The Calculating Stars is an excellent book.

The Hugo award finalists have been announced.

It seems like it'd make sense to have a thread to point out this list and to discuss any of them.

One interesting thing is that Archive of Our Own (the website) is a finalist for the Related Work category. It's nice to see the award-giving people recognize fandom websites as important.

I haven't read most of the things on this list (I hadn't even heard of most of them, and also grad school is hard on reading time), but:

1) Space Opera is a really good and funny book, and I'd recommend. The basic premise is humans need to fight for their survival by getting better than last in ... Space Eurovision.
2) I've already plugged the Laundry Files at length, so I'll not repeat myself
3) The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat got plugged here a few months ago, was well-liked, and pretty good. It's nice to see it nominated.
4) A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies is a very good (and somewhat heavy) story I read today. Judging by the reaction in the Discord, I'd suggest folks take a few minutes to go read this (if they can).

- Tomash

I got it for Christmas and read it in a couple of days. For a book that starts with a meteor strike taking out Washington DC and most of the Eastern Seaboard, and deals intimately with all manner of prejudice (it is the 1950s, after all), it's surprisingly... wholesome, is the best word I can come up with. It would be very easy for that premise to go all DARKNESS -- NO PARENTS, but Kowal resists the temptation. That doesn't mean she doesn't do justice to the fact that '50s America was super prejudiced in so many ways - but she does it in a way that doesn't make me hate every single character in there.

I think part of the reason is that she doesn't take the route of 'it's Institutional, so we can't change it', but rather treats institutional prejudice as something that can be changed, and by individuals. Yes, it takes work - a lot of work, a lot of pain - but it can be done.

hS