Thread of Wonder, the next 5000 posts: science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction 2021 and beyond

Time to launch another lifeboat to the stars. Previously: ThReads Must Roll: the new, improved rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

All aboard the Strato-Cruiser!

DO U SEE, I’m a stranger here myself.

Singing thread title to the tune of the Theme from Underdog

Thread of Wonder
5000 posts

Wonder Thread
Wonder Thread!

Thread of royal beauty bright!

Cool, except PLEASE change "Sci-Fi" to "Science Fiction"; true headz will respect it more.

Seriously, change that shit.

If a mod wants to a mod can, now to read some skiffy some I can make a real contribution to the thread.

some

In thee beginning (not really, butt a big ol goodun, where I came in)
rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

That rolled from 2011 to 2014, I believe.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/P/B08F9XYGVQ.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_SX500_.jpg

Kindle daily deal today. seems odd that it doesn't mention Gagarin by name.

also listed, a Tchaikovsky book, Doors of Eden. anyone? i liked the one about the spiders, i didn't like ironclads.

just finished The Ministry For the Future. almost comically unsubtle and didactic in its politcs. the last hundred pages or so were "scouring of the shire" bad. first half is excellent.

started that -- the first scene is harrowing, but i instantly lost all interest when things shifted to the ministry itself. i suppose no one dramatizes vast bureaucratic processes better than KSR but it's a low bar, and i'm not really up for doom right now

read 'hench', which has a jokey premise -- underemployed young woman seeks placement as a villain's henchman through a temp service -- but turned out to be fierce as well as funny

started jo walton's 'the just city'; it's a little precious but i'm liking it a lot so far

as everyone says about recent KSR, it's actually very optimistic. the first scene though good grief.

Yeah, if the future is remotely like that KSR projects I'd be a hell of a lot more hopeful than I am now.

the last hundred pages or so were "scouring of the shire" bad.

I am struggling with this sentence.

Yeah.

ha! do you mean you're struggling with it syntactically or morally?

Uh, aesthetically? The scouring of the shire is a highlight!

I'm more bothered by the lack of a comma in 5,000 than I am abt sci-fi tbh

Commas are only for numbers of five figures and up as far as I'm concerned

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbNlMtqrYS0
x10

Almost posted that embed 10x ina old-school JW Noizeborad style.

I'm sure I talked about some of this in the previous thread about hanging out with horror people mostly then SFF people and then when you go back to horrorland, most people in SFF land start seeming really uptight and conversations have so many restricted areas and I have to respect what people aren't willing to discuss but I find it occasionally frustrating. And then there's this area of horror which is like the children of Dennis Cooper and it's lovely how relaxed they are and talking about what drugs they're taking all the time.

https://amphetaminesulphate.bigcartel.com/
https://www.clashbooks.com/
https://expatpress.com/shop/
https://www.apocalypse-party.com/books.html
https://www.infinitylandpress.com/books

I generally like SFF fans but I do feel like a lot of them (even a lot of the progressive ones) still want stories that are easy to swallow and are probably afraid to look at their dog's anus.

Only thing is, the blurbs for some of these authors can be completely ridiculous and leave you hanging, not knowing what it's like or about. "Britney Spears singing love songs to you while Baudelaire gives you an enema" or some nonsense like that.

Ha, exactly.

Think I started a thread about that once.

When Author X was Compared to Author Y by Author Z

nothing more riveting than people talking about their drug regimens, very transgressive

I'm a complete teetolaler and I'm not even into drug talk but my point is it's nice to hear writers talking in a more carefree way. It's probably significant that the horror genre largely escaped the culture war and there's less people out to get each other.

Like this crap is still going on in SFF land
https://dorisvsutherland.com/2021/04/06/baens-bar-the-utterly-incompetent-case-for-the-defence/

i haven't the patience to delve into what you consider 'culture war' 'crap' that's 'easy to swallow'

tbh i've seen way too much of my cat's anus, but nor have i considered cramming something up there and calling it art

honestly you are fucking creepy as hell; maybe you should stick to to 'open-minded' horror boards where you can discuss what you want to do to your waifus with no judgment

but nor have i considered cramming something up there and calling it art

Does anyone do this?

