th

Property lines

Intellectual property, how does it work?

The transformation of the Tuskens

The Book of Boba Fett and The Mandalorian added depth to the Tusken Raiders, but complications remain

John Scalzi's Kaiju Preservation Society optioned for TV

The book is due out on March 15th

Paramount options Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone

The project was previously at Lucasfilm

Here are the 2022 Philip K. Dick Award Finalists

The best paperback originals of 2021

Two sides of the same coin

Science fiction and fantasy, side by side

Octavia Butler's Kindred is heading to television

The project will hopefully shine more light on the late author's body of work

Studies in Arachnology

Let’s rank the Spider-man films, shall we?

Career changes in a Galaxy Far, Far, Away

Chapter 2: The Tribes of Tatooine

My most anticipated reads of 2022

Make room on your TBR pile

Jonathan Nolan will direct Amazon's Fallout series pilot

The series is expected to enter production later this year.

So, what's going on with NBC's Battlestar Galactica continuation?

So say we all?

The best SF/F books of 2021

Essential reads from a bleak year

The resurrection of Boba Fett

Chapter 1: Stranger in a Strange Land

All the new sci-fi and fantasy books you should check out in January

New year, new piles of books to take over your TBR pile

Here's what I read in 2021

52 books in 52 weeks

My best work in 2021

Thank you for reading what I wrote this year

A Brief History of Star Wars’ Mandalorian Warriors

The Mandalorians have had a long and vivid history within the Star Wars universe, and their popularity will only rise from here

Incoming Adaptations

Three well-known books are getting some big adaptations

Soft power

Science Fiction has often been used as a tool to further geopolitical goals

“I didn’t choose to do this”

Sam Raimi’s Spider-man trilogy does something interesting that the modern MCU doesn’t really do: lean into the horrific origins Marvel’s characters

Weekend reading

Introducing Julian Yap and Fran Wilde’s new weekly speculative fiction magazine, Sunday Morning Transport

Pushing against nostalgia

Paul Tremblay on his next horror novel, The Pallbearer's Club

"Maybe this isn't the story we think it is."

Updates from The Matrix Resurrections, Shang-Chi 2, Marvel's Daredevil, The Penguin series, and Rogue Squadron

Transfer Orbit's 2021 Gift Guide

A bunch of ideas for things to buy your friends

Fandom demarkation lines

Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse gets a trailer, and Saga appears in a ... Taco Bell commercial.

One foot in front of the other

What it's like to march in the Macy's Day Parade as a stormtrooper

Updates from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

All the sci-fi and fantasy books to check out this December

Stories of revolution, space pirates, cyber mages, and more to read this holiday season

14 SF/F books to check out this December

Stories about distant civilizations, magical cyberpunk, and the history of libraries.

Here’s the cover for Cosplay: A History!

Coming June 28th, 2022!

History and prophesy

Dreams are messages from the deep

Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune succeeds because it understands the grounded nature of Frank Herbert's novel

Destroying Empires

Brian Staveley on his latest epic fantasy, The Empire's Ruin, taking risks, and throwing away an entire book to write a better one

Review: Brian Staveley’s The Empire’s Ruin

Brian Staveley's The Empire's Ruin

War in the 'belt

The art of future war

The evolution of military science fiction

Marvel takes the spotlight at Disney+ Day

Bringing it all home

New tools for storytellers

Unity acquired Weta's SFX division, potentially putting the studio's tools in the hands of more creatives

Fragmented

A soldier contends with the toll of war on a distant planet

Snag on the tarmac

Updates on Lucasfilm's Rogue Squadron, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a new Philip K. Dick adaptation, and more.

Sony's Spider-Web

Walkabout

Voice in the machine

As text-to-speech technology improves, we shouldn't forget that narration isn't just reading a book: it's a performance

Imagining different histories

P. Djèlí Clark on history, fantasy, and how racism creates monsters

Plan your fall SF/F TV viewing schedule this fall

So much TV, so little time.

Boba Fett is coming for you

Trailers for The Book of Boba Fett, The Witcher, and The Wheel of Time, and more news to start off the week.

Here are all the new SF/F books you should check out this November!

Stories about fallen empires, climate change, and more to check out this month.

27 new SF/F books to check out this November

The October books, in chronological order.

Drifting towards the finale

Boundary lines

Is that *really* science fiction?

Space is big this week

Returning to Last Dangerous Visions

Updates about Star Wars TV, Apple's Mythic Quest, Paizo's unionization drive, and the Wheel of Time

Empire vs. faith

Meet my book, Cosplay: A History

My book about the history of cosplay is finally available to order online!

Stories about the end of the world

Some Transfer Orbit updates

Doubling down with this newsletter

Foundation wants you to know that Gaal Dornick is Very Smart

Into the black

William Shatner's launch into space is fitting, and he brought along a message that we could all stand to listen to.

Our vanishing world

Looking at the past and future of conservation with Michelle Nijhuis and Jeff VanderMeer

The first Seldon Crisis

Transmission of Habit

How do groups and organizations foster healthy futures?

Ghosts in the timeline

Here are all the new SF/F (and other) books coming this October!

New stories about fantasy worlds, distant solar systems, and stories about the Marvel Universe.

20 SF/F (and other) books to check out this October

Here's the October 2021 book list, in chronological order.

Growing pains

This weekend, the biggest union behind the live entertainment industry is about to vote whether or not to go on strike. They have good reason to: the demand for original content has pushed Hollywood's workers to the limit.

Babylon 5: the reboot

Well, this is unexpected.

Asimov's empire

How Foundation became the story that powered space opera

Netflix acquires Roald Dahl

A decade of The Expanse

Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck look back on their epic space opera series, writing for television, and what they hope its impact will be a decade from now

Paperpocalypse

Booksellers and publishers are warning that if you want that big new book this holiday season, you should probably get your orders in early.

Reviving our last, best hope for peace

J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 is a phenomenal space opera series. A reboot is long-overdue.

Hot zone cosplay

How are conventions adapting to the world of COVID-19? Pretty well, it seems.

Squandered legacy

The rise and fall of ANOVOS

What does the next great space opera series look like?

Serialization has brought plenty of excellent shows to television. But what would a great, episodic space opera series look like today?

Here are all the new SF/F (and other) books coming this September!

