2026 Nerds of a Feather Awards Recommended Reading, Part 4: Institutional Categories

Welcome to the final part of the Nerds of a Feather 2026 Award Recommendation List!

Today will look at the Institutional Categories of Semiprozine, Fanzine and Fancast and Best Related Work. It also contains a redux of last year's special Hugo for Best Poem, which has been added again by LA.

As before, we here at nerds are presenting a collective longlist of potential Hugo nominees that we think are worthy of your consideration. These selections represent the spectrum of tastes, tendencies, and predilections found among our group of writers. Today's section contains Best Fanzine, a category unsurprisingly near and dear to our own hearts.

As ever, this list should not at all be considered comprehensive, even in the remaining categories. Some outstanding works and institutions will not make our longlist for the simple reason that we have not managed to keep abreast of all the amazing things within the SFF space. We encourage you to think of this as a list of candidates to consider alongside people with which you are already familiar, nothing more and nothing less.

We hope these posts have been useful to you in curating your potential award nominees, and we're excited to see where this year's awards seasons take us.

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Nerds of a Feather 2025 Recommendation List Series:

Part 1: Fiction Categories (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Series, Lodestar Award)

Part 2: Visual Work Categories (Graphic Story, Dramatic Presentation)

Part 3: Individual Categories (Editor, Fan Writer, Professional Artist, Fan Artist, Astounding Award for Best New Writer)

Part 4: Institutional Categories (Semiprozine, Fanzine, Fancast, Related Work, Special Hugo for Poetry)

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Semiprozine

The Deadlands
FIYAH
GigaNotoSaurus
Heartlines
Interzone
khōréō
Lightspeed
Omenana
Radon Journal
Shoreline of Infinity
Small Wonders
Strange Horizons
Sunday Morning Transport

Fanzine

The Ancillary Review of Books
Fantasy Cafe
Intergalactic Mixtape
Runalong the Shelves
SFF Book Reviews
Speculative Fiction in Translation
Transfer Orbit

Fancast

The 250
Critical Friends
Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones
Hugo, Girl!
A Meal of Thorns
Mostly Nitpicking
Narrated Podcast
Octothorpe
Skiffy and Fanty
Starship Alexandria
Stitch and Bitch
Strange Horizons at 25

Best Related Work

Baron, David, The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America, [Liveright]
Eklund, Lynette, Weird: A Monster-Maker's Journey From Small Town to Hollywood With OCD, [Histria A&E]
Ferreira, Becky, First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, [Workman Publishing Company]
Gillan, Zachary, Reading Weird Fiction in the Age of Fascism
Hamilton, Jenny, With the Serial Numbers Filed Off: The Problem with Trad Pub Fanfic
Hartland, Dan, Snap! Criticism
The Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom
Kincaid, Paul, Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science Fiction, [Briardene Books]
Kotsko, Adam, Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era, [University of Minnesota Press]
Lukin, Gregory, When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident
Roberts, Abby, What Lies and Threats: History and Nationalist Myth-Making in The Lord of the Rings
Roberts, Adam, Fantasy: a Short History, [Bloomsbury Academic]
Sanchez-Taylor, Joy, Dispelling Fantasies: Authors of Color Reimagine a Genre, [Ohio State Press]
Scharf, Caleb, The Giant Leap: Why Space Is the Next Frontier in the Evolution of Life, [Basic Books]
Speculative Insight
Templeton, Molly, Mark as Read
Whiteson, Daniel, and Warner, Andy, Do Aliens Speak Physics?: And Other Questions about Science and the Nature of Reality, [W. W. Norton & Company]
Yu, Yi Izzy and Branscum, John Yu, Stars That Pause: 2,000 Years of Asian UFO Encounters & Lore, [Empress Wu Books]

Best Poem

Behan, Thomas, "Important Enough to Bomb", (Radon Journal Issue 10)
Geater, Charlotte, "elf diaries", (Ragged Band of Travellers: Writing from the Threshold of Dungeons & Dragons edited by Jon Stone) 
Oluremi, Daniel, "Tonight, Even the Moon Has Travelled Home", (Heartlines Issue 7, Spring 2025)
Whitcher, Ursula, "Beyond the Standard Model", (Analog) Whitcher, Ursula, "Fine Print", (Asimov's, September/October 2025) Zhang, J. Y., "From Dust", (Small Wonders Issue 30, Dec 2025)

2026 Nerds of a Feather Awards Recommended Reading, Part 3: Individual Categories

Welcome to our continuing presentation of the Nerds of a Feather 2026 Award Recommendation List!

