ladybusiness | Guest Post: Genrewise

"Hugo Awards, Book Releases, Star Wars & Marvel News - Genrewise #11" (Watch on YouTube)

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

Woops, it’s been a while! Summer has been a bit too hectic to keep producing Genrewise on our previous schedule so going forward this will be a monthly show. Now, I am recording on September 8th 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 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 this year's Hugo Awards which were given out at the 77th worldcon in Dublin, Ireland. I was very, very happy with some of the results, especially with the Archive Of Our Own winning Best Related Work, Lady Business getting a second Hugo for Best Fanzine and Best Series going to the Wayfarers books by Becky Chambers. I will of course leave a link to a full list of the winners in the description box below, since I don't really have time to go through all of the categories here, much as I would love to.

Next up, SF magazine Analog have recently announced that they are renaming the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. This comes after discussion and controversy in SF fandom around the fact that John W. Campbell was really very racist and very sexist—this is something that was commented on even by his own contemporaries, and something that was highlighted by this year's Astounding Award Winner Jeannette Ng in her acceptance speech, but it had been pointed out by many people before her, too. The decision to rename the award was entirely Analog's to make because it is their award, it is only administered by WorldCon on their behalf, so hopefully we can make this change happen by next year, despite the fact that it is notoriously slow to change things in the WorldCon constitution.

And finally, the Tiptree Award is also being considered for a name change. For a full rundown of the history around Alice Sheldon, who wrote as James Tiptree Jr, and why we as a fandom really need to be having this discussion, you can check out the link in the description box below.

[Ed note: since this video, the Motherboard has stated they will rename the award.]

First up in books, video essayist Lindsay Ellis, a finalist for this year's Hugo Award for Best Related Work, just announced her debut novel. Axiom's End is an alternate universe first contact story set in the late 2000s; it has been pitched as Stranger Things meets Arrival and it's due out in summer 2020 from St. Martin's Press.

Another book that was just announced for summer 2020 is Shuri by Nic Stone, a middle-grade tie-in novel all about the Princess of Wakanda. This is just the start of a multiyear partnership between Scholastic and Marvel which will feature more original stories about Marvel superheroes for young readers. They've also announced Avengers Assembly by Preeti Chhibber. We don't have a cover for that one yet. We don't know when it comes out but it is apparently the start of a series.

Next we've got an exciting announcement from Tor.Com Publishing, who have acquired the debut novel from award-winning short fiction writer P. Djèlí Clark, as well as two more novellas from him. The novel doesn't have a title or a release date yet but we do know that it will be historical fantasy and it will be set in the steampunk world introduced in Clark's novelette A Dead Djinn in Cairo. As for the two novellas, it looks like they will both be stand-alone works in different settings, one featuring a young black woman with ancestral powers fighting against the KKK and the other revolving around a league of deadly assassins.

Next up, World Fantasy Award-Winning writer Fonda Lee is writing for Marvel. On top of finishing her acclaimed Jade War series with the final novel Jade Legacy, out in 2020, Lee has now joined the writing team for the Shang-Chi comic Sword Master, her writing debuts in issue #4.

Tor.com Publishing has announced two new novels that sound right up my alley. First we’ve got The Factory Witches of Lowell, by C. S. Malerich, a historical fantasy about a women’s strike in a cotton mill featuring a lesbian romance and the dying art of witchcraft. It’s due out in summer 2020. There is also Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell, and this is a debut novel that was originally published online. It is a queer, romantic space opera about a forced political marriage between a scandal-prone prince and a dutiful scholar which sounds just delightful to me. There’s no release date yet but you can bet that I will be there with bells on whenever it lands.

We've now got a release date for Martha Wells’ upcoming Murderbot novel Network Effect. It comes out on the 5th May 2020, and it's available for pre-order now but sadly we don't have a cover for it yet.

And finally, we’ve got some cover reveals, starting with an updated cover for Fortuna by Kristyn Merbeth, a high-energy space opera about a family of smugglers that comes out on November 05, 2019 from Orbit Books. This gorgeously colourful cover design is by Lisa Marie Pompilio with illustrations from Arcangel and Shutterstock.

We’ve also got a cover for The Obsidian Tower, the first book in a new epic fantasy trilogy by Melissa Caruso. It’s all about a mage with deadly, broken magic and I just love how menacing this hovering castle looks and how it’s got crumbling bits of crystal flying off of it. The cover design is by Lisa Marie Pompilio with art by Peter Bollinger and it’s due out in summer 2020 from Orbit Books.

And finally there’s N.K. Jemisin’s new book The City We Became, which is about the city of New York literally coming to life and selecting five of her human inhabitants as champions to defend her from an ancient evil. Jemisin said the story was her "chance to have a little monstrous fun after the weight of the Broken Earth saga" which sounds amazing to me, I want it in my eyeballs right now, please. This riotously vibrant cover was designed by Lauren Panepinto with images by Arcangel, and the book comes out March 24, 2020 from Orbit Books.

