Jun 19 2026

Hugo Awards 2026: Best Poem

I am glad that successive Worldcons have decided to make Best Poem a permanent category. Poetry is probably the oldest literary genre, and limiting the Hugo award to prose meant missing out. Speculative or fantastic poetry is difficult, because a work has to be both: good poetry and something beyond the mundane, whether science fiction, fantasy or myth. It’s quite a challenge for both readers and writers. Will the audience get what the author was aiming for within the limited space of the poem? Does a work need to be a poem to convey what the author wants? Recognizing when this is well done can only improve poetry’s standing within the community of people who care about the Hugos, and maybe it can even help build a larger cadre of practitioners, strengthening the form.

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Here are my brief notes on this year’s finalists, in ascending order of preference.

“Landing: Seattle” by Brandon O’Brien was presented at and for the opening ceremony of the Seattle Worldcon in 2025. Occasional poetry is a tough nut to crack; even Robert Frost fell back on something he had previously written when the sun got in his eyes on that January day in 1961. I wouldn’t say occasional poetry shouldn’t exist — it is there to heighten the occasion, and it can perform that role most admirably. It seldom outlives the occasion for which it was composed, and “Landing: Seattle” gives an example of why.

“The Mourning Robot” by Angela Liu opens with an arresting couple of lines: “They came with machetes/asked if we knew the way to Wonderland.” Tell me more! But the poem veers off in a more imagist direction, giving readers more fragments, a “they” and a “we” with little to attach them to, charged words and a final turn. I suppose it’s meant to be a mood, but it never came together enough for me. This poem illustrates some of the things that make speculative poetry so difficult. If it’s short, it runs the risk that readers don’t have enough to follow the author’s ideas and intentions. If it’s long, it can make readers wonder why it isn’t a prose story instead. Maybe there are references that I missed, that would have made “The Mourning Robot” cohere more. Or maybe Liu is just aiming for a feeling, a vibe, a combination of machine and mourning, with menace from that first line. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell, and so we went past each other, the poet and I.

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Jun 18 2026

An Interview with Kevin Hincker, author of The Story Eaters Of Yamm

Hello, readers! We have a treat for you today with an interview from acclaimed sci-fi author Kevin Hincker. His latest novel riffs off of the Wag The Dog scenario familiar to consumers of both sci-fi classics (that we won’t name here because of potential spoilers) and political thrillers of page and screen.

The Story Eaters Of Yamm revolves around a group of science-fiction writers who’ve been hired by a mysterious corporation to create an alien invasion story. They soon discover that not only is the invasion real, but that what they’re writing is being used as a blueprint for a galactic war involving extraterrestrial snails capable of mind control.

Leading the writers is Larry Palczewski, a hapless, time-blind author whose affliction sets up the clever metafictional structure of story. If you love humorous speculative fiction that pays homage to genre tropes, as well as unique, experimental novel formats, then you definitely have to check out this book!

Read on for a brief, spoiler-free interview with the author himself, on the topics of humor, sci-fi tropes, aliens and neurodiversity!

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Jun 17 2026

Recent Researched Comics for Grown-ups

Some lovely graphic works for adult readership have come out this Spring, each based on fact to various degrees. Tillie Walden’s Charity and Sylvia came out this week from Drawn & Quarterly; last month gave us Opioids and Organs by Arizona O’Neill; and in March, the collected volume of Death to Pachuco by Henry Barajas and Rachel Merrill came out from Image. All of these were great reads, and each of them also taught me stuff I hadn’t already known about the world I live in.

silhouettes of two women look at eachother in an ornate border on the cover of charity and sylvia by tillie waldenThe beautiful and engaging Charity and Sylvia by Tillie Walden makes a terrific mid-June centerpiece for Pride Month. A sepia-toned, meticulously researched graphic novel, it tells the story of two women who lived together as a couple in rural Vermont in the 19th century. Walden uses artifacts and handwritten documents from the lives of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, and historical records of the larger American experience at the time, such as when railroads arrived, what undergarments looked like, how cold it was, and what was happening in national politics, to piece together a story of these women’s lives.

They really did exist, and live as a couple, and Walden’s version of their love and life story is both historically informed and beautifully depicted. In the Afterword, Walden tells us that like Charity and Sylvia, she, too, lives with her wife in rural Vermont.

I never watched The Walking Dead on television, and I only read a couple volumes of the original comics series it was based on, but I love Walden’s spin-off graphic novel trilogy Clementine. I eagerly awaited each new book in that series, and I think even though there are no zombies, Charity and Sylvia has a lot in common with Clementine because it is so atmospheric, and focused on people making humane connections with each other in the midst of extremely harsh circumstances. I recommend Charity and Sylvia if you are interested in queer history, love stories, American History, beautiful page design, or a masterclass on pacing. For a deep dive into any of these aspects, take a look at Walden’s website for the project, charityandsylvia.com

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Jun 16 2026

The Reel Life Of Zara Kregg by Brad Barkley (EXCERPT)

Hello, readers! We have a treat for you today with an excerpt from a sensitive coming-of-age tale, as a young girl must come out of the shadows in order to embrace a whole life.

