FOAS Bad Pet Art - Dwight

 

Dwight approves of his appliqué portrait!

REVIEW: Queen of Faces by Petra Lord (2.5 stars)

 The premise hooked me: the “pith” is the person and the body is just a chassis you drive. But the worldbuilding never earns it. Memory, language, and even personhood turn out to be editable or winnable in contests, yet the book also insists that a bad body will kill you, so the metaphor strains against its own plot. And nobody ever asks who makes these bodies. Scalzi’s Old Man’s War shows you the engineering and the branding, and Bennett’s biotech has a visible supply chain. Here, fully functional bodies just show up.

The “humdrum” label felt needlessly pejorative to me, especially once you learn magic is a learnable skill. The divide is access to training, not nature, which makes the contempt look like class snobbery in costume. The same goes for the “Edgar” brand for the cheap male chassis, which was a smart touch of shaming through vocabulary.

I wanted more from the gender angle. Ten years in a male body while living as a girl, and Nell being forced into one, gave the story real stakes. But the body market offers only two models, both built to a narrow, pale, lean beauty standard. For a world where you can choose your body, that’s an oddly limited menu, and the book doesn’t seem interested in questioning it.

The bigger picture reads as a totalitarian regime: it can erase names, wipe a people’s language until they drown themselves, and ration magic through one academy. All of that is more compelling than the surface plot. As for the blood and torture in a YA book, the darkness fits the themes, but it sometimes felt like escalation rather than insight.

Interesting ideas, thin foundations. I’d read the sequel only if it finally shows where the bodies come from and find out whether Nell decides she was happier in a "boy" body.

REVIEW: Queen of Faces by Petra Lord (2.5 stars)

REVIEW: A Wall is Also a Road by Annalee Newitz (5-stars)

I really enjoyed this book. Writing a novel from an alien perspective is a unique challenge, and Newitz handles it with confidence and creativity. Gardenpath, our protagonist, comes from a distant galaxy where gender doesn’t exist. They’re an amoeba — a Rational person — studying at the Memory and hoping to excel in a program that will allow them to become an investigator. Their people experience time differently and use teleportation as a matter of course, so Earth has long been dismissed as a lifeless rock. Gardenpath’s decision to research Earth is already a break from cultural assumptions.

Newitz builds the Memory with impressive cohesion: how Rational people move, communicate, express emotion, and interact feels fully imagined. I especially enjoyed the interpersonal dynamics on campus between Gardenpath and their friends, adversaries, and professors. The academic environment feels lived‑in — there’s genuine competition among students, supportive and wise mentors, and maybe a few corrupt professors, tolerated in ways that say a lot about the institution. These relationships give the Memory a social texture that makes Gardenpath’s ambitions and struggles feel grounded.

As Gardenpath begins traveling to Earth more frequently, Newitz introduces one of the novel’s most interesting structural choices. About two‑thirds of the way through, the narration shifts to she/her pronouns while Gardenpath is on Earth in a female‑appearing body and using the name Peristyle. When the story returns to the Memory, the pronouns revert to they/them. It’s a subtle way of showing how embodiment and context shape identity — and it also highlights Gardenpath’s discipline as a researcher. In fieldwork, there’s always the risk of “going native,” losing the critical distance needed to study a culture. Gardenpath’s best friend, Oriel, and their informal advisor, Column, both warn them about this, encouraging them to maintain boundaries and stay honest with the people they meet on Earth. Gardenpath manages to keep the perspective of a foreign scholar, navigating Earth with curiosity rather than assimilation. Readers interested in this theme might explore identity shifts in field research or gender fluidity in alien narratives.

The Earth subplot provides a strong counterpoint. Gardenpath’s repeated visits to Pompeii, their friendship with Murtis, and their gradual understanding of gender all build naturally on the emotional and intellectual groundwork laid in the campus chapters. Moving between the Memory and Earth creates a rhythm that lets their internal growth unfold across both worlds, and the contrast between settings keeps the narrative fresh.