Today will look at the Individual Categories of Editor, Fan Writer, Artists and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

As before, we here at nerds are presenting a collective longlist of potential Hugo nominees that we think are worthy of your consideration. These selections represent the spectrum of tastes, tendencies, and predilections found among our group of writers. Today's section is one of the areas where there are some categories missing, not because nothing good existed in them, but because the flock don't have a big enough focus on them to provide recommendations. That said, it's also the one with the category closest to our hearts, as all of our contributors are eligible for best fan writer for their work on the blog in 2025. Look out for a future post talking about the work they're proud of and eligible for.

As ever, this list should not at all be considered comprehensive, even in the remaining categories. Some outstanding people will not make our longlist for the simple reason that we have not managed to keep abreast of all the amazing folks doing work within the SFF space. We encourage you to think of this as a list of candidates to consider alongside people with which you are already familiar, nothing more and nothing less.

--

Nerds of a Feather 2025 Recommendation List Series:

Part 1: Fiction Categories (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Series, Lodestar Award)

Part 2: Visual Work Categories (Graphic Story, Dramatic Presentation)

Part 3: Individual Categories (Editor, Fan Writer, Professional Artist, Fan Artist, Astounding Award for Best New Writer)

Part 4: Institutional Categories (Related Work, Semiprozine, Fanzine, Fancast)

--

Editor Long Form

As well as the names listed below, we encourage you to look at the editors for your Best Novel selections on your final ballot, and consider them for Editor, Long Form. And of course, do look at part one for some potential suggestions for Best Novel.

Amy Borsuk
Jaymee Goh
David Thomas Moore
Somto Ihezue
Olivia Kidula

Fan Writer

Tristan Beiter
Liz Bourke
Alex Brown
Jake Casella Brookins
Forestofglory
Jenny Hamilton
Nathaniel Harrington
Niall Harrison
Dan Hartland
Patricia Matson
Archita Mittra
Wm Henry Morris
Abigail Nussbaum
Jacqueline Nyathi
Renay
Alasdair Stuart
Molly Templeton

Fan Artist

Chloé Stawski
Harkalé Linaï
Jaki
jenny.___666
Laya Rose
Lydia Croft
Punkey Doodles
ritzeldraws
spacegoose
yuumei-art

Astounding Award for Best New Writer (first pro-publication 2024-2025)

M. H. Ayinde
Sharang Biswas
Antonia Hodgson
Finn Longman
Caskey Russell
Emily Yu-Xian Qin

2026 Nerds of a Feather Awards Recommended Reading, Part 2: Visual Work Categories

Welcome to our continuing presentation of the Nerds of a Feather 2026 Award Recommendation List. Today will look at Graphic Story, Dramatic Presentation long and short form, and Best Interactive.

As before, we here at nerds are presenting a collective longlist of potential Hugo nominees that we think are worthy of your consideration. These selections represent the spectrum of tastes, tendencies, and predilections found among our group of writers.

And so, this list should not at all be considered comprehensive, even in the remaining categories. Some outstanding works will not make our longlist for the simple reason that we have not seen, read, or played it. We encourage you to think of this as a list of candidates to consider alongside works with which you are already familiar, nothing more and nothing less.

--

Nerds of a Feather 2025 Recommendation List Series:

Part 1: Fiction Categories (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Series, Lodestar Award)

Part 2: Visual Work Categories (Graphic Story, Dramatic Presentation)

Part 3: Individual Categories (Editor, Fan Writer, Professional Artist, Fan Artist, Astounding Award for Best New Writer)

Part 4: Institutional Categories (Related Work, Semiprozine, Fanzine, Fancast)

--

Graphic Story

Avengers Academy: Assemble by Anthony Oliveira (Author); Carola Borelli, Bailie Rosenlund, Alba Glez, Pablo Collar, Karen S. Darboe and Ig Guara (Artists); Elisabetta D'Amico (Inker); Ariana Maher (Letterer); Carlos Lopez, K.J. Diaz and Ian Herring (Colorists); and Sarah Brunstad and Lindsey Cohick (editors) [Marvel]

The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers by Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes [Image Comics]

Absolute Wonder Woman Volume 1: The Last Amazon by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman, Mattia De Iulis, Jordie Bellaire [DC Comics]

Drome by Jesse Lonergan, [23rd St.]

