Nonfiction
Book Review: Poster Girl, by Veronica Roth
If you’ve been thinking about how Big Brother is probably watching you, then you might want to check out Poster Girl, a new SF novel from Veronica Roth.
If you’ve been thinking about how Big Brother is probably watching you, then you might want to check out Poster Girl, a new SF novel from Veronica Roth.
I’ve seen lots of Baba Yaga retellings and modernizations—and don’t get me wrong, the old witch is fascinating, deserving of every ounce of attention she gets. For this story, though, I wanted to cast one of the figures of Slavic folklore I don’t see revisited nearly as often: Poludnitsa (also known as the Noon Witch, or Lady Midday). Pulling from my own experiences, I threw in some teenage angst, some intergenerational dissonance, and a Burning Man–esque desert setting that’s going to be make or break for our modern Noon Witch.
If the word “anthropocene” elicits immediate feelings of gloom and doom, this new SF anthology is a good antidote. Let reviewer Arley Sorg tell you all about it!
I love time travel stories, and I always have. Not just time travel stories, but time-bending stories, time-jumping stories, any kind of time-futzing, I’m there for it. The novel I’m writing now is called Big Time. It’s a time-manipulation piece, and it had me doing a lot of research on theories and mechanisms of time travel. I think this story came from that work. So it’s a bit of a subsidiary to the novel I’m working on—although it’s a very, very different piece, both in plot and tone. In terms of inspiration, Back To The Future is an obvious one; anything where you’ve got a hero, especially a self-confident, clever kid, traveling through time, you’re in BTTF territory.
Are you looking for a fantasy for people who like mysteries and a mystery for people who love fantasy? Then Maria Dong’s new novel Liar, Dreamer, Thief might just be for you!
The germ of this story was a little flight of fancy I had one day, involving a young dragon that went into a cave and then grew so much that it couldn’t get out. Then I realized it fit into a series of stories I’ve been writing off and on for (eek) fifteen years now. This is the fourth to be published, after “Wizard’s Six,” “Dragon’s Teeth,” and “Chisel and Chime.” Several more are in progress. The twin guideposts for all of them are Earthsea and Viriconium.
Be sure to check out the editorial for a run-down of this month’s terrific content.
In stories like this one, particularly when the central conflict is built around a pandemic or climate change, happy endings often come in the form of restoring the status quo—we win by overcoming the new threat and setting things back the way they were. In reality, this thinking doesn’t work for climate change because “the way things were” is what got us into this mess in the first place. The only way we win now is by embracing radical change: in ourselves, our behaviour and our society. I wanted to write a story that made the metaphor literal.
This month, Chris Kluwe launches us into the difficult future of Hugh Howey’s The Sand Chronicles. Find out why you might love Howey’s new novel Across the Sand, even if you haven’t read the first book in the series.
Here’s some advice for other writers but also advice for myself: don’t care so much about pleasing everyone with your writing. Know that some people are going to like what you write and some people are not going to like what you write and that’s okay. Remember a person’s opinion of a story or a book generally says more about their reading preferences than about the quality of the story or the book. Also leave positive reviews on Goodreads and Amazon for the books you love. And if you read something you love, drop the author a line and let them know.