Reading

After some digging

I am not aware of any big name authors who got their start with a work published by Baen Books after 2006. If there are recent analogs of Bujold or Weber, I do not know of them.

So, I asked on Bluesky:

Aside from Larry Correia, are there any big name Baen authors who debuted at Baen, after Jim Baen's death?

(So, Tim Powers wouldn't count because he debuted not at Baen and also long before JB died)

I got three names: Chuck Gannon, Jason Cordova and Mike Kupari. Gannon actually debuted at Baen in 1994 but only two (I think) short pieces, after which there was a long delay until his novels began appearing. I don't know the other two but SF is huge and it's perfectly possible for me to overlook BNAs. Still, granting all three, with LC that makes four... and in 2028, Toni Weisskopf will have been running Baen for as long as Jim Baen did.

This could, of course, be the natural consequence of the Del Monte approach.

[added later]

Merry Christmas for Poilievre!

I got much better at spelling his name once I realized it contains "lie".

Embattled CPC leader's Christmas card list gets one name shorter.

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Looking Back at the Work of John Varley, 1947-2025

Where to start reading — or rereading — Varley's many series and stories.

Looking Back at the Work of John Varley, 1947-2025

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The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson

The visitors might be Bird Island's salvation or simply the next step in its doom.

The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson

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podcasts

podcast friday

Here's a series from a week or two ago that you really should check out: It Could Happen Here's "Darién Gap: One Year Later." It's four parts and I recommend listening to the whole thing, as it's some truly brilliant reporting, but if you are like me, the one that will stand out the most is the second episode, "To Be Called By No Name." It begins with a song written in 1948, Woody Guthrie's "Deportees (Plane Crash At Los Gatos)" that has horrifying resonance now, nearly 80 years later. From that jumping off point, James discusses the media coverage of the manufactured migrant crisis.

The four part series focuses on two migrants in particular, Primrose and her daughter Kim, from Zimbabwe. Primrose's family opposed the regime there and her father was disappeared; she and her daughter fled a deadly situation to try to claim refugee status in the US. The plight of migrants from African countries is even less discussed than those from Latin America or the Middle East; in detailing Primrose's story, James makes her visible, a heroic protagonist facing impossible odds, someone who lodges in your heart and stays there. It's great storytelling as well as great journalism. He refuses the objectivity of the mainstream reporters, who just don't bother to talk to migrants, let alone give voice to their names and stories.

Even posting about this tears me up. I know a lot of you reading this are doing your best to fight ICE but I want to beat every one of those bastards to death with my bare hands and by the end of this series, you will too.

John Varley (1947 - 2025)

Multiple sources report the death of SF author John Varley.

We seem to have read different books

One of (Blish's) best novels, in my view, is The Star Dwellers, first published in 1961 and now nominated for the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction.

vs my

How does a novel this terrible not only get published but remain in print for twenty years (more than sixty in the UK)?

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Summer of Love (Zhu Wong, volume 1) by Lisa Mason

A 2567 blueblood travels back to the Summer of Love to save one very special 16-year-old.

Summer of Love (Zhu Wong, volume 1) by Lisa Mason

Arthur D. Hlavaty (1942 - 2025)

Bernadette Bosky reported Arthur's death on Facebook

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bundle of holding

Bundle of Holding: Magical Kitties

Magical Kitties Save the Day, the all-ages introductory storytelling game from Atlas Games.

Bundle of Holding: Magical Kitties

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To The Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young (Translated by Soje)

Could safety from the global pandemic be found in desperate flight towards a land of banditry and violence?

To The Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young (Translated by Soje)

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books

Reading Wednesday

Just finished: You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson. I never had the privilege of seeing Gibson perform, other than on YouTube, so this is as close as I'm ever going to get. They really were a brilliant poet. Some of the poems lose a bit in print—they tend towards the storytelling and autobiographical, and that reads much less powerfully on the page than in speech—but this is a fairly minor critique. Gibson writes powerfully about queerness, gender, disability, and the climate crisis, and their furious energy is made all the more poignant by their premature death earlier this year.