Dramatic Presentation Long Form

Arco
The Day the Earth Blew Up
Department Q (series)
Frankenstein
Kowloon Generic Romance (series)
K-Pop Demon Hunters
Mickey 17
Murderbot: Season 1 (series)
Zootopia 2

Dramatic Presentation Short Form

Alien: Earth, Episode 4 ("Observation")
Alien: Earth, Episode 6 ("The Fly")
Apocalypse Hotel, Episode 11 ("Wag Your Tail, But Never Wag a Shift")
Creature Commandos, Episode 6 ("Priyatel Skelet")
Creature Commandos, Episode 7 ("A Very Funny Monster")
Doctor Who, Series 15, Episode 2 ("Lux"),
Doctor Who, Series 15, Episode 5 ("The Story & the Engine")
Kowloon Generic Romance, Episode 10
The Mighty Nein, Episode 5 ("Little Spark")
Murderbot, Episode 6 ("Command Feed")
Murderbot, Episode 10 ("The Perimeter")
Pluribus, Episode 1 ("We Is Us")

Pluribus, Episode 4 ("Please, Carol")
Severance, Season 2, Episode 4 ("Woe's Hollow")
Severance, Season 2, Episode 10 ("Cold Harbor")
Silo, Series 2, Episode 8 ("The Book of Quinn")
Silo, Series 2, Episode 9 ("The Safeguard")
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 3 Episode 7 "What Is Starfleet?"
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 3 Episode 8 "Four and a Half Vulcans"
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 3 Episode 9 "Terrarium" 

Game or Interactive Experience

Avowed [Obsidian Entertainment]
Battle Suit Aces [Trinket Studios]~
Blue Prince [Dogubomb]
Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector [Jump Over The Age]
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 [Sandfall Interactive]
Death Stranding 2 [Kojima Productions]
Eternal Strands [Yellow Brick Games]
Hades 2 [Supergiant Games]
Hollow Knight: Silksong [Team Cherry]
Hundred Line: Last Defence Academy [Too Kyo Games, Media.Vision Inc.]
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game [Bryan Bornmueller]
Trails in the Sky: First Chapter [Nihon Falcom]

Book Review: All That Is in the Earth, by Andrew Knighton

 Sometimes you really shouldn't cross that line

Cover: Jay Johnstone

 

All That Is in the Earth is the new novella from Andrew Knighton, a british author who has many, many books under other people’s names and is still finding his niche in terms of publishing under his own name. 

 

This novella is published by Luna Press. Luna is one of the mainstays of British indie publishing, alongside Wizard’s Tower Press, NewCon Press and Blackshuck Books. This is Luna’s 24^th (that’s right) novella. Both they and NewCon have published long standing series of novellas of which each entry is worth your time. They don’t get as much recognition as some of their US counterparts but the quality and consistency is worth your investigation.

 

Knighton’s novella is largely set on the planet of Abaddon, a quarantined colony where some catastrophe struck and no one survived. At least that’s what Clifford believes before he ends up there when the station he’s on is attacked and destroyed. 

 

Abaddon’s fate has not simply attracted a deadly quarantine but also every corporate and war mongering interest in Knighton’s world and each of them are looking to find a way to profit from what happened even if no one is quite sure what happened or why. 

 

Clifford is a scientist, specifically a biologist. He is not a gun slinging soldier or a genius or a hero but a quietly competent scientist who doesn’t really understand the politics of his own people’s interest in the planet let alone those of other polities. 

 

This leads to a set of intriguing encounters as Clifford discovers each and every one of his assumptions about Abaddon is wrong. 

 

It has been said that with a novella you get to ask maybe one, sometimes two, questions – the short form nature of the structure meaning that there’s little time for more, at least if you want to present these central ideas well. Knighton is, I think, most interested in asking two questions – the first being what it means to survive disaster and the second being about what it takes to turn strangers into community. 

 

Clifford is a man without resources or relevant skills when he arrives on Abaddon. He immediately ends up with people who have both and his biggest challenge is understanding them and determining how he gives back. 