This month brings a ton of books about AI, kingdoms in strife, and plenty of other adventures to dive into

26 SF/F (and other) books to check out this September

Here's the September 2021 book list, in chronological order.

Return of the Rocketeer

Right time, right book

Reading and criticism shouldn't be tied to a book's publicity calendar

Ignition failure

Storytelling platform Curious Fictions is shutting down. It filled a unique need for writers: hosting their short fiction backlist.

Building for stories

Tanya Breshears on founding, running, and closing down Curious Fictions

Faithful Adaptations

Apple's Foundation is on its way, and every time I write about it, I see lots of handwringing over how it'll turn out. What makes a good adaptation?

Wartime lessons

The fall of Afghanistan brings to an end two decades of warfare. It also brings a key lesson for writers: acknowledge complexity.

Fiction is powerful

This week’s revelation that anti-vaccine activists have been citing a plot point from 2007’s I Am Legend serves as a good reminder of fiction’s ability to shape our understanding of reality.

Inaudible

An audiobook narrator spent two months creating a new audio edition of Dune, only to discover that the entire project was a scam

Booking a cruise to a galaxy far, far away

Starting in 2022, you'll be able to book a voyage on Disney's Galactic Starcruiser, an immersive Star Wars experience... for a hefty price.

Further reading

The Middle-earth-set series drops on Amazon Prime Video on September 2nd, 2022

Here's the August 2021 sci-fi and fantasy book list!

A roundup of all of the best-looking science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels hitting shelves this month.

Looking back on the Space Age

The near future of crewed spaceflight brings a lot of promise with it, but it's worth looking back on the Apollo missions to understand where we've come from

The role of the military's science fiction

A recent hot take suggested that the military's use of fiction ignores the genre's inherent warnings about technology. The opposite is true.

Octavia Butler's finally getting her due

Dune is a war epic

Frank Herbert's Dune has been adapted a handful of times, but I think this new adaptation captures a key part of the story that the others haven't: it's a story about war.

Netflix isn't just a streaming TV outlet

Anatomy of an ARC

ARCs have long been a staple of publishing, but their role in a book’s publicity lifecycle is evolving.

The billionaires of LEO

Neill Blomkamp's 2013 film Elysium is an underrated film that continues to grow in relevance

Tech CEOs should stop using sci-fi as a blueprint for humanity’s future in space

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have repeatedly highlighted how science fiction has influenced their worldviews

Can you hear me now?

Two novels, Arkady Martine's A Desolation Called Peace and Timothy Zahn's Conqueror's Pride deal with first contact in some interesting ways

Visiting Tau Ceti

Tau Ceti is one of our nearest celestial neighbors, so it shouldn't be a huge surprise that it's a frequent destination for authors.

Snyder's Star Wars

Science Fiction's Maelstrom

After Isabel Fall published a story through Clarkesworld, Science Fiction Twitter came down on her quickly.

Here's the July 2021 sci-fi and fantasy book list!

A roundup of all the science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels coming out in July 2021 to add to Mt. Toberead.

It looks like Apple's Foundation series will come at the perfect time

Apple released a new trailer for its upcoming adaptation of Foundation, and it looks as though it'll fit with a larger genre trend: critically examining the cost of imperialism and colonization

Fandom superiority complex

Every year, we get reminders about how fandom at its worst can be exclusionary and forbidden to newcomers. That's something that should change.

Spielberg's Amblin heads to Netflix

The prescient Octavia Butler

Carrie Vaughn's immersive worlds

Carrie Vaughn on tactile escapism, immersive entertainment, and her latest book Questland

Contemplating canons

The idea of a science fiction canon is important to the larger fan community — but it's a canon that isn't always interrogated or reexamined

The rekindling of Fireside Magazine

After publishing a racist audio version of one of its essays in November 2020, Fireside Magazine is working to regain its status as one of science fiction's leading anti-racist voices

The taxonomy of dressing up for fun

There's an invisible line between cosplayers and reenactors, but while the uniforms are different, there's a lot that's the same under the hood

Another Middle-earth-set film is on its way

The Tolkien-verse gets even bigger.

"Space belongs to you": Becky Chambers on optimistic sci-fi and ending her Wayfarers series

Becky Chambers won the inaugural Hugo Award for Best Series in 2019, and with her latest novel, The Galaxy and the Ground Within now out, she talks about building "wonderful and insignificant" stories about space.

Storytelling is an unrealized work tool

Storytelling is a powerful tool to evoke and impart emotions, and morality through fiction. But it's also a tool that organizations can and should utilize to effectively communicate their efforts.

Imagining the breakdown

Here's the June 2021 sci-fi/fantasy book list!

A roundup of all the science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels coming out in June 2021 that you should add to your bookshelves.

Amazon's roar

Amazon announced that it's acquiring film studio MGM. The move is part of a larger trend of media consolidation, and it could have some worrisome impacts on MGM's creative legacy.

Transfer Orbit Slack Channel

Reopening the Stargate

Earlier this week, word broke that Amazon was in discussions to purchase MGM. If that goes through, it could provide a return path for the Stargate franchise.

AT&T is spinning off WarnerMedia

The Return of the Cons

In this week's Transfer Orbit roundup, we take a look at what the return of conventions and what it means for cosplayers.

Returning to a lost galaxy

How Kenneth C. Flint's long-lost and unpublished Star Wars novel was unearthed and lit up the fan community

May the 4th is all the friends we made along the way

May the 4th has become the defacto holiday for all things Star Wars, and I've been thinking about what that means, both as a cynical day of free marketing for Disney, but also a celebration of the community of fans out there.

30 years ago, Timothy Zahn resurrected Star Wars

When Timothy Zahn published Heir to the Empire in 1991, the Star Wars franchise was far from the public's awareness. The Thrawn trilogy helped it roar back.

Building a Galaxy: Endings and Beginnings

While the Star Wars franchise is best known for its films, it's also well-known for its sprawling novel series, the Star Wars Expanded Universe. While it's no longer canon, it kept Star Wars going for decades, and still retains a loyal following.

Building a Galaxy: Unexplored Territory

While the Star Wars franchise is best known for its films, it's also well-known for its sprawling novel series, the Star Wars Expanded Universe. While it's no longer canon, it kept Star Wars going for decades, and still retains a loyal following.

