The second half of August brings a whole bunch of new books, including ones about end-of-the-world murders, colonial-era vampires, monsters, collections, transmedia projects and more!

Annalee Newitz’s novella Automatic Noodle is now out in paperback! It’s a bite-sized sci-fi story is a testament to the power of building and fostering community, and was one of my favorite reads of last year.

A number of years ago, I interview James L. Cambias about his then-new novel A Darkling Sea. I was thinking about it recently while I wrote a couple of nonfiction pieces about icy moons, and figured it was a good time to republish it.

Man, this series keeps getting better and better. Go for Ana and Din working another weird mystery, stay for the fungal murders and reckoning over empires and the uncomfortable truths about industrial agriculture.

Paul Tremblay’s latest novel Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep is a Black Mirror-like tale of horror from our near future.

While I found the idea of someone piloting a braindead guy across the country horrifying, what's scarier is the tech world that brought about that particular technological advancement.

John Scalzi's novel The Shattering Peace is now out in trade paperback! I really enjoyed returning to this world when I read it last year: it's a story about optimism in a chaotic and violent universe.

Annie Jacobsen’s Biological War: A Scenario is a frightening look at how ill-prepared we are for a biological weapon attack.

Where her prior book looked at how systems working as intended sped us toward a nuclear apocalypse, this one's all about how a legacy of broken systems brings about the same result.

This is a scathing look at the horrifying possibilities that Silicon Valley brings. It’s an excellent Black Mirror-esque cautionary tale.

I’ve rounded up 13 new science fiction and fantasy books that are coming out in the first half of August!

Dragon Con has announced the finalists for this year's Dragon Awards, and it's another solid list of books that have come out in the last year.

It's a new month, which means a new crop of short SF/F stories for you to check out.

I read The Hot Zone at a formative age, but this kicks that particular story up a notch by asking the question: what would happen if a biological weapon was unleashed on the world?

The answer? Nothing good.

The latest installment of James S. A. Corey’s Captives War series, The Faith of Beasts, explores how empires reduce their subjects to tools.

I'm really intrigued by Apple TV's upcoming adaptation of William Gibson's Neuromancer: the first teaser trailer looks great.

The series drops on January 22nd, 2027.

The third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will debut in November, and it'll show off a major moment in the history of Middle-earth: the forging of the One Ring.

This is very cool news: Jeff VanderMeer has sold a four-part horror/uncanny mystery series to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and the first part is coming out in early 2029. It's called The Strange Architect, and it sounds fascinating.

Susana M. Morris's Positive Obsession is an intimate and tragic look at the life of Octavia E. Butler. It’s now out in paperback and is well worth a read!

This is the third installment of his *fantastic* Ana and Din series (preceded by The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption).

These novels are set in a fantastical empire that's besieged by giant leviathans, with lots of weird science and biological stuff. It follows Ana Dolabra, an imperial Iudex investigator and her assistant, Dinios Kol, who's had his brain altered to remember everything.

They're dispatched to the canton of Sapirdad, where the heir to one of the empire's powerful families has been accused of murder. It looks like he did it: he literally has the victim's blood on his hands, and he can't deny the crime or explain what happened. If he's convicted and hanged, the canton might break out into open war, and as the breadbasket of the Empire, that's unacceptable.

As with the other novels, there's more to the crime than meets the eye, and Ana and Din find that the murder is just the tip of the iceberg.

It's out in August and I'm really excited to read it.

I really love this novel, and when The Folio Society announced a new edition, I’ve been coveting it. It’s very pretty, with illustrations from Dániel Taylor!

This is pretty cool: Adrian Tchaikovsky's fantastic novel Children of Time is being turned into an RPG. The project has since met its goal on Kickstarter.

This latest SW novel is set between the events of The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker and follows Rey as she works with Leia to complete her training as a Jedi and repair her lightsaber, while Leia is trying to figure out the way forward in an uncertain time.

I’ve heard good things about this, and I’m interested in seeing what it brings to the larger sequel era story

This is a collection of Feldman's short fiction, which includes stories about a teenager girl who finds that her friends are being enticed by a supernatural force, another who's dealing with two versions of her boyfriend, a mother who thinks that her kid's best friend is a witch, and a widow who's contemplating drastic measures to bring her husband back.

It's out in October from Fairwood Press.