Guest Column: Genrewise — November 2019

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Hi, I’m Claire and welcome to Genrewise, news from the world of SFF.

I am recording on November 30th and today we're going to start by looking at awards news, then we'll move on to books, fandom news, then film and TV news and finally IRL news. For every item that I'm talking about, I'm going to link some extra information & more in-depth articles in the description box below so you can always check there for further reading.

First up in awards news, we’ve got the Goodreads Choice Awards, which are, of course, voted on by users of the site. Voting has been ongoing throughout November and if you are watching this video on the day of release, you’ll just have time to go and cast your votes in the final round of voting. Winners in the many categories as well as the overall winner will be announced on December 10th.

Next up, this year’s World Fantasy Award winners were announced at World Fantasy Con earlier this month, and I’m delighted to report that C.L. Polk won Best Novel for her excellent debut Witchmark. The Privilege of the Happy Ending by Kij Johnson which won Best Novella, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction, edited by Irene Gallo, won Best Anthology. Congratulations to them and all the other winners and finalists.

And finally, since I’ve started to see eligibility posts for next year’s awards popping up all over my Twitter feed, I want to remind you all that if you’d like to participate in the nominating portion of the 2020 Hugo Awards, you should get yourself a membership to Worldcon before December 31st, 2019. If you’re not able to attend this upcoming Worldcon in Wellington, New Zealand, you can get a Supporting Membership to the con. It’s cheaper than the Attending Membership, it lets you participate in the Hugo Awards and you also get an e-bundle of works from the final ballot so you can decide who to vote for. I could talk about the Hugos for ages, so please let me know if you want a full video about it!

Moving on to books: Tor will be republishing novels by the late fantasy author John M. Ford, including a lot of previously published work that is currently out of print as well as two volumes of never published work. The first of Ford’s novels to be re-released will be The Dragon Waiting, coming in early fall 2020. Tor describes it as "an alternate historical fantasy political thriller in which Byzantium, Richard III, and vampires are all striving for power during the War of the Roses", which sounds absolutely wild to me.

Also out from Tor Books next year, we have a new science fiction novel from Eragon author Christopher Paolini. To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is a first contact novel about a xenobiologist who finds an alien relic during a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet and it’s due out on September 15th, 2020.

Next up, we’ve got something a little different from Signal to Noise author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Her next book, Mexican Gothic, is a suspenseful historical thriller set in the 1950s in the Mexican countryside, and it follows glamorous socialite who’s just received a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin, claiming she’s in danger. I have no idea whether there will be any supernatural or fantastical elements to this story, but I can definitely see how Moreno-Garcia’s writing would lend itself really, really well to a straight-up thriller. Entertainment Weekly has an excerpt of the novel, if you don’t want to wait until it releases on June 30th, 2020 to check it out.

Independent press Erewhon Books is publishing the debut novel from Astounding Award winner E Lily Yu. They are describing On Fragile Waves as a heartbreaking and haunting magical realism story about a refugee family’s quest for a new home in an unwelcoming world as they travel from Afghanistan to faraway Australia. The book comes out in Fall 2020.

Also out from Erewhon Books in Fall 2020 is a new novel from World Fantasy Award winner C.L. Polk. The Midnight Bargain is set in a world in which married women have their magic taken from them to protect the lives of their unborn children, and we follow a young woman must balance her desire to become the first great female magician against her duty to secure a rich husband who can save her family from debt.

Lady Astronaut fans rejoice, we have a date, cover and title for the third book in Mary Robinette Kowal's multi-award winning series. The Relentless Moon continues the story from the Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky with Elma York on her way to Mars and her friend Nicole Wargin, a fellow Lady Astronaut and the wife of a senator, arriving at her station on the brand new Moon colony where she'll have to use her considerable political know-how and flight skills to help keep the program on track. There's an except available over at Entertainment Weekly, if you want to check out Nicole’s point of view, and the book comes out on July 14th, 2020 from Tor Books.

She Who Became the Sun is an epic alternate history debut from Otherwise Fellowship winner Shelley Parker-Chan and it is set in Ancient China. We follow an iron-willed peasant girl who defies the bounds of gender to steals her brother’s identity and his great destiny. Her ambition takes her from lowly monk to leader of the rebellion against China’s Mongol rulers. It comes out in Spring 2021 from Tor Books and they are pitching it as Mulan meets The Song of Achilles. It will appeal to fans of Game of Thrones and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which sounds pretty good to me.

Next up, we’ve got Star Eater by Kerstin Hall, another intriguing debut coming out in 2021, this one from Tor.com Publishing. They’re calling this fantasy novel "Epic Weird" and pitching it as Robin McKinley meets The Handmaid’s Tale. In it, we follow Elfreda, a bureaucrat, a priestess, and a practitioner of cannibalistic magic, who must betray the Order in which she was raised so that she can choose her own future. That’s right, there’s a whole religious-sounding order of scheming matriarchal cannibals and as I said, I’m intrigued.

Next, we’ve got Queen’s Peril, a new Star Wars novel from YA writer EK Johnston. The book comes out on May 5, 2020 and it’s a prequel to Johnston’s previous Star Wars novel Queen’s Shadow, which was all about Padmé Amidala and her handmaidens.