Old Lunch was asking maybe two years ago about problems with reactionary horror people but as far as the fiction/poetry side goes it's really minimal compared to SFF, it's been said they're more easy going and get on better together.
The drawback is maybe the low brow attitude, too much easy amusement with juxtaposing high and low culture and the shit eating grins (see lots of horror author photos) and it does annoy me when people feel they have to present dark or gross subject matter in a jokey way, I'm regularly guilty of it too and it's often my first instinct to joke about some of these things. I think people do this because if they keep a straight face about it, they're worried people will think they're crazy.
But I think sometimes humor and punky attitude doesn't let people process things as well, I'd rather the subject matters weren't considered so transgressive or frightening, it makes peoples lives more difficult. So it's nice when people are just more at ease with it all, but the transgression is undeniably part of the appeal of some of these writers.

There's been a lot of good buzz about this one
https://www.apocalypse-party.com/negativespace.html

Going to be weird hearing “George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun, Or: The 2020 Hugo Awards Ceremony (Rageblog Edition)” read out at a ceremony.
https://www.tor.com/2021/04/13/announcing-the-2021-hugo-award-finalists/

https://www.tor.com/2021/04/13/a-brief-guide-to-the-extraordinary-fiction-of-vonda-n-mcintyre/

http://file770.com/discon-iii-declines-to-comment-on-code-of-conduct-issue-about-hugo-finalist/

A little bit heartbreaking how many SFF authors despise each other and the awards nominations intensifying it all.

How many people nominated for a Hugo alongside Isabel Fall this year celebrated the removal of her story or contributed to the harassment campaign against her?

I think I count 3 so far. I really hope she wins.

— Experiencing A Significant Poggers Shortfall (@mechanicalkurt) April 13, 2021

The entire SF/F community came out and said "if you don't write about being trans in the way we think you should, we will attempt to harm you."

This is especially angering because it was an open secret that literally all of Chuck Wendig's writer friends were sex pests.

— Qualia Redux (@QualiaRedux) April 15, 2021

and some nice animals. What's weirder than the giant bunny in the first picture, is the way that guy is holding the pilot's head

One great sub-genre of retro sci-fi art: Confusingly Placed Animals pic.twitter.com/P0rmh9WG7I

— 70s Sci-Fi Art (@70sscifi) April 15, 2021

Jess Nevins - Horror Needs No Passport

This starts with Nevins explaining his frustration that there has been very little survey or study of international horror fiction and that he did this book because nobody else had. It sticks to the 20th century (with occasional background and influential writers from further back), skips USA, UK and a few other english speaking countries but there is still a bunch of english fiction included from other countries. Nevins doesn't say which writers he has actually read himself, he quotes other scholars evaluations quite a lot but I did get the impression he was voicing his own opinions about most of the japanese writers (who are surprisingly well represented in english translation) and these were some of the most enjoyable parts.

It might have been inevitable that many of the writers end up sounding very similar and my eyes often glazed over the descriptions of their approaches (what subgenres, where the horror effects are coming from). But every once in a while there's really tantalizing or unusual sounding stories about Africa, Indonesian martial arts horror, a story about a shepherd, Tarzan starring in Israeli horror adventures, italian extreme horror and amazing sounding gothics from all around the world.

It notes a handful of comic artists, Suehiro Maruo is oddly absent but I was pleased to discover Daijiro Morohoshi who I might have seen a little of but most of what I found on search was new to me.

The political/cultural background for every country is detailed, if horror was frowned upon or even outlawed (often in soviet countries, Germany and Japan censored under post-war occupation, some people writing horror only in exile), whether what each writer was doing was considered high art or trash from the gutter. It seemed like quite a lot of the South American writers were politicians.
A few times Nevins writes about authors not pursuing just "mere fear" and it seemed as if it was his own opinion (?), I don't understand why someone so devoted to horror would feel that being scary for it's own sake wasn't enough, given how that approach can be as intense and memorable as anything else when it's done well.

It is mentioned that Ewers was a Nazi but not Strobl, somehow.