Next up is fandom news, and I want to talk about the Archive of Our Own Hugo again because it just makes me so happy. While delivering their acceptance speech, the folks from the Organization For Transformative Works, which is the nonprofit that maintains the archive, have announced that the AO3 Hugo will be joining the traveling exhibition that goes to each Worldcon, because it belongs to all of fandom. So if you've ever contributed any fanwork to the archive, if you've ever enjoyed any fanwork that’s on the archive, then go look at that Hugo next time you're at a worldcon because it belongs to you too. I know I will, because I’m mushy like that.

[Ed note: The AO3 is supported by 15+ committees made up of volunteers, led by Accessibility, Design, & Technology, and guided by the OTW, which is the parent nonprofit.]

And finally, we’ve had a bit of a sad update from the governance team at Nine Worlds, a London-based, multi-genre, multi-media convention that I’ve personally loved attending since it started. But there were a lot of issues piling up with this con and after the 2018 event, the whole convention came under new management. They decided not to hold the event in 2019 hoping that a year off might give them time to salvage things, but it’s now looking like that will definitely not happen, and Nine Worlds is very likely to just shut down for good. It’s bittersweet news, I know I’ll miss how good Nine Worlds was at its peak but there’s no denying there were a lot of issues with it in the last few years.

Now onto film and TV news. First up we've got some exciting Star Wars news out of Disney's D23 expo. The big one, of course, was a new trailer and poster for Episode IX, The Rise Of Skywalker, including what looks like a Dark Rey. But we'll get more Star Wars even before the movie releases in December, with The Mandalorian. The TV show premieres on November 12th, it will be released weekly on Disney plus, and it will star Ming-Na Wen and Natalia Tena. The trailer is linked in the description box. We got another new trailer for Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 7, that's coming out in early 2020 and will show the Siege of Mandalore. And finally for Star Wars, a TV show all about Obi-Wan was announced. Ewan McGregor will reprise the role, with filming starting next year. A timeline shown at D23 places the series 8 years after Revenge of the Sith.

And because Disney now owns all of the things, we’ve also got a bunch of Marvel news from D23, including a release date for Black Panther 2: May 6 2022. Director Ryan Coogler says they’re "taking their time with it" to get it right which sounds great but ahhh, 2022 is so far away.

And finally, Marvel have announced some new TV series in development for Disney+ including Moon Knight, She-Hulk and my absolute favourite piece of news for this segment, Ms. Marvel!! There will be a live-action series featuring Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel and I’m so, so happy that that is going to be a thing! We’ve not got any details yet about release dates or casting, but Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has confirmed that all of these series alongside previously announced titles like The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Loki, and What If? will be integrated with the MCU films.

Next up, a new television adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea series is in development from studio A24 and Oscar-nominated producer Jennifer Fox. Before she died last year, LeGuin gave the producer her blessing to adapt the books into a series of films. The adaptation has since moved to a television series format but it continues with the blessing of Ursula K. LeGuin’s son, so here’s hoping it turns out better than the 2004 adaptation.

Charlie Jane Anders’ latest novel, The City In The Middle Of The Night has been optioned for series development by Sony Pictures Television; Sharon Hall, who’s previously worked on The Expanse is attached to executive produce. The book is set on a tidally-locked planet where half the world is always in blinding daylight and the other is always in pitch-black night and humans can only live in a narrow band at the edge of night and day. I haven’t read it yet but it sounds like it could look amazing on screen.

And finally, MGM TV and Hulu have announced they are developing Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments for television. This is, of course, the sequel to Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale which picks up more than 15 years after the events of the first book, and with the current TV adaptation of Handmaid’s being so popular and continuing on past the ending of the book, it’s no surprise to hear the sequel will be also be adapted, even though it’s not technically out yet.

Speaking of The Testaments not technically being out yet, let’s move on to real life news and talk about how Amazon broke the publishing embargo on The Testaments, shipping pre-ordered copies to customers as early as last week, a full seven days before the book’s actual release date. Amazon have apologized and blamed a technical error, but no matter the cause, it’s an incredibly frustrating and infuriating situation for independent booksellers and publishing professionals out there to witness. The Testaments is perhaps the most eagerly-anticipated title of the year and anyone else who has come into contact with this book has had to sign the same strict embargo that Amazon just broke. Only when a small independent bookshop or really anyone who’s not Amazon does something like this there are severe consequences and at this point it’s unclear what publisher Penguin Random House could even do about it. Amazon is too big to be held accountable and it is kind of terrifying, so… if you can avoid buying your books from Amazon, please do.

And finally, I'm sorry to end on a bit of a downer, but it looks like we're not going to get more Spidey in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spider-Man rights holders Sony Pictures have now split from Marvel Studios and as much as we all want more of Tom Holland's Spider-Man in the MCU, it is not looking good. A few weeks back, I would have said, for sure, they must have some kind of emergency deal up their sleeve. I was convinced Marvel Studios would do whatever it took to be able to keep making Spider-Man movies in the MCU, especially after those post credit scenes in Far From Home, but unfortunately Sony have said that "for the moment the door is closed".

So that’s it, this was Genrewise, I hope you enjoyed it and please let me know your thoughts in the comments below. How did you feel about this year's Hugo winners, did any of your faves win? Which of those upcoming books sounds the most up your alley? Which of those D23 announcements are you most excited for? Is it enough for you to get Disney+? 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’s time for more science-fiction, fantasy and fandom news.