Gardenpath’s “galaxy suit,” which lets them pass as human by configuring itself to mimic other people, is a great device — especially once you add tentacles. There’s some amoeba sex, people sex, and interspecies sex; it’s not excessive, and it feels like a nod to Octavia Butler’s Oankali in Lilith’s Brood. It fits the story’s exploration of embodiment and identity without overwhelming the plot.

By the end, Gardenpath and their cohort gather enough evidence to permanently oust the toxic professor — a figure who literally injects students with toxins and interrogates them like captives. The students’ decision to found a new institution, New Memory, feels like a natural extension of their growth and opens an intriguing direction for future novels.

I loved the ending, and I’d happily read more about Gardenpath in whatever comes next. This was a fun, imaginative read that balances worldbuilding, character development, and thematic curiosity in a way that really worked for me.

UPDATE: FOAS Bad Pet Art Portraits - DELIVERED

 I heard from my friend that she got a note that her portrait of Dwight was delivered, and Newmie's mom reached out to me with photos of Newmie giving his approval of his portrait. 

How cute is that dog? I love him and I haven't even met him!

REVIEW: Mindwise by Nichalas Epley (3-stars)

 A competent, readable survey of the psychology of "reading" other minds — mind perception, dehumanization, overconfidence in our assumptions about what others think and feel — but it plays like a 201-level undergrad course compiled into book form. Greatest-hits research, popular studies you've likely encountered before, stitched together with narrative glue rather than a distinct original argument. If you've spent any real time in organizational behavior or social psych, there's not much new territory here.

A recurring pattern across the book: study after study on perspective-taking shows people just imagining what someone else is thinking, and getting it wrong — not randomly, but in ways that trace back to their own biases and insecurities. Epley leans on the old Carlin bit about how everyone driving slower than you is an idiot and everyone driving faster is a maniac — a good shorthand for how our own reference point quietly becomes the norm we judge everyone else against. His actual prescription is sharper than the usual "walk a mile in their shoes" platitude: he argues for trying to get someone's perspective by asking and listening, rather than taking it by imagining your way into their head — which is really just projection with extra steps. It's a solid reframe, but by the back half of the book the same basic move (person imagines, person is wrong, bias is the culprit) repeats often enough to feel like a broken record.

One fact genuinely stopped me: Epley notes infants routinely underwent surgery without anesthesia until the early 1990s, because doctors didn't believe infants could feel pain — I had to look it up to confirm it. It also tracked with my own experience: I had a titanium screw removed from my ulna in 1990, and the doctor gave me only local anesthesia to open the skin before taking a ratcheting wrench to the hex bolt in my arm, confidently informing me "there are no nerve endings in the bone." It hurt like hell, and he looked genuinely shaken that I reacted. But that story is really two failures stacked on top of each other, and only one of them is what Epley's book is actually about. His book is about the moment-to-moment failure to model someone else's mind — the imagining-instead-of-asking problem. What happened to me is the deeper version: that doctor, likely in his 50s, had been trained on a certified fact ("no nerve endings in bone") the same way an earlier generation of doctors had been trained that infants don't feel pain. He wasn't guessing badly about my mind in the moment — he was executing a belief the field had already gotten wrong for him, before he ever picked up the wrench. That's a colder failure than anything perspective-taking exercises can fix, and the book doesn't really go there.

The one place the book clearly earns its keep: a sharp critique of the iceberg model that's calcified into gospel in leadership and PM training. Epley's objection is that the metaphor reinforces the myth that we only use 10% of our brains — implying the unconscious "90%" is dormant, untapped potential. He argues that's backwards: the unconscious runs most of what you do in a given moment, while consciousness handles the smaller job of making sense of your behavior after the fact so you can explain it to yourself and others. Genuinely useful for anyone who's sat through a training deck treating the submerged part of the iceberg as a vast reservoir waiting to be mined.

Solid intro-level primer if you're new to the subject. If you've already got the background, or you've read his later book on talking to strangers, "A Little More Social,"  you'll feel like you're watching him warm up for a better book he hadn't written yet.

