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SFWA has announced the Nebula finalists for work published in 2023, and James and I are thrilled and honoured to announce that The Bread Must Rise is on the ballot for the Nebula Award for Best Game Writing!

2024 Nebula Award for Best Game Writing Nominees

Titles below are reproduced in the same order they appear on the official announcement, which you can watch on SFWA’s YouTube channel.

The Bread Must Rise, Stewart C Baker, James Beamon (Choice of Games)

Alan Wake II, Sam Lake, Clay Murphy, Tyler Burton Smith, Sinikka Annala (Remedy Entertainment, Epic Games Publishing)

Ninefox Gambit: Machineries of Empire Roleplaying Game, Yoon Ha Lee, Marie Brennan (Android)

Dredge, Joel Mason (Black Salt Games, Team 17)Chants of Sennaar, Julien Moya, Thomas Panuel (Rundisc, Focus Entertainment)

Baldur’s Gate 3, Adam Smith, Adrienne Law, Baudelaire Welch, Chrystal Ding, Ella McConnell, Ine Van Hamme, Jan Van Dosselaer, John Corocran, Kevin VanOrd, Lawrence Schick, Martin Docherty, Rachel Quirke, Ruairí Moore, Sarah Baylus, Stephen Rooney, Swen Vincke (Larian Studios)

It’s super exciting to be appearing on the official ballot for this year’s Nebula award for Best Game Writing, and in such fine company.

I’m especially pleased to be sharing space on the larger Nebula ballot with friends like Rachael K. Jones, Vajra Chandrasekera, and SL Huang, among others! Check out the full list of finalists on the SFWA Blog.

About The Bread Must Rise

The Great Godstone Bake-off has arrived!

As a hapless baker deeply in debt, you finally have the opportunity to rise to fame and fortune! Under the tutelage of such famous chefs as Gordon Ramslayer, Tira Misu, and The Baladin, you will learn the arts of baking, breadcrafting, and dare you whisper it… necromancy?

The Bread Must Rise is a 450,000 word, text-only cosmic horror / fantasy / baking / comedy extravaganza written by James Beamon and Stewart C Baker and published by Choice of Games.

Play the first three chapters free

Special Choice of Games Sale

To celebrate the game’s nomination, our publisher is running a special sale for a limited time!

Check out most Choice of Games titles, including those that have been nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Game Writing or other awards, at a hefty discount of up to 40% off.

The sale runs until March 21st, 2024, on all major storefronts, including Steam, the App Store, Google Play, and the Choice of Games web store.

Not sure what to try out? Here are a few favourites from their long, long list of excellent titles:

Crème de la Crème

Climb to the very top of the class at your exclusive private school for socialites! Will you study hard, find a perfect match, or embrace scandal?

Play Crème de la Crème, by Hannah Powell-Smith

Fallen Hero: Retribution

Stay one step ahead of your past and build your future as Los Diablos’ greatest villain. Can you keep up the lies, or will you risk everything trusting the people you once called friends?

Play Fallen Hero: Retribution, by Malin Rydén

The Luminous Underground

Blast spirits out of a haunted subway system! Can your team defeat rival exterminators, shoddy gear, and City Hall?

Play The Luminous Underground, by Phoebe Barton

The Martian Job

Rob the first Martian casino and find out who really rules the planet! Crack a safe, break some hearts, start a revolution, or get rich beyond the stars!

Play The Martian Job, by M. Darusha Wehm

Rent-A-Vice

What doesn’t kill you…kills someone else, and leads you down an ethical rabbit hole. Can you do what’s right in a world where vice is a virtue?

Play Crème de la Crème, by Natalia Theodoridou

The Road to Canterbury

May the best story win! Enter the medieval world of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” where your journey, and the stories you tell, will change history.

Play The Road to Canterbury, by Kate Heartfield

Tale of Two Cranes

Fulfill your epic destiny in mythic ancient China! Lead armies, wield magic, and put an emperor on the throne – or become the emperor yourself!

Play Tale of Two Cranes, by Michelle Balaban and Stephanie Balaban

Teahouse of the Gods

Harness the qi energy of life itself to control body, mind, and environment! Will you use your power to save the world, or will corruption stain your soul?