No cover credit for Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

I do wish there was some sort of guide about the availability in english of these books. Perhaps Nevins was concerned it would date the book too much and that people might not bother searching for newer books if they weren't already in an english list? I spent a while checking isfdb and amazon for many of the writers but I didn't have the patience to research every writer that sounded promising. A few were indeed published after this book.
Sad that I probably won't hear about most of these authors again. If a particular writer has sufficiently high status, there's a good chance Penguin or some other classics publisher has them in english, a good deal of this stuff goes unnoticed by most horror fans and I can't blame them too much for not catching them all.

This could and should be an important building block for the future of horror. It's pretty great and I bought Nevins' Horror Fiction In The 20th Century, which can be considered a companion to this.

I can't remember who the writer was but one of the unique ideas I came across in the above book was from a writer in exile from a dictatorship who wrote a novel in which even gods are powerless against the goverment, which just seems like a horribly depressing idea. Quite a few south american stories were mentioned in which all the characters are completely fucked and have nothing but terrifyingly bad choices available.

I didn't know that books aimed at railway travelers was such a big thing in India. Which makes me wonder about "airport novels", do publishers and even writers really spend a lot of time thinking about what people want to read at an airport?

https://locusmag.com/2021/02/paul-di-filippo-reviews-the-society-of-time-by-john-brunner/

I like the idea of Brunner but haven’t really been able to read.

Brunner’s supporting cast, including the Jesuit time-travel expert, Father Ramon

Another one for my 'Catholics in spaaaaaace!' list.

Never read any Brunner meself, sounds intriguing but this (re: Stand on Zanzibar) puts me off: Some examples of slang include "codder" (man), "shiggy" (woman), "whereinole" (where in hell?), "prowlie" (an armoured police car), "offyourass" (possessing an attitude), "bivving" (bisexuality, from "ambivalent") and "mucker" (a person running amok).

Elizabeth Moon's Remnant population: emo sf in the Le Guin mould. Good aliens and bad humans, though the humans aren't all that bad, and the dice are stacked rather heavily in favour of the aliens - not that Le Guin didn't indulge in a bit of dice stacking herself. Enjoyable but somewhat cosy and convenient.

Also for fans of (at least) 5000 posts, this Rollin Speculative looks like the first, b. 2011, and is where I came in: (hey thomp, get back here):
rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

Didn't mean to drop the g, sorry.

Cory Doctorow loves John Varley.

I am reading Patricia McKillip's The Riddle Master of Hed, which I had never heard of until mookie referenced it as one of the greatest fantasy series ever here or in the fantasy maps thread. It took me most of the year to acquire all three books in the old Ballantine/Del Rey mass paperback editions. I would have been utterly enthralled had a I read this at age 12. Heck, I'm loving it now, especially the way McKillip references people, places, events, etc. without exposition or really explanation. Always a great trick when done right.

Winter Rose is another good'un, the only full-length McK. I've read.

Patricia McKillip was one of the discoveries of 2025 for me - I loved the Riddle-Master trilogy, but also adored Winter Rose and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. I haven't ready anything else by her as yet, and I feel like I need to portion them out a bit, because I don't know anything else quite like these books.

I've come across a few disappointing later shorter things in anthologies---seemed like she was moving very quickly, maybe accruing a sense of her own mortality.

https://kpfa.org/area941/episode/the-probabilities-archive-tanith-lee-chelsea-quinn-yarbro-virtuosos-of-horror-fantasy-and-science-fiction/
really nice surprise discovery

Michael Shea - Nifft The Lean

For too long I held the misguided idea that I should read the foundational genre texts before the books built on them. I've had this book for maybe as long as 15 years and it was sitting on a very small shelf of books I was most eager to read, I really should have started reading it the day I bought it (I got the whole series at the right time, before they became collector's items). I first heard about this from Pringle's guide to the 100 best fantasy novels, and it sounded incredible, especially the comparison to Bosch paintings.

It lives up to it's reputation. It's a collection of 4 long stories, the only way in which they rely on each other is that some creatures are described fully in one story and not in another. So it doesn't feel like a mosaic novel, but it's such a balanced collection that it doesn't have any notable dips in quality. A bunch of reviewers like the 4th story a lot less but I admire it a great deal, I found some of the landscape/architecture descriptions confusing but it's amazing watching all this travelling, construction and destruction from such a distance, it's almost like the videogame Civilization but in the span of weeks or months.

