Yes, an interesting new animated series. From the minds of executive producers J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), Matt Reeves (The Batman), and Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series) comes a brand new animated series for the Dark Knight and releasing on Prime Video this summer with Batman: Caped Crusader.
There’s a new series of Orphan Black, set 25 years after the original. The new series Orphan Black: Echoes stars Krysten Ritter as Lucy. The episode begins with Lucy, disoriented as she wakes up to talk to a scientist played by Keeley Hawes. She can’t remember anything and eventually escapes the room, finding a lab with computer-printed body parts. “You were created. You were printed from a high-resolution scan using a very complex process,” Hawes’ scientist tells her. “It’s a new technology. It’s the fourth-dimensional printing of human tissue.” Lucy escapes, and seems to have found a new life two years later. Unfortunately, she is found by the scientist, who apparently has links to the clones in Orphan Black.
The nominees in the fiction categories for the 2024 Hugos have been announced:
Best Novel The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (Harper Voyager, Harper Voyager UK) The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom) Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Tordotcom, Orbit UK) Starter Villain by John Scalzi (Tor, Tor UK) Translation State by Ann Leckie (Orbit US, Orbit UK) Witch King by Martha Wells (Tordotcom) 1420 ballots cast for 576 nominees. Finalists range 91-172.
Best Novella “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet”, He Xi / 人生不相见, 何夕, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers) Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom) The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older (Tordotcom) Rose/House by Arkady Martine (Subterranean) “Seeds of Mercury”, Wang Jinkang / 水星播种, 王晋康, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers) Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (Tor, Titan UK) 962 ballots cast for 187 nominees. Finalists range 106-186.
Best Novelette I AM AI by Ai Jiang (Shortwave) “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition”, Gu Shi /〈2181序曲〉再版导言, 顾适 translated by Emily Jin (Clarkesworld, February 2023) “Ivy, Angelica, Bay” by C. L. Polk (Tor.com 8 December 2023) “On the Fox Roads” by Nghi Vo (Tor.com 31 October 2023) “One Man’s Treasure” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2023) “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2023) 755 ballots cast for 212 nominees. Finalists range 40-117.
Best Short Story “Answerless Journey”, Han Song / 没有答案的航程, 韩松, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers) “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023) “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark (Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2023) “The Mausoleum’s Children” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny Magazine, May-June 2023) “The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare Magazine, October 2023) 美食三品 (“ s”), 宝树 / Baoshu (银河边缘013：黑域密室 / Galaxy’s Edge Vol. 13: Secret Room in the Black Domain) 720 ballots cast for 612 nominees. Finalists range 27-69.
Although Sheri S. Tepper became best known for her eco-feminist SF writing, her first published trilogy, The True Game, can be read as a more traditional fantasy with SF elements. Two subsequent trilogies continue exploring this world. Over the nine novels set on this world, many of her future themes can be found which lift it out of the traditional fantasy genre into something more interesting. Consisting of the Peter Trilogy (collected as The True Game in 1985), the Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped, and the Jinian Trilogy, the nine novels explore themes of ecology, feminism and colonialism.
Zoom Details: Critical Mass July Time: Jun 26, 2024 6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne/Sydney, 5pm Perth
In person: in June and July, we are meeting at the Community Room at Christie Walk, 101 Sturt Street, as Kappy’s will not be open in the evenings. Turn up at Christie Walk at 6:15 for a 6:30pm start on Wednesday, June 26th.
We are delighted to announce that Dr Janeen Webb, author, critic, critic, editor, World Fantasy Award winner, is our speaker at June’s Nova Mob meeting on Wednesday 5 June!
Janeen’s recent published works have explored alternate histories to great effect, receiving recognition in overseas markets that her home Australian market would do well to meet. Comment from critics are that her novels and stories are strong additions to the subgenre of alternate history (counterfactuals), a realm of the science fiction landscape where it’s hard to tell stories well but when you do get it right, you wield large enduring narrative power which stays with the reader and achieves that conceptual breakthrough and reframing of perception which is at the heart of successful science fiction.
Excellent memorable powerful stories.
What makes for excellence in alternate history? What makes special this particular realm of sf? You are invited to a fireside chat on these and similar questions.
If you’ve not encountered Janeen’s fiction over the past decade, now is your opportunity.
You may know Janeen Webb’s work from many perspectives. Perhaps the award-winning anthologies of Australian SF she co-edited, Dreaming Down Under and Dreaming Again, or the republication of Kenneth MacKay’s 1895 Yellow Peril novel The Yellow Wave (co-edited with Andrew Enstice). Or as a critic, including as a member of the ASFR (Australian Science Fiction Review) collective. Perhaps as an academic, “I spent way too many years as a professor, and I’ve recently been lecturing on counterfactuals for a post-grad College in Canberra”. Or as author of the nonfiction work of note Aliens & Savages: Fiction, Politics, and Prejudice in Australia (1998, 2023) with Andrew Enstice. Maybe by way of her short stories. Or maybe as author of the young adult fantasy Sinbad Chronicles series, of Sailing to Atlantis (2001) and The Silken Road to Samarkand (2003). Or novelist of the fantasy satires The Gold-Jade Dragon and The Dragon’s Child, or the alternate history author of The City of the Sun series (also co-authored with Andrew Enstice).