NOTE:  It's a short read -- ends at around 70% on Kindle with the remainder being very extensive end notes.

REVIEW: Mindwise by Nichalas Epley
RATING: 3-stars

REVIEW: "Bodies of Magic" by Freya Marske (2.5)

I loved Freya Marske's The Cinder House. It created characters and a world that were interesting, funny and the story structure allowed for their growth.  This resulted in a working found family situation for the main protagonists. When I picked up Bodies of Magic, I was hoping for more. Maybe something along the lines of The Incandescent, which I adored. Instead, I got something along the lines of The Raven Scholar.

And you know what? That might just mean it's not my genre, which is fine. Preferences are real.

But there's a problem underneath the tone and pacing that goes deeper than genre mismatch. It's about what the book borrows and what it refuses to reckon with.

Bodies of Magic has a genuinely compelling mystery at its core: a brilliant student is dead, and there are institutional incentives to hide the death: keep students enrolled another year, keep the funding flowing, protect the academy's reputation. That's a meaty plot. There's real corruption there, real stakes. The detective work of uncovering what happened and why the institution had reason to want fail talented students training to meet a role that is in short supply in their world is really the book could sing.

And parts of it do. The mystery itself works. But the execution fractures everywhere else.

The protagonists swing between reading as young teenagers and college students gone wild -- not convincingly as both, not even convincingly as either one. The resolution doesn't feel earned; the villain makes a confession in front of a room of people without the setup to land it. The supporting cast feels ineffectual in ways that undermine rather than complicate the narrative.

These are craft problems, and they're real problems. But underneath them sits something that troubles me more.

In the real world -- the one you and I live in, the one Freya Marske lives in -- there are people who believe that physical illness can be healed through metaphysical, spiritual, or faith-based means instead of medicine. This isn't a metaphor. It isn't a thought experiment. It's a functioning ideology with practitioners and consequences.

Christian Science. Medical neglect in faith-healing churches. Anti-vax communities. The logic is the same: the body can be healed by belief, by prayer, by spiritual alignment, or, in this book's framing, by having the right magical gift.

The novel's portrayal of "healers" who cure illness through magical circles, humming, and singing risks romanticizing faith healing while overlooking its real-world consequences. Medical neglect is not limited to refusing vaccines; it can mean denying children doctors, hospitals, diagnostic tests, appropriate medicines, and even basic treatment for fever and pain. When serious illnesses are left untreated, the result can be preventable death, permanent hearing loss, neurological injury, developmental or behavioral difficulties, chronic disability, and lifelong suffering. The fantasy may present healing rituals as effective, but in real life, replacing evidence-based medical care with prayer or ritual can have devastating consequences, especially for children who cannot make that choice for themselves.

This is the ideology Bodies of Magic borrows and validates. The book tries to create distance by inventing fictitious ailments (phantomes, for instance) but it doesn't create enough distance. The logic remains unchanged: the body can be healed through non-material, non-scientific means, without ever engaging with how medicine actually works. The mechanism is magic instead of prayer, but the underlying delusion is identical.

The worldbuilding picks and chooses what exists based on plot convenience and aesthetic preference, not coherence.

Consider the infrastructure: the book includes hospitals, gyms, boxing clubs, self-defense training, pianos, and institutional bureaucracy sophisticated enough to set retirement ages at 70. Healers are revered as an elite, essential profession, yet they coexist with all these other systems. Why would a society have hospitals if magical healing works? Why gyms, why physical training, why concern about bodies at all? Why pianos and gymnasiums but also medieval garments and archaic names? Why sophisticated enough institutions to raise the retirement age, but not sophisticated enough to have a postal service—relying instead on wax seals on messenger-delivered notes?

While there's a non-binary character -- there's also repeated references to "whorish" as a pejorative descriptor (esp as related to short hair styles - sort of a 1950s/medieval-coded misogyny and shame-based sexual control) interspersed with olympian sexual exploits across characters.

