#intergalactic mixtape

[heyheyrenay]

Issue 62 of Intergalactic Mixtape is out, featuring:

a podcast about Sunshine by Robin McKinley!

an essay from The Lord of the Rings recaps by Abigail Nussbaum (she is one of many doing a re-read/analysis this year)

various book lists, including Book Riot's best science fiction of the 21st century (so far)

links to some of the things I saw this week, like the Stardew Valley crochet book? I would go into battle for Concerned Ape, truly.

art recs

[heyheyrenay]

Intergalactic Mixtape #32

Essay recs from this issue:

Anatomy of a Sex Scene: Heated Rivalry Edition

everyone HATES a negative review

Hollywood is Dead. Long Live Hollywood.

[heyheyrenay]

Intergalactic Mixtape #22

Intergalactic Mixtape is out and this week: a ton of The Murderbot Diaries headcanons I love from users right here on tumblr dot com (y'all are so creative and wonderful), SFF reviews, the normal grab bag of SFF happenings, and a call for folks to share their favorite SFF read in September.

[heyheyrenay]

Issue 63 of Intergalactic Mixtape is out, featuring:

Cassandra Khaw reading guide: choose your level of cannibalism

huge list of organized labor in science fiction

a video about the difference between fanfic and tribute anthologies; upon thinking about it there’s three anthologies I want some publisher to greenlight immediately

Clair Obscur feelings

book recs

[heyheyrenay]

Issue 61 of Intergalactic Mixtape is out, featuring:

excellent essays, plus one video essay that maybe rewired my brain?

reviews of other SFF titles going around

July book releases

lots of SFF short fiction recs

art recs from Bluesky

[heyheyrenay]

The latest issue of Intergalactic Mixtape is out, featuring news about:

the Le Guin Prize finalists

hella reviews of those finalists

my favorite essays of the week

WSFS/Hugo Award woes

lots of reviews of other SFF titles

SFF book and short fiction rec lists

[heyheyrenay]

Intergalactic Mixtape #34. :)

(Turns out I was smart to limit how many reviews one person could have listed per week, because some of these reviewers are prolific.)

[heyheyrenay]

From May - December I shared approximately 750 media reviews via Intergalactic Mixtape, which means I probably read over 1500 reviews this year. I don't link to every review I read because that would get out of hand (I actually had to limit reviews in each issue because I saw how easy it would be for me to obsess and then burn out). Fan/hobbyist review culture is very much alive and kicking outside the bookish social sites (which have their own culture).

Once I knew how many reviews I linked to, I wanted to know which books had the most reviews. Which books were catching my eye over and over via their reviews from among the people I follow? Luckily, I track everything (like a nerd) and I have these numbers.

Four Reviews

Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin

Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher

The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

The Nameless Land by Kate Elliott

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older

Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston

Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce

Red City by Marie Lu

Slow Gods by Claire North

Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell

Spread Me by Sarah Gailey

The Summer War by Naomi Novik

The Two Lies of Faven Sythe by Megan E. O'Keefe

These Memories Do Not Belong to Us by Yiming Ma

Uncertain Sons and Other Stories by Thomas Ha

The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes

Five Reviews

Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim, translated by Anton Hur

The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig

The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher

Six Reviews

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai

A Song of Legends Lost by M. H. Ayinde

When There Are Wolves Again by E. J. Swift

A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

Seven Reviews

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill

The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott

Eight Reviews

The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab

Cinder House by Freya Marske

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Nine + Reviews

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (9)

The Everlasting by Alix E Harrow (14)

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (13)

Katabasis by R.F Kuang (16)

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (11)

There's not much to learn from this data, because the way I collected it was so hapzard. No controls! No rules just vibes! My main takeaway is that I'm not as interested in books by white men, and therefore, don't read many reviews about their work unless they're nominated for an SFF award that I follow (Wiswell and Bennett were both nominated for the Hugo Award). Martin Cahill is the outlier here because his novella was covered by several reviewers I follow closely.

Another thing is that people who write about their reading can shift the tide of a book: I watched The Everlasting go from a late release title at the end of October with a few people excited to a book I see people hand reccing in comment threads all over, cross platforms. That's still fall book season, but it's easier to get lost closer to the end of the year because of all the holidays, end of school obligations, and family time. But it didn't! Because people discovered it and then yapped about/wrote a review/pitched an essay/recced it to a pal.

My recs from this list: The Witch Roads and The Raven Scholar, because those are the two that I've read, even though I own a ton of these. :P

Anyway, 2026 will be fun because I'll have a whole year of data, instead of just data from May - December. Maybe next year I can track how often a book is mentioned in reviews I share over time.