Sue Burke’s most recent science fiction novel is Usurpation, the conclusion of the trilogy that began with Semiosis and Interference. She began writing professionally as a teenager, working for newspapers and magazines as a reporter and editor, and began writing fiction in 1995. She has published more than 40 short stories, along with essays, poetry, and translations from Spanish into English of short stories, novels, poetry, and historical works. Find out more at https://sueburke.site/
“You ever wish that fireworks were incredibly quiet and also didn’t disappear so quickly and also you could keep them in your home and also you could hold them in your hands? Because if so, I’d love to introduce you to … flowers.”
— Jonny Sun, author and illustrator
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By the way, here’s a review by Lola Robles of the Spanish edition of Semiosis (in Spanish).
Fantástikas: “Semiosis”, de Sue Burke
Galaxies by Barry N. Malzberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m not sure I can recommend this book to other readers. It’s like recommending cilantro or anchovies. Some people love them, others can’t stand them. I liked this novel, but it’s a niche piece, and you very reasonably might not.
The book is actually notes for a novel, not a novel, as Malzberg says right at the beginning. We learn a lot about the struggles of the author, who ponders what to include and what not, and how to approach various tropes and expectations. The book addresses issues like sex and death from a nervous 1970s perspective, returning to these issues from several angles. The science, however, which involves a black hole, was squishy even for its time.
Here is an example of the text:
“We are upon the conclusion and that conclusion, obviously, is open-ended. Cunningly it has been built into the construct from the very outset. It is a characteristic of a certain kind of well-structured fiction that it will lead toward a resolution which in retrospect may appear inevitable…”
Despite all these caveats, I found the conclusion satisfying. I’m glad I read this book. Maybe I found it interesting because I am a writer, and it dealt with many writerly concerns, handling them with wit. However, you may prefer a more conventional book, and I won’t blame you.
By the way, here’s a review of my novel Usurpation at Hidden Sci-Fi and Semiosis and Interference at C Gockel Writes.
Venus is the Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, and lust, among other things, and today is Valentine’s Day, so that makes this post somewhat well-timed.
The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is a plant that eats insects. Its leaves have red toothed lobes with a hinge at the midrib to snap shut around prey. But why is it called a Venus flytrap? Well, it’s named for the goddess, not the planet. (The planet is also named for the goddess, but that’s a different story.)
The plant, native to North and South Carolina, was first documented by European settlers in 1759 in a letter by the British colonial governor for North Carolina, Arthur Dobbs. Word of the discovery reached John Bartram, royal botanist to King George III for the North American Colonies. He was the first to send a specimen to England, calling it “tipitiwitchet” or “Tippity Twitchet” as slang for its supposed resemblance to female genitalia. Apparently he thought that was quite funny and made lots of jokes about it.
A less obviously crude-minded naturalist named John Ellis gave it the scientific name Dionaea muscipula. This translates from neo-Latin into English as “Daughter of Dione mousetrap.” (The daughter of the Greek goddess Dione was Aphrodite, whom the Romans called Venus.) Both the scientific name and the common name, it seems, are mere euphemisms for low-brow humor.
Anyway, happy Valentine’s Day. Bugs are good food for carnivorous plants, but for us humans, I recommend celebrating with chocolate.
Photo: Mosaic of Venus at the Makthar Museum in Tunisia.
From February 5 to 7, Barnes and Noble is offering discounts to B&N members and Premium members for pre-orders for all forthcoming print, ebook, and audio titles.
This includes the paperback edition of Usurpation, coming October 21, 2025!
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Meanwhile, you might enjoy the short story “Bodyhoppers” by Rocío Vega that I translated for the February 2025 issue of Clarkesworld Science Fiction & Fantasy Magazine. Read it here.
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Finally, the story I translated for Clarkesworld Magazine last year, “The Coffee Machine” by Celia Corral-Vázquez, is a finalist for Best Short Story of 2024. More information is here.
Alex Kingsley has interviewed me about the Semiosis trilogy for Interstellar Flight Magazine. You can read the interview here.
One of the questions: Would you trust Stevland if you lived on Pax?
Stevland is all alone, the last of his species. Even here on Earth, some plants are social creatures, just like humans. For humans, solitary confinement is torture, and Stevland suffers the same way. He has abandonment issues and other mental health problems, so although he means well and he has a moral compass, his deep-seated anxieties get in the way. And he knows, at least unconsciously, that if he loses his new community, his humans, he cannot survive, so he will do anything to keep them. Anything, even if it violates his moral compass.
The novel Usurpation discusses drop bears a lot: voracious carnivores originally from Cygni, a distant star system.
“Those definitely should not have been let loose on Earth because they didn’t just eat small animals, they’d attack human toddlers. I had friends who hunted drop bears, and I didn’t want to kill robots, but it was different for drop bears.” (Chapter 2)
“Foehn contacts Boreas and me. ‘I see a drop bear! You know what the fippokats are going to do!’” (Chapter 5)
Here’s the joke, per Drop bear – Wikipedia:
“The drop bear (sometimes dropbear) is a hoax in contemporary Australian folklore featuring a predatory, carnivorous version of the koala. This imaginary animal is commonly spoken about in tall tales designed to scare tourists. While koalas are typically docile herbivores (and are not bears), drop bears are described as unusually large and vicious marsupials that inhabit treetops and attack unsuspecting people (or other prey) that walk beneath them by dropping onto their heads from above.”