Building a Galaxy: New Publisher, New Directions

While the Star Wars franchise is best known for its films, it's also well-known for its sprawling novel series, the Star Wars Expanded Universe. While it's no longer canon, it kept Star Wars going for decades, and still retains a loyal following.

Building a Galaxy: Expanding the Universe

While the Star Wars franchise is best known for its films, it's also well-known for its sprawling novel series, the Star Wars Expanded Universe. While it's no longer canon, it kept Star Wars going for decades, and still retains a loyal following.

Building a Galaxy: Heir to the Trilogy

While the Star Wars franchise is best known for its films, it's also well-known for its sprawling novel series, the Star Wars Expanded Universe. While it's no longer canon, it kept Star Wars going for decades, and still retains a loyal following.

Building a Galaxy: Origin Stories

While the Star Wars franchise is best known for its films, it's also well-known for its sprawling novel series, the Star Wars Expanded Universe. While it's no longer canon, it kept Star Wars going for decades, and still retains a loyal following.

Here's the May 2021 science fiction and fantasy book list!

A roundup of all the science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels coming out in May 2021 that you should add to your bookshelves.

SFWA announces #DisneyMustPay task force

Transfer Orbit's roundup for the week of April 26th: Developments in the #DisneyMustPay campaign.

The cost of superheroics

Natalie Zina Walschot's novel Hench is an exhilarating, funny, and pointed look at the cost of superheroes.

Martha Wells on writing an anxious, relatable killbot

Martha Wells on her blockbuster series Murderbot: finding common ground with anxiety-driven killer robots, television, and second chances.

Wild Thing's Laura Krantz about exploring the unknown

I speak with Wild Thing's Laura Krantz about UFO and Bigfoot culture, and what those stories have to tell us about the world

Does science fiction have a moral imperative to address climate change?

This post was originally published in September 2019 for the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog [https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/does-science-fiction-have-a-moral-imperative-to-address-climate-change/] . Today, in cities across the globe, millions of people are taking part in the Global Climate Strike [https://globalclimatestrike.net/], an international movement to bring awareness to

Solving the climate crisis

Three novels take on a changing climate

Looking back on the journey

Game of Thrones debuted a decade ago this month, and it arrived at a pivotal point in television history. Now that it's over, it's worth revisiting with fresh eyes.

The hateful sci-fi novel that brought white supremacists together

The Turner Diaries inspired generations of white supremacists, and its narrative filled with racist tropes continues to have an impact.

Recapping the Hugo Awards noms

Happy Saturday! This week got a bit away from me: I'm still dealing with some back problems that are making it hard to sit, and I spent [https://twitter.com/AndrewLiptak/status/1383108390373711875] much of Friday minding a tiny monster [https://twitter.com/AndrewLiptak/status/1383108390373711875] as we visited her

Amazon launches serialized fiction platform, Kindle Vella

Earlier this week, Amazon announced an intriguing new product: Kindle Vella. It'll be a self-publishing platform that allows authors in its Kindle Direct Publishing program to write and sell serialized stories, and which lets readers read a couple of the installments for free, and pay for additional installments with a

Read AAPI / Asian SF/F Authors

Hello! This'll be a bit of a short newsletter this week. I did something to my back, and it's been painful to sit for long periods of time. I've been spending this week trying to avoid sitting or lifting things, which seems to be helping. Two programming notes: * With the

Subterranean worlds

HBO Max released Godzilla vs. Kong last week, and I've been watching it in chunks with Bram over the last couple of days. I've been enjoying it: my expectations are firmly in the "two giant monsters duking it out on an aircrafter carrier" is a lot of fun, rather than

Serial Box's Transformation

Happy Friday: I hope that you've had a good week. For a brief moment, it was spring here in Vermont, but outside my window, the landscape has been covered in a thin layer of snow. I'm ready for winter to be over, but at least it's pretty, and it's helpful

20 science fiction and fantasy books to check out this April

Happy April! It's finally spring, although Mother Nature decided to play a cruel April Fool's joke on us here in Vermont: I'm watching snow fall past my window right now. With the beginning of a new month, it's time to look forward a bit to see what books are coming

Transfer Orbit has moved!

Good morning! This is your notification that as of this week, Transfer Orbit has moved to a new home on Ghost. A couple of housekeeping notes: * I'm mirroring this email on both platforms, so you should receive one from each platform: if you only get the one from Substack, please

Connecting up cinematic universes

Happy Saturday, and apologies for the delay: this week has been a busy one. First, some personal news: We got a kitten! Meet Cinnamon, which breaks our established naming convention, but this little guy is essentially Bram's, so he got to name it. I've been calling him Sir Cinnamon, but

Arizona State University’s Free Solarpunk Anthology is All About Optimistic Futures

Featuring stories from Paolo Bacigalupi, S.B. Divya, Deji Bryce Olukotun, and Andrew Dana Hudson

Setting course for a new orbit

Nebulas and Substack problems

This week: the 2020 Nebula Awards, trouble with Substack, and more.

Do I stay or do I go now?

The creeping dread of Battlestar Galactica's miniseries

Happy Friday! This week has been pretty quiet, SF/F-wise: it seems like the news about the royal family, the anniversary of COVID-19, and the passage of the latest stimulus bill has sucked most of the oxygen out of the room. Instead, I’ve got some thoughts on a thing

Telling War Stories

Every day should be World Book Day

Yesterday was the first of two annual “World Book Days” — this one celebrated in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and which is funded by local publishers as a way to encourage reading and literacy. The bigger World Book Day will take place next month, on April 23rd (formally known as

Syfy's Defiance was an ambitious cross-platform experiment that failed

Long after the TV series ended, its companion game is being shut down

15 science fiction and fantasy books to check out this March

Image: Andrew LiptakWelcome to March. There are two belated entries that I missed for the February list [https://andrewliptak.substack.com/p/february-2021-science-fiction-fantasy-new-books] that I meant to include (I had them marked down as March books, but it turns out I put them in the wrong month): the first is

All the news that's fit to link

This has been a pretty quiet week for me: I took a couple of days to get away from the internet and out of the house with my son, so this is going to be a bit of a shorter newsletter than usual. We’ve spent the last couple of

The Space Between Worlds is a clever read about power and parallel worlds

Micaiah Johnson’s debut is all about identity and the struggle for power

Pokémon GO turned me into a birder

Games can lead to obsession and to action

Transfer Orbit Roundup: Barfight

I hope that you’re safe where you are, given the snowstorm that’s caused problems for Texas. I’ve horrified at the images that I’ve seen from the storm, and have been reflecting on my relationship with winter here in Vermont, where I’m a homeowner. I have

Child soldiers

Narratives of modernization

A history of Chinese science fiction Image: Andrew LiptakIn 2015, author Ken Liu stepped up to the podium at Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, to accept the Hugo Award for Best Novel on behalf of Liu Cixin, author of The Three-Body Problem. It was a historic moment: Liu

Carano, Whedon, and some new fantasy franchises

Happy Friday — I hope that you’ve made it through this busy week. Presently, it’s -4° here in Vermont, which has me bundled up in my workplace with an entire pot of hot tea. This’ll be the first of two posts that will arrive in your inbox today.