The closest that 16 year-old Zara Kegg has to friendships in her coastal North Carolina town is with the regulars she watches from the projection booth of the movie theater where she works. The Palace Theater shows pretty much only cult classics, and when Zara isn’t watching the movie or the regulars over whom she feels a protective sort of interest, she’s busy trying — more or less — to figure her way out of her existential crisis. Her mom died three years ago and her dad has been sliding further and further into depression and bad coping mechanisms. Zara has Real Problems, and no time for friends, much less romance.

That changes when her flaky boss asks her to organize a Valentine’s Day marathon of Godzilla movies. As she scrambles to deal with 150 inflatable Godzillas, she slowly begins to make new friends and, perhaps, more. But will she be able to emerge fully from her existence as a spectator in order to finally be the main character of her own life?

Read on for an immersive look at Zara’s perspective from the projection booth!

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Jun 15 2026

Gay Mormon Dad by Chad Anderson & Remy Burke

I have been super bad at properly commemorating celebration months this year so far, but better late than never I suppose, so Happy Pride! I tend to read a lot of books with queer characters and themes yet, oddly, feel like Chad Anderson and Remy Burke’s Gay Mormon Dad is the only one I’ve read for June so far.

But what a way to start! This is a deeply personal, achingly vulnerable memoir of what it was like to grow up gay and Mormon at the end of the 20th century, and how Mr Anderson eventually came out and began to live life on his own terms. It was not an easy journey, but his honesty and courage give readers hope that they too can overcome the obstacles in their path on the way to existing as free and honest people.

Beginning from a childhood marked by abuse, Chad sought comfort in the church his mother devoutly believed in. Since church elders told him he could pray the gay away, he tried his best to do exactly that, even getting married and having two kids before deciding that he couldn’t live like he was suffocating any more. Unsurprisingly, it was a hard road forward, but he persevered until he achieved a life he could be, well, proud of.

As someone who spent a large part of my youth in a conservative religious society, I felt immediately familiar with so much of his struggle. What was new to me were the details of the Mormon church and practices, which I found fascinating. I didn’t expect learn so much about the faith in this book but definitely appreciate the greater sociological understanding I came away with.

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Jun 14 2026

Hugo Awards 2026: Best Short Story

True to form, two of this year’s finalists in the category of Best Short Story are listicle stories. I guess by now they’re just another variation in the form, rather than an innovation. The strength in the variation is that it allows an author to show numerous different perspectives or aspects of a situation within a compressed space. The corresponding weakness is that it enables an author to merely gesture in the direction of a story, expecting the reader to fill in the rest, without actually using the form to expand storytelling possibilities or to actually tell a single story through the listicle format. It’s devilishly tricky to do, and it seems to me that authors often exhaust their creative energy for that particular story with the format, rather than using it to its fullest extent.

Here are brief notes on the 2026 finalists for Best Short Story, in ascending order of my preference.

Missing Helen - Clarkesworld

“In My Country” by Thomas Ha is not a listicle story. The first-person narrator addresses the reader directly about his country, which is one marked by surveillance, censorship and oppression. The moral landscape of the narrator’s country was very familiar to me as someone who has studied Nazism in Germany and communism throughout Central and Eastern Europe. It will be familiar in its contours, if not in the direct actions of the secret police, by people who have lived in societies in which existing hierarchies are backed by state or private violence. Ha strips down the shape of oppression to its bare basics. “Listen to what I say. Listen to what I don’t say.” The oppressors have trouble with ambiguity. The secret police can take you away, and say that everything is fine, and people have to demonstrate they believe it.

I am sure the story is very heartfelt, and it might even have a big effect on a reader who has not encountered this sort of thing before. But I’ve read how Milosz did it, I’ve read how Solzhenitsyn did it, I’ve read how Grossman did it, I’ve read Havel’s essays and Michnik’s tactics for beating it and Konrad’s search for an escape from politics. In my countries, I’ve seen the problems presented in this story many, many times; I’ve lived among folks who still know what their neighbors did during the war; I’ve seen how the kinds of forces that Ha is grasping to describe have shaped lives, and so none of this was new enough to pique much of my interest.

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Jun 13 2026

Hugo Awards 2026: Best Graphic Story or Comic

This year’s list of Hugo Award finalists in the category of Best Graphic Story of Comic is unusual in that for the first time since 2016 neither Saga nor Monstress is among them. The balance between one-offs and continuing characters/series is a little more usual, with three volumes from each. The ongoing series are a little unusual, in that one is the start of a new continuity, one is part of a long-running webcomic, and only one — the Wonder Woman book — features a familiar character from a traditional comics publisher. The three stand-alones are a children’s book that is almost entirely art, a graphic novel, and an adaptation of a beloved fantasy classic. I vastly preferred the stand-alone works, as will become clear from these notes on the finalists, in ascending order of my preference.