Compare this to Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea, where magic students attend school and academy but remain embedded in society.  These magicians are revered for their skill as they would be for any other trade, integrated rather than separated, valued and relied upon as essential workers. That's a coherent world.

Bodies of Magic doesn't want coherence. It wants the aesthetic of medieval oppression (archaic clothing, gendered shame, class hierarchy, elite separation) layered over modern institutional infrastructure (hospitals, gyms, retirement systems). It borrows the visual and emotional texture of oppression without committing to understanding what any of it actually means.

And the faith-healing system is just the most ideologically charged example of this pattern.  The world also features elite hoarding of essential services as window dressing -- entire geographic areas are without proper medical care in this world.

By treating magical medicine as a functional, glamorous reality for an elite group of college students, the narrative unintentionally validates the internal logic of real-world faith healers. It proposes a world where the people who reject standard medicine are actually right—they just have access to something better. Everyone else just doesn't have the gift.

For anyone who has lived with the devastating, permanent consequences of that real-world delusion, this doesn't read as a fun magical escape. 

I'm not arguing that fantasy needs literal scientific accuracy. A hyperdrive is ridiculous. Enchanted swords are ridiculous. Dragons are ridiculous. Fantasy invents abstract impossibilities constantly, and that's the entire point.

But there's a difference between inventing an impossibility and borrowing a real-world ideology that has a body count.

A hyperdrive doesn't exist, and no one is dying because their parents tried to build one instead of taking them to the ER. It's pure invention. Harmless imagination.

A system where physical illnesses are treated through metaphysical, spiritual, or faith-based means? That's not pure invention. That's stepping directly into territory occupied by real, living people who use that exact logic to justify medical neglect.

The distinction isn't about realism. It's about tonal responsibility. When you borrow a real-world delusion that actively kills children and wrap it in aspirational, lighthearted narrative, you're not creating a fun alternate magic system. You're fulfilling a fantasy of a world where the people who reject medicine are actually right. That's not a neutral choice.

Bodies of Magic isn't a bad book. It has solid mystery structure, and the author clearly knows how to craft a narrative (see: The Cinder House).

But the premise is irresponsible, and the execution doesn't reckon with that irresponsibility. The tone stays light. The romance keeps the focus on interpersonal drama rather than systemic harm. The resolution is neat and unsatisfying.

2.5 stars feels right: good bones undone by a lack of tonal responsibility.

Maybe that's fine for readers who come to fantasy for escape and aren't carrying the specific trauma of having watched faith-healing ideology destroy people they love. Maybe for those readers, magical medicine is just another ridiculous trope, no different from a hyperdrive.

"Bad Art" Fundraiser Pet Portraits for Friends of Oakland Animal Services

In the past year, two really cute appliqué pet portraits have crossed my path - my friend Veronika made one of her cat Oscar, and a fan of a shop cat at Warner Mountain Weavers left one for Adrienne.  Naturally, when I saw a "Call for Artists" for the annual "Bad Art" fundraiser for FOAS, I signed up and decided to do appliqué pet portraits.  I looked at a few videos and instructional aides, but this one on Lorraine's "Quilting in the Fog" website gave me the simplest guidance for Pet Portrait Appliqué of all of them.  I printed the (sometimes cropped) photos to full 8.5 x 11" and used wax paper and sharpies to make templates. 

Here are the reference photos for Noomie the border collie, Dwight the ginger tabby, and Jojo who is a good boy (so said the note on the artist dashboard):

Here are a few WIP photos:

Newmie was the easiest -- his shapes were really clearly defined. As you see on the print out of his photo to the right, I had made some notes about how to approach and define the color areas, and then just traced with waxed paper using a sharpie and cut out the templates.  I pinned the waxed paper to fabric with Stitch Witchery already applied to the back side and used tiny scissors to snip it out.

He is a good boy!

Dwight was a bit trickier - I didn't feel I had enough fabrics close enough to his colors (my mac is not printing on my Brother CN3040 printer properly) but I think it worked out ok.  I know Dwight personally and wanted to give him a really good portrait.  Even though I was constrained by fabric selections (shockingly - I don't have a lot of beiges and browns in my stash), I used about 6 different thread colors (zoom in and you can see).