Actions have consequences

Fuck around and find out

How I read

All Expanse all the time

I made a cool finding earlier this week: while lamenting with some friends about the demise [https://andrewliptak.substack.com/p/reading-list-november-22nd] of the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, my former editor, Joel Cunningham, said to double-check the rights — he couldn’t remember where ownership lies for the pieces that

Buck Rogers could be the next big sci-fi franchise

Waking the Leviathan

The story of how James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse went from game concept to book series to blockbuster TV show

17 science fiction and fantasy books to check out this February

January was a fun month, wasn’t it? With all of that behind us, it’s time to look ahead at the next month, which means that there’s a whole bunch of new titles hitting stores. There is a book that I meant to include in the January book

Toxic fans, streaming IP, and the Hugo Awards

Hello! We’re a month into a new year, and it doesn’t quite feel as bleak, does it? It’s a nice feeling. I’m making a couple of programming changes with what I’ve been calling the “roundup” newsletter public issues, which will hopefully be more useful to

Adapting the department

Law & Order: SVU, The Rookie, and others in the post-George Floyd era Last year, I decided to binge watch my favorite fantasy TV series: Law & Order: SVU. All 21 seasons of it. I started with Season 13, right when the series experienced a bit of a reset when co-star Christopher

A Dragonlance update

Fan fiction is the lifeblood of fandom

Fan fiction's strength isn't based on its literary merits, but on the fans that it brings together

When dystopian fiction comes to life

What science fiction tells us about our current moment in 2021

Orwell's America

13 science fiction and fantasy books to pick up this January

2021 — a new year. Hopefully, you had a good weekend to test out these strange four numbers, and hopefully, they’ll be a little less chaotic than 2020 was. One thing’s for sure: there’ll always be books. In case you missed it, here’s my recent list of

What I Read in 2020

Last 2020 retrospective that I’ve got for you this week. Happy new year! Over the last couple of years, I’ve kept a running thread on Twitter of the books I read, part of my effort to keep myself on track with a reading goal of roughly a book

My most anticipated SF/F reads for 2021

The year ahead in new worlds and adventures A new year brings a whole slate of new books to covet. For a couple of months now, I’ve started getting new books in the mail: it’s always exciting to see what’s coming up, and it’s gotten me

2020: the year in science fiction

The big events, stories, and people that shaped the year We’ve reached the end of another year. 2020 always held something of a science fictional promise — as any round-numbered year seems to — and the last 12 months outdid themselves. It’s been a challenging year for everyone, and I

Thank you for reading in 2020

This is the final roundup edition of 2020, although I’ll be in your inbox a couple of more time this week as I look back on the year. I started 2020 with just over 450 subscribers, and we’re ending with nearly a thousand new additions — you all are

My Best Work in 2020

Thank you for reading me this year We’re coming up on the end of 2020, and I’ve been thinking about the work that I’ve done. It’s been a busy year: most of my writing has been for Tor.com as a news writer, but it’s

Jeremy Bulloch's Boba Fett inspired legions of fans

The future of the Star Wars cinematic (telematic?) universe

The next couple of years for a Galaxy Far, Far Away I’ve been writing a lot about Star Wars recently (apologies if that’s not your jam — there’s just been a lot about it lately), and while Transfer Orbit isn’t *just* about the franchise, I think it’

The objects that tell us stories

Hello! Happy Thursday: I hope that you’re having a good week. This week has been a busy one on this end: our daycare is closed, so we’re dealing not only with a school-aged kid doing school work, but a tiny, feral monster that would otherwise be rehomed for

Disney, royalties and copyright law

A deep dive into #DisneyMustPay For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on a story about a major campaign that SFWA put out: #DisneyMustPay. Back in November, SFWA held a press conference that revealed that Alan Dean Foster found that some of his royalties had dried up

2020 Transfer Orbit Holiday Gift Guide

It’s mid-December, and I’ve had gifts on my mind the last couple of weeks, and I’ve always had fun putting these sorts of lists together. If you’re looking for some ideas of things to get for your friends or family (or yourself!), I’ve rounded up

Michael A. Stackpole's Rogue Squadron novels unlocked Star Wars' vast potential

Showing a bigger world beyond people named Luke, Leia, and Han

Cyberpunk's power came from global dystopian politics

It might look like the 1980s, but we're still living in it

What do book events look like in 2021 and beyond?

Book programming in a post-COVID world

Warner Brothers' 2021 release schedule is a glimpse at the future of cinema

How I made Bram's Mandalorian armor

14 science fiction and fantasy books to check out this December

It’s December. I’m not quite sure how that happened. The year has stretched on forever and is gone in a blink. (I feel like I say that every time though, so I’m not sure it’s really a surprise.) But: we made it! Onto 2021. Reaching the

The Expanded Universe comes for The Mandalorian

But is The Mandalorian simply becoming a launchpad for more projects? Hello! I meant to get this issue out the day after Thanksgiving — apologies for the delay. The holiday itself was good. We made a small mountain of food and more turkey than we needed, but our dog, Tiki, was

Audible backtracks after outrage over return policy

The Expanse will end with its sixth season

"It's better to go down swinging than rolling over." Amazon Studios has announced [https://twitter.com/ExpanseOnPrime/status/1331281426520662017?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet] that it’s renewed its science fiction series for a sixth — and final — season, bringing to a close the adaptation of James S.

