The Inhumans and Other Stories: A Selection of Bengali Science Fiction edited and translated by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay brings to print a previously untranslated, iconic Bengali sci fi novella from 1935: The Inhumans by Hemendrakumar Roy, a satire that has never gone out of print in its original language but has never been translated despite its well-earned place in the Radium Age of science fiction. Chattopadhyay adds three other early short stories as a bonus. Together, we get a collection of excellent classic sci fi with a non-Western perspective.

The Inhumans is a strange novella, featuring some classics of the early sci fi genre—story within a story, secrets in the predatory jungles of Africa, science's potential to over-reach—but with a uniquely anti-colonial undertone. The story is at turns absurd, funny, and scary as our narrator comes face-to-face with a secret civilization of "advanced" human beings hidden in the African wilderness. As for the short stories, they're a wonderful mix of myth and science, magic and sci fi, that I really enjoyed. Fans of classic, early sci fi will enjoy this, but so will most sci fi readers, and I'm glad that more classics that aren't originally in English are finally becoming more widespread and accessible.

Content warnings for fatphobia, violence/body horror.

100 pages into Translation State and I do very much appreciate that among the three POVs one is nonbinary (member of a culturally normative third gender with its own pronoun set, standards of dress, role in the family, etc) and another is nonbinary (grown in a vat by aliens, shows no sign of even being aware of the concept of gender).

2024 reads / storygraph

Walking In Two Worlds & The Everlasting Road

YA sff set in the near future where an opensource augmented reality is commonly used like social media, and there’s also a completely virtual fantasy game version

follows an Anishinaabe girl who who’s the top player in the VR game, and is constantly fighting to keep her place against the misogynist neo-nazi group in second place

as well as her real life, dealing with being a shy and self-conscious teen growing up on the Rez, and her brother having cancer

and a Uyghur boy who’s moved to her community from China after finding acceptance in an online community (even when he doesn’t agree with their more extreme views) - but when he gets to know Bugz, he has to decide who truly deserves his loyalty

great mix of sff and culture, the future while also very real community traumas of the past (and present)

maybe book sales have sucked so bad this year bc every book ever has been really bland. is the incorrect conclusion i’m coming to based off reading all the best books of 2023 lists

As a semi-professional homebrewer, the best advice I can give to get better at homebrewing is to live through a global pandemic just as you were getting into TTRPGs, then use homebrewing as a method of escapism during quarantine and to satisfy your fixation with the game while you don't have a group, so that your understanding of TTRPGs becomes inseparable from tinkering with rules.

Migrations Box: Winter 2024.

I really enjoyed this subscription last year, so I'm participating again! Of the lot, I'm actually most excited for VERDIGRIS (I know, right: wild, given that cover). I love getting surprise books I'd never pick out myself hand selected and shipped directly to me.

Insane to say that the hugo thing is obviously because of NEFARIOUS!! EXTREMIST!! chinese COMMUNIST!! censorship but it gets even more insane when you realize that the other two authors affected are literally chinese but only the white man is running his enitre mouth about this. man shut up

IN OTHER NEWS I FINISHED TRANSLATION STATE LAST NIGHT the ending had me sobbing not bc it's sad at all but WAAAAA

um ok i actually went into ao3 to see if i was maybe not the only person this specific kind of insane on the internet and. well i might be because there were zero hits but there's actually an unexpected [1] amount of agatha christie fics?? 1-2 for specific books. as for specific detectives: 2 for parker pyne. 10 for tommy and tuppence. 14 for mr quin. 159 for miss marple. 341 for poirot. slay.

[1] maybe it shouldn't be given she's a powerhouse best-seller

just spent twenty minutes rattling off new sci fi recs 2 my brother. 90% of which i have not read

May 28, 2022

Just finished reading The Alchemist of Lantian by BaiFanRuShuang (trans. Ru-Ping Chen) from The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, edited by Yu Chen and Regina Kanyu Wang.

Qin Shi Huang was referenced a lot in this story, about a wayward alchemist/kinda immortal, so thank you @xiranjayzhao because after reading Zachary Ying I ACTUALLY know who Qin Shi Huang is. Otherwise I would’ve had to do some heavy googling to understand this story.

"Radaachi cultural quirk number one: Their language only has one set of pronouns and as a collective they've decided that misgendering everyone was easier than figuring out how that shit works with foreigners" is such a great bit of worldbuilding.

about 3/5 into a memory called empire which has taken me a couple tries to get started over the last year or two. hoped to be more into and while i'm still leaving it on while playing games and stuff, im not as into as i would like 2 b. we'll see how the end sticks the landing before i decide if i keep going

Migrations Subscription Box: Summer Edition! Very excited for all four of these--THE NIGHT, THE NIGHT looks wild, especially!