Shea's writing is beautiful, a real visual artist who works in prose, the pages bustle with detail and invention. He surpasses most of the weird fiction he's building on, he never has any hackneyed language. My only problem with the book is there aren't enough paragraph breaks, I feel like I've been served my favorite meal but it's slightly exhausting to chew through because the chef hasn't chopped it up enough, I often decided to read something else because I didn't possess the energy to take everything in. I think this might be the reason it didn't stay in print for much longer? It won a World Fantasy Award, it's been highlighted in a few guide books and it is a cult classic but it deserved a much bigger audience. I hope the series is reprinted and if the unreleased 4th book is ready to go, it needs to happen sooner than later. A big publisher marketing it to Dark Souls fans would be a reasonable idea but so would a Penguin Classics edition. And I would buy a Michael Shea t-shirt.

Check out the original DAW cover art (Michael Whelan) and the Italian edition. A lot of the other covers sell it short.
https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/5/50/NFFTTHLN881982.jpg
https://michaelsheaauthor.com/wp-content/gallery/covers/ital_niff.jpg

I got some art books by Ron Walotsky and Tim White. Shocking that there's never been a Paul Lehr book.

Michael Shea - Nifft The Lean

Looks sufficiently up my (damnation) alley that I'm considering the ridiculous used prices I'm seeing.

Michael Shea
Robert Shea
... I always get those two mixed up. Or used to, until I read M Shea's fantastically gloopy short story 'The Autopsy' in David Hartwell's superb anthology The Dark Descent: The Colour of Evil (I think there's a recentish TV version of 'The Autopsy'?)

I have the far less attractive UK paperback of Nifft the Lean:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https%3A%2F%2Fblackwells.co.uk%2Fbookshop%2Fproduct%2FNifft-the-Lean-by-Michael-Shea%2F9780586064993%3Fsrsltid%3DAfmBOormeuCG7bi-LQW8mXTLWm2RyvVfqC1JN0BCQ3OPNS4f-zkiJBWj&ved=0CBYQjRxqFwoTCIC2w-fxgZIDFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI&opi=89978449

Plus a UK paperback of A Quest for Simbilis, one of his Jack Vance/Dyling Earth novel, and Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea (Dark Regions Press, 2017), editor S. T. Joshi.

https://blackwells.co.uk/jacket/l/9780586064993.webp

His wife is getting some stuff back in print (there has been 6 books in the last few years, which is not bad) and I think some writer friends were helping her out but I fear the outright fantasy stuff is having difficulty finding a new home.

https://pulpfest.com/2016/03/03/the-amazing-story-the-sixties-the-goose-flesh-factor/

^About Cele Goldsmith Lalli, her editorship at Amazing Stories and Fantastic and the generation of writers that she championed.

Great read, thanks so much! Amazing was a staple of my childhood, and I've still got some of the Cele issues he mentions, incl the one w "The Days of Perky Pat."

(PKD's comments, backstory: https://philipdick.com/mirror/websites/pkdweb/short_stories/The%20Days%20Of%20Perky%20Pat.htm#:~:text=With%20the%20title%20changed%20slightly%2C,short%20quote%20from%20the%20story.)

Here's something short: https://seattlein2025.org/2024/09/20/fantastic-fiction-the-amazing-and-fantastic-cele-goldsmith/

And something long: https://galacticjourney.org/september-26-1966-all-that-glitters-in-praise-of-cele-goldsmith-lalli/

I finished The Riddle-Master of Hed and absolutely loved it. That ending is a nice twist. I was bemoaning the lack of interest in Morgon's betrothed and then started the second book. Quite a switch-up.

Loving all the love for McKillip. There's really nothing else out there quite like it. To some extent all other books in my life have been an attempt to recapture reading the Riddlemaster trilogy as a kid. I'm incredibly grateful that they hold up (along with LeGuin). It was an era of greats.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is also a real smack upside the head. You think it's going to be a romance and then the romance plot kind of happens and there still so much story left. What a beautiful and deeply true book.

“I am his harpist.”