He is a good boy!

Jojo presented a different challenge:  the pose and the photo were a bit tricky to translate to "flat" without him looking like, well, roadkill.  I made his partly opened eye more open, added velvet to the belly and tail so he can be petted - and interpreted the words from the note "He is a good boy" so it's clear that this is a present tense Jojo!

NOTES AND TIPS:

• Stitch Witchery is the way to go; I considered using spray basting adhesive but that would have been trickier for smaller pieces.
• Use an unscented dryer sheet to clean off the sticky stuff from your iron.
• Iron - I used my small travel iron - just in case - and it was all I needed.
• Nonstick silicone cookie sheet mat worked really well to keep the Stitch Witchery webbing from sticking to my ironing pad.
• Velvet melts - lower heat and iron from the back to get the stitch witchery to stick or use spray stitching. 
• Upholstery samples are great backgrounds - just make sure to soak overnight and peel the paper from the backside.  I tried to sew through and broke a few needles. 
• Sewing:  my Singer 201 gives me the option to drop the feed dogs, which I did try with the embroidery foot but... without putting the piece in an embroidery hoop, it didn't feel right.  I just did this with the feed dogs in place, a transparent acrylic quilting foot, and lots of forward/backward on the stitch direction.

INSPIRATION:  

Visit the FOAS Bad Art Gallery and check out the portraits that inspired me!

  

REVIEW: Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (2.5 stars)

Palmer teaches medieval history to college students, and it shows: "Too Like the Lightning" feels as though it was written for readers encountering these ideas (gender beyond binary, transgressive religion, questioning power structures) for the first time. The book might feel revelatory to them. For anyone with any kind of background in social sciences, philosophy, organizational behavior, or critical theory, it's overlong and under-rewarding.

But the core problem isn't the audience mismatch. It's that Palmer has written a book describing totalitarianism and presented it as a utopia -- but nobody in the book seems to know the difference.

Mycroft is established as an unreliable narrator from the start, but the specifics of his crimes -- a weeklong killing/torture spree of his chosen family motivated by messianic delusion -- don't surface until late. The society's response was to elevate him into the ruling elite's inner circle, where he functions as a sophisticated pet: allowed to witness high-level meetings, observe from closets, provide intelligence, but always at their sufferance. He's kept close because he's intelligent and useful, not because he's a visionary.

The majority of this book is a detective story. The investigation into a stolen political document (the Seven-Ten List) uncovers something far darker: the Saneer-Weeksbooth bash has been conducting systematic political assassinations, justified as necessary to maintain world peace.  Martin Guildbreaker and Papadelias uncover a state-level assassination conspiracy, apparently running on the exact same messianic logic and hidden as accidental deaths in a highly regulated flying car system.

I personally didn't connect with any of the characters - Mycroft is creepy and gross at best, alternating between sniveling obsequiousness, or creepy obsession (ie repeated mentions of dark Indian skin), with tender parental concern over Bridger.  

Then there's Bridger: a 13-year-old alien with god-like reality-warping powers who acts like a 4-year-old and wants to sit on adult laps. He can draw a potion on paper and manifest it. He can resurrect the dead, turn plush toys into living animals. But Palmer gives him no actual imagination or agency. He doesn't explore what else he can do. He doesn't test his powers or question his dependency. He just sits passively, infantilized and underutilized.   Don't even get me started on JEDD Mason and Dominic Seneschal.

There are many genetic advancements - people can change their physical gender if they like but they are still in a psot-gender society (despite Mycroft's obsession with using binary gender pronouns). Or consider the centipede cat: multiple segmented bodies, supposedly a marvel of this future world. Except Mycroft describes it wrapping around both your ankles and spiraling onto your lap for petting and snuggles—exactly what a regular four-legged cat already does. The elaborate construction delivers no functional difference, just complication for its own sake.  Why not create cats who enjoy improved health with aging - without kidney disease, lymphoma, diabetes or dental issues.

