🌸💀✨️ Issue 7 is out now! ✨️💀🌸
12 stories ready to break your heart, make you wince, fill you with bittersweet longing, or just make you kind of uneasy. You will feel things.
https://inner-worlds.ghost.io/issue-seven-editors-note/
#SFF #Horror #SpecFic #Fantasy #ScienceFiction #SpeculativeFiction #FlashFiction #LitMag #ShortStories #SciFi #HorrorFiction #HorrorCommunity #HorrorFam
"Everyone flutters, flaring with the strongest of yellows, a rich goldenrod-alarm.
At the edge of the trees waits a stranger, a human, the first we've encountered in so very long."
Read "The Spellbook of the Moth Witch" by Devan Barlow in our last issue: https://inner-worlds.ghost.io/the-spellbook-of-the-moth-witch-devan-barlow/
We're less than a week away from a brand-new episode of "The Post Mortem Report" - In the meantime, check out our latest authorcast, featuring books by Martha Wells and DS LaLonde, amid a plethora of other fun topics.
#video #podcast #authorcast #book #books #bookstodon #booktodon #readersofmastodon #reading #readingcommunity #scifi #horror #specfic
📘 "De laatste kinderen van Tokyo" by Yōko Tawada, translated from Japanese into Dutch by Luk Van Haute
Available in English as "The Last Children of Tokyo" or "The Emissary".
Ah, this book... Lots of feelings. Definitely positive ones. For me, it taps into these times so well, I thought about a lot. Bear with me for a second while I get rambly.
I'm in my early 30s. While I was in primary school, 9/11 happened and most of life was about learning to understand hostile international politics, terrorism and the end of privacy. When I was in high school, the financial crisis of 2008 hit and shit hit the fan. As a young adult, life was dictated by severe austerity measures and loss. Since then, I have been observing natural disasters, wars, genocides, pandemics. I'm very privileged in my position in life, but I can't say that life in general is looking good.
This all is accompanied by tragic behavior of people of retirement age. And no, I don't want to support generations fighting with each other, and I know hashtag not all boomers, other generations suck too, yada yada, all people can be suffering till their last breath, and we should unite and fight the system together -I still believe that. But many of these people in my life were able to get higher wages, buy houses, pay for children, retire at 60 or earlier, use social safety nets and spend time on expensive treats like holidays abroad. Meanwhile I'm not getting beyond minimum wage and dreaming of a secure roof over my head is really only that: a dream. A decent quality of life in the future seems like a dream too, with all of the pollution and climate change.
What really ignites the flames of bitterness is the majority of 60+ year-old people voting right-wing and actively participating in destroying society. Openly supporting lower minimum wages. Declining green reforms. Removing governmental support systems like accessible healthcare. Refusing to share their wealth. Never acknowledging the struggles of younger generations. The world is dying and they want to complain to me about the food on the plane they took on their 3rd holiday of the year while I'm stressfully counting coins to pay for another medicine that has once again gotten more expensive. Please. Can you for one second care about the world you're leaving behind? At this point I'm literally begging more than sarcastically asking.
In this book, the world is dying too. Humans too. But not the elderly, they seem to have become immortal. Yet, younger generations get weaker and die, and their children become even more sickly and die even earlier, and then their children too, on it goes. Until what? Is it fun, for these elderly, to keep chugging on with their silly stuff, all alone, on barren land, reaping what they sowed?
In the novel we follow Yoshiro, in his 100s already, taking care of his very weak great-grandchild, Mumei. He's kind, humble and accommodating. He desperately wants better circumstances for the child, but is unable to change the world. Instead he tries to give Mumei daily comforts as much as possible. But through tiny cracks we also see that maybe he wasn't always so caring, that maybe he was more self-absorbed and judgmental when he was still a regular, young elderly in the old days.
The world is interesting, but we only get to learn about it in snippets. There's extreme isolationism going on. Human industry of the past appears to have done a lot of damage. It looks like climate collapse has happened. You even start to wonder if atomic bombs have fallen.
