SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases discussion

This is a thread where members may share anything, from personal to global news. Just keep it polite

My news is that I tried AI-backed text-to-speech for my books and it is notably better than what I tried before. Still, there are unnatural pauses in some sentences, but overall it is a step above my earlier attempts. If anyone is interested I may share a GitHub link to python program that does it (or actually MS Edge does, but the program creates multiple parallel requests and finalizes creating M4B audio-file)

I just read UESI by Karl Drinkwater, brand new novella out. It was ... surprising! Not really like the other books apart from Ruabon (which had AI droid chats). And yet, it pulled me in and kept making me think and wonder what the AIs were really up to! This is clever stuff and worth rereading once you have your thoughts in order. (The photobomb rabbit makes sense in terms of the plot but I can't explain as it might be a spoiler.) Anyone else read it? (I couldn't find a better thread for "currently reading/read" but if there is one I apologise and will delete this from ehre!)

Fiona wrote: "I just read UESI by Karl Drinkwater, brand new novella out. It was ... surprising! "

I guess I've never read anything by Karl Drinkwater. What is the most prominent SFF work by him to try?

Oleksandr wrote: "My news is that I tried AI-backed text-to-speech for my books and it is notably better than what I tried before. Still, there are unnatural pauses in some sentences, but overall it is a step above ..."

So, you are not just an economist, you also are a programmer of a text-to-speech program????

My husband listens to a lot of books, and he could beta test. He cannot offer any technical advice, but he could tell you what he thinks.

Kateblue wrote: "So, you are not just an economist, you also are a programmer of a text-to-speech program????
"

My programming skills are much more primitive (I'm still trying to make a web scrapping program to collect data I need as an economist), but I sometimes find good stuff at GitHub.

So, if your husband wants, he can install Python on his computer (ask youtube for instructions) and then follow instructions to install any (or both):

1. https://github.com/aedocw/epub2tts-edge - this is my preferred program, it uses the fact that Microsoft Edge has text-to-speech and sends it multiple paragraphs to voice. The text I usually prepare in calibre, because while this program can make epub to txt and then txt to voice, it often throws errors, so I make txt in calibre, and clean them in Notepad (just deleting stuff like contents)

2. there is an alternative https://github.com/santinic/audiblez - it works locally on your PC, directly with epub, but at least in my experiment it throws error at the last stage (converting wv files to m4b) which isn't a problem, my player plays wv as well

Lists for 2026 hugo eligible novels and novellas have been created, but are a bit thin ATM:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2...

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2...

I tend to use them as a target list later in the year; meanwhile I've dumped some stuff on them temporarily simply to add them (I can always unvote them later if they're crap).

MH wrote: "Lists for 2026 hugo eligible novels and novellas have been created, but are a bit thin ATM:
"

Thanks!

Oops more books on my TBR
How did I miss 3(!!) Kingfishers!

I always recommend bookmarking the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom as well! This is the 2026 one: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

2025 Hugo awards:

https://file770.com/2025-hugo-awards/

The Tainted Cup and The Tusks of Extinction won novel and novella. Good choices, but sad it wasn't Tchaikovsky's year (maybe next year with Shroud...)

This year I was a bit busy irl, therefore I haven't created the thread on how we should vote and haven't voted! Shame on me

I figured Tusks would win for novella. I really did not like it. Too preachy if I recall (but maybe I don't). I am surprised Bennett won for novel because I think he's not as good as other authors.

There two Tchaikovsky books running against each other--that probably split the vote. Kiss of death in movie nominations, usually, also.

I am glad that The Ministry of Time didn't win. It was way inferior when compared to the others, IMHO. And then I thought The Tainted Cup was the next lowest. Can't believe I actually read them all. For me a tossup between the other 4--all EXTREMELY well written, which I didn't really think Tainted was. I am not a fan of Bennett writing, though. It seems ponderous. I have DNF'ed several of his

I also was surprised by Bennett's win - I did like his book a lot, but it from the start looks like a series start, while usually the strongest novels are standalone (there are quite a few exceptions to this rule)

The only Bennett I’ve read was City of Stairs a number of years ago, one of my experiments with audiobooks that I never actually finished. I’ll check this one out but I’m well back in the library queue. I liked The Tusks of Extinction a lot but I think I would have put The Butcher of the Forest ahead of it.

I was hoping for either Tchaikovsky or Bennett, because I didn't think the others stood up to that quality. As more of a fantasy, I would've preferred Bennett's book winning the Nebula, as I feel that field was pretty weak, with AT taking the Hugo, preferably for Alien Clay. I agree with Stephen on The Butcher of the Forest.

I really liked Tainted, I’m glad it won but I do think Alien Clay was a better book. It was a weaker cohort this year, but it’s kinda a trend I think we have all noticed.

Oleksandr wrote: "I also was surprised by Bennett's win - I did like his book a lot, but it from the start looks like a series start, while usually the strongest novels are standalone..."

Looked like, but it managed to also be a complete story, rather than just setup - a vibe they also manage with book 2.

I am also in Team "Alien Clay was a beter book", but "The Tainted Cup" was not unworthy.

Also: two Tchaikovsky's only "splits the vote" if people do not understand preferential voting (here in Aotearoa we're getting our triennial reminder on this, at least for those of us who live in STV jurisdictions)

The stats are out, if anyone wants to tease meaning out of the vote distribution. To me it looks like “The Tainted Cup” was pretty dominant in the novel category.

MH wrote: "if people do not understand preferential voting."

Yes, this can be a problem. In early July there was a vote for Polish Hugo analog and Crossroads of Ravens won. However, Poles unlike the Hugo fans, have a reading group that I guess currently over 50% of all votes and after the results are out, they discuss all nominees in detail. And the majority say that this book was mostly their second choice

There is voting stats https://seattlein2025.org/wp-content/...

and it seems that from the start, Clay got much more votes than Model, so even summing votes for two of them, they still weren't the best (ofc that could have changed in consecutive rounds)

And also, Service Model fans didn't really strongly prefer Alien Clay over the other top contenders.

Which makes sense - they're very different styles of story, despite being by the same author.