Play Teahouse of the Gods, by Naca Rat

Jōi said: “Because imperial anthologies are used to flatter those of high rank and to grant favor to their lackeys, true skill in composition, elegant taste, and practice have become of secondary importance.”

Tonna, From a Frog at the Bottom of the Well, translated by Steven Carter (source link)

Welcome

This month I’m sharing some recently released stories I’ve enjoyed and some medieval-inspired synth. And (since those awards reading periods are in full swing) a tongue in cheek look at poets with very strong opinions about their peers.

Shitposting Poets

It’s probably no surprise that many poets have strong opinions about poetry. Sometimes, though, those opinions cross the line to straight-up disdain.

Okay. Sometimes they don’t “cross” it so much as “light it on fire and stomp on the ashes.”

That earlier quote is a great example.

Imperial anthologies were compiled at the order of the reigning Japanese emperor from the 10th to 14th centuries, and were intended to showcase poetic excellence and mastery. In reality, of course, influence and personal taste played just as much a role, as Tonna points out by including this anecdote in his advice book for younger waka poets.

Poetic shitposting is by no means restrained to early medieval Japan. Admittedly, it is often not very poetic.

• In a letter to a friend, Lord Byron called John Keats “trash” and urged that he be “flayed alive”
  
• Alice B. Toklas, in her autobiography, describes Gertrude Stein calling Ezra Pound a “village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.”
  
• Oscar Wilde (who I think everyone can agree was a fantastic shitposter) once said that “There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Alexander Pope.” (source obscure, as with many things Oscar Wilde said or supposedly said)

Music to Listen to: Tales Under the Oak

Stressed out by the very idea of poets making snarky comments about each other’s work?

Take a breather with the soothing sounds of The Toad Alchemy by German dungeonsynth group Tales Under the Oak. (With bonus hour-long audiobook about the toad kingdom included!)

You can listen to the album for free on YouTube courtesy of the artist, or buy a high-quality digital album on Bandcamp.

Recommended Reading

We’re only a couple of months into the new year, but there’s already an embarrassment of riches when it comes to great SFF stories to read.

I particularly enjoyed Isabel J Kim’s “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” in the February edition of Clarkesworld. LeGuin’s “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas” is one of those stories that I’m always down to engage with, and I thought the way Isabel approaches it was razor-sharp and timely (up to and including the digs at social media discourse). This one will definitely give you something to think about!

Speaking of razor-sharp and timely, vampire fans and people with an interest in equity work will love N. Romaine White’s “D.E.I. (Death, Eternity, and Inclusion)” in the winter edition of Fiyah Magazine.

If you’re in the mood for something short and funny, how about Aidan Doyle’s “The Royal Wizard’s Apprentice Explains the Prophecy of the Return of the Sorcerer King in Varying Levels of Complexity,” from Small Wonders? Aidan’s title game is clearly top notch, and the story it describes is just as excellent. (My cats are in no way responsible for this suggestion.)

Writing Update

I have two short fiction releases this month, if you’re into that sort of thing!

• “Companion Animals in Mahō Shōjo Kira Kira Sunlight” (original, 1484 words) – Out in this month’s Lightspeed Magazine, this story describes the thematic use of companion animals in a fictional animated series. Free to read or listen to online, this story is an homage to Sailor Moon and other magical girl anime that’s filled with subtle references. I had a blast writing this one, and I’m excited it’s out in the world at such a great market! (Content notes: violence against animals, abduction, suicidal ideation, grief)
• “A Difference of Opinion” (reprint, 4100 words) – First published in Kaleidotrope a couple of years back, this far-future space opera story about diplomacy and artificial intelligences is getting a print appearance in Flame Tree Publishing’s latest anthology, Learning to Be Human, where I’m sharing a ToC with P.A. Cornell, Yelena Crane, Nemma Wollenfang, Franz Kafka, Mary Shelley, and H.G. Wells (just to name a few). 

