edhaswellJust finished reading Ray Nayler's "Palaces of the Crow". Powerful story. Highly recommended.
#PalacesOfTheCrow #SpeculativeFiction #books #reading #RayNayler
Numéro 246/1 - En attendant Nadeau [Unofficial]La SF aux prises avec le réel
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.en-attendant-nadeau.fr/2026/06/15/la-sf-aux-prises-avec-le-reel/
Nicola GriffithSome updates
She Is Here
New:
Dee-licious Locus review: https://locusmag.com/review/she-is-here-by-nicola-griffith-review-by-gary-k-wolfe/
Fascinating Ancillary Review of Books review: https://ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2026/05/12/constant-discovery/
And in case you missed it before:
Pretty political Project Censored interview: https://www.projectcensored.org/narrative-history-israel-policing-activist/
Flowers
We’ve just bought a bunch o’ bright annuals and will soon get more perennials and some herbs—we meant to do it two weeks ago, but, y’know, life—so expect to start getting lots and lots of proud pictures of just-potted flowers. Soonish. Meanwhile, here’s what’s going on in our rather meagre deck pots of things that survived winter.
Salvia ‘Hot Lips’Geranium—supposed to be an annual, but this one has perennial ambitionsKelley’s beloved fuchsia survived like a championAnd this snapdragon self-seeded into the herb basket, and of course we’ll let it grow, so the herbs will have to go somewhere else this yearPublishing
Here’s where I become cryptic—sorry! All I can say is, after the terrible news last month about the demise of MCD and FSG letting-go of my long-time editor, things are looking up, particularly on the— Well, no, nope, sorry, don’t want to jinx that… But right now I’m happy.
Events
Two things coming up for Seattle-area folks:
Tuesday, June 2, 2026. Elliott Bay Book Company, Capitol Hill, Seattle.
- Event: 7:00 – 8:00 pm at Elliott Bay Books, 1521 10th Ave.Seattle, WA 98122. Company. Doors open 6:30 pm
- In-conversation with Ray Nayler about his new novel, Palaces of the Crow. And all things cultural, environmental, and inter-species…
- Ray is a good friend, a great writer, and an absolutely fascinating conversationalist. I do hope you’ll join us.
- Free, but please do reserve your spot by RSVPing
Thursday, June 11, 2026. National Nordic Museum, Ballard, Seattle. And online.
- Event: Celebration of Pride, focused on the very Norwegian security consultant and snappy dresser, Aud Torvingen.
- Want to know her origins? Where the idea came from and why she’s named after a Norwegian/Hebridean/Dublin/Icelandic woman from the Long Ago? And what on earth Norwegian architecture has to do with her character? Then come listen to me talk to Kelley about it all on stage!
- The event coincides with the reissue of my first two (very queer—you should have seen the indignant reviews when SR, particularly, was published!) SFF novels, Ammonite and Slow River, both with spiffy new covers (cover reveal coming soon!) and extra content. You as my Patrons have already seen the new covers. No one else has. Yet.
- Get tickets here ($5 for NNM members, $10 everyone else)
- NNM is a truly magnificent venue—gorgeous, comfortable, and wholly accessible. Plus:
- There will be a bar and café, open before and during the event 🙂
- I’ll be focusing not only on Aud’s queer Norwegian awesomeness—but also on her namesake, the 9th-century Aud the Deepminded
- The event dovetails nicely with NNM’s current exhibit about Tove Jansson and her life with partner Tuulikki Pietilä.
- And while you’re there you can see the stunning glass artwork of Ginny Ruffner, the friend who died just last year
RanaldCloustonAs a mail subscriber to #AsimovsScienceFiction magazine, I get a vote in their 2025 reader's awards. It was fun to go back and re-read my favourite stories for the year to decide my rankings:
Best Novella:
1. Quantum Ghosts, #NancyKress
2. The Chronolithographer's Assistant, #SuzannePalmer
3. Spare Parts for the Mind, #GregEgan
Best Novelette:
1. Most Things, #RichLarson
2. On the Night Shift, #ZoharJacobs
3. The Fight Goes On, #HarryTurtledove
Best Short Story:
1. Catch a Tiger in the Snow, #RayNayler
2. Lolo's Last Run, #EMKerkman
3. Woolly, #CarrieVaughn
Best Poem:
1. I Try to Explain the Concept of Teeth to My Alien Roommate, #RachelLinton
Best Cover:
1. July/August, #MaurizioManzieri (attached image)
- My subscription started after the Jan/Feb issue, so that got snubbed.