 

What particularly struck me is that Knighton shows us a handful of different ways of organising societies and communities and the pros and cons are touched on lightly and shown through the values of each of the different people from those backgrounds as Clifford comes across them. Yet within that Knighton makes the case that people remain people; that there’s some kind of goodness in us that, if given the chance, transcends the social values we’re fed from birth. 

 

I’m not sure I agree with that – I think the programming we receive from birth is largely invisible to us and comes in flavours that are as fundamental as what kind of textures and noises and smells we think are acceptable and which provoke basic revulsion but nevertheless his choice in presenting the world this way allows him to pick at the question of what it takes to step past the barriers we each erect to keep those not like us out. 

 

Knighton is clear that those barriers are sometimes raised for the sake of safety but only as much as those barriers are also raised arbitrarily based on originating conditions we can no longer identify or because to have different ones would threaten the interests at the centre of our societies. 

 

Given Abaddon is a place where you’re absolutely going to die, the stakes are such that they can puncture those barriers and allow people to cross between each other’s ways of life in the name of survival. It’s deftly done – there is no growth of a happy family or community around Clifford and those he meets. 

 

People don’t live long on Abaddon through no fault of their own and where that does help them breach their preconceptions about one another, no one survives long enough to grow something more than that. As a metaphor for how external pressure can provoke unexpected cooperation but also stymie it as well, Abaddon works really well.

 

Clifford’s role in much of this is as observer and babe in arms learning his first steps while hoping not to fall down a hole and die. It largely works. Clifford’s own journey is a little undercooked – perhaps my own preference here and even a measure of the success of the story because I wanted more than what I got. Specifically Clifford’s actual skill as a biologist is taken halfway towards a conclusion but then we finish our time with him. It’s frustrating but I concede that this thread of the story isn’t really the point of Clifford’s stay on Abaddon.

 

All That is in the Earth is about having one’s eyes opened to others, to the worlds they inhabit and about the questions vis a vis ourselves that arise when we realise that other people are as real and fragile as us.

--

 

Highlights:

• Lots of different types of community on stage
• Alien fauna and flora
• a thoughtful questioning of what makes for strangers and friendship

Nerd coefficient: 7/10, a gentle but carefully structured novella about what it takes to cross over our boundaries.

References: Knighton, Andrew, All That is in the Earth. [Luna Press, 2026].

STEWART HOTSTON is an author of all kinds of science fiction and fantasy. He's a sometime physicist and currently a banker in the City of London. A Subjective Chaos and BFA finalist he's also Chair of the British Science Fiction Association and Treasurer for the British Fantasy Society. He is on bluesky at: @stewarthotston.com.

2026 Nerds of a Feather Awards Recommended Reading, Part 1: Fiction Categories

The wheel turns, the turtle flies through space, and once more time brings our feet marching dutifully back to the foot of Mount Awards Season. Welcome to another round of Nerds of a Feather Recommended Reading.

As is traditional, we have pulled together the combined suggestions of our roster of contributors and editors to bring you a four part list of all our absolute favourites from 2025, ready for some last minute reading, watching, perusing and pondering before you have to submit your Hugo Awards nomination ballots. We make no guarantees for completeness - we are, after all, only mortal nerdly birds with a limited capacity to drink in the inexorable river of genre works* - and fully admit that this list is highly subjective. There will be fabulous works we missed. If such is one of yours, take this as your call to shout about it, wherever you yourself talk about genre.

On which point, while we do our best to cover as much ground as possible, there are some categories and formats where we just hadn't read widely or deeply enough, and so have nothing to suggest. This says nothing about the strength of what was produced in 2025, but is merely a reflection of the interests of our writers. As ever, this list is merely a starting point and inspiration, not an attempt at the comprehensive. Caveats aside, though, we hope you enjoy and are inspired to nominate from and discuss these lists.

Today brings Part One, all about the prose fiction categories.