I’m still hard at work on my next full-length text game, and I’ve also being doing some scholarly research and writing related to libraries. Finally, I’ve had a couple of other stories accepted for publication, with both likely coming out sometime this year.

This is how it started: I livestreamed my latest painting, left it on display while I went to bed alone, and woke up in another universe.

“The Copenhagen Exhibitions” (source link)

Hi There!

I hope your new year is off to a good start.

I’ve been pretty busy with short story and game writing. Here’s an update on what I’ve been writing and reading, along with some music to enjoy.

The Copenhagen Exhibitions

My flash story “The Copenhagen Exhibitions” is available to read for free in the Quantum Shorts competition.

Quantum Shorts is a long-running competition where authors and film-makers create work inspired by quantum physics. I think quantum physics is fascinating, so I’ve entered it several times over the years.

My entry this year is about every SF author’s favourite quantum oddity: the idea that the universe splits into multiple universes with every decision we make. It’s also got romantic discovery and heartbreak! Which maybe shouldn’t have an exclamation mark after it, I guess.

You can read “The Copenhagen Exhibitions” online on the Quantum Shorts website.

Take a Journey with Ithya

This month’s musical recommendation is the YouTube channel of French illustrator and animator Dorian Cotterau, called Blue Turtle.

Dorian collects relaxing, inspiring, or adventurous (and free-to-reuse) music from around the web and uses it to create digital albums on YouTube.

Paired with illustrations like the one on the right, they make for great writing soundtracks. The one pictured here is called Sunset in the Mountains. 

Short Story on the BSFA Longlist

I’m thrilled and agog to have a short story on the BSFA Awards Longlist for the first time!

My story “Six Ways to Get Past the Shadow Shogun’s Goons and One Thing to Do When You Get There,” which appeared last May in the final issue of Galaxy’s Edge, has made the list for best short fiction.

The BSFA awards use a three-tiered voting process, whereby anything with at least one vote appears on the longlist. Longlist entries are then voted on by the BSFA membership to create the shortlist, which is voted on by anyone with a membership to Eastercon (an annual British SFF convention). 

I don’t have any expectations of appearing on the shortlist considering all the other great work in the short story category, but it’s nice to know that somebody liked my work enough to consider it worthy of an award.

You can read or listen to my story at Escape Pod (the Galaxy’s Edge link no longer works) and check out all the other great work on the longlist on the BSFA Longlist web page.

What I’ve Been Reading

I lately finished Alix E. Harrow’s latest novel, Starling House. 

If you like dark fairy tales, living houses, metafiction¹ or protagonists who use sarcasm to hide their gooey, vulnerable center, you might enjoy it as much as I did!

Next up I’m starting on Anita Harris Satkunananthan’s Watermyth, an epic story of mermaids, storytelling, and war. What I’ve read so far is engaging and immersive, so I’m really looking forward to diving in more. (Get it? Mermaids? Diving?? I’ll show myself out.)

The ebook for Watermyth is half price until the end of February, so now’s a great time to pick it up in your preferred ebook storefront! 

1. Starling House has footnotes!

Gigantea: Age of Rot update

My new choicescript game is one thing that’s been taking up my time these days.

I have most of the first chapter finished now, a little bit ahead of schedule, and I also wrote some kind of fun minigames to include in a festival scene in the chapter. (I always enjoyed the festival scenes in old-school JRPGs like Chrono Trigger and Wild Arms.)

If you want to try one out, why not see if you can solve a sliding puzzle or play a round of Spirits and Gods?

Earlier this month, Manawaker Studios released a podcast of an original flash fiction story I wrote called “Four Scenes from Proxima b.” The story, as Addison Smith noted, is an example of extreme worldbuilding.

Rather than following a single character through a single event, like most flash and short fiction does, it follows an entire planetary civilization (or at least, parts of it) through an apocalypse. I originally wrote the story to a prompt about philosophy in fiction, and the inciting incident is similar to Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem and L.X. Beckett’s Gamechanger: What would happen if we suddenly found out we weren’t alone in the universe?

After that, though, it’s really more about the decisions we make in times of crisis, and how we decide to move through the world.