Guardians of the Galaxy’s Nebula is getting her own solo comic. The new storyline will be written by Vita Ayala, who’s previously worked on Marvel's X-Men comics and the Shuri comic series, and it will be illustrated by Claire Roe and Jen Bartel. I’m really excited to see those illustrations! The limited series will launch in February 2020 and follow Nebula into new territory as she tries to shed the shadows of her father, Thanos, and her sister, Gamora.

And finally, we’ve got a couple of cool cover reveals, starting with A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry, a story of magic, war, and the struggle for freedom set in the Age of Enlightenment that comes out in June 2020 from Orbit Books. The blurb says it’s for fans of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell or Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown and it features a necromancer, Robespierre, calling for revolution in France and Toussaint L’Ouverture as a weather mage leading the enslaved people of Haiti in their fight for freedom. Everything about this sounds very much like my cup of tea, including this lovely cover designed by Lisa Marie Pompilio.

We’ve finally got a cover for the upcoming Mercenary Librarians novel that writing duo Kit Rocha has been teasing for months. Deal With the Devil is pitched as Orphan Black meets the post-apocalyptic Avengers and it features, as you might have guessed, mercenary librarians, but there are also battle-weary supersoldiers in the mix, and a lost server from the Library of Congress. This absolutely stunning cover was designed by Peter Lutjen with art and photography by Colin Anderson, and the book comes May 12th, 2020.

Next up we’ve got fandom news, and all I want to say is, if you haven’t watched the new Star Wars video looking at how the franchise has influenced pop culture over the last four decades, do yourself a favour and go watch it now, and get some tissues ready because if you’re anything like me it will get you emotional. I always love seeing this kind of behind the scenes, especially when it’s got a fandom focus, and especially when it reveals what looks very much like a cameo from Lin Manuel Miranda!

Now onto film and TV, the hugely popular role-playing livestream series Critical Role is getting a TV show on Amazon Prime Video. This comes after a successful Kickstarter campaign in which the critical role team raised funds to create a 10 episode animated series based on storylines from their streaming campaign called Legend Of Vox Machina. Prime Video purchased the streaming rights for the series, as well as ordering an additional 14 episodes, for a total of 24 episodes across two seasons. Season 1 should start airing in late 2020 and I am personally really excited about this one because Critical Role seems like it would absolutely be up my alley, but I haven't managed to make time to watch the actual show since each episode is fairly long. So hopefully this new animated series will serve as a good point of entry into Critical Role fandom for people like me who feel a little overwhelmed and don't know where to start with this one.

Tamora Pierce’s Tortall Universe series has been optioned by Lionsgate for a possible television adaptation. The series is over 20 books long and it is set in a medieval fantasy universe populated with lords, ladies, knights and sorcerers. The kingdom of Tortall and its neighbouring countries are home to an interesting assortment of heroes, but only a lucky few possess magical gifts and many more are embroiled in politics. There’s no news yet on when the series might be available, but I will report back once we hear more.

Next, there’s pretty exciting news from Marvel Studios. The upcoming Disney+ series She-Hulk has found its lead writer in Jessica Gao. First of all, I’m pretty excited that they hired a woman to write a show where the main character is a woman, second of all, I’m pretty excited that they hired Jessica Gao who won an Emmy for her work on Rick & Morty, a show I really like and find very well-written. So yeah, she wrote Pickle Rick and now she’s going to be developing and leading the writing team for She-Hulk. Yes, please. Also, Jeremy Slater, who developed and wrote Umbrella Academy for Netflix will be developing and leading the writing team for Moon Knight, another Disney+ series from Marvel Studios.

Witcher fans will be glad to hear that the Netflix adaptation has been greenlit for a second season, more than a month before the first season even starts airing on Dec 20th. The second season will consist of eight episodes and it should go into production in early 2020 for a planned release in 2021.

And finally, we’ve got confirmation that Peyton Reed, who previously directed Ant-Man and Ant-Man and The Wasp is coming back to the MCU to direct a third Ant-Man movie, which should start shooting in early 2021 and be partly filmed in the UK.

And finally, in real life news, the entire writing teams of both the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog and SFF blog were let go earlier this month, or rather, since they were all freelancers in the first place, they were told that the site would no longer acquire any writing from them. Apparently the B&N Teen blog will remain active in some capacity, but there is no word on what that will look like and no word on the future of the SFF blog either. Both of those blogs featured a lot of great writing and the landscape of book criticism will be poorer without them. This news comes only a few months after Barnes & Noble was acquired by the same hedge fund that now owns Waterstones, so that bodes well for the future.

So that’s it, this was Genrewise! I hope you enjoyed it and please let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Are you going to participate in next year's Hugos Awards? Did that Star Wars video also punch you in the feels? Which of those adaptations are you most excited to see? Those are important questions and I want to know your answers!

If you like the show, please share it around. I work really hard on it and I’d love for as many people as possible to see it. Thanks for watching & I hope you’ll join me again in a month’ time for more science-fiction, fantasy and fandom news.

★ Claire is a Booktuber and the producer of Radio Free Fandom. You can find her on Twitter at ClaireRousseau.