<3

^^^
She foreshadows that moment a few times and I still didn't see it coming.

lol

https://www.howtopronounce.com/ghisteslwchlohm

read 'slow gods' by claire north; good single-book space opera

certain of its premises are somewhat akin to those in adrian tchaikovsky's 'the final architecture' series . . . but i guess he didn't mind because he hella blurbed it

i seriously understand the desire to make pronouns beyond he/his/her/hers commonplace -- it has to start somewhere.

but it's sooo awkward. there's still a difference between referring to a character as te/ter vs. qe/qim. for now anyway

Been waiting for that one to come down to paperback prices.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/m002ppy0

The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
Wry 'fables for the cybernetic age' from Poland's most original author of science fiction.

5 episodes, 15 minutes each, expiring in a week or so

Got the book but might give them a go anyway. I read his The Invincible this week. Not top tier. Lots of rugged men doing rugged things in rugged terrain. Descriptions of technology from kind of advanced (anti matter cannons) to not very (rockets). Just one big idea along his classic "aliens would be really alien, man" line but it reads like any standard 60s SF.

Being sick this week helped me blaze through the second Riddle-Master book, Heir of Sea and Fire. The second half of that book is amazing, especially Raederle summoning all the dead kings even if it's bit close to the Paths of the Dead section of LOTR. McKillip's writing is just the right balance of readable and wondrous.

tl;dr article by Ian Watson about The Lathe of Heaven, for future reference: https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/watson5art.htm

Think I will read the Kelly Link intro to a recent edition though

Several months after spending a considerable amount on the final book, Hugh Cook's 10 book series is reprinted with introductions by Adrian Tchaikovsky, looks like new cover art scans too. Didn't see this coming at all.
https://zenphospress.com/books/

locus magazine 2025 recommended reading list

This debut science fiction novel by National Book Award–winning author William Alexander is a must-read for fans of Becky Chambers and Ursula K. Le Guin.

(re: Sunward) hmm, one of the best, most deep thinking and considerate authors of all time vs. "pollyanna in space". Ok I only read less than half of one Becky Chambers book, maybe she got better?

Thanks to posts itt I've started on The Riddle Master of Hed. Quite opaque in places, especially regarding the riddles, but I'm enjoying it.

hmm, one of the best, most deep thinking and considerate authors of all time vs. "pollyanna in space".

just learned that neal asher dedicated a book, in 2025, to elon musk.

Five years ago, I watched the two Falcon Heavy side boosters come into land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Base. Honestly, it was like something in a game animation and seemingly too perfect to be believable. Others, I’ve seen landing on drone ships with names taken from Iain M. Banks’ Culture books. Just recently, I saw a huge booster for the Starship come down to be caught between two metal arms—y’know, they caught something the size of a skyscraper like a dropping stick—and that was an astounding feat of engineering. But these are not in isolation, since SpaceX, as of last month, has launched over a hundred rockets in 2024.

Meanwhile, the guy who brought this about, the guy who is aiming to make humanity multi-planetary by putting us on Mars, has a few other projects on the go, like building electric cars, burrowing tunnels under cities, putting up a satellite internet system and, perhaps the most important of them all, preventing the totalitarians of our world from killing free speech.

So thank you, Elon Musk, for bringing to reality, right before my eyes, those things I read and dreamed about as a teenager.

ffs

Of course by UKG I meant UKLG, not to be confused with her contemporary PKD. Was wondering how far along Julie Phillips was with the Le Guin bio and still have no idea, but there at least seems to be an interesting chapter about her in The Baby on the Fire Escape.

xp Just the other day I was wondering hmm should I read some neal asher? Happy to have had that decision made for me.

ledge I very much look forward to your Riddlemaster updates; please do keep us informed.

her contemporary PKD.

Ima Gardener (in orbit) at 2:23 8 Feb 26

ledge I very much look forward to your Riddlemaster updates; please do keep us informed.

Oh dear... well. I enjoyed the first two books! There was a lot of travelling up and down the realm. I mean a lot. And a lot of silly quarreling - "I'm going to do this thing!" "No you're not!" "Yes I am!" "Not!" "Am!" "Not!"; but it's a distinctive mythology with some interesting characters. However by the third book I started to find the endless travelling up and down the realm and the same old quarrels unbearable, and Morgon's story becomes so far beyond anything human or comprehensible. The final revelation/explanation of you know who was very well done, but the very end... I love you but I'm going to live in the sea. OK well I love you but I'm going to live in the wasteland. wtf!

