twenty years across the sea

I AM GOING TO ALIF,WYGAEKSVBDA;UFLWNES,D

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

If anyone has any recommendations give them to me please!

Gladly! The pieces on this list aren’t limited to specifically anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy, but they do center related and relevant topics, themes, etc.

• Anything by NK Jemisin. She is the best speculative fiction writer of her generation and probably the best speculative fiction writer alive. She is easily one of the best writers working right now, across all genres. That’s not hyperbole. She deserves all the hype.
• Anything by Octavia Butler. She needs no introduction. Her short fiction is incredible; “Bloodchild” is one of the pieces that inspired me to write.
• An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. Excellent. Just read it.
• The Radiant Emperor duology by Shelley P. Chan. It broke my heart and it'll break yours.
• Babel by RF Kuang. You’ve probably already heard of this book because Harper Voyager marketed the shit out of it and was right to do so. It’s very, very good. Kuang writes a compulsively readable story, that’s for sure.
• The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo.
• So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.
• Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (anthology) edited by Nalo Hopkinson.

Severely underhyped books of assorted speculative genres:

• The Blood Trials by NE Davenport. Given the current chokehold romantasy has on the public it’s insane to me that this book hasn’t sold a billion copies.
• The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez. It’ll change you.
• The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera.
• The Lesson by Caldwell Turnbull.

Read widely. Read diversely. People of the Caucasian persuasion need to stop getting pissy when the story doesn’t immediately center them and they don’t automatically relate to everything the character says and does and is. Just let yourself get swept in the story—even if it touches on (gasp!) racism—and maybe, just maybe, it’ll reveal something to you.

Or maybe not! Marginalized sff authors do not have to and should not have to educate their readers. But if I see one more white person complain about how Black characters are fundamentally annoying because they complain too much I’m going to fling myself into the sun

Thanks for coming to my ted talk I didn’t want to do it but here I am

Don't forget Aliette de Bodard! Especially her Xuya and Dominion of the Fallen series.

Zen Cho is my other favorite - Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen, and also Black Water Sister.

The Faded Sun Trilogy by CJ CHERRYH.

Just finished my umpteenth reread

SYLVIA. MORENO. GARCIA.

Do you love dark Gaiman-esque fantasy? Did The Shape of Water and Crimson Peak permanently alter your brain chemistry? Do you dig awesome female protagonists, bittersweet romance, and historic fiction that doesn't center on 19th century England for once? Get thee to this woman's writing immediately. (Gods of Jade and Shadow is my personal favorite, but you can't go wrong with Mexican Gothic or The Daughter of Doctor Moreau either.)

never let anyone tell you that trawling through mediocre victorian poetry isn't worth it. we just happened upon an absolute BANGER of a worm poem. go read it or else 🪱🪱🪱

the reviews are in... glad everyone's enjoying song of the worm

[id: tumblr tags reading 'dude This Fucking Rules', 'holy fucking shit! that was legit so cool?', 'holy shit that is fucking metal', 'oh this fucks severely', 'yeah no this fucking SLAPS', 'yo this RULES']

Holy fucking shit this is one of the most incredible things I have ever read.

I am dead serious. I PROMISE you that you want to read this, and you're going to immediately send it to all your weird friends who you also know will love it.

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Yes. Have YOU considered that sometimes working on hard things is both necessary and worthwhile?

Gotta practice

What I think: wow I can’t believe the word “hark” means “listen, pay attention” and a major role of the Harkers in the story is to notice important details, record conversations, gather information and otherwise defeat Dracula by listening and paying attention

What I say: my favorite part of Dracula is when the Harkers said “it’s Harkin’ time!” and harked all over the place

the unbearable lightness of the straw

one of my all time favorite fun facts is the existence of the raffles novels sorry... what if i told you arthur conan doyle's brother-in-law wrote a series of obvious mirrorverse holmes/watson pastiches where they're gay thieves and acd hated them because he felt they glorified bug- sorry burglary

my hot take is that as we're clearly not getting a good gay holmes adaptation anytime soon so someone should step in and make a deeply chaotic raffles adaptation. hilariously enough i think guy ritchie is the man for it lmao

the thing about mr darcy. is that everything he does he does because of his eldest sibling syndrome. it's so important that he has a younger sister and it's so important that she's 16 and it's so important that their parents are dead. it's so important that georgaina is friendly and cheerful and that he hates everyone. it's so important that he loathes wickham for what he did to her and gets involved to stop him from destroying lizzy's younger sister's life. it's so important that he moves bingley away because he thinks he's about to get his heart broken. it's so important that bingley is a lot like georgiana. like seriously darcy is an asshole because he's an eldest sibling and he's so so sweet because he's an eldest sibling that's the whole point

My boyfriend was showing me his cat and I leaned over to kiss the cat on his soft little baby head and he went "meow" and scrambled away because I'd been wearing my headphones and I accidentally jabbed him with the microphone.

And I said "Damn, this is exactly like in the Iliad"

#explanation: this references the scene where Hektor the prince of troy goes to his wife after a battle and leans in to kiss his son #(who is still a baby and being held in andromache's arms) #but his son cringes away in fear of his father's battle helmet #it's a gut wrenching scene about how war dehumanizes you and separates you from the people you love #this interpretation implies that being a gamer is analogous

lmao god, english upper class people... I was reading Mathilda, and there's all these monologues about the protagonist going insane from loneliness and not knowing how to act when she finally strikes up a friendship again; she has retired to a cottage in the woods and is essentially in hiding. All this time we're given the impression that she is utterly alone in that cottage. Much woe about the completeness of her loneliness. and then.

what do you mean your servant ...? in your cottage in the woods where you were so utterly alone? that one?

pt 2, this time Frankenstein by the same. Said Frankenstein is greatly relieved when he returns and the 'apartment was empty' because this means his monster has fled. but then

...did that servant materialise out of thin air to bring him food in his room. The place not actually empty, just empty of people of his own class. he just left the servant and his monster with each other while he was out.

Eventually the monster was like "well this is awkward. I'm out." and the servant presumably just filed the encounter under "weird shit upper class people do" and went on with his life.

I remember taking this college elective on film adaptations and we talked about the controversy caused by the PBS adaptation of Emma, which made a point of putting servants in every. single. scene, confronting the audience with the reality that the main characters are surrounded by servants constantly and are choosing not to acknowledge their presence. Emma is consoling her "poor" friend Harriet over her misfortune and the entire time a servant is standing there silently brushing Emma's hair or some shit.

Virtually every other adaptation of Emma does a very good job of invisiblizing the constant presence of the working class labor force that allowed these people to live the way they did.

If anyone is interested the murder mystery Gosford Park specifically explored this phenomenon. Roger Ebert did a review of it here.

ALT

chapter one of Carmilla, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

One day, a complete gothic horror novel where the story is actually gentry acting nuts from the pov of the servants (who want to unionize)

I apologize for the harshness of my words, Miss Bennet, but your family is just so cringe