A Wizard of Earthsea — Graphic Novel

The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers starts a story about superpowered beings in the post-WWII era, a story that will presumably run for a considerable number of additional issues. Doreen reviewed it here, and liked it much more than I did. I did not make it to the end of volume 1. A psionic massacre in the White House and, I think, across the US government is where I noped out. Under Trump 2.0, friends have had careers destroyed; the personal intervention of Elon Musk and his DOGE boys sparked gratuitous waste on an epic scale, and will cause many, many thousands of needless deaths. Friends who have stayed in public service have had their work made needlessly more difficult, just to stroke the overweening egos of rotten men. Others I was once close to but have not kept up with may have had their careers destroyed simply because it was their time to rotate back to the States instead of staying in the field. One friend was personally hounded out of an ambassadorial posting in a war zone because she would not tell egregious and easily disproven lies on Trump’s behalf. Though it was not a literal massacre like the one depicted in the book, it was close enough that I did not want to read more, not least because the prologue and couple dozen pages that served as an introduction did not have me invested enough in the characters to go along on a ride of cosmic destruction. The art was striking, but it did not induce me to care what happened to those people.

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Jun 12 2026

Tantalizing Tales — June 2026 — Part Two

Happy Men’s World Cup season, dear readers! I do not, alas, have any books related to the beautiful game in this week’s tantalizing pile but I do have several that could tempt me to look away from my TV screen for a second… or more likely fill the empty time between these already wonderful and infuriating matches!

First up, we have C B Everett’s The Final Chapter, a metafictional book-within-a-book thriller that’s certain to delight fans of both puzzles and high concept mysteries like myself!

A decade ago, a bestselling, critically acclaimed author suddenly disappeared. Now, a manuscript purporting to be his final novel has unexpectedly resurfaced. Trouble is, it’s nothing like his other books. Instead of a moving work of literary genius, this new novel is an espionage thriller filled with seemingly stereotypical James-Bond-esque characters and situations.

Bewildered, his publisher calls in the author’s best friend for help contextualizing the novel in the missing writer’s larger oeuvre. C B Everett (!) is also an author, but he’s just as baffled by this strange book as everyone else is. The more he reads, however, the more he begins to recognize details from the life that he and his missing friend had actually shared. Could his friend have coded real world secrets into the manuscript before abruptly disappearing? Soon, C B will be wondering how well we can really know our friends — and even ourselves — as he’s plunged into a life-threatening web of intrigue.

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Jun 11 2026

The Mystery Of The Stolen World Cup Trophy by Angela Cervantes

Men’s World Cup season has officially begun! Ever since 1998, this has been THE most exciting global sporting event for me, and even tho this year’s promises to be the worst run and most corrupt tournament of all time, not even that can dampen my love of the sport and the community who actually care about the beautiful game.

With that in mind, I was super happy to dive into Angela Cervantes’ The Mystery of The Stolen World Cup Trophy as part of my preparations/celebrations. I am very pro anything that spreads the joy of the tournament to as many people as possible, and am still a little bitter at all the years I missed out on of this in my youth. This middle grade mystery series definitely transmits that excitement and hopefully entices more than a few bookish kids into finding out more about the beautiful game. Conversely, I hope it also introduces some sports-mad kids to the joys of a good mystery novel, which this definitely is (tho not without certain reservations that I’ll discuss later in this review.)

The story itself revolves around sixth grader Diez Espada, who’s inherited his love of football — tho not, unfortunately, commensurate skill — from his dad and his love of detection from his recently deceased librarian mom. When he and his dad receive exclusive tickets to a party where the actual World Cup trophy will be displayed in Miami, ahead of the 2026 World Cup final, it feels like a dream come true.

Disaster strikes, however, when the trophy is stolen by the international thief known as La Lechuza. Diez is certain that he’ll be able to figure out whodunnit and get the trophy back, with the help of his crush Rio and the actual detective on the case, the world-famous Detective Enzo. But there’ll be more than one tricky conundrum in his path as he figures out how to navigate a surprisingly treacherous field.

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Jun 10 2026

Murder Summer!

Here in the northern hemisphere, as temperatures get hotter and hotter, and vacations get (hopefully) more and more imminent, don’t we all just want to relax with a cold beverage and a book in which people die at the hand of another? It can’t just be me. Luckily, publishers know we want this, and there is a delightful lineup of murder books this season, to help us while away the hot days of summer.

a hotel key is dipped in blood on the cover of Body Count by Codie CrowleyIf you’re in the mood for a politically progressive teen slasher, go for Body Count, by Codie Crowley. If you want a self-referential portal fantasy (with murders), Sarah Rees Brennan’s All Hail Chaos is perfect for you. And if your summer calls for a combo classic mystery and romance that takes place in the golden era of British mystery novels, The Cloak and Dagger Club by Jackie McMahon will satisfy that craving.

All of these books are genre-savvy, commenting enjoyably on the tropes and potential pitfalls of their respective genres, which is exactly my jam.

Body Count came out from Disney Hyperion on May 5th. Don’t let the Disney publisher lead you astray. There are no princesses with animal sidekicks here. I loved Codie Crowley’s first book, Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch, so I was extremely excited for Body Count. In Body Count, Sundae is a cheerleader prom queen on the Jersey Shore for Prom Weekend, when a supernatural entity starts targeting her and everyone around her. A classic set up for a teen slasher story, but this one upends several genre expectations.

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