- For all that print #SciFi magazines are now extremely marginal commercially and culturally, this one at least still attracts some pretty great material (mixed in, admittedly, with some so-so stuff) including by veteran greats of the genre - Kress and Turtledove are still producing amazing work in their mid-late 70s!
- I found the Novella section hardest to trim down to 3, with narrow cuts for stories by T.R. Napper, Ted Kosmatka, and John Kessel.
- It was a great year for pets in SF stories, or maybe as a dog- and cat-lover I'm just sucker for them. I found a place in my heart for Lolo, Magritte, Goobler the miniature woolly mammoth, Sponge, and of course, the tiger in the snow!
The most recent #AsimovsScienceFiction to appear in my mailbox features an absorbing cover future story from #GregEgan about a dementia sufferer's experimental brain implants that lead him to a partial recovery, but also highlights a world of techbro hype, conspiracy theories, and dubious intellectual property claims surrounding the technology. My favourite story in the collection was the beautiful, very short, 'Catch a Tiger in the Snow' by #RayNayler . Also nice to see a rare appearance of a New Zealand author in a #SciFi collection, #SeanMonaghan . @bookstodon #Bookstodon
Shaya- Dans le berceau du temps d'Adrian Tchaikovski : https://urlr.me/us5zwf
#chroniquelitteraire #sfff #blog #chronique #litterature #lecture #raynayler #patmurphy #aurelie wellenstein #adriantchaikovski #blogpost #lecture #imaginaire
Hoochie Daddy moved to mas.toBook 12: “Where the Axe is Buried” by #RayNayler.
I love this cover so much; it’s like a riso print for a comic. Had to diagram characters, locations, and timelines to follow all of the jumping around. It’s Nayler’s usual fare of capitalism, consciousness, environmental collapse, and AI, but he always manages to write interesting stories about them in different combinations. It’s not all bleak, but what a mess we continue to make for ourselves.
Laura Bayleaf
Andrew KuchlingTHE TUSKS OF EXTINCTION, by Ray Nayler, is an excellent story set in a bleak and depressingly plausible future. Elephants are gone from the wild, with only captive herds remaining: the battle between poachers and rangers began to target the rangers directly, and ultimately the poachers won. Now a mammoth herd has been recreated and placed in a vast Siberian reserve.
Damira is a now-dead Russian woman who was an anti-poaching activist, and ultimately was murdered. But her consciousness was uploaded years before her death, and now has been placed in the matriarch of the mammoth herd to keep them safe. When poachers get in and kill two of the males, Damira sees red. And she has a human's ability to understand what's happening, and to plan, and to seek revenge.
I'm torn on this one, ... it's a great story, showing empathy for Damira the human, Damira the mammoth, Svyatoslav the poacher, and Vladimir who's more of an observer -- but it left me feeling down for several days. I think the sentence that killed me was where the author says that not even the tuskless elephants were safe, as attention shifted from elephant ivory to skin or body parts instead, and so the hunting continued into extinction. A tough book to read, but I think it'll stay with me for a while.
(2/6)
Lise AndreasenUdryddelsesstødtand
Anmeldelse af The Tusks of Extinction, af #RayNayler. Kortroman. 2024. Hugo-finalist. Skitse: Damira følger et spor af blod med sin mammutsnabel. Damira besøger et sted med døde elefanter og er klar med riflen, hvis krybskytterne stadig er der. Er det science fiction? Ja. Der er en god forklaring på det der med Damira. Temaer: Vi […]