And Palmer never interrogates what it would actually mean to have a multi-segmented creature loose in public -- tripping people, risking injury to itself or bicyclists—assuming anyone even bikes, which they don't seem to, because there's no evidence of embodied physical life in this "utopia." No exercise. No nature engagement, though some of the people like to include elaborate representations of nature on their clothing. Aside from Mycroft torturing someone in the Antarctic, we don't hear much about outdoor activity. Just people in cities and buildings absorbing data and ideas while a totalitarian system monitors their every movement.

The book describes this as a utopia worth saving. Mycroft narrates it as enlightenment nerd. But what's actually on the page: a totalitarian system run by hedonistic elites that keeps a serial killer as a prized pet and a god-like alien child as an infantilized tool. Everyone monitored. Nature abstracted into fashion. The "solutions" (kitchen trees, meat machines) eliminate visible labor without solving underlying constraints. There's no actual life, just the performance of transcendence.

If Palmer intended this as a critique of how totalitarian systems normalize themselves through the eyes of those benefiting from them, it needs to be much clearer. If she actually believes the utopia Mycroft is selling, then the book is inadvertently propaganda for totalitarianism.

Either way, it's overwritten, underpaced, and unwilling to interrogate what it's actually describing. The ambition is real. The execution isn't there.

REVIEW: The A.R.C.: A Virus That Kills When You Lie by Tim Disney (2.5 stars)

 I picked this up free at WorldCon. It was shrink-wrapped, so I couldn't preview it, and the $45 price on the back suggests I got a bargain. I'm not sure I did.

"A virus that kills you when you lie" is a terrific engine for satire, and I wanted this to be sharper than it is. The hardcover is beautifully produced, and the art is a real strength, which makes it more disappointing that the writing doesn't match. The idea is more or less the whole book. The plot is thin, the characters are barely sketched, and the rules never settle. Some people die instantly while others linger long enough to save themselves by telling the truth. Is that tied to the size of the lie? The liar? Pure convenience? Without an answer, the story can't build real tension or say anything pointed about who gets punished for lying.

In the cruise ship subplot, the book's only gay couple is clearly identified as gay, and one of them says "I love you," insists it's true, and dies anyway, so the virus rules that he was lying. Meanwhile, a husband and wife who admit they're out of love, but say they want to make it work, are treated as telling the truth. Whatever the intent, the result is that the only gay characters in the book are the ones whose love is declared fake, while a straight couple who admit they're out of love get to live. It also undercuts the premise, since the virus is supposed to punish lies, not sincerity, and it makes the rules feel even more arbitrary.

At the end there are several pages of rants about the problems of cruise ships. The cruise ship material is a fair target, and I have no objection to a screed against the industry. But the small island opening artillery on a cruise ship struck me as violence with no comic or thematic payoff.

The bigger problem is the book's treatment of women. There's a Benny Hill-style gag in which a man falls face first into a woman's chest and greets it with "Good morning, America." Beyond that, the "attractive" women are wasp-waisted with enormous breasts, and nearly everyone else is either old and ugly or old and fat. Satire is supposed to punch at power and hypocrisy. This reproduces the tropes it could have mocked, and it made the book feel dated, misogynist, and mean-spirited. It wasn't the only graphic novel I picked up at WorldCon that leaned on the same stereotypes in place of characters, and it's a shame, because the premise here deserved better.

The "obituary" section, with portraits of billionaires and politicians who die from the virus, is where the book's spite is most on display. Powerful liars are a fair target, and this could have been the payoff of the premise. But there's no context for what any of these people lied about or why they earned it, so it reads like the authors' personal wishlist instead of satire. A rogues gallery isn't a punchline.

The final section, an alternate history in which Robert Kennedy becomes president, is heavy on gags and tropes and light on substance. Good alt-history satire uses the changes to say something about our world, and this mostly piles on jokes.