Currently reading: Censorship & Information Control: From Printing Press to Internet by Ada Palmer. This is an exhibit based on a course that Palmer taught and it just makes me wish I could take the course. I'm screenshotting bits to text to people. Her central argument is that the total state censorship we see depicted in 1984 is the exception rather than the norm; more often censorship is incomplete, self-enforced, or carried out by non-state entities like the church or marketplace. This is obviously important when we talk about issues like free speech, which tends to be very narrowly defined when most of the threats to it have traditionally not come directly from the government (I mean, present-day US excepted, but it took a lot of informal censorship to get to that point).

The bit about fig leafs, complete with illustrations, is particularly good, as is the bit on Pierre Bayle, who hid his radical ideas in the footnotes to his Historical and Critical Dictionary in lengthy footnotes that he knew no one would read.

You can get this for free if you want to read it btw.

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review

A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

A depowered witch discovers she is just one zany scheme away from regaining her power... provided her estranged mentor does not intervene. Which of course he will.

A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

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bundle of holding

Bundle of Holding: Forged 3

The third array of recent standalone tabletop roleplaying games using the Forged in the Dark rules system based on John Harper's Blades in the Dark from One Seven Design Studio.

Bundle of Holding: Forged 3

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Five Freshly Reprinted SFF Books and Series

Did you miss these books the first time around? Good news!

Five Freshly Reprinted SFF Books and Series

Books Received, November 29 — December 5

Six works new to me: four fantasy, one horror, and one SF (also ttrpg). Four are arguably series.

Books Received, November 29 — December 5

Poll #33929 Books Received, November 29 — December 5

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 26

View Respondents

Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Volume I, Number 5 edited by Oliver Brackenbury (December 2025)
3 (11.5%)

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Volume I, Number 6 edited by Oliver Brackenbury (December 2025)
3 (11.5%)

New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine: Volume I, Number 7 edited by Oliver Brackenbury (December 2025)
2 (7.7%)

Black River Ruby by Jean Cottle (January 2026)
7 (26.9%)

The Flowers of Algorab by Nils Karlén, Kosta Kostulas, and Martin Grip (January 2026)
8 (30.8%)

Headlights by C J Leede (June 2026)
4 (15.4%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
21 (80.8%)

Well, this was weird

Another unconscious person on public transit. This guy just seemed to be terribly tired, but when he slumped over, he knocked his stuff on the floor. Several times. I kept putting his stuff back, and mentioned him to the drive on my way out.

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Space Skimmer by David Gerrold

Who killed the empire? More importantly, what does it take to get men to process their emotions?

Space Skimmer by David Gerrold

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you choose such a backward time

There's a store on Queen Street that has a sign out front that says "Ice-cream fixes everything."

Yesterday I walked past a bistro on my way to the gf's place that said "Wine fixes everything".

I am prepared to review their respective arguments, especially if said arguments are made via wine and ice cream.

***

Note that I said "walked" in that story, because I am WALKING again, no cane required. My physiotherapist is fucking magic. I'm still on a bit of a leash so I don't overdo it, but the gf's condo is a 25 minute walk from my house and not only did I walk there, I walked home after and my foot felt fine this morning.

Plans to set the entire world on fire may be temporarily placed on hold as a result.

***

Got my boosters last week. Spent most of my spare time for the next three days sleeping. My immune system calmed down eventually but the first day at work was kinda rough.

***

My dad is doing much better and his wife decided he doesn't need the hospital bed since it's a rental. She was planning to buy him a regular bed, but since I still have the Old Man's old bed frame in my storage locker I offered that one. My sister has a pickup truck, so the two of us hauled it over and set it up.

We're both encouraging her to look into moving to a condo but she's not really receptive to the idea. Thing is, she's also running out of the ability to take care of the place, especially since she's doing it alone and taking care of my dad at the same time. She already hires people to deal with the yard.

***

Still waiting on engineer.

***

( cut for the endless gauntlet of house shit )

***

I have the overwhelming desire to put together a playlist for my family's Xmas dinner. This desire was sparked by hearing Laibach's version of Jesus Christ Superstar on Twitch tonight.

C'mon, it would be hilarious.