Hey everybody and welcome back! It’s been a week! Yes, a week happened, can you believe it? And we’ve got a lot in store for you if you missed the great things we’ve covered at Speculative Chic. Introductions are really not my thing, so without further ado, let’s get on it with the Weekly Roundup!
Monday
Our special guest for My Favorite Things is author Kristin Dearborn, and we’re honoring her most recent release, Sacrifice Island. What’s better than “wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings?” How about a dino park gone wrong, a future with absolutely unique war machines, and a podcast full of mysteries and true crime! There’s so much to dive into, so take the leap!
Tuesday
Continuing along with celebrating podcasts, we’ve got Merrin reviewing King Falls AM, set up as “a late night talk radio show in a quiet mountain town” but with an amalgam of fantasy and sci fi elements, including bizarre magic spells and alien abductions, balanced by a helping of everyday issues that include budding relationships, friendships, and more. How does the podcast pull off this stack of quirkiness? Does this offering sink or swim? You can find Merrin’s verdict here.
Wednesday
Erin is jumping on her 2020 Resolution Project by rereading and discussing James A. Corey‘s Expanse series. consisting of novels, novellas, and short stories. Starting off: “Drive,” a 7-page novella written from Solomon Epstein’s point of view, and covering the discovery of the technology known as the Epstein Drive which allows for travel (and expansion) far into space.
Then Erin tackles the longer piece, “The Butcher of Anderson Station,” which follows Colonel Frederick Lucius Johnson as he earns his nickname (the title of this story) from when members of the Outer Planets Alliance captured him. As an added bonus to Erin’s discussion, she also gives you her dream cast of actors who could play these roles — fun! Read on!
Thursday
Nicole reviews Rhonda Mason‘s sci fi novel The Empress Game, where the ruler of an intergalactic empire is determined by the winner of a tournament of combat — an ancient ritual that doubles as a power battle both in and out of the arena. Is supreme fighter Kayla Reinumon a worthy contender for the Empress Game, and is this book worthy of your consideration? Step into the ring and found out here.
Friday
Our January Roundtable comes at you with the Speculative Chic gang gushing about worldbuilding and the imagination it takes to make a fictional world immersive. Our key question this month: “If you could live in any fictional world, what would it be?” We’ve got offerings from books, movies, and video games, and lots of pretty pictures, with works of science fiction and fantasy. Grab your interstellar passport and go!
Book Club
The clock is ticking as we approach our first Book Club offering for 2020! Shara is hosting and has chosen the sci fi novel This is How You Lose the Time War, written by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Join us on January 31st to discuss this acclaimed novel! We’d love to see you in the comments.
You can also start prepping for our next two Book club offerings. For February I will be hosting The Atrocities, a horror novella by Jeremy C. Shipp, and Kendra will be covering Cate Glass‘s fantasy, An Illusion of Thieves. The next few months are going to be exciting, and please look forward to our announcements for future selections!
Based on the works we’ve covered this week, plus the Resolution Project I’m currently working on, I thought I’d take a moment to consider the science fantasy genre and try to understand a little more about what it is. I don’t hear it expressly talked about very much, but it’s pretty much as it sounds: a mixed genre that combines tropes or rules from each genre. The Screenwriter’s Taxonomy calls it a microgenre under the umbrella of speculative fiction that “revels in creating stories that are scientifically impossible” (Williams). Perhaps a more detailed definition would help from Fantasy Magazine: “Science fantasy is like hard or soft scifi but mixed with magical or supernatural elements, or that uses alternate or imaginary science and technology that is simply impossible given all known scientific laws, theories and constraints” (Henderson). So something like King Falls AM would qualify, as well as Star Wars, and Fullmetal Alchemist, among countless others. And while these works exist, I haven’t heard the term “science fantasy” ascribed to them, which is weird to me.
When I first thought about defining science fantasy, my brain immediately went with, FANTASY CREATURES IN SPAAAAAACE! If science fantasy is all about combining the major tropes of each genre, then of course I’d leap to two major genre definers. And then…my brain kinda went Full Internet™ and thought about different images we’ve seen crop up when it comes to depicting imaginary creatures floating among the stars. In honor of aaaaalll the things, I present to my dear Chicers this ridiculous art I made from PD and CC images to honor both science fantasy and the internet’s take on it. Ta-da, and we’ll see you next week!
(c) Kristina Elyse Butke
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