The book closes with quotes about truth from a run of notable men, then one from a woman named Dailey, who says the truth shouldn't get in the way of a good story. I couldn't verify her, so I can't say whether the choice was a clever wink at the reader or just how the closing page fell together. Either way, it fits a book about the slippery relationship between truth and stories.

A handsome package around an underdeveloped idea. I'd suggest skipping it and waiting for a better use of this premise.

REVIEW: The A.R.C.: A Virus That Kills When You Lie by Tim Disney
RATING: 2.5 stars

2026 Hugo Nominees Reading List (⭐ for category winners)

On this page:

• Best Novel
• Best Novella
• Best Novelette
• Best Short Story
• Best Series
• Best Graphic Story or Comic
• Best Related Work
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
• Lodestar Award for Best YA Book
• Best Poem
• Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Best Novel

Title	Author	Publisher	Rating / Review
A Drop of Corruption	Robert Jackson Bennett	Del Rey / Hodderscape	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.Review Related essay
Death of the Author	Nnedi Okorafor	William Morrow / Gollancz	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.review coming
Shroud	Adrian Tchaikovsky	Tor UK / Orbit US	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.review coming
⭐ The Everlasting	Alix E. Harrow	Tor US / Tor UK	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.Review
The Incandescent	Emily Tesh	Tor US / Orbit UK	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.Review
The Raven Scholar	Antonia Hodgson	Orbit US / Hodderscape	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Review

Best Novella

Title	Author	Publisher	Rating / Review
Automatic Noodle	Annalee Newitz	Tordotcom	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.Review
Cinder House	Freya Marske	Tordotcom / Tor UK	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Murder by Memory	Olivia Waite	Tordotcom	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
⭐ The River Has Roots	Amal El-Mohtar	Tordotcom / Arcadia UK	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.review coming
The Summer War	Naomi Novik	Del Rey US / Del Rey UK	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.Review
What Stalks the Deep	T. Kingfisher	Nightfire / Titan UK	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.review coming

Best Novelette

Title	Author	Publication	Rating / Review
"Kaiju Agonistes"	Scott Lynch	Uncanny Magazine #62	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
⭐ "Never Eaten Vegetables"	H.H. Pak	Clarkesworld #220	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.Review (opens in new tab)
"Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy"	Martha Wells	Reactor, Jul 10 2025	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Related essay
"The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For"	Cameron Reed	Reactor, Apr 2 2025	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.review coming
"The Millay Illusion"	Sarah Pinsker	Uncanny Magazine #67	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Review
"When He Calls Your Name"	Catherynne M. Valente	Uncanny Magazine #65	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Best Short Story

Title	Author	Publication	Rating / Review
"10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days"	Samantha Mills	Uncanny Magazine #63	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
⭐ "In My Country"	Thomas Ha	Clarkesworld #223	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
"Laser Eyes Ain't Everything"	Effie Seiberg	Diabolical Plots, May 16 2025	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.review coming
"Missing Helen"	Tia Tashiro	Clarkesworld #226	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
"Six People to Revise You"	J.R. Dawson	Uncanny Magazine #62	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.review coming
"Wire Mother"	Isabel J. Kim	Clarkesworld #229	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Best Series

Series	Author	Publisher	Rating / Review
Emily Wilde	Heather Fawcett	Del Rey US / Orbit UK	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Encyclopaedia • Map • Compendium
October Daye	Seanan McGuire	Tor US / DAW	Will Not Rate
⭐ Old Man's War	John Scalzi	Tor US / Tor UK	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. (aggregate, books 1–4)Review (Books 1–5)
The Chronicles of Osreth	Katherine Addison	Tor US / Solaris UK	TBR
The Craft Wars	Max Gladstone	Tor / Tordotcom	TBR
White Space	Elizabeth Bear	Saga Press / Gollancz	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