*but a near limitless capacity for torturous mixed metaphors

--

Nerds of a Feather 2025 Recommendation List Series:

Part 1: Prose Fiction Categories (Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Series, Lodestar Award)

Part 2: Visual Work Categories (Graphic Story, Dramatic Presentation)

Part 3: Individual Categories (Editor, Fan Writer, Professional Artist, Fan Artist, Astounding Award for Best New Writer)

Part 4: Institutional Categories (Related Work, Semiprozine, Fanzine, Fancast) and New Hugo Award for Best Poem

--

Novel

Afifi, Nadia, A Rebel's History of Mars, [Flame Tree Press]
Allan, Nina, A Granite Silence, [riverrun]
Bassoff, Jon, The Memory Ward by Jon Bassoff, [Blackstone Publishing Inc.]
Bhatia, Gautam, The Sentence, [Westland IF]
Birch, Jenny, Woven from Clay, [Wednesday Books]
Brown, Gareth, The Society of Unknowable Objects, [Bantam]
Burnham, Sophie, Bloodtide, [DAW]
Catrileo, Daniela, Chilco, [FSG Originals] (tr. Jacob Edelstein)
de la Chevotière, Robert, Tall is Her Body, [Erewhon]
Chung, Bora, Red Sword, [Honford Star] (tr. Anton Hur)
Elliott, Kate, The Witch Roads, [Tor Books]
Elliott, Kate, The Nameless Land, [Tor Books]
Ennes, Hiron, The Works of Vermin, [Tor Books]
Fayne, Rickey, The Devil Three Times, [Little, Brown and Company]

Fellman, Isaac, Notes from a Regicide, [Tor Books]
Foster, Alex, Circular Motion, [Grove Press]
Geon, Caspar, The Immeasurable Heaven, [Solaris]
Harrow, Alix E, The Everlasting, [Tor Books]
Haynes, Justin, Ibis, [Harry N. Abrams]
Hodgson, Antonia, The Raven Scholar, [Hodderscape]
Ibrahim, Salma, Salutation Road, [Mantle]
Ingold, Jon, Heaven's Vault: The Flood, [Inklestudios]
Ishizawa, Mai, The Place of Shells, [Sceptre] (tr. Polly Barton)
Jackson Bennett, Robert, A Drop of Corruption, [Del Rey]
Johal, Gurnaik, Saraswati, [Serpent's Tail]
King, Raymond, Alien Nation, [Visceral Books]
McEwan, Ian, What We Can Know, [Knopf]
McKenna, Jude, The Eye of Atlas, [Liminal Horizon Press]

Meijer, Eva, Sea Now, [Two Lines Press] (tr. Anne Thompson Melo)
Menger-Anderson, Kirsten, The Expert of Subtle Revisions, [Crown]
North, Claire, Slow Gods, [Orbit]
Onyebuchi, Tochi, Harmattan Season, [Tor Books]
Park, Silvia, Luminous, [Simon & Schuster]
Rameera, Alysha, Her Soul for a Crown, [Sourcebooks Casablanca]
Reyes, Ruben Jr., Archive of Unknown Universes, [Mariner Books]
Russell, Caskey, The Door on the Sea, [Solaris]
Swan, Richard, Grave Empire, [Orbit]
Swift, E. J., When There Are Wolves Again, [Arcadia]
Tesh, Emily, The Incandescent, [Tor Books]
Theodoridou, Natalia, Sour Cherry, [Tin House]
Thien, Madeleine, The Book of Records, [Granta Books]
Wells, Martha, Queen Demon, [Tor Books]
Wilde, Fran, A Philosophy of Thieves, [Erewhon Books]
Wilson, Lorraine, The Salt Oracle, [Solaris]
Yu, An, Sunbirth, [Grove Press]

Novella

Beker, Syr Hayati, What A Fish Looks Like, [Stelliform Press]

Biswas, Sharang, The Iron Below Remembers, [Neon Hemlock]

Cahill, Martin, Audition for the Fox, [Tachyon Publications]

Donnelly, Lara Elena, No Such Thing As Duty, [Neon Hemlock]

García Freire, Natalia, A Carnival of Atrocities, [World Editions]

Huff, Drew, My Name Isn't Paul, [Independently Published]

Knighton, Andrew, Walking a Wounded Land, [Wizard's Tower Press]

Kurella, Jordan, The Death of Mountains, [Lethe Press]

Larraquy, Roque, The National Telepathy, [Charco Press] (tr. Frank Wynne)

Lowachee, Karin, The Desert Talon, [Solaris]

Lowachee, Karin, A Covenant of Ice, [Solaris]

Majolagbe, Kehinde, The Ballad of Nod, [Independently Published]

