Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading.
Twitter: @MissLiberty
Hello, my little space sounds! In today’s round-up of recent sci-fi and fantasy links, I have stuff to share about the best dystopian movies, eco-horror, a witchy sapphic romance, underrated sci-fi shows, and more!
Read an Excerpt from Everything She Does Is Magic by Bridget Morrissey
I know I often tease you by talking about books that haven’t been released yet, so I am kicking things off with a book you can get your hands on now! Everything She Does Is Magic by Bridget Morrissey is a witchy YA sapphic romance about Fableview, a town where every day is Halloween.
Darcy Keller is getting ready to leave for college, even though her parents would rather she stay home and take over the family business, which is a Halloween empire. Anya Doyle is new to Fableview, and a witch looking for a coven. She finds one in Fableview, but to be initiated, she must have a non-witch protector. Since Anya hasn’t made any friends, she lies and says the cute girl she saw, Darcy, will be her protector. Cue the forced proximity romance! As Darcy and Anya attend Fableview’s fall festivities together, they begin to catch feelings. But with Darcy leaving soon for school and Anya joining her coven, is their romance going to last?
Swords and Spaceships
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You can start reading Everything She Does Is Magic in the recent excerpt from Nerd Daily:
“As the legend goes, on Halloween night, in the thick of the forest, where the trees make the shape of a Trinity knot and when the clock hovers between eleven and twelve, you can look up in the clearing and see a witch on her broomstick.”
The tourists watch me with intense interest, tracking my every flick and flourish.
“Only the luckiest among us are privileged with this view,” I continue, dropping my voice into the lowest part of my register. “The moon must be full, or the witch won’t be visible. Not to human eyes, at least. But she’s always there, every Hallows’ Eve, sprinkling another year of good fortune atop our little town of Fableview.”
Scattered flecks of golden glitter shimmer out of my hands and into the air. I do a dramatic swoosh with my cape, throwing it over the blank art canvas beside me. When the cape settles again at my ankles, the canvas has been transformed. There is now a painting of a witch flying over the forest, sprinkling magic dust onto the trees, exactly as I described her. She looks like me—long black cape covering her body, low-heeled boots on her feet, and blond waves flowing out from beneath her pointy hat.
My audience applauds as I strum my fingers together in delight, pretending this transformation is the work of my magical powers, not a practical stunt my parents taught me when I started teaching some of the art classes here at Pam’s Paints.”
The 10 Greatest Dystopian Thrillers of All Time
This time around, I am going to share not one but two lists. (I love lists!) Collider recently shared a list of its picks for the 10 greatest dystopian thrillers of all time. I have seen seven of them, and agree that they deserve a place on the list (although I would have ranked Gattaca higher). I loved the adaptation of The Children of Men. I think I saw it four times in the theater. (How is it already almost twenty years old??!) And of course, you have to have Roy Batty.
Also. I completely forgot about George Lucas’s pre-Star Wars film THX 1138 and will have to check that out soon. (Although, with all the twenty-first-century texting speak, I now read it as “Thanks 1138” in my head.) What movies would you put on this list?
Story Time! “If a Digitized Tree Falls” by Caroline M. Yoachim and Ken Liu
Reactor recently shared a new short story by Caroline M. Yoachim and Ken Liu called “If a Digitized Tree Falls,” and it’s pretty great. It’s about a young woman trying to hold on to the forest she loves as humans start moving to space.
From the story:
“He could hardly blame the girls for escaping to the forest. Tall, thick trunks seemed to reach all the way to heaven, like pillars in a magnificent cathedral, each topped with a dense crown of leaves that rustled and whispered, the irregular green clouds quilting a canopy full of sunlit gaps and seams that shifted and writhed as the trees swayed gently, a mesmerizing, abstract Sistine Chapel painted by lightning in slow motion. Thick vines draped down from high boughs like silk tapestries, decorated with orchids of every description that were twins of the colorful birds sitting in the branches. Hummingbirds darted about, untroubled by the humans scrambling to get out their phones, hovering, backing up, twisting in midair—Tara said they moved like fairies, and Navi had, for once, not contradicted her big sister on principle but solemnly agreed. They were at such lovely ages, eight and six, when all the world was wondrous and full of possibility.
But how much of this idyllic world will still exist when they’re my age?
His art—rendered in incredible detail for a dynamic visualization module that held an entire ecosystem—seemed more relevant than ever, not just an observation about the world, but a testimony. A digital twin of the Magic Forest encapsulated in what looked like nothing more than a snow globe. He was grateful that he’d had the opportunity to come here to make some final sketches and calibrations, with Mia of course since she was a biologist on the project, but also to share this experience with their daughters.
Mia ducked her head into their tent. “Where are the girls? The charter bus is here to take everyone back down the mountain to the airport.”
“I thought they were with you. They told me you wanted to take one more hike in the Magic Forest.”
“I was out buying souvenirs,” Mia held up a canvas shopping bag with the tour company logo. “I thought they were helping you finish packing.”
Greg shut the suitcase lid. “I last saw them fifteen minutes ago. They can’t have gotten far.”
His initial confidence soon proved misplaced. They split up and searched the campsite, asking everyone if they’d seen the girls, but no one had. Eventually they couldn’t hold the bus any longer, so it started down the winding mountain road, and still no sign of Tara and Navi. Most of the staff joined in the search, widening the radius and chattering on walkie-talkies.
In fairy tales, a Magic Forest could be dark and full of danger. Were the girls lost?”
You can read it all on Reactor!
10 Underrated Sci-Fi TV Shows You Need to Discover
And here’s the other list I mentioned. ScreenRant shared 10 underrated sci-fi TV shows you need to discover. While I have heard of all of the shows on this list, I have not watched a single one, so good job bringing them to my attention, ScreenRant! If I were to pick one to watch first, it would probably be Counterpart, which I have talked about before, because J.K. Simmons is so great in everything. Or maybe The OA, since so many people loved it and lost their minds when it was canceled. What shows on the list do you love? (Related: Here are 8 sci-fi shows that don’t have a bad episode.)
And To Close: An Excerpt from Humboldt Cut by Allison Mick
I love a scary book set in the woods. The woods are just so naturally creepy! So I am excited to get my hands on this upcoming eco-horror, Humboldt Cut by Allison Mick, which is being called “Jordan Peele and Jeff Vandermeer meet The Overstory.” In it, a Black nurse returns to her logging hometown for her godmother’s funeral, where the scary secrets of the forest are getting ready to reveal themselves.
From the publisher’s description: “When her godmother dies, Jas returns to Redceder for the funeral, a logging town where her grandfather William Whipple made a living deforesting the countryside, ripping and raping apart nature’s very foundations for corporate profits. As trees fell to axes and chainsaws, so did dozens of lumberjacks, falling prey to the dangers of their job—and to the ecoterrorism of Jas’s grandfather who was lynched for his crimes.
And buried in the haunted woods are even more dark secrets perpetrated by Jas’s family. Unnatural acts giving birth to entities made of human flesh and petrified bark, seeking to avenge the devastation that ravaged their land. It is an inheritance that threatens to consume the remnants of Jas’s family, and her very sanity…”
If you are as intrigued as I am, Reactor recently shared an excerpt from the book, which will be out January 27, 2025, from Erewhon Books!
Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the BR podcast All the Books! and on Bluesky and Instagram.
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