At Last, Dangerous Visions

Harlan Ellison's long-unfinished science fiction anthology might finally see the light of day

Long reads: private space and AI warfare

Greetings! It’s been… quite the week, hasn’t it? I was incredibly relieved when various networks began to call the Presidential race on Saturday: a weight of uncertainty has been lifted. Obviously, there’s a lot that needs to happen between now and then: states need to certify their

The [AI]nformation battlespace

Artificial intelligence is coming to the battlefield: how will we prepare? Under the cover of darkness, a team of soldiers from the United States Special Operations Command quietly makes their way into an unnamed East African city. They’re clad in specialized clothing and makeup that hampers facial recognition software

17 sci-fi and fantasy books to check out this November

This week is going to be… a week, isn’t it? I cast my ballot for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a couple of months ago, and I’m dreading the coming controversy that’s sure to come this week as the votes are tabulated. On top of that, it’

Three horror novels to keep you up at night in 2020

Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic, Stephen Graham Jones' The Only Good Indians, and Paul Tremblay's Survivor Song

"Qanon for nerds": Fandom isn't immune to online radicalization

Conspiracy theories and online fandom

Where the monsters come out

There’s a road near where I grew up where a monster is said to live. Drive a half mile up the Devil’s Washbowl Road, and it narrows into a single track that isn’t maintained come winter. As you drive into the forest, the trees tower over you,

"I wanted to paint ash": Simon Stålenhag on his latest art book, The Labyrinth

The cold has come for Vermont. I woke up this week to darkening skies and a thin layer of wet snow clinging to the leaves, and it’s remained overcast and damp, which is the perfect environment for the week of Halloween, and for a project that I’ve been

P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout reimagines Lovecraftian horror

Reimagining Lovecraft, Robin Hobb on The Farseer Trilogy, and more Hello! I hope that you’ve been faring well in the last couple of weeks. One of the things that I’ve found myself doing the last couple of months is work around the house, activities that keep me focused

Dragonlance changed how we read fantasy

The franchise's original creators have sued Wizards of the Coast for breach of contract over a new book trilogy

Walk in the Woods

Transfer Orbit Fiction My phone pings, rousing me out of my light sleep. I sigh and pick myself up from where I was lying in the driver’s seat of my battered pickup truck. The sun hasn’t appeared over the eastern mountains just yet, but the overcast sky has

Failed State's Christopher Brown on building utopias out of dystopias

Happy Friday! (or whatever day it is you’re reading this on.) One of my favorite discoveries recently has been author Christopher Brown, author of Tropic of Kansas, Rule of Capture, and Failed State, as well as a whole host of short stories. He’s popped up in some interesting

Fifty years of Larry Niven's Ringworld

The legacy of a megastructure

What's In My Bag: 2020 Edition

Mobile office for when I need to get out of the house\ Last June, I took it upon myself to write up a post [https://andrewliptak.substack.com/p/reading-list-what-s-in-your-bag-reviews] about what I carry with me when I go out and about. I did another one for the newsletter GetRevue

Dune is migrating to 2021

Another COVID casualty Well, this isn’t a huge surprise: Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures have apparently bumped the release date of their adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune from December 18th 2020 to October 1st, 2021, according to Variety [https://variety.com/2020/film/box-office/dune-release-date-delayed-2021-1234767105/] . It’s the

New season, new mission, new name

Introducing Transfer Orbit Hello! We’re in the midst of fall here in Vermont — the reds, yellows, and oranges are particularly vivid on the trees and the forest floors. It’s a time of transition, something that’s been on my mind as we barrel into October. The state of

24 science fiction and fantasy books to check out this October

How is it October already? I think we’ve established that time is working in strange ways this year, and if this week is any indication, it’s going to be an awful slog over the next 33 days. Go vote! If there’s any bright spot, it’s that

Three-Body Geopolitics

Liu Cixin runs afoul of the GOP Yesterday, five US senators, Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Rick Scott (R-FL), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Thom Tillis (NC), and Martha McSally (R-TX) sent a letter [https://www.blackburn.senate.gov/services/files/D8359E17-4931-41B8-9EE4-0DC874904A23] to Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos over a recent project that

Cover Art

How I photograph books and covers I’ve had a couple of people ask over the years about what I do for book photographs, and I figured it would be a good excuse to talk a bit about my approach to using images in reviews. When it comes to reviewing

Fans lead the way

A podcast, a streaming service, and a look at the making of a classic film I hope that you’ve had a good week. I’ve spent the last couple of days playing with a power washer — my house is now free of a decent layer of grime and dust.

Read Trans / Nonbinary Authors

By Lee Mandelo Earlier this year, J.K. Rowling blew up headlines with a series of transphobic tweets and a followup essay that outlined her views when it came to trans people. It’s caused considerable angst within the trans community and its allies, and has both galvanized trans activists

Announcing New Worlds: The Story of Frank Herbert's Dune

Warner Bros. has released the first trailer [https://www.tor.com/2020/09/09/dune-movie-denis-villeneuve-frank-herbert-trailer-watch/] for its upcoming adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. The trailer looks really fantastic: a faithful adaptation that really takes the source material seriously. The original novel is one of my favorites, and I’ve

Lovecraft Country: making the best of the horror icon

Hello! I hope that you had a restful Labor Day. The leaves here in Vermont are beginning to slowly change, and the temperatures have fallen to a respectable temperature, which I’m enjoying. This week: I’ve got an interview with Matt Ruff, author of the novel Lovecraft Country, which

Online bookselling in the time of COVID

Since 1994, if you wanted to buy a book online, there’s a good chance that you’d do so from one place: Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos’ company started out as an online bookstore, but in the years since its founding, it’s expanded far beyond the bookshelf to everything

Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem is coming to Netflix

From the creators of Game of Thrones A bit of cool news came through this morning: Netflix is adapting [https://twitter.com/NXOnNetflix/status/1300795547536719875] Liu Cixin’s epic science fiction trilogy The Remembrance of Earth’s Past — The Three-Body Problem, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End, with a

22 science fiction and fantasy books to check out this September

Hello! It’s hard to believe that it’s September already. Time flies when you’re… stuck at home and time has no meaning, I guess? I’ve been in a bit of a reading rut in recent weeks, but one book that I’ve been enjoying is The Human

The Technological Landscape

A walk through the recent past A month or so ago, my family and I took advantage of the warmer weather and went on a hike through Barre’s Millstone Trail [http://www.millstonetrails.org/] system, a nexus of recreation paths across second-growth forest that covers up the remains of