Best Graphic Story or Comic

Title	Creator(s)	Publisher	Rating / Review
Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon	Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, Mattia de Iulis	DC Comics	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Review
A Girl and Her Fed	KB Spangler & Ale Presser	agirlandherfed.com (opens in new tab)	★★Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
⭐ A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel	Le Guin, adapted by Fred Fordham	Clarion Books / Walker UK	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Review
The Invisible Parade	Leigh Bardugo & John Picacio	Little, Brown / Orion UK	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Review
The Power Fantasy Vol. 1: The Superpowers	Kieron Gillen & Caspar Wijngaard	Image Comics	★★Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
The Space Cat	Nnedi Okorafor & Tana Ford	First Second	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.Review

Best Related Work

Title	Author / Creator	Publisher	Rating / Review
Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction	Paul Kincaid	Briardene Books	TBR
⭐ Inventing the Renaissance	Ada Palmer	U of Chicago Press / Head of Zeus	★★Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
Last War in Albion: "The Cuddled Little Vice (Sandman)"	Elizabeth Sandifer	Eruditorum Press	TBR
Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler	Susana M. Morris	Amistad	TBR
"Ragnarök vs the Long Night" (podcast)	Ashaya & Aziz	History of Westeros, Aug 10 2025	TBR
The Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom	Renay	Google Spreadsheet	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

Title	Writer(s) / Director	Platform	Rating / Review
Andor (Season 2)	Bissell, Gilroy, Gilroy, Willimon	Disney+	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
Frankenstein	Guillermo del Toro	Netflix	★★Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
KPop Demon Hunters	Kang & Appelhans	Netflix	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
Mickey 17	Bong Joon Ho	Warner Bros.	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.Review (w/ Superman)
⭐ Sinners	Ryan Coogler	Warner Bros.	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.review coming
Superman	James Gunn	DC Studios / Warner Bros.	★Rating: 1 out of 5 stars.Review (w/ Mickey 17)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

Title	Writer / Director	Platform	Rating / Review
Doctor Who: "The Story & the Engine"	Inua Ellams / Makalla McPherson	BBC One / Disney+	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.
⭐ Murderbot: "All Systems Red"	Paul & Chris Weitz / Roseanne Liang	Apple TV+	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.Related essay
Murderbot: "The Perimeter"	Chris & Paul Weitz / Paul Weitz	Apple TV+	★★★★★Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.Related essay
Pluribus: "We Is Us"	Vince Gilligan	Apple TV+	★★Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
Severance: "Cold Harbor"	Dan Erickson / Ben Stiller	Apple TV+	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
The Wheel of Time: "The Road to the Spear"	Rafe Lee Judkins / Thomas Napper	Amazon Prime Video	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Lodestar Award for Best YA Book

Title	Author	Publisher	Rating / Review
Among Ghosts	Rachel Hartman		TBR
⭐ Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe	C.B. Lee		★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Review
Holy Terrors	Margaret Owen		TBR
Oathbound	Tracy Deonn		★★Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.Review
Sunrise on the Reaping	Suzanne Collins		Will Not Rate
They Bloom at Night	Trang Thanh Tran		TBR

Best Poem

Title	Author	Publication	Rating / Review
"Care for Lightning (opens in new tab)"	Mari Ness	Uncanny Magazine	★★Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
⭐ "Hex Supply Customer Support Log (opens in new tab)"	Elis Montgomery	Strange Horizons	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
"How to Become a Sea Witch (opens in new tab)"	Theodora Goss	The Orange Bee	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
"Landing: Seattle"	Brandon O'Brien		★★Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
"The Mourning Robot (opens in new tab)"	Angela Liu	Uncanny Magazine	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
"The World to Come (opens in new tab)"	Jennifer Hudak	Strange Horizons	★★Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.

Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Author	Notable Work in Packet	Rating / Review
Sophie Burnham	Sargassa and Bloodtide	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Sargassa / Bloodtide TBR
Kamilah Cole	So Let Them Burn	TBR
⭐ Antonia Hodgson	The Raven Scholar	★★★Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.Review
Molly O'Neill	Greenteeth (excerpt)	TBR
H.H. Pak	"Never Eaten Vegetables"	★★★★Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.review coming
Jared Pechaček	The West Passage	★★★Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.Review