Tag: science fiction

What I Read: Nov 2025 – Jan 2026

To encapsulate the last three months in a meme:

Inigo Montoya from the Princess Bride: "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

In November:

  • I participated in a panel of writers at Organized Intelligence, a conference about LDS perspectives on AI. One of my central metaphors was quoted in a Deseret News summary of the event.
  • I attended the American Academy of Religion/Society for Biblical Literature conference in Boston and presented my paper on Mormons writing aliens. This conference was huge, but perhaps because of that, I was able to find a bunch of other scholars working on religion and sci-fi/fantasy. Easily the most productive conference I’ve been to. I’m making plans to return next year.You can see all the energy I’m gathering just by being at AAR/SBL.

December started out with:

  • Attending Dragonsteel Nexus with my kids and El, my podcast co-host on The Storming Journey. Sanderson always puts on a good party. This was followed next weekend by
  • Watching my daughter perform in Ballet West’s Nutcracker! This was our first time doing a major ballet production. The practices nearly killed us, but it was all worth it seeing how happy she was being on that stage. Once that was over, it was time for
  • Christmas at Hogwarts, or at least a very elaborately themed AirBnB.I can’t believe someone cosplayed as my favorite religious joke in all of Sanderson. This made my day.

And in January:

  • Further Light finally launched! I’m so excited about the stories, essays, and poems that have been published so far and can’t wait for you to read them as well. If you can’t wait either, you could always grab your own copy of issue 1 in print or ebook.
Cover for issue 1 of Further Light, with a party of adventurers around a fire built inside a large dragon skull

Throughout it all, we’ve been releasing weekly episodes of The Storming Journey. Some of my favorites were our episodes on Excellence, Pain, and Authority. And we even squeezed in a discussion of Wake Up Dead Man on Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree, which changed the way I saw a part of the movie I previously despised.

And now for a dump of book reviews, which is actually pretty small considering it’s three months of reading.

Speculative Fiction

Hyperion by Dan Simmons – I was finally pushed over the edge into reading this book by seeing that someone was presenting a paper about it at AAR. The paper ended up being about the later volumes in the series, but I’m still really glad I was propelled into reading this, because this book is complex and devastating. It also deals with religion in several interesting ways. The connection to the Canterbury Tales was not as pervasive as I thought it was going to be, but still the concept of a pilgrimage in the space era stands out as a unique plot structure. Be warned if you pick it up that this book has a lot of adult content, in addition to playing out situations that will emotionally wreck you in a way made possible only by sci-fi conceits. I intend to get to the rest of the series, but it may take a while to drum up the emotional fortitude.

A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys – Another one brought to my attention by a conference paper. This book is a great example of how to bring contemporary religion into a science fictional setting. The premise is somewhat solar punk: after multiple disasters (ecological, political, otherwise), humanity is finally beginning to work to harmonize its technological existence with the earth. The government of our main characters is a sort of anarcho-commune where decisions are essentially made by a giant reddit-like system of discussion boards and upvoting. In the middle of this, aliens arrive. Their goal is to liberate humanity from their dying world by teaching them new tech like building Dyson spheres and integrating them into the galactic harmony. A clash of worldviews ensues between the aliens and our Jewish narrator who is determined to help them see the value of a planet.

Probably the most fascinating sci-fi idea here is the fact that the aliens refuse to negotiate with anyone who doesn’t have children and bring them into diplomatic settings. The elevation of parenthood (more specifically motherhood) into a sign of trustworthiness and investment in successful collaboration was fascinating, especially where it clashed with the progressive liberal views of the protagonist on sex/gender. Lots of interesting conversations in this book about what makes life valuable and what is worth saving. None of the political points scored here ever felt like the author was just trying to preach; there’s always a thoughtful counterpoint to show the expanse of ideas. I haven’t even touched here on the cool Passover scene with alien guests! Worth your time to pick up.

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett – This may be controversial, but I think I’ve decided that Terry Pratchett novels are just not for me. It’s not that they aren’t amazingly written and funny. I love the conceit of world where the rules of story are part of the fabric of the universe. The idea that Death itself is getting to be too much of a personality and therefore needs to be retired is pure genius. But as much as I enjoy a Pratchett novel when reading it, I give them almost no attention when I’m not reading them, meaning I have a hard time picking them back up and continuing to the end. It’s like eating a sandwich: it’s fine, filling even, but if I’ve got virtually any other kind of food to hand, I’m probably not making one. I’ve tried entering Discworld at several different points now, and I think it’s time for me to stop trying for a season.

Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold – After finally convincing my husband to try out the Pen & Des books and watching him rocket through them in our shared Libby account, I started to feel a little jealous. That plus going through the no-man’s-land of the week between Christmas and New Year led to me picking up the first novella again. I forgot just how young and naive Penric is in his first adventure, and how many of the things that Penric does by instinct, like naming his demon, are very unnatural in the world the story is set it. Still really tight writing, and a good beginning to a fun series of adventures.

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox by Lois McMaster Bujold – I think I may have missed or forgotten some of the latest Penric & Desdemona novellas because I was a little confused by this book at first. But of course, Penric’s antics and voice won out and I enjoyed the book anyway. The addition of two more points of view made things more varied. Not one of the most stellar adventures, but still fun nonetheless.

Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones – Picked this up after hearing on the podcast Eight Days of Dianna Wynne Jones that this was the book with the most literary criticism written about it. After finishing the book, I can see why. I found the ending almost entirely incomprehensible without going online and reading what people had said about it. This book does that thing that Sanderson is always saying authors shouldn’t do with a twist: held off explaining it for so long that the audience who would like the twist quits in frustration. Most of this book is mundane experiences, punctuated by brief magical interludes which are never explained or commented on until the last chapter. And the mundane interactions are one of my least favorite kinds: completely selfish and un-self-aware parents wrecking their children’s lives while blaming them for it. I know it happens and is a valid story, and also usually a portion of every DWJ book. But for some reason, it bothered me a lot more in this one, probably because it’s not dressed up in ridiculous humor but just plain bleak. The final connections to the fairy story she’s retelling are interesting, but in my opinion not enough to make it worth wading through the rest of the book.

Fiction

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 5-8 by Beth Brower – It’s difficult to review these books individually as they really do blend into each other. Just as with the first few volumes, the highlight of this series is Emma’s voice. She’s hilarious, even when the pretense that she’s writing all this down in a journal begins to wear a bit thin. (See this hilarious thread calculating how long Emma would have to spend writing each day to finish the work). I like some characters more than others and I’m intrigued to continue the series, but sad that I’m now caught up and can’t binge read them.

The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet by Katherine Cowley – Finally got this one off my TBR list by getting my bookclub to pick it for our January meeting, and I’m so glad I did. Katherine Cowley manages to keep Mary as almost as stodgy, self-righteous, and socially oblivious as the original, but by putting us in her head makes her likeable. Mary is somewhat of an unreliable narrator, as the reader may spot some of what is going on before Mary begins to pick up on it. I loved the idea of the socially-incompetent sister channeling what the various other Bennet sisters might do in order to get by in the world. And the throughline of her comparing herself to Elizabeth is heartbreaking. The mystery plot is fun and light, but it’s the characterization that really elevates the book to five stars for me.

The True Confessions of a London Spy by Katherine Cowley – I picked this one up immediately after the first novel because I needed more Mary Bennet. The book has some great historical details that I hadn’t seen anywhere else, like the ice festival on the Thames and the first London restaurants. Mary’s escapades and, yes, romances, were even more fun than the first novel, though they do begin to strain believability within the universe of Pride and Prejudice. But if you’re willing to go along with it, it’s an enjoyable ride.

Nonfiction

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green – I am not in any way a fan of John Green’s fiction, probably because they are mostly contemporary romances which is one of my least favorite genres. (I’ve read An Abundance of Katherines and watched the movie version of The Fault in Our Stars. Just not for me.) But I enjoy his YouTube commentary enough, and heard enough positive reviews from friends, to pick this one up. I’m glad I did because the essays in this volume are absolutely wonderful. I could have done without the conceit of giving things star ratings, because aside from the meta-moment where he asks himself why he’s refusing to give anything five stars, it doesn’t really add a lot to the essays themselves. On the other hand, it’s hard enough to get anyone to pick up a collection of essays, so I can’t really fault him for trying to make them cohesive somehow. Anyway, this volume is absolutely worth your time; you will cry, you will laugh, you will stand in awe. In audiobook form, they are also podcast-level consumable. You can finish an essay in a short commute, which is nice.

Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier

Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigail Shrier – While I think Shrier made some good points, especially about the fact that therapy isn’t a universal good, I find that some points here are exaggerated for rhetorical effect. In fact, I was so put off by her alarmist tone that I could not finish this book. I would love to hear about a book that covers the same ground from a more journalist or at least more neutral tone.

Your Early Christmas Present? New LDS Science Fiction

A few months ago, I did that annoying author thing where I cryptically posted that a story of mine which I never thought would see the light of day was going to be published. Well, now’s the time for more details because my flash fiction piece “The Arm of Mercy” is a part of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts advent calendar!

Every day from now until Christmas, you can open a short story by a Latter-day Saint writer. The calendar features stories from across the 20th and 21st centuries: I can’t believe I’m sharing a page with Nephi Anderson, Susa Young Gates, and Maureen Whipple in addition to several of my favorite contemporary LDS writers. And going by the daily icons, I’m guessing we have a good deal of speculative fiction represented as well.

My story is behind the little virtual flap for December 8th, a week from today. I’ve sometimes described “The Arm of Mercy” as Mormon Star Trek, because that’s what my beta-reader called it, but it would be more accurate to say the story is a more culturally-aware version of the LDSS Nauvoo from The Expanse. In this flash story, I try to fill out what an actual Latter-day Saint generation ship might look like. What would happen if your ward not only lived in the same geographic area but crewed a starship together?

In the story, you’ll notice some aspects of LDS culture that I’ve copy-pasted straight from our current context, and others that I’ve allowed to develop in unusual ways. I’m not in any way predicting that the Church would develop this way in space, only that it’s an interesting possibility. One of the fun things about writing the far future is imagining the ways that things both change and stay the same. Amidst all the tantalizing changes, the thing that I hope grounds readers in the story is the interpersonal dynamics of serving in ward leadership. Several characters in the story are extrapolated from people I’ve worked with in my decade of serving as a Relief Society secretary in three different wards.

To check out my story along with 23 other interesting works of LDS literature, visit the Center’s Advent Calendar page. Just don’t get on Santa’s naughty list by opening the stories early! 😉

What I Read: June 2025

The final conference in my post-graduation gauntlet of conferences was the Mormon History Association conference in Ogden. I presented my research on Orson Scott Card’s 1987 rewrite of the Hill Cumorah Pageant, which I’ve had a ton of fun researching. A few things about the presentation are still tied up in permissions, but if I get that straightened out, I hope to publish it someday.

I was shocked how much literature-related content has grown at MHA since the Bushmans introduced the idea at the 2022 conference. Whereas I’m usually struggling to find literary panels, this year there were several panels relating to the upcoming volume on Mormon rhetoric, a paper about a Harlem renaissance poet who joined the church, and a panel each on Nephi Anderson and Bernard Devoto, just naming a few. We got together the AML crowd for a nice lunch one day, and I got to watch Burgindie’s two outstanding short films, The Angel and Java Jive—both highly recommended. My only disappointment was that Emma Tueller Stone’s paper on Orson Scott Card and Heavenly Mother was scheduled for the same time as my paper on Card. (Which reminds me that I need to send her an email to get a copy…)

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The panel listing attentively as Steve Peck rightly extolls Piranesi

Later in June, I also spoke on a panel for The Compass Gallery’s exhibit of religious fantasy art with two of my favorite people, Chanel Earl and Steven Peck. We had a great time bouncing ideas off each other about the significance of imagination for building and practicing faith. Wayfare is currently serializing Chanel’s book about fairy tales and the atonement. The introduction and piece on Snow White are available now: both are excellent examples of how fantasy and faith can collide in interesting ways.

Over on Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree, we released a double-length short episode on two recent Catholic films, Conclave and The Two Popes. Carl and I had an excellent discussion about the similarities and differences between Catholic and LDS leadership and succession and how Hollywood doesn’t seem to really understand either. We’re hoping to release at least one episode a month during the summer, then return to a regular biweekly schedule in the fall.

I’m taking a short break from presentations in July, but I’ll be back right at the beginning of August presenting at the Mythopoeic Society’s Online Midyear Seminar. My presentation is about Lev Grossman’s Arthurian retelling The Bright Sword, but there’s a whole track of Tolkien presentations as well. The conference is not very expensive and obviously online, so if you’re interested in these things, I’d love to see you (virtually) there!