The streaming wars comes for the bookshelf

Hello! I’ve been realizing that this newsletter is a bit scattershot when it comes to topic, and I like the ability to bundle together a random assortment of ideas. This week, I’ve got some thoughts about the technology side of reading: some recent news about audiobooks from two

Applied Pandemic Fiction

The summer is coming to a quick close. I’ve already begun seeing red and yellow leaves falling to the floor while out on walks, and the peak summer temperatures up here thankfully seem to have passed. COVID-19 is still a thing, and we’re coming to terms with what

One Year

It’s been just over a year since I was summoned into a video chat and told that I no longer had a job. It’s a weird sort of anniversary, one that marks a door slamming shut in my face, but there’s also been a bunch of other

Writing the Future of War

This past week has been a busy one. Not just because of last week’s Hugo Awards ceremony — huge thanks to those who followed along with my live-tweeting of the ceremony, and for finding your way here — but I’ve also been doing some decidedly non-SF/F work, in the

Mushroom Clouds on the Future Horizon

Science fiction was born in the fires of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Last night's Hugo Awards ceremony was a mess

This year’s Hugo Awards have been announced [https://www.tor.com/2020/07/31/announcing-the-2020-hugo-award-winners/]: Arkady Martine won for Best Novel for her debut, A Memory Called Empire, a space opera about colonization and freedom as a solitary ambassador from a distant space habitat tries to keep her home

20 Sci-fi and fantasy books to check out in August

Tonight at the virtual CoNZealand is this year’s Hugo Awards presentation. It’ll begin streaming online at 7PM Eastern time [https://watch.thefantasy.netw/], and I’m eager to see what wins the top honor this year. The last couple of years have brought about some excellent works, and

War in Space

This past weekend, Apple unveiled a teaser trailer for the second season of its upcoming series, For All Mankind, showing off an alternate future of war on the Moon, and it’s pretty scary. I’m a big fan of this show [https://www.polygon.com/2019/11/1/20941718/

Three Novels About Unbalanced Worlds

Robert Jackson Bennett's Shorefall, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, and Mary Robinette Kowal's The Relentless Moon show off worlds that are full of imbalance

Endless Universes and Genre Soundscapes

Hello! It’s been a fun couple of days. If you’re on Twitter and have Verified status, you probably found that you couldn’t post the other day for a while. Twitter experienced a major security breach [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxd3d/twitter-insider-access-panel-account-hacks-biden-uber-bezos] , and it seems

Interview with Mary Robinette Kowal

A couple of years ago, Mary Robinette Kowal published a pair of books that utterly blew me away [https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/22/17698510/the-lady-astronaut-calculating-stars-fated-sky-mary-robinette-kowal-science-fiction-book-review] : the first two installments of her Lady Astronaut series: The Calculating Stars [https://bookshop.org/a/6134/9780765378385] and The Fated Sky [https:

Ernie Cline's Armada Fucking Sucks

Some interesting news just dropped: Ernie Cline is finally publishing his sequel [https://www.tor.com/2020/07/08/ernest-clines-ready-player-two-will-hit-bookstores-in-november/] to his blockbuster book Ready Player One [https://bookshop.org/a/6134/9780307887443]. Ready Player Two (ugh) is set to hit stores on November 24th, and needless to say, I

Expanding the Crichtonverse

In November 2019, a familiar name appeared in bookstores: Michael Crichton. Crichton had died at the age of 66 in 2008 after a brief battle against lymphoma, but there his name was emblazoned in red on the cover of a new novel called The Andromeda Evolution [https://bookshop.org/a/

23 SF/F books to check out this July

How is it July already? The year moving right along despite everything, and that means that we’ve got a new batch of books hitting bookstores in the next month. This coming month brings a whole bunch of interesting titles: a bunch of post-apocalyptic adventures, expeditions into the depths of

Some updates

Hi — I have a couple of brief updates on upcoming newsletter stuff, and the state of the genre fan world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you’re tied into the genre fan scene at all in the last week, my condolences. It’s been a bit of a bloodbath, as a number of

Nostalgic Adventures and Racism as Cosmic Horror

Hello! I feel like I’ve been in a bit of a lull the last week. I’ve had plenty to do, and plenty to read (and I have been busy), but it feels like it’s one of those weeks (or months) where the results of that work isn’

They Should Know Better

Oh no, J.K. Rowling and Richard K. Morgan > A couple of disclaimers before I dive into this letter: First: To make it very clear where I stand here: trans rights are human rights. I’m the interloper here. I’m a white, cis male who hasn’t experienced the

Endless Universes and Tales of Two Worlds

Hello! It’s been a weird week, hasn’t it? I spent the weekend getting away from home for a couple of days by visiting my parents in upstate New York. (Fortunately, Vermont has relaxed some travel restrictions, allowing us to go out to low-impact counties and return without having

Read Black Authors

I promised a letter with some additional commentary and reviews in my June 2020 book list issue, but given the events of this week, my mind has been scattered. I’m heartbroken at the senseless loss of life, the blatant police brutality, and the disproportionate, racist, and sheer evil response

22 New Science Fiction and Fantasy Books Coming Out in June

Hello! As noted in my May 22nd letter [https://andrewliptak.substack.com/p/reading-list-fandoms-relationship], my regular column with Polygon has been put on hiatus for a while, presumably because of the strain that the COVID-19 pandemic puts on editorial resources and budgets. I enjoy putting these together, so I’ll

Interview with Marko Kloos

Hello! I hope that you had a restful Memorial Day weekend. It’s a day that often finds me in a reflective mood. I majored in history and military history in college and grad school, and specifically studied the men from Norwich University who went off to fight during World

Fandom's relationship with studios

It’s been a busy week! I’ve been caught up with a bunch of projects, and there has been some interesting developments in the last week that I’ll talk about in a minute, along with the usual slate of recommendations and longer reads that I found worth reading.

Interview with John Scalzi

John Scalzi on fictional pandemics, space empires, and more.