It is these latter works to which Janeen will be talking in particular. In the best tradition of fannish discourse however it’s likely all these various aspects will be touched on.
“The date is 1854. The place is the Australian goldfields in the British colony of Victoria—the richest prize on earth. The story begins with a stockade. The flag of independence is unfurled. Men driven beyond endurance take arms against British redcoats. At their forefront are two hundred Colt-wielding Americans, the California Rangers, led by the charismatic and idealistic Captain James McGill. The stockade falls. The Rangers are scattered.
But from the ashes will rise a new revolution—a revolution powered by the sun. And this one will not fail. In the 19th century, just how close did we come to a world run on solar power? The Five Star Republic is history with a twist, the story of a world that might easily have been—the future you’ll wish we’d had. For more information visit the publisher’s page.” Link to video of the book launch
Introduction by Andrew Enstice & Janeen Webb “He was a mate of Banjo Paterson, and hailed as a possible poetic successor to Henry Kendall. He was a champion jockey, a prospector, a station owner. He sat for thirty-five years in the New South Wales parliament. He was a friend of Churchill, of Cecil Rhodes, and a champion of the rights of the ordinary soldier. He founded the Australian Light Horse, and led them into battle in South Africa. And yet you’ve probably never heard of Kenneth Mackay. But the themes of The Yellow Wave: A Romance of the Asiatic Invasion of Australia resonate as much today as they did a century and a quarter ago: nationalism, racism, and fear of a resurgent China.”
“Janeen Webb holds a PhD in literature from the University of Newcastle. A lecturer in literature at Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Janeen is also co-editor, with Jack Dann, of the anthology Dreaming Down-Under, which won the 1999 international World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, as well as the 1999 Ditmar (Australian Science Fiction Award). She has won both the Aurealis and the Ditmar awards for her short stories. She splits her time between Melbourne and her country retreat in Foster in South Gippsland.” https://www.harpercollins.com.au/cr-107969/janeen-webb/
Malka Older’s SF mystery novella The Mimicking of Known Successes (2023) is a current Nebula Award nominee and started a new series, The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, with second book The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (2024) published earlier this year and a third volume forthcoming.She hosts the Science Fiction Sparkle Salon video conversation series with Arkady Martine, Annalee Newitz, Amal El-Mohtar, Karen Lord, and Katie Mack.
“I honestly didn’t realize until halfway into The Mimicking of Known Successes that it’s actually a postapocalyptic story. There’s a lot that’s melancholy in it, and this terrible yearning for an Earth that these characters have never known, and for nature, and all these things they know they’re missing because they still have all this literature and art from Earth. But at the same time, they got a pretty sweet setup – it’s not that bad where they’re living, and they have a lot of good things going on. They have really rich lives: friends and concerts and academic research in a comfortable setting. They’ve got little cities that are interesting, and that people can go to see for fun. It’s kind of that contradiction of something that I really wanted to make really cozy and sweet, but it’s got this doom, too; this melancholy base note under it. Fortunately, by the time I figured that out, I was already very in the story and I was comfortable with things. I didn’t get too depressed in early 2021 trying to finish writing this. It was really a comforting thing for me to write, and I hope it becomes that for people reading it, too.
“I did consciously base it on Sherlock Holmes, to an extent, but more, really, on Sherlock Holmes reboots, because those are like catnip for me. I see Sherlock retellings and I’m like, ‘Yes, smash that button.’ I was really analyzing why that is, beyond the standard murder-mystery thing that I already mentioned. In addition to imprinting a little bit, young, on the Laurie King & Mary Russell Sherlock Holmes series – the first three books especially are really great – it also has a lot to do with the dynamic of a duo that’s working together, who have brains that work in very different ways. And yet, they come to a way of working together that makes sense for both of them.
Christine Pyman looks at the New Doctor Who with a critical eye. She is a long-time fan of Dr Who, and as an admin of a couple of Doctor Who groups, and a member of many more, has seen some of the best and worst of the Who world’s reactions to a new Doctor.
You might want to have a look at some of the behind the scenes snippets on youtube:
The second episode, The Devil’s Chord, features The Maestro, Abbey road, the Beatles and more…
Please join us for a discussion about the new Doctor Who, at 6:30, Thursday May 30th. We’re meeting a bit later in the month, so you’ll have the chance to watch the first four episodes of the new Doctor Who, screening on BBC on Sunday the 12th (2 episodes), 19th and 26th. [Doctor Who‘s next season will officially air on Disney Plus from Friday, May 10 at 10 AM AEDT in Australia. ]
In person at Kappy’s Tea & Coffee, 1/22 Compton St, Adelaide — 6:15 for a 6:30 start, or zoom in at 6:30
The Adelaide Fan Review 
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