This month continues my Hugo (and other fantasy awards) reading, so there’s a lot of new spec fic reviews below. Enjoy!

Speculative Fiction

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky – For some reason, this book puts me in mind of The Murderbot Diaries, which is strange because the tone is almost entirely different. Whereas Murderbot is sarcastic and ironic, UnCharles is sincere and straightforward. But what they share is being robots/constructs that want to deny their humanity, even though the reader can clearly see it’s there. I quickly fell in love with the narrative style of avoiding attributing emotion to the robot by describing what it would be feeling *if* anyone was stupid enough to build a robot with feelings, which they wouldn’t.

While the characters are charming, the plot of the book leaves something to be desired. It’s very episodic: we stop at one place after another, displaying how the robots have gone wrong in each place via the very mechanisms which were supposed to make them more efficient. Service Model reads like a strong commentary on contemporary constrained LLMs, which makes it worth the slight tedium. The ending is a bit sudden but resolves several things well. Worth a read if you need to laugh before you cry about AI.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher – I was hesitant about this one, given the cover and my general feelings about horror. Indeed, this book made me genuinely unsettled while also being absolutely compelling. As a retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher, you know it’s going to end badly for the Ushers. This isn’t the kind of book where you expect plot surprises; it’s the kind where you can see the horrible ending coming from a million miles off and you still remain glued to it like a trainwreck. If you’re up for skin-crawling body horror, it’s worth a read.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke – This will be my fourth review of Piranesi in only five years since it’s come out. So suffice to say, I think this book is here to stay as part of my life. I continue to discover new parts and pieces to it each time I read. This time, my focus was on what Clarke is saying about academia and the way it warps people, and how there might be other, better ways of deep knowing. (Should I write a paper on academia in speculative fiction? It seems to be trending…) Please, please, do yourself a favor and read this book. Preferably without knowing anything about where the book is going. You will be rewarded.

The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler – The concept of this book was interesting, but that’s really all it is: a concept. The book poses many interesting questions but provides no answers. No one acts, just reflects on past action. I expected characters to come into conflict over the morality of bringing back mammoths, the morality of getting funding by controlled harvesting of ivory to bring back mammoths, the morality of putting someone’s brain into a mammoth in order to . . . bring back mammoths. But no, everyone just seems to feel really ambiguous about things and then just continue on with the same course of life. I really just can’t recommend this one.

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo

The City in Glass by Nghi Vo – Another one that disappointed me, which I finished only because the audio book was so short and it keeps popping up on award finalist lists. This book fits into the apparently growing genre where an angel and a demon become uneasy friends, like Good Omens or When the Angels Left the Old Country. The problem was that this book is almost entirely vibes. For a book that’s advertised as building an epic fantasy city, everything remains very nebulous. It’s unclear what type of culture the city has–at various points I thought we were in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, maybe even Africa. There’s nothing consistent or real about the worldbuilding, which is only there to give the two main characters things to vibe over in their will-they-wont-they enemies-to-lovers plot. There are hints that there could be really cool magic or a world behind all this, but it’s left completely undeveloped. For me, this book was like one of those Japanese plastic food models in the window of a restaurant: perfectly suited from a distance, but lacking nourishment up close.

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett – This one is billed as a “fantasy Sherlock Holmes,” and the beginning chapter is almost too on the nose. Our detective is living for the thrill of the next mystery, plays a stringed instrument, and tries to get the Watson-character to buy them some drugs to cut through the boredom. Luckily, the book soon moves beyond this color-by-numbers rewrite and brings in some really interesting magical worldbuilding and details. I enjoyed the simultaneous unfolding of a strange world with the methodical unraveling of the mystery. The magic is sufficiently explained for the eventual way it is used in the payoff, but less clear than a Sanderson-style hard magic. I also really enjoyed how the Watson-character’s learning disability was incorporated into the plot, as well as the extra little twist about the detective at the end. This book works well as a standalone, but I will absolutely pick up the next in the series.

Nonfiction

Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities by Gregory M. Colon Semenza – Even though the references to keeping everything on paper make this book a bit dated, it’s still the most comprehensive guide I’ve found to seeking an academic career in the humanities. Much of what you find online about grad school is geared towards STEM or social science fields, which operate very differently than the humanities. The individual chapters can be read individually as needed, but they also operate together as a whole. I look forward to applying this approach in my future endeavors.