Martinez, Felicia, The Other Lives of Altagracia Sanchez, [Querencia Press]

Mohamed, Premee, The First Thousand Trees, [ECW Press]

Papadopoulou, Ioanna, The Castaway and the Witch, [Ghost Orchid Press]

Parker, K. J., Making History, [Tordotcom]

Parker, June Orchid, Suplex and Sorcery, [Brackenbury Books]

Qassemzadeh, Mohammad, Family Secret Memories, [Asemana Books] (tr. Mahshad Abdoli)

Tchaikovsky, Adrian, Lives of Bitter Rain, [Head of Zeus]

Tomkins, Deborah, Aerth, [Weatherglass Books]

Utomi, Moses Ose, The Memory of the Ogisi, [Tordotcom]

Short Story

Chandrasekera, Vajra, "Death and Liquidity Under the New Moon", (Sunday Morning Transport, 06 July 2025)

Drnovšek Zorko, Filip Hajdar, "The Place I Came To", (Lightspeed, Issue 184)

McMahon, Will, "The Exquisite Pull of Relentless Desire", (Lightspeed, Issue 176)

North, Emet, "Resurrections", (Strange Horizons, 21 July 2025)

Quinn, Timothy, "The Warfighter", (Small Wonders, Issue 23)

Radovich, Nadia, "Looped", (Heartlines Spec, Issue 9)

Rigathi, Kevin, "If Memory Serves", (Will This Be a Problem edited by Olivia Kidula and Somto Ihezue)

Tryantafyllou, Eugenia, "Some to Cradle, Some to Eat", (Lightspeed, Issue 177)

Valente, Cathrynne M., "When He Calls Your Name", (Uncanny, Issue Sixty-Five)

Wernicke, Bree, "Jack of All Faces", (Small Wonders, Issue 22)

Zhang, J Y, "White Smoke from the West", (Heartlines Spec, Issue 7)

Series (Qualifying Work)

Scalzi, John, "Old Man's War", qualifying work The Shattering Peace, [Tor Books]

Scott, Melissa (and Lisa A. Barnett for the first two books), "Astreaint", qualifying work Point of Hearts, [Queen of Swords Press]

Tchaikovsky, Adrian, "The Tyrant Philosophers", qualifying work Lives of Bitter Rain, [Head of Zeus]

West, Michelle, "Essalieyan", qualifying work The Wild Road, [Rosdan Press]

Lodestar

Hartman, Rachel, Among Ghosts, [Penguin Teen Canada]

Knox, Elizabeth, Kings of This World, [Allen & Unwin]

Film Review: Arco

Look up and make a wish

First we have the far future. People live on platforms above the clouds, where they practice subsistence farming. With the help of multicolored robes adorned with pretty diamonds, they routinely travel to the prehistoric past to recover samples of usable species; there are hints that something caused an ecological catastrophe that made the surface unlivable. The family we follow has a girl and a boy, but the boy, Arco, is still too young to join the time-traveling expeditions. Because it’s a human universal, even after the end of civilization, that kids have an instinct for getting in trouble, the boy steals a suit and attempts a time jump on his own. As can be expected, he gets lost, and thus we have a movie.

Then we have the not too far future. The environment is still in the middle of falling apart; one day can bring a killer hurricane and the next a massive forest fire, and the solution of rich people is to have retractable glass domes built around their houses. That way you can have your dinner in peace while nature rages outside. The family we follow in this era has a preteen girl, a baby boy and a robot nanny. The parents are perpetually busy at work in some other city, and the girl, Iris, is tired of feeling lonely. So fate fulfills her wishes one day, when Arco crash-lands in her neighborhood.

The plot of the French animated film Arco brings to mind E.T., with the strange visitor hiding in a child’s house until they can return to their parents. The main difference in this case is that Iris and Arco can talk to each other. She’s excited about showing him all the cool things of her modern life, but he’s rather guarded about how much of his time she can be allowed to know. This dynamic only gets a brief time to develop before we have adult authorities, mysterious stalkers and natural disasters converging to get in the way of this adorable pair.

A curious contrast to the beauty of this moment in the kids’ lives is the stunted development of the trio of stalkers who jump out of nowhere to find Arco and obtain proof that time travel is real. They’re introduced as antagonists, but soon enough their clumsiness neutralizes any threat they may pose, and they spend the rest of the movie looking goofy and obstructing our heroes’ quest for no good reason. I hear many viewers enjoyed these characters; I found them mostly annoying.

