11 Jul, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
Janelle Monáe’s 2023 The Memory Librarian And Other Stories of Dirty Computer is a dystopic cyberpunk work. The Memory Librarian is set in the same world as Monáe’s film Dirty Computer (which I have not yet seen), and Monáe’s album Dirty Computer (to which I have not yet listened).
I realize that there are lacunae in ISFDB.
10 Jul, 2025
Special Requests
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Alix E. Harrow’s 2024 Starling House is a Southern gothic horror novel.
Eden, Kentucky is paradise… for Don Gravely, CEO of Gravely Power, and his luckier kin. For the less fortunate inhabitants of Eden, the town is a polluted, misfortune-plagued prison from which entrenched poverty makes escape impossible1.
Twenty-seven-year-old Opal may never escape. She is determined that her bright younger brother Jasper will. For Jasper to escape, Opal needs money for his tuition.
Enter Starling House, infamous mansion of E. Starling, author of The Underland.
9 Jul, 2025
Translation
2020’s Kowloon Generic Romance, Volume One is the first tankōbon for Jun Mayuzuki’s science fiction manga series, Kūron Jenerikku Romansu in the original Japanese. Kowloon Generic Romance has been serialized in Shueisha’s seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Jump since November 2019. Amanda Haley’s English translation was published in 2022.
Kowloon Walled City is1 home to 35,000 people on just 2.6 hectares2. That’s over a million people per square kilometer. One thing is sure: real estate firms will never lack for clients.
Good news for the employees of the Wong Loi Realty Company!
8 Jul, 2025
Shockwave Reader
John Brunner’s 1965 The Squares of the City is a stand-alone Ruritanian thriller.
Under Vados’ benign dictatorship, the once-backwater South American nation of Aguazul thrives. Ciudad de Vados is an exemplar of Vados’ vision, a useless wasteland transformed into a peerless modern city.
Ciudad de Vados has one unsolved challenge. Traffic analyst Boyd Hakluyt is hired to help resolve it.
6 Jul, 2025
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
Christopher Anvil’s 1980 The Steel, the Mist, and the Blazing Sun is (almost) a stand-alone post-apocalyptic proto-military SF novel.
The atomic unpleasantness left half of North America as slag lands1, and left Europe untouched but a Russ dependency. The Russ even established colonies on the North American east coast. It seemed unlikely that the invaders would ever be forced to leave. After all, the Russ have (dwindling) stores of Old Stuff, whereas the descendants of American and Canadian survivors make do with far more primitive equipment.
Recent events proved that the Russ were curiously vulnerable. Under Arakal, King of the Wesdem O’Cracys2, the North American savages somehow overcame their technological and ideological impediments, outmaneuvered their enemy, and drove the Russ high command from North America.
What next?
4 Jul, 2025
Doing the WFC's Homework
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s 2025 The Bewitching is a period-piece horror novel1.
International student Minerva Contreras keeps busy with her studies at Stoneridge College, her work in the language lab, and her duties as a resident director. Despite this, Minerva is consumed with inexplicable ennui.
An encounter with wealthy failson Noah Yates provides Minerva with all the diversion she could want. Somewhat more, in fact.
3 Jul, 2025
Special Requests
2025’s Blight is the second volume in Rachel A. Rosen’s The Sleep of Reason apocalyptic fantasy series.
In the wake of the cataclysmic Blight, Director of the Dominion1 Quinn Atherton is determined to provide the Dominion with peace, order, good government… oh, and a lot of mass graves filled with the ethnically unfashionable, dissidents, and the unwisely frank. While progress in the matters of peace, order, and good government is mixed at best, the Dominion has excelled in the field of filling mass graves.
Of course, every ambitious government faces nattering nabobs of negativity. Take Lucy Fletcher, for example.
2 Jul, 2025
Translation
2023’s Touring After the Apocalypse, Volume Five is the fifth tankōbon in Sakae Saito’s post-apocalyptic iyashikei manga. Touring has been serialized in in ASCII Media Works’ seinen manga magazine Dengeki Maoh since September 2020. Amanda Haley’s English translation was published in late 2024.
Mount Asama is part of a spectacular volcano complex. Post-apocalyptic tourists1 Youko and Airi could hardly pass up the opportunity to see it in person. As Asama is an active volcano, and as the route the pair chose passes through a pocket of toxic volcanic gas, Mount Asama might be their final destination.
1 Jul, 2025
Meetpoint
1983’s The Dreamstone1 is the first of two novels in C. J. Cherryh’s Ealdwood series.
Human encroachment being seemingly unstoppable, the Fair Folk went elsewhere. Some retreated deep underground or underwater. Others left for Faery. All save Arafel.
Arafel remained in her Ealdwood. Only the brave, the arrogant, the naïve, or the desperate Men trespassed in the Ealdwood.
Niall was desperate.
29 Jun, 2025
Because My Tears Are Delicious To You
William Sloane’s 1937 To Walk the Night1 is a stand-alone cosmic horror novel.
Berkeley “Bark” Jones visits Dr. Lister, the man who was effectively Bark’s father. Bark has two grim tasks: to deliver to Lister the ashes of Lister’s son Jerry, and to explain to the doctor the events leading up to Jerry’s suicide.
It began with a burning astronomer.