Also I feel Raederle is a bit hard done by in the third book? At the start it sets her up as though she's going to have a pivotal role at the end, but she just doesn't. And she spends most of the book as a crow just following Morgon around.

I did like the bit in the second book where she asks the dead kings to protect Morgon and they pick the wrong guy. That was pretty funny!

i respect this take!

btw, this is Boris Vallejo's artwork for Playboy’s Pro Football Preview, August 1984.

https://i.postimg.cc/bvNHsPND/borisnfl.jpg

xp Yeah, that's why I've come to avoid series, although I'll prob read that one---McKillip's standalone, prev. mentioned Winter Rose is indeed dope---ditto Naomi Novik's---wiki sez:

Naomi Novik is an American author of speculative fiction. She is known for the Temeraire series (2006–2016), an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars involving dragons, and her Scholomance fantasy series (2020–2022). Her standalone fantasy novels Uprooted (2015) and Spinning Silver (2018) were inspired by Polish folklore and the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale respectively. Novik has won many awards for her work, including the Alex, Audie, British Fantasy, Locus, Mythopoeic and Nebula Awards.

Novik is great. Uprooted/Spinning Silver are both top-tier. My SO loved Novik's Scholomance series, which is based on a Transylvanian folkloric vampire school saga that inspired Bram Stoker.

Morgon's story becomes so far beyond anything human or comprehensible.

I'm just reading an sf story (fine structure by qntm, available here: https://qntm.org/structure) which features things way beyond anything human or comprehensible but because they're wrapped in technobabble I find them more enjoyable so, though I stand by my quote above as an accurate description, I will retract it as a criticism!

there are apparently thousands of books/series involving 'secret british police/government/societies designated to deal with supernatural phenomena'

e.g. 'rivers of london'/'the checquy files'/'fractured europe'/'*-handed booksellers of [british city]/certain nick harkaway works/etc. and no doubt more i've forgotten or were never aware of

but i have to admit that i've quite enjoyed all of those i've encountered

see also 'the atlas *' by olivie blake

so many libraries, so few original plots to build around them

https://reactormag.com/jo-waltons-reading-list-january-2026/
Hearthfire Saga Book 1 — Ada Palmer (2027)

Re-read. I read the first draft and now I read this revision. This is a book about Norse gods and the Norse cosmos, and so it’s about survival and the marginal way in which it’s possible to make space to survive. It’s the story of a man and a god travelling through memory to learn why they’re doing it, to learn about themselves and each other. As you’d expect, it’s brilliant, very intensely absorbing, very long, and very thought-provoking. It’s also meticulously researched and deeply grounded in all of the latest research about Norse culture and cosmology. And it’s great, and as I was heading towards the end I was just reading faster and faster in that can’t put it down way, even though I’d read it before and I knew what was going to happen. I will remind you when this comes out, and when it has an official title.

https://www.adapalmer.com/publication/hearthfire/

Fire in the Dark is Ada Palmer’s new Viking Mythology–focused novel series, with two books planned and an estimated publication date for early 2027, from Tor.

One of the goals of the series is to use a lot of the latest new scholarship on Viking myths and culture. A lot of fiction based on mythology draws, very naturally, on the versions the author grew up with, which usually means versions that are at least 30 years out of date, and since children’s books tend to lag behind adult books in terms of using updated material, they often repeat versions that are as much as 70 years out of date in terms of modern scholarship. As a scholar at a major research library, Palmer puts her access to the latest interpretations and discoveries at the service of readers and the fantasy fiction community by including the latest awesome research in her version of the Viking cosmos.

The series also works to focus on the anti-nationalist, anti-Nazi, anti-white-supremacist sides of the latest research, since Viking culture has been heavily coopted in our present moment by the alt right. It is a great moment to zoom in on the aspects of real Viking culture that blow white supremacist readings out of the water, aspects like its focus on disability; on gender fluidity; on weakness, compromise, and cooperation; and on racial mixing and interdependence. All of these are themes which are huge in the original sources and help prove how ahistorical and distorted the coopted readings are.

In Fire in the Dark, Palmer will tell a great story while also providing some refreshing healing to a corpus of stories which has taken a battering.