One feature that stands out about the overall tone of Arco is how obviously it’s not an American or Japanese cartoon. It’s far too common for children in American cartoons to be overly expressive of their emotions, whereas children in Japanese cartoons can sometimes speak with such deep introspection that believability is stretched. The two lead children in Arco come off as more relaxed in their inner life, which makes the stakes feel starker later, when it’s time to panic. The naturality with which they let themselves feel their emotions ends up being key to the gradual way these two start falling in love without having a clue of what romance is.

There’s an element of irony in the suggestion that Arco’s description of the post-disaster world will inspire Iris to get to work to mitigate the disaster that in her time is still ongoing. But her success is more visible in the personal sphere. Her family life is strained because she almost never gets to see her parents, who work a lot to afford the storm-proof house where she lives. When one looks at the family Arco comes from, and the magnitude of the effort it takes for his parents to find him, the implication is that Iris changed a society where parents rarely spend time with their kids into a society where parents move heaven and earth to see them. This side of the story is more impactful than any environmentalist lesson that could be read in the plot. Viewers probably already know the dangers that surround us, so Arco can just show the full extent of the climate crisis without turning preachy; the images suffice.

The gorgeous animation and the careful balancing of tension and humor highlight the small tragedy at the core of the story: two children having a wonderful, one-in-a-lifetime experience whose full meaning they can’t yet grasp. They just know something special is happening to them, and they don’t have a name for it, and it will take them decades of growth to appreciate those fleeting days of magic. The part of the movie’s ending that is happy gives both Iris and Arco a blunt reminder of the cruelty of time, a hard truth that not even time travel can fix. That’s the thing about growing up: if it tastes bittersweet, you’re doing it right.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Book Review: Lessons in Magic and Disaster

A Russian nested doll of stories, characters and relationships, and yes, magic

Jamie is a grad student in Massachusetts, working as best she can to teach classes and make her way in the world. She’s also a witch, has been for years, and has gotten more and more interested in the uses of magic. But it is her relationship with her mother, and the story of two women in the 18th century, and a book, and the story within that book, that truly drive and reinforce the narrative.

This is the story of Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders.

On the level of basic plot description, the novel is a relatively straightforward affair about Jamie’s relationship with her mother, and about uncovering what happened to her other mother, Mae. This proceeds as Jamie struggles with her relationship with her mother, with her spouse, Ro, and with the nature and uses of magic. Oh, and there is also drama and issues with her graduate studies and classes in the modern day.

Anyone with a parental relationship as an adult will find a lot here to think on and absorb. There is a real dividing line from when you stop being a child and start being an adult with an adult parent; and what life is like on that other side can be uncomfortable, especially if relations have had a break for a time. This novel explores the implications of that sort of relationship intimately and with feeling.

The narrative is far more than the sum of its parts. It is a rich dive deep down in levels and layers that wind up influencing and talking to each other, and to the reader. The novel works on those interlocking layers. At the very top, this is a story about a mother and a daughter and how they try to reconnect, with the daughter teaching magic to her mother, and the use of that magic having all sorts of spinning consequences. This impacts severely the relationship. And since this is a Charlie Jane Anders book, nearly all of the sympathetic characters are queer.

Jamie’s graduate studies center on the author Sarah Fielding, a real-life author, and sister of the more famous author Henry Fielding. The story of 18th-century women like Sarah is part of this novel. Anders devises a fictional novel of hers called Emily, making the text (and Jamie) focus on that book and speculate on the relationship between Emily and one Charlotte Clarke. Charlotte is a fascinating real-life character who transgressed gender roles in complicated ways, was often known as Charles Brown, and dressed in men’s clothes. In real life we don’t know how much Charlotte and Sarah knew each other. In this novel, bits of a speculated relationship between the two is a “level” of the story underneath the main ones.