Abroad in Japan: Ten Years in the Land of the Rising Sun by Chris Broad – I didn’t realize how early in his career I had started follow Chris Broad’s YouTube channel. As a result, I already knew many of the stories of this book. Nonetheless, it was interesting to see how they fit together. However, you don’t really read this book for the content so much as Broad’s fantastic voice–and I mean that literally, since he narrates the audiobook in a slightly toned-down version of his YouTube persona. If you’re interested in the experience of living long-term as a foreigner in Japan, beyond the starry-eyed gushing of many travel books, this is the one you should pick up. Broad doesn’t shy away from the bad parts of life in Japan as well as the anime-fueled dream many of us have been sold. A really fun read before my own journey to Japan.

What I Read: May 2025

You know how sometimes past-you makes plans that sound fun, but present-you ends up resenting those plans? Yeah, that was May for me. May was the month of conferences, all of which I wanted to attend individually, but maybe not all within the same 30 days. Ah well, I’m sure future-me will look back and be happy we did it, even if it made May pretty insane.

On May 9-10, I attended Storymakers, a local conference mostly for fiction writers. I’ve never been able to justify paying for a ticket before as fiction is mostly a side hobby for me, but when my friend from Seattle told me that her book was a finalist for the Whitney Awards, I decided this was my year. The Storymakers atmosphere is every bit as fun and friendly as I had heard, and we had a great time. I met up with several of my favorite Mormon lit friends and generally stuffed my brain full of writing advice. I tried to focus mainly on panels about editing, publishing, and marketing, since I have a project I’m working on that involves these things. (Watch this space…)

Looking like goofballs while sitting at a table with Charlie Holmberg and Jeff Wheeler!

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The next weekend was the Faith and Knowledge Conference at the University of Utah. Lots of great advice given about finding employment in Mormon studies-related circles as well as the relationship between faith and scholarship. It was nice to be in a space where we could talk about our various perspectives on these things openly without worrying about judgement or providing context.

May be an image of 15 people
Faith and Knowledge Conference attendees!

I had a bye week to celebrate the end of school with my kids and then we promptly took off for a family vacation in Ephraim, UT, which was also the location of the AML-MSH joint conference the next weekend. Since AML has only done virtual conferences since the pandemic, it was amazing to see so many of these people whose writing I’ve read in person. Also exciting to have a whole two tracks with lots and lots of Mormon literature scholarship, instead of just a few crumbs. Michael Austin’s keynote was a call to action to further scholarship on lesser-known authors, which some of us are already scheming to answer.

Of course, I still had one more conference to go at this point, but I’ll leave the summary of MHA for my June reading post.

If reading about all these conferences has you ready to jump in on the action (and you live in Utah), you have a chance tomorrow night! I’ll be speaking on a panel about faith and imagine at the Compass gallery on Center Street in Provo on Wednesday, June 18th at 7 pm. More details here. Come say hi and maybe we’ll grab Rockwell Ice Cream’s new Brandon Sanderlanche flavor afterwards.

Now on to the book reviews! You’ll notice that I’m loading up on a lot of the Hugo nominees below. That’s a trend that will probably continue for a few months, though after reading so many brand-new books in a row, I do have an impulse to follow CS Lewis’s advice and grab a few old books as a palate cleanser.

Continue reading “What I Read: May 2025”

Severance and the Locus of Human Meaning: What Makes Life Worth Living?

I’m about halfway through season two of Severance, which means I’m two months or so away from being timely. It also means that everything I’m observing here could be overturned with a twist in the final episode. But nonetheless, I am diving in because I want to work through one reason the show is so emblematic of the modern condition.

Severance Season 2 Teaser Unveils More Mystery and New Faces - 4RO

If you’ve been living under a rock, the idea behind the Apple+ science fiction series Severance is that a new technology allows you to separate your work and home lives into two separate people. When you go to work, your work persona (“innie”) becomes conscious and does all the drudgery for you; when you leave the building, your brain snaps back to your “outie,” or your personal life.

**Spoilers through season 2, episode 6 of Severance below, though more general premise than plot**

Continue reading “Severance and the Locus of Human Meaning: What Makes Life Worth Living?”