If you’re into audio, I highly recommend listening to the excellent audio version over at Manawaker Studios, narrated by CB Droege. Otherwise, read on to explore…

Four Scenes from Proxima b

1. Intercept

Anxa is at the WorldMind, reporting on a meeting of the world’s most eminent women, men, and xan. It’s an important assignment, one she’s worked for since she was a broodling with big dreams.

A member from the Lem Anarchy speaks, xyr voice insistent: “…caused by nothing more nor less than inroads into sacred Lem space, Consolidator Kao!”

Kao, a commander from the steppes to the north, flares his nostrils in a show of contempt. “All we have done,” he says, “is installed a station for our peace-keepers.”

Anxa knows she should repeat this exchange, but she’s tired. Why can’t these self-important fools see that they’re doing more harm than good?

The mics cut out, and a xan in a white jacket ascends to a podium at the room’s center. “Stop this bickering,” xey say. “Our long-range detectors have picked up transmissions. They are from people — people just like us, half the galaxy away!”

The massive screens that line the room light up behind xem. They are strange, these ‘people’ — all flesh and hair, incisors and nails. They march across the screen in grainy black and white. They argue, they strike at one another. They kill.

The floor of the WorldMind erupts into chaos, members speaking out of turn, shouting to be heard over one another’s arguments.

Anxa snaps her fingers, getting the camera-xan’s attention. “Keep filming!” she mouths, then turns on what she thinks of as her ‘reporting voice,’ thick and gravely to mimic the xan poet-singers centuries before, expertly calibrated to catch the attention.

“This is t’Ly Anxa on the floor of the WorldMind,” she says, “where we’ve just received a warning from beyond the stars.”

2. Ruin

Kel hobbles through the haze that hangs over the once-proud city of Hab, xyr hands clenched tight on the shopping trolley xey took from a store, years ago at the start of the troubles.

The wheels squeak, but the trolley still serves its purpose: to hold food xey have scrounged to give nourishment for xyr broodlings. Survival for xyr family. Hope for xyr future.

A staccato burst of gunfire sounds from several streets ahead, and Kel quivers, fighting the temptation to clench xyr earflaps tight. Noise means a fight, yes, and danger, but is also a warning, and without that xey are dead. Xey turn down a side alley, speed xyr steps.

“No! Please, I’m begging you!”

The shout comes from same direction as the gunfire. It’s far enough away that the speaker can’t mean xem, but the despair in that voice makes Kel’s stomachs twist.

“You can’t —  You — “

The speaker breaks into sobs, and Kel presses xyr eyes closed until xey see stars. Xyr broodmother would be ashamed if xey abandoned someone. Xyr own family’s future just as bleak.

Xey push the trolley behind a loose wall panel, settle xyr stomachs with three deep breaths, and break into a run.

3. Superposition

Somebody has lit the library on fire.

Flames leap from hexagonal holding cube to hexagonal holding cube with all the hunger of the triple suns, turning centuries of learning into ash and melted plasteel.

Panli saves what she can: treatises on chemistry. Physics proceedings. Vids of famous plays, children’s rhymes, countless stills of art from a score of dead and dying civilizations. She is too drained to cry, and focuses her energies on keeping the books secured as she staggers down the stairs with a commandeered book cart.

At the bottom of the staircase, the cart tips sideways, dumping precious knowledge across the floor in a clattering that rings loud against the dim roar of flames. Panli retrieves some, fingers shaking. She should have brought a satchel, a strap to tie them down.

She doesn’t see the attacker before he slams one foot into her shoulder, shoving her the rest of the way to the floor. He has a gun, and his face has been painted in a grotesque mockery of alien features.

 His eyes have nothing in them of compassion, nothing of a possible future. “Unbeliever,” he whispers. “Heretic.”

“Please,” she says. “All I want is to save the things I love. To give others hope.”

The man raises his gun, and Panli scarcely dares to breathe, lest she knock the future free from its precipice — to ruin or hope? to life or death? to freedom or captivity?

“Please.“

At last the man bows his head, and when he looks up there is something like shame in his eyes. “Go,” he snarls, lowering his gun. “Go, before they kill us both.”