The End of the War

Greetings! I hope that you’re doing well. I’ve got a lot coming up in this newsletter. First up, some potential changes to this letter that I’d love to get your thoughts on. After that, thoughts on the end of The Clone Wars, Eddie Robson’s Hearts of

Averting Orbital War, Bookshelf Duplicates, and Mando Fans

Hello! Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway contest. In total, we raised $225. I’ve notified giveaway winners, and I’ll be shipping their books out to them shortly. Thank you! If you happen to buy a new book in the next couple of weeks or months, consider

Giveaway Reminder!

I wanted to sent out a short reminder to folks regarding the giveaway that I announced in the last message: it ends tonight! From the last letter: So, I’ve got a challenge: donate to this fund before April 14th, and let me know how much you donated. I’ll

4 books to get you through the pandemic

I hope that you’re doing okay — it feels like the last two weeks have been an eternity. The last couple of days have been rough, watching things like the unemployment numbers skyrocket, and seeing headlines that trumpet that we’re certainly headed for a recession, if not a depression.

Geoengineering, Magical universities, and the private space industry

Greetings! It’s amazing at how quickly things seem to have turned with the COVID-19 pandemic. I guess that’s to be expected when you’re on an exponential curve. Last week, we learned that schools would be closed until April. No worries — we have a solid daycare that would

Plague Edition

Hello! I’ve been working on getting back into a routine after finishing The Book: I’ve got a couple of freelance projects that I’ve been working on, but it’s been nice to take a relatively quiet couple of days to catch up on some reading and other

The Book is DONE

So… I wrote a book! The first draft of Cosplay: A History, or whatever we’re going to call it, is now complete. And by complete, it’s like a house with walls, a roof that’s leaking, and that’s in dire need of some more furniture, plumbing, and

Beyond Solaris

New editions explore the many facets of sci-fi icon Stanislaw Lem

Crossing the 75K Line

Hello! This isn’t a regular issue, but a short update on The Book. It’s officially crossed the 75,000 word count that my contract mandates! Technically, I guess I can turn it in, but that’s not going to happen just yet: I still have quite a bit

The Rise of Skywalker

Hello! It’s been a little while since my last newsletter went out. I’ve been working on The Book. Let’s jump into it. The Book First off, an update on The Book: it’s coming along nicely. I’m about 80% of the way there, and is now

Necromancers in Space and Alternate Astronauts

Hello there! I hope that the new year is treating you well. I’ve been hard at work on a bunch of things while fighting off a head cold. I’ve got a couple of things here to chat about this time around: a look at Tamyn Muir’s fantastic

Most Anticipated SF/F Books of 2020

Happy new year! 2019 was a year full of changes and surprises. We had a baby girl, I sold a book (which I’m in the midst of writing now), got into a major car crash, lost my job and went back to freelance writing, and attended a number of

The decade in 8 stories

It’s been a long ten years. As the end of the year approached, I toyed with putting together some sort of “best of the decade” list, only to realize that that’s a nearly impossible task: stories are subjective at the best of times, and such a list simply

Rise of Skywalker, Octopuses in space, and grimdark finales

Hello! I was on the road this past weekend on a secret mission to California: I attended the world premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker! I made a bit of an extended trip out of it, and had a blast. I meant to get this letter out before

The Secret Commonwealth, BN SciFi, and a Gift Guide!

Hello! This letter is a bit overdue. I’ve been tied up with a bunch of baby, book, teaching, and other things the last couple of weeks. Let’s dive in. Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth For years now, author Philip Pullman worked on a successor to his His

Mandos, clones, and bad publishers

Hello! It’s been a busy couple of weeks, between teaching and regular writing work. And, yesterday was Disney + day! It’s extremely exciting because it meant the release of The Mandalorian, which I’ve been really pumped for. Some thoughts ahead, as well as an overview of some costuming

Alternate Apollos

I’m writing from my hotel room in Rhode Island, where I’m spending the next couple of days to attend Rhode Island Comic Con, the last big convention that I’m planning on going to this year. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and I’ve got

Books as a personal image

Hello! Bonus issue today for y’all. I was annoyed by a list of science fiction recommendations that I came across, and wanted to unpack that a bit more than I did on Twitter. Plus, I had a stack of neat articles that I wanted to share with y’all.

Folio's Game of Thrones Art and portals to new worlds and futures

Hello! It's been a ... busy couple of weeks while we adjust to having a new child in the house. Thank you for the kind words about Iris — she's coming along nicely, and appears to be a fairly well-tempered child. Getting a second child in the house meant that I needed

Ten steps to expedite a departure from Pantaga Station

A ship's XO goes over the ways in which to make a quick escape from a space station

Delayed

The Cosplayers of Dragon Con

Hello! It’s been a busy couple of weeks — the highlight of which was heading down to attend DragonCon for the first time. It’s a convention that I’ve seen a lot of friends go to over the years, but haven’t had the chance to go to until

Oh no, John Campbell

Hello! It's been quite the week. Some good news: I'm picking up some freelance work at The Barnes and Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, it looks like I'll be picking up some of my regular book coverage with Polygon, and will be regularly writing news for Tor.com. I kicked off

Well, that was unexpected

Hello! So, last week didn't turn out as I'd expected it to. I was let go from The Verge : my last day was Wednesday. The reasons are both simple and complicated, and I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail, other than to say that I'm bummed

Books with Character, Veronica Mars, djinns and Space Spies!

Hello! This letter is coming a bit later than usual: I’ve been thinking that I want to shift this to a Monday delivery, and ended up getting caught up in a home-improvement project all day yesterday. I’ve got a couple of things for you today: books that I

Why are they called the Hugo Awards?

A history of science fiction’s biggest award

The Future of Stranger Things, Lessons from Cadwell Turnbull, and more

Hello! I hope that you’re enjoying your summer! I’ve got some overdue features that I’ve promised you for this newsletter: some thoughts on Netflix’s Stranger Things, an interview with Cadwell Turnbull, and some other things. I’m heading out today to Fort Ticonderoga in New York

Watch a Star Wars character go from image to cosplay in realtime

Hello! I’m writing this weekend from upstate New York. My parents have a house on a lake up here, and it’s been a bit of a retreat that we’ve been utilizing over the last couple of years. They got high-speed internet a year or so ago, which

What's in your bag?, reviews for Ancestral Night / Magic for Liars, and more

Hello! There’s been a bunch of newcomers to this newsletter in the last couple of weeks / months. This is a letter that I write out on a regular basis about science fiction, writing and the future of reading. In this issue, a "What's in your bag?" post, reviews for

Quick event announcement!