The character of Mumei made me think of 'I Who Have Never Known Men' and other books like it. Never having known another world, he just lives, even when people who've known otherwise complain and mourn. He suffers, yes, but it is what it is, and he's still curious and enjoying what's there. On one side I live for such tales and characters, they motivate me to adapt and keep going. On the other side, looking at him through the eyes of someone who knew a better life, it's sad that this is it. All that young children will ever know, is this. Do I embrace the joy of living in a world that's merely different, maybe not worse, despite its limits, or the sadness of not even knowing the extent of those limits? A bit of both?
Will the people who've lived at least double the amount of decades that I have, become more understanding like Yoshiro? Or won't they without the threat of having to live long enough to see the consequences of how they've shaped the world? Does it even still matter?
Either way, as you can see, this book has been living rent free in my head. The language is very pleasant, with unexpected descriptions, comparisons and wordplays. The different perspectives flow into each other comfortably. The ending lights up a candle, suddenly illuminating things that you've read earlier in the story and adding meaning to them, which I love. I've been sleeping on Yōko Tawada!
Just finished A Song of Legends Lost by M.H. Ayinde. Epic sci-fantasy, first of the Invoker trilogy, and bloody hell the next one better be out soon, because I'm hooked! Americans, this one comes out next month in the US. Get in on a library hold ASAP. It's fabulous. I definitely expect to see it on award shortlists
#fantasy #SpecFic
https://store.orbit-books.co.uk/products/a-song-of-legends-lost
Pleased to share this thoughtful review of my latest book, "8: Tales of The Big Men from The Nod/Wells Timelines" by Tony Travis, a fellow speculative-fiction author. Follow the link for the full text and be sure to check out his site. It's rather swank. 🙂👍
https://www.tonytravis.com/post/tony-s-review-of-8-tales-of-the-big-men-from-the-nod-wells-timelines
#scifi #sciencefiction #specfic #speculativefiction #horror #thriller #book #books #bookreview #bookreviews #bookrec #bookrecs #bookrecommendation #bookrecommendations #read #reading
📘 "Over de berekening van ruimte III" by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish into Dutch by Adriaan van der Hoeven & Edith Koenders
Will be available later in 2025 in English as "On the Calculation of Volume III".
Yes, I'm hooked enough that I switched reading languages when I saw the Dutch translations have been coming out quicker than the English ones. I was ready to fight for them at my local library, but it wasn't necessary, because it appears that I was the only one interested.
At the end of book I and II I had no idea where the story was going to take us, and the same can be said for part III. I'm really enjoying it, especially when unexpected things happen. I feel like we're getting closer to understanding the book's title, but also maybe not at all...
I'm reviewing Esperance by Adam Oyebanjo #newrelease #specfic #mystery @quercusbooks
ICYMI: For those curious about the books after watching "Murderbot," I did a little recap of my experience reading the seven that are currently available in our latest episode. There's some other cool stuff there, too!
#murderbot #bookstodon #booktodon #specfic #speculativefiction #podcast #authorcast #scifi #sciencefiction #horror #book #books #reading
In each episode, hosts Ronald McGillvray and Michael Shotter take a break from writing speculative fiction to resurrect some of their favorite obscure social media posts from the past few months, and give them another chance at life. Topics include: books, films, television shows, music, video games, podcasts, interviews, and much more.
Says author Dan Brown: "...the word occult, despite conjuring images of devil worship, actually means 'hidden' or 'obscured'. In times of religious oppression, knowledge that was counterdmoctrinal had to be kept hidden or 'occult', and because the church felt threatened by this, they redefined anything 'occult' as evil, and the prejudice survived." 🧵⬇️
#writingquote #writerquote #occult #specfic #horror #darkfantasy
Inner Worlds
Michael Shotter
Reading Recluse
BeeCycling
MJ Porter
Lauren McMenemy