The novel is like that: levels upon levels, echoing and reflecting on each other, like a layer cake. From the top:

• Main day story of Jamie, Ro (her partner) and Serena (her mother). Plus magic.
• The story of Serena and her partner Mae (Jamie’s parents). It’s a tragedy in many ways. I was moved to tears at points.
• The story of Sarah Fielding and Charlotte Clarke. Anders takes what we know and, thanks to it being part of Jamie’s thesis, has her speculate on the relationship.
• The fictional novel Emily by Fielding (which we get excerpts and commentary on, since this is Jamie’s thesis).
• Finally, inside Emily there is a layer further down: a fantasy story, the Tale of the Princess and the Strolling Player, that definitely has connections at least up to Fielding and Clarke’s story, and, I think, all the way to Jamie and Ro’s as well.

Although there is no actual time travel involved in this book, what comes to mind when reading it is Tim Powers’s The Anubis Gates, which focuses on the early 19th century, and the work of an imaginary Romantic poet’s work and its importance to the narrative. With all these layers influencing each other, I am also reminded of the Dialogues of Achilles and the Tortoise in Hofstadter’s Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

So the novel is extremely geeky in a literary sense. It’s a fascinating high wire act from Anders. It’s also a very science-fictional geeky book. For all of the focus on an 18th-century author, the novel lives in a modern context and has plenty of references and genre awareness—not to the degree of, say, a Jo Walton novel, but enough for someone new to genre works or movies to find it just very slightly off-putting. That said, this IS the novel to give your queer or queer-friendly friend who has never read science fiction or fantasy before but wants to try it out.

That subject has been in the water in recent months. Here, in Lessons in Magic and Disaster, there are no spell-slinging wizards; the magic is subtle. While people might reach for Kelly Link here, what this novel made me think of (besides earlier works by Anders and the aforementioned Tim Powers), is Megan Lindholm (a.k.a. Robin Hobb)’s Wizard of the Pigeons, where magic is also very subtle and hard to notice.¹ The threat in that novel is mystical, whereas the challenges Jamie and her family and friends face are all too real and present.

The theory of magic, such as it is for Jamie and her family and friends, is one of discovery and of liminal places. There is a numinous, mysterious and only-vaguely-understood nature of magic that is very much against codified rules. Jamie, who has been practicing this magic for some time before the book, has theories about it that don’t always seem to align with the actual results. Serena, to whom she teaches magic, has her own ideas on what it’s good for. When Serena and Jamie find other practitioners, the bounds and sphere of actual theory, craft and knowledge expand further. At no point is there a Sandersonian ruleset defined. Magic is, in the end, mysterious. And it’s not the entire focus of the book, as witness the book’s Kelly-Link-like title.

The voice in the writing of Lessons in Magic and Disaster is contemporary and open. In this year of 2026, Jamie’s voice resonates as someone you might know, or at least be neighbors with. Her concerns and problems, aside from the issues of magic, and of the 18th-century material mentioned before, are of this moment too: the rising intolerance against queer people, and the difficulties of relationships with a spouse and a mother. It’s not a comfortable read, given what Jamie and those around her go through, but Anders makes the experience easy for us to immerse in, and find sympathy in both Jamie and her mother despite their differences. There are no easy answers at the end. That in itself is a form of magic.

There is a point in the novel where Jamie finds a thesis statement (or thinks she has) for her study of Fielding. It’s really an echo for the thesis statement for Anders’ s novel as well, and so, atypically, I am going to quote it verbatim:

So now Jamie is thinking of Emily as a story about nature, change, and chasing your own heart’s desire in spite of everyone else’s expectations. Emily is a book about the games we play along the cliff edge. About nature encroaching in the places that people have left behind to move to towns at the very start of industrial capitalism, and the changes that people can make in those places. It’s about the trade-offs between security and self-determination, and Emily’s struggle to have both.

Lessons in Magic and Disaster is a queer, immersive character study that sometimes uncomfortably (in a good way) speaks to fractured relationships, both familial and otherwise, and the costs of both action and inaction in dealing with challenges. Plus magic.

Highlights:

• Character-focused, immersive story
• Russian-doll narrative, layered story reinforcing and exploring theme
• Possibly a very good fit for a first SFF novel for queer-friendly readers

Reference: Anders, Charlie Jane. Lessons in Magic and Disaster [Tor Books, 2025].

¹ I’ve thrown a number of books and references at you, the reader, in this review, but the book is like that, too. There are both a Historical Note and a strongly felt Afterword where Anders reveals her thought process, ideas, and a reading list. And a music list, because she’s like that.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.