Panli holds her treasures close, and she does not look back. Not even when the screaming starts.

4. Contemplation

The seekers’ fast is built upon an outcropping at a canyon’s edge, its walls clinging to the jagged rock at an angle as though at any moment might tumble downward. It is mid-morning, and the largest sun’s heat has not yet cleared the mist from the canyon, so that it appears an abyss, endless and unchanging.

In the garden at the centre of the fast, three seekers sit in quiet conversation.

“But Locutor,” one says. “Why did Panli not encourage the man to come with her? They could have saved more knowledge between them. Helped more people.”

The locutor shrugs. “It was a long time ago,” xe says. “And without her choice, the fast may never have been founded. The light and knowledge we carry may have been lost for good.”

The first speaker harrumphs. “If it were me,” she mutters…

The locutor smiles. Xe remembers being new to seekerdom xemself. What it felt like to be certain the answers were there for the taking, rather than endless mirages in the mist that wreathe the walls of the fast. “We can never know the truth of others’ actions,” xe says, not unkindly. “But, my children, that does not change what we can do: Think deeply. Act well. Guide each other as we watch the stars’ wheeling path — and our own.”

This is the fifty-seventh time Ship has tried to stop Zander from entering the cellar.

That’s the opening line to my new story in Lightspeed Magazine, “The Spread of Space and Endless Devastation.”

Time loop stories and other fun tropes

I’ve written time loop stories (and one time loop game) before, and several of them have even been published.

“The Spread of Space” focuses on a couple of other tropes I find myself returning to — either as a reader or an author — time and time again:

• Found families
• Ships/AIs with feelings
• Parenting feels
• Learning to let go, even when it hurts

It’s also got an ensemble cast, with a crew of colourful characters — something I’m particularly amused about in a 1200 word story!

We’ve got Kala, a historian with a tendency for self-insertion. Eun-ja, who is obsessed with dramas. Iope, the crew’s well-intended heckler. And of course there’s Zander, essentially the kind of person who feels he has to keep everyone else on track and is perpetually tired as a result.

The story follows the crew (and, of course, Ship!) as they examine a newly rediscovered asteroid out on the edge of known space, complete with a mysterious ancient ruin that seems to have been inhabited all too recently and weird alien writing.

But what’s in the cellar? Why does Zander keep going down there? What does it all have to do with time loop stories?

For the answer to those questions and more, you’ll have to go read the story! It’s free to read on the Lightspeed website.

I’ve had two new stories out in May and June, so to celebrate their publication I’m here with yet another blog post about things that interest me and probably nobody else!

First off, the stories!

Two New Short Stories

Debuting in May over at Haven Speculative, I’m pleased to present “The Calligrapher’s Granddaughter,” a short story set in early modern Japan. It’s got magic, calligraphy, snotty samurai, probably too much detail about kanji radicals, and found family feels. (Content notes for off-screen child abandonment and child endangerment, plus animal use.)

Next, appropriately published in June, is “The Nature of Stones” in All Worlds Wayfarer’s delightful Prismatic Dreams anthology. Billing itself as a “kaleidoscope of queer speculative fiction,” the anthology has 30 stories featuring queer characters in a variety of genres. My story is about childbirth, mythic astronomy (???), and unhealthy relationships. All set in a world with no concept of gender.

Please consider purchasing a copy of either or both of these great publications if you can afford it, and thank you for supporting small publishers! :)

What is Early Modern Japan?

Early Modern Japan roughly coincides with the period between 1580 and 1868. The Edo Period, with its strong central rule, relative peace, and cultural unification, is emblematic of Japan’s early modern period, to the extent that most historians do not use the term “early modern.”

Myths and Realities of Early Modern Japan

Only one of my new stories is set in early modern Japan, but it’s certainly a time and a place that I return to again and again for inspiration and as a setting for my short stories.

Even if you don’t know much about Japan, you’ve probably seen some kind of popular media set in this time period. Seven Samurai, anybody? Naruto? Shogun?

