The wheel turns, the turtle flies through space, and once more time brings our feet marching dutifully back to the foot of Mount Awards Seas...

In a 1978 review of Lem's work in The Nation, Kurt Vonnegut dug deep into the source of Lem's humour: "He wants us to feel no pity for Homo sapiens, and so excludes appealing women and children from his tales. The adult males he shows us are variously bald, arthritic, sharp-kneed, squinting, jowly, rotten toothed and so on, and surely ludicrous—save for his space crewmen, who are as expendable as pawns in a chess game. We do not get to know anybody well enough to like him. If he dies, he dies."

Hugo and Ignyte Award Winner

Intergalactic Mixtape is a weekly collection of science fiction, fantasy, science/tech, and (sometimes) horror related essays, articles, reviews, videos, and news from around fandom, posted weekly on ...

The magazine of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror field with news, reviews, and author interviews

Archita Mittra is a writer and artist with a love for all things vintage, whimsical, and darkly fantastical. She occasionally reads tarot cards, has more hobbies than she can count, and loves blueberr...

Hugo and Ignyte Award Winner

Alternative Nebula & Hugo shortlists: or the problem of the tordotcom award for novellas published by Tor

Appalachian in the big city. Coffee pro, SF reviewer & scholar.

The magazine of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror field with news, reviews, and author interviews

After a string of increasingly stronger and inventive episodes, this one is more conventional. This is closer to what the show would be if the stress were more on Star Trek and less on it being an academy. What it made me think of was not a specific X-Men plot but that recurring kind of X-Men spin-off (New Mutant, Generation X1 etc.) where less experienced superheroes have to do their stuff. We also get both sex and violence, and so the rating was a bit higher here. Unlike recent episodes, there wasn't a singular focus character, but Tarima Sadal ends up playing a substantial role in the plot.

This year's Hugo Awards nominations are now open.  If you are eligible to nominate for this year's Hugo Award (being presented at LACon V this year, for

Welcome to Susan's Salon. This post has an open comment thread for people to discuss any topic they would like. Happy, sad, weird or just catching up with events. Yes, you can promote things in the comments if you want. The only rules are: nothing hateful and no cranky disputes/arguments. Susan's Salon is posted early Monday morning Sydney time, which is usually still Sunday in most places in the world. I'm sure I say "feb-u-rary" and not whatever "february" is supposed to sound like.

Things have been happening in Canberra. The Liberal (i.e. Conservative) Party dumped their leader, Susan Ley, for the more right-wing Angus Taylor. The new guy is unpleasant, but the Liberal Party has been doing poorly in the polls, despite the Labor1 government not being very popular. Ley was elected Liberal Party leader after the disastrous results in the last general election, when they were led by the potato-headed avatar of the concept of "cop from Queensland" Peter Dutton. This was a smart move because the electoral wisdom suggests the only route for the Liberal Party to get into government is by reclaiming affluent constituencies in the big cities.