Good morning! I've got a regular newsletter prepped for later this week, but I wanted to send out a quick thing about a pair of events that I'll be at in the coming days — I'll be interviewing debut author Cadwell Turnbull about his new novel The Lesson! I've been reading

Proposals for Regulating Free-Range Velociraptors

A neighborhood is fed up with a new problem that they face: free-range velociraptors

Dune's growing cinematic universe and Chernobyl / Roadside Picnic

Hello! This is the Reading List part of this week’s newsletter (the other is the short story, which you should have also received.) First up: I’ll be at a couple of events with debut author Cadwell Turnbull [https://www.andrewliptak.com/blog/cadwell-turnbull-the-lesson-events-books-are-magic-yankee-bookshop-brooklyn-woodstock-event] : one at Brooklyn’s Books

Deep dives into the history of science fiction

Hello! This is a bit of a shorter letter this week: I don’t have any huge, overarching commentary this time around, but I did have a couple of things that caught my interest when it comes to the world of science fiction and fantasy writing. End of an Era

The never-ending story

Hello! Apologies for the tardiness of this latest letter: my sister's wedding was this weekend: it was a lovely time, and I ended up spending the weekend seeing relatives (hi Aunt Dot, Aunt Gin!) that I haven't seen in a while. This weekend marked the end of HBO's Game of

Spoilers! (Don't worry, I'm not going to actually spoil anything)

Hello! Happy May the 4th — the internationally recognized corporate, toyetic holiday for all things Star Wars. It's also Free Comic Book Day. I took my son to pick up a couple of comics from the local store here. I picked up some Firefly ones, which I kind of forgot were

I'm writing a book about the history of cosplay!

Hello! Here's a special announcement edition of Wordplay, because that thing I mentioned to keep an eye out on in my last letter? I can finally say what it is: I'm writing a book! The contracts have been signed and counter-signed, and the announcement just went up on [https://www.

Wordplay: Star Wars Celebration, Rogue One, and Literary SF

Hello! I'm back from Star Wars Celebration. It was a blast, and I have to say, post-con blues are a thing. I've been down all week, and I'm already looking forward to hitting up another convention at some point in the nearish future. Onto your regularly-scheduled newsletter! Star Wars Celebration!

Tolkien and the Horrors of the Great War

Hello! This week’s letter is coming in early, because later this week, I’ll be out at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago. This weekend, I attended the 16th Annual Tolkien in Vermont conference at UVM [https://tolkienvt.org/2019]. Dr. Christopher Vaccaro puts on the event each year, and

Letters of Transit

A migrant navigates a twisted set of spells to cross a formidable border.

The streaming TV boom, science fiction storytelling and advertising, and fan fiction

Hello! I hope that you're doing well. I've been jotting down ideas for this column the last couple of weeks, and I keep coming back to a topic I've been thinking about a lot over the years — how we pay for science fiction, and how the fiction we consume is

Wordplay: Netflix's new anthology and the mythos of Apollo

Second letter in a week? What is this madness? The last issue was late, and I figure I might as well stick with the biweekly schedule, so you get two this week. This newsletter has hit 300 subscribers, which is astonishing to me. Thank you to those of you who

This year's awards scuffle and influence in the SF/F world

Is this thing on? This issue is very delayed, and I’m very sorry about that. I’ve been crawling out of a pit of sickness the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, my son, wife, and I all came down with what we think is the flu, which

IP and the future of entertainment

Hello! I'm writing from my hotel room in Boston, where I'm attending Boskone 56. It's a long-running, annual science fiction / fantasy literature convention that I've gone to the past couple of years, and like any convention, it's a good opportunity and place to meet up with fellow writers and fans,

Wordplay: The future will be collective

Hello! I hope that you’re doing well. I meant to get this out earlier, but I had the day off yesterday, spent many hours in the car, saw some friends, then got home late. I've got a short letter for today. Collective futures Last week, we published a story

Tolkien, Tolkien, Tolkien

Hello! Apologies for the delay in this latest installment. I was caught up with a bunch of projects at work (which I’ll get to in a moment), as well as a snow storm that’s dumped more than a foot of powder on my literal doorstep. My snow blower

History, generation ships, and suspension pods

Happy new year! I hope that you had an opportunity to take a break over the holidays. I took two weeks off, which was great — I feel like I haven't taken a break in a while, and it was nice to get out and see family, do a bit of

Wordplay: What is the role of optimism in science fiction?

Hello! Welcome to issue #4 of Wordplay! (You can read the past issues here [https://tinyletter.com/liptakaa/archive]) I’ve alluded to a big project being launched in the last two letters, and it’s finally been revealed: The Verge [https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/5/18055980/better-worlds-science-fiction-short-stories-video]

Conceptualizing the future with science fiction

Hello! This is letter #3 of Wordplay (here are the first [https://app.tinyletter.com/#!/messages/6162217/report] two [https://app.tinyletter.com/#!/messages/6165445/report]). I hope that everyone had a happy Thanksgiving! We stayed at home this year, rather than drive down to Pennsylvania. Instead, my mother-in-law drove

How (and what) I'm reading, Chinese science fiction, and hints of things to come

Greetings! This is letter #2 (you can read the first here [http://tinyletter.com/liptakaa/letters/wordplay-lunar-stories-star-wars-cinematic-universe-stumbles-and-sci-fi-history] ). Thanks for those who told me that they liked the first letter, or who have since signed up or spread the word. It's much appreciated. This week, I've got some thoughts on how

Lunar stories, Star Wars' cinematic universe stumbles, and sci-fi history

Okay, let's try this out — I honestly wasn't sure what the response would be like when I said that I'd be doing a newsletter, and I'm gratified at the kind words people have sent my way, and for all of you who jumped on the bandwagon. Thank you! Hopefully it'll

Elizabeth Bonesteel’s Central Corps trilogy is a refreshing space opera

An underrated SF trilogy

In Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, It’s Growing Up That Is Truly Terrifying

In Paul Tremblay’s latest novel, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock [https://bookshop.org/a/6134/9780062363275], a 13-year-old named Tommy Sanderson goes missing. His vanishing pulls his family into a downward spiral of grief and despair, even as the police begin to piece together what happened. Tremblay’s last

Fragmented

A soldier contends with the toll of war on a distant planet.