In fact, early modern Japan is so popular a destination for popular media—both domestically and abroad—that people unfamiliar with Japanese history often claim that Japan has always been a closed-off land of honor-obsessed samurai where nothing ever changed, the social class you were born into was inescapable, and rich lords sat in their tea houses as the shogun plotted against them.

That’s actually not true at all. Like most nations, Japan has a long and fascinating existence with many changes. The early modern period (generally dated between the late 1500s to the late 1800s) amounts to a decent but not outsized portion of its roughly 1400-year recorded history.

For instance, there was no shogun in the Heian period (794-1185) and samurai didn’t even exist as a class or a concept until sometime in the 12th century. Likewise, Japan certainly wasn’t a “closed” country until the Tokugawa shogunate enacted a policy limiting contact with the outside world in the 1630s, and even then it was impossible to totally block out foreign influences.

By the early modern period, however, genre movie staples like samurai and ninja were very much on stage (if only in the popular imagination), and rigid social structures with a powerful centralized government were well entrenched. Despite the somewhat tyrannical rule of the Tokugawa, though–or perhaps because of it–early modern Japan was also a fairly peaceful period in Japanese history, with less outright militancy than some other periods.

All of this is a very oversimplified description of Japanese history, probably to the point where it’s almost as inaccurate as American movies about samurai. (Okay, hopefully it’s not that inaccurate.)

If you’re interested in learning more about Japan during the rule of the Tokugawa, The Tokugawa World is a recent collection of scholarly essays exploring everything from the military to comic books in the time period. (That link will take you to WorldCat, where you can find it in a library near you. Yay, libraries!)

If a whole scholarly book sounds exhausting, the Wikipedia article on Edo period Japan isn’t terrible, either–just don’t tell anybody I suggested it or my librarian street cred will be shot!

“It’s insulting,” the Intelligence drone they’d been assigned to was saying, now. “Yes, we asked you to come here; yes, we asked to join the Federation. But that doesn’t give you the right to treat us like… like…” The drone’s iridescent carapace shuddered slightly, and their speakers gave a remarkably convincing approximation of sputtering with rage. “Like computers!”

From “A Difference of Opinion,” Kaleidotrope, April 2022

The spring 2022 issue of Kaleidotrope includes my story “A Difference of Opinion,” a short space opera in the tradition of Ursula Le Guin’s Hain Cycle and Iain M. Banks’s Culture series. The story features self-aware AI (with AI children!), far-flung federations with an interest in collecting different polities, and a take on the “battle of wits” scene from The Princess Bride. (Yes, that’s right: it’s got AI, space opera, AND poison!)

Although the term space opera started out as a pejorative one for low-quality science fiction, the subgenre is now long established as a force to be reckoned with. Especially in the last five or six years, space opera has been been having “a moment.” Books like Ancillary Justice, Gideon the Ninth and A Memory Called Empire (and their sequels), the Murderbot novellas (and a novel, now!), and all sorts of other great stories have received critical attention in the way of award nominations or wins.

If you’ve read some of those titles and are looking for more, I’ve pulled together a list of some of my favourite space opera settings ranging from classic titles by LeGuin to newer stories by equally amazing authors.

1: Aliette de Bodard’s Universe of Xuya

Aliette de Bodard’s Universe of Xuya is one of my absolute favourite settings regardless of genre and sub-genre. It interrogates

It has the delicious mix of high-stakes interplanetary conflict and intimate personal stakes that’s one of space opera’s most defining elements, all set in “Confucian galactic empires of Vietnamese and Chinese inspiration.”

If you’re interested in Classical Chinese and Vietnamese culture, or—frankly—just like amazing storytelling with memorable characters, lushly and lovingly described, you’ve definitely got to pick up some of Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya books and stories.

The Tea Master and the Detective, the Nebula-award winning novella that de Bodard describes as a “gender-swapped space opera Sherlock Holmes retelling,” is a great place to start your exploration.

2: Macross Seven

Okay, stick with me here. If you’re not into anime, you’ve probably never even seen that word before. But if you like your space opera with a healthy dose of romantic melodrama and “not taking itself entirely seriously,” you’ll likely appreciate this one.

