We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
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2014 Hugo Nominee Ballot: Best Novel
Reading Time
I feel like this is one of those categories where no matter what I do, I’ll always miss something. 2013 wasn’t a huge reading year for me, and that means there are just too many bloody novels I didn’t have time to get to. Thankfully, I got to read some exceptional books, even if they are only 1% of the things published in sf/f in 2013.
So without further delay, here’s what I’ve chosen:
The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord
If there’s one thing to be said about this book, it’s this: it sure doesn’t pull any punches with its central conceit. Right at the start, an entire people is nearly wiped off the proverbial map, with remnants of the population scrounging to figure out how to survive in a dwindling gene pool. What follows is a fascinating examination of genetics, cultural clash, and…love? I loved it. Paul Weimer loved it. You will, too (or else I’ll cry).
Our interview on The Skiffy and Fanty Show.
Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson
I’m biased. I know. But Sister Mine is the kind of urban fantasy that will keep me coming back for more every single time. Hopkinson’s characters are richly developed and beautiful in their eccentricities. I also loved her attempt to incorporate the orishas of African “myth” into a modern setting, particularly as it assigned semi-divine status to the main character and her sister.
Our interview on The Skiffy and Fanty Show.
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes
Remember when Zoo City was the coolest thing Lauren Beukes had published? Then she released The Shining Girls and destroyed our minds forever. I loved Beukes’ use of time travel and the pov of a serial killer to explore mortality and psychosis; attentive readers will discover all kinds of unique connections between the various details, too. If you haven’t read it yet, then you’re missing out.
Our interview on The Skiffy and Fanty Show.
The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar
In my humble opinion, this is the best sf/f book of 2013. Tidhar’s prose style, historical depth, and unique take on “superheroes” or “superpowers” absolutely blew me away when I read it earlier this year. There’s something haunting about this particular work, much like Osama (2011). If Tidhar keeps it up, I’m going to have to dedicate an entire college-level course to his work…
Our interview on The Skiffy and Fanty Show.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
I imagine this is the one book everyone expects to make it to the final ballot. And it deserves to be there, too. While sf has previously played with gender in ways similar to Leckie’s take, there’s something refreshing about Ancillary Justice. Maybe it’s the unique take on empire or the protagonist’s past as part of a “collective” or simply the immediacy with which Leckie destabilizes the gender paradigms in the first chapter…whatever it is that makes this book so compelling, I loved it.
Our interview on The Skiffy and Fanty Show.
Now what am I missing?
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A Reading List of Dystopian Fiction and Relevant Texts (Apropos of Nothing in Particular)
Why would someone make a list of important and interesting works of dystopian fiction? Or a suggested reading list of works that are relevant to those dystopian works? There is absolutely no reason other than raw interest. There’s nothing going on to compel this. There is nothing in particular one making such a list would hope you’d learn. The lists below are not an exhaustive list. There are bound to be texts I have forgotten or texts you think folks should read that are not listed. Feel free to make your own list and tell me about it OR leave a comment. I’ll add things I’ve missed! Anywhoodles. Here goes:
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Duke’s Best EDM Tracks of 2024
And so it came to pass that I finished up my annual Best of EDM [Insert Year Here] lists. I used to do these on Spotify before switching to Tidal, and I continued doing them on Tidal because I listen to an absurd amount of EDM and like keeping track of the tunes I love the most. Below, you will find a Tidal playlist that should be public. You can listen to the first 50 tracks right here, but the full playlist is available on Tidal proper (which has a free version just like Spotify does). For whatever reason, the embedded playlist breaks the page, and so I’ve opted to link to it here and at the bottom of this post. Embeds are weird. Or you can pull songs into your preferred listening app. It’s up to you. Some caveats before we begin:
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2025: The Year of Something
We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
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