Learn more about the drop bear at CNN and at the Australian Museum.
The alien fauna mentioned in Usurpation also includes the tree octopus.
Sometimes I get bored and find ways to quietly entertain myself as I write. No apologies.
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I received an advance copy of this novel with an invitation to write a quote for its release. I love Tchaikovsky’s work, so of course I said yes.
I knew from the description that the story would involve an encounter with the dominant life-form living on a moon named Shroud — weird, wonderful life. Because that’s what Tchaikovsky is good at, right?
But as I read, I kept feeling doubt in a good way. How could life possibly exist on such an utterly inhospitable planet? How was Tchaikovsky going to pull this off? Well, he found a way.
Tchaikovsky explores worlds where no one else would dare to go, and he makes the unimaginable become believable with characters who grow to meet their challenges. As the story develops, survival becomes more desperate and necessary. This is hard-edged science fiction that never loses its soul.
And the ending of the novel is breathtaking
In other news, Jo Walton at Reactor Magazine had kind things to say about Usurpation:
“Third in the Semiosis series, don’t start here. Well, I suppose you could, it would probably stand alone reasonably well, but you should do yourself the favour of reading the first two because they’re terrific. All three books are very good, and I really liked this one. Sentient trees from another planet are on future Earth and are trying to deal with Earth’s problems, while still being alien trees. The alien POV is excellent. The future Earth is pretty grim, but overall this is a hopeful book with a lot of fascinating things going on at many levels. Sue Burke is doing really interesting things.”
The FanFiAddict website is back with TBRCon2025, an all-virtual sci-fi/fantasy/horror convention that will livestream from January 19 to 26. More than 150 authors, podcasters, bloggers, and booktubers will appear on the virtual stage for 25 livestream panels, 5 live podcasts and 2 RPG sessions.
TBRCon2025 is free to watch, available on YouTube, Bluesky, X, and Threads during convention week — or to re-watch on YouTube at your convenience.
I’ll be on the panel “Is Science Catching Up to What Was Once Sci-fi?” on Wednesday, January 22, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. CST, with Mary Robinette Kowal, Malka Older, and Wick Welker, moderated by Neil Williams. A lot has changed in recent years when it comes to technology. But are we at full sci-fi tech level yet?
You can watch it live on YouTube here:
Some other panels I want to see: What Makes a Great Prologue? – Artificial Intelligence in Sci-Fi Over the Years – Space Horror: Monsters in Zero Gravity – How Book Illustrations Come to Life – What Is the Future of Dystopian Sci-Fi? – What Writing Advice Do You Take and What Do You Leave Behind? – Sci-Fi Tropes That Need an Update – How to Market Through Email Newsletters: Do’s and Don’ts.
Written by award-winning author Cristina Jurado, ChloroPhilia tells the story of Kirmen. He’s different from the other inhabitants of the Cloister, whose walls protect them all from the endless storm ravaging Earth. As a result of the Doctor’s cruel experiments, his physical form is gradually evolving into something better fit for survival in the world outside. This singular coming-of-age story addresses life after an environmental disaster and collective madness, and ends with surprising triumph.
As a translator, I faced a particular challenge with the prologue and the closing section. I’ve translated Cristina before, and she writes beautifully. She poured her talent into prose soaring toward poetry that needed to be equally compelling in English. I did my best:
And behind it all was the roar of the swarm that was its body, millions of shrieks drowning in the fleshy throats of minute beings, a beautiful song made from the spark that lit their lives and that, doused forever, wove the music of the dead.
You can read an interview with the author at The Madrid Review: New Book From The Queen Of Spanish Sci Fi in English.
The novela was reviewed by the Fantasy-Hive as “a remarkable, powerful and disturbing novella that confirms Jurado as a key creative voice in speculative fiction.”
ChloroPhilia is on sale here or at your favorite bookseller.
New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention by Elizabeth Bear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Short stories are one of my favorite art forms, but some readers don’t seem to like them. Perhaps, in school, all the short stories they read were old, depressing, pedantic, and hard to parse. (But new, uplifting, entertaining, unperplexing short stories are written all the time.) Or perhaps, some readers don’t like them because unlike novels, short stories are too fast, too intense, and send readers back into the world a little breathless. (Is that a bad thing?) Or perhaps, readers just don’t hear about them as much as novels.
Now hear this: New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention is a great way to start your 2025 reading. It offers two dozen science fiction and fantasy short stories united by the idea of personal change. Themes include time travel, Greek myth, fairy tales, foreseen death, odd dystopias, programmed memory loss, and manufactured life. Many are quite short, and the tone varies from playful to horrific.
I enjoyed them all, like eating a box of chocolates or bento box, and was sometimes left a little breathless. The anthology was published by the Viable Paradise writing workshop 2023 cohort as a Kickstarter that was funded in less than 12 hours.
Semiosis