The Macross franchise of anime (and manga, and games, and…) is well-known among anime fans for a few things, including love triangles, the integration of music into space battles, missile barrages that paint the sky with explosions, and fighter planes that transform into giant, humanoid robots. While its subgenre is technically mecha (“giant robot”) rather than space opera as such, the conflicts are often inter-cultural and inter-species as well as personal, so for my purposes I’m just going to go with it.

There are many different Macross series, but my personal favourite is Macross 7—probably also the one that takes itself the least seriously.

Macross 7 follows pacifist rock musician Nekki Basara as he embarks on a one-man quest to stop war and spread love by… flying a giant transforming space fighter jet / robot that seems to be powered by guitar.

Oh, also he fires speaker pods into enemy fighters and sings at them.

It may be goofy, but it’s a lot of fun. Give it a chance, and soon you too will be shouting 「俺の歌を聴けー！」 (listen to my song!)

Sadly, the DVDs are out of production and it’s not available for streaming, so you’ll have to do some work to find copies of this one.

3: Merc Fenn Wolfmoor’s Sun Lords of the Principality

Merc Fenn Wolfmoor is a Nebula award finalist whose work always moves me. Their Sun Lords of the Principality story series is no different.

Consisting of five stories published in Lightspeed Magazine, the Sun Lords series follows warriors, poets, heroes, villains, and gods through galaxy-sized conflicts that threaten to consume everything and everyone they touch.

Fair warning, some of these stories are super dark—at times, even unrelentingly brutal. But even at their grimmest, they have an inescapable core of humanity and empathy that gives them a warm place in my library. If you’ve ever asked yourself how you can possibly keep going with the world as messed up as it is, give these a try.

Also, I heartily recommend checking out some of Merc’s other work! Their latest publication, “Hero’s Choice“, is a humorous fantasy novelette that sounds like it’s just crying out for an isekai anime adaptation. Or for a broader taste of their work, try Friends for Robots, a recent short story collection.

4: Ursula K. LeGuin’s Hainish Cycle

Okay, Ursula K. LeGuin probably doesn’t need much of an introduction. With decades of acclaim under her belt at the time of her death in 2018, most people know of her work either from A Wizard of Earthsea or sci-fi novels like The Left Hand of Darkness. It’s the latter we’ll concern ourselves with here.

Le Guin’s science fiction stories usually (but not always) fall into what is referred to as the Hainish Cycle (although the author herself didn’t like the term “cycle”), a series which all deal with a spacefaring civilization called the Ekumen. The Ekumen, and its main planet, Hain, is a kind of Star Trek like galaxy-spanning confederation of planets dedicated to inclusivity and cooperation. Most of the stories and novels in the series deal with members of the Ekumen called mobiles, who go to newly-admitted or isolated planets and observe (while usually also agitating for membership and Hainish values).

A lot of SF fans have read The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, but my favourites set on Hain are The Telling, set on a suddenly-capitalist-consumerist planet where the old way of doing things still lives on under the surface, and “Five Ways to Forgiveness,” five connected stories about slavery and social change. If you want something shorter and more fun, try “A Fisherman of the Inland Sea,” a short story that does some fun things with FTL travel.

If you can afford it, I recommend splurging on a copy of the Library of America’s Hainish Novels and Stories boxed set, a collection of Ursula K. LeGuin’s space opera. The two books contain all the stories and novels that feature Hain, including “Five Ways to Forgiveness,” which hasn’t previously been published in full. Also, they’re absolutely gorgeous to look at!

Bonus Story: “How They Name the Ships”

So there you have it: four space opera settings I enjoy!

I don’t have a fully-fledged universe of my own that spans dozens of published stories—yet. But if you like “A Difference of Opinion,” it does take place in the same setting as “How They Name the Ships,” published in 2020 in Frozen Wavelets. That one is only about 750 words, so it’s a quick read.

As the title suggests, it’s all about the power of names and naming—a theme that’s particularly important in a lot of LeGuin’s fiction, but one that also shows up a lot in other space operas. If you’re interested in the topic, you can see what I wrote about some of my favourite ship names from other space opera series in an older blog post: “Ship Names, Naming, and Identity in Space Opera.”