The Pitfalls of the Strong Female Character

Posted by Augur Blog
On July 31, 2019

By Jorie Rao I’m not like other girls. I wear a leather jacket. I look perfect when I’m kicking butt. I like cars and weapons. I’m independent, yet soft enough that I don’t outshine men. I am the Strong Female Character. Or at least this is the way some writers represent strength in a female […]

15 Badass Fantasy Characters Who Aren’t Cis Men

Posted by Augur Blog
On July 24, 2019

By Mado, Lawrence, Kerrie and Anna The fantasy genre is rife with cis-male characters. Over the course of the genre’s history, fantasy has amassed plenty of Dude—capital “D”—badass heroes. In our opinion, that’s quite enough, thank you very much. Here are 15 badass characters we love who are not Dudes. Ronica Vestrit Liveship Trilogy by […]

The City in Time: A Review of What We See in the Smoke

Posted by Augur Blog
On June 19, 2019

Reviewed by Catherine Lu Although the same city in different time periods can be unrecognizable, Ben Berman Ghan’s Toronto in What We See in the Smoke has kept some street names and locations even as the physical place moved from Earth in 2016 to Janus in 3036. There are seventeen short stories in this collection, […]

Magic vs. Reality: The Totally Logical Guide to Magic Systems

Posted by Augur Blog
On June 7, 2019

By Jorie Rao I love the idea of magic so much that every time I pass by an odd looking tree or old piece of furniture, I touch it just in case it is a portal to another realm or a magical artifact that will endow me with powers. Hey, you never know, right? Growing […]

Gods and Disorders in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater

Posted by Augur Blog
On June 5, 2019

By Anna Bendiy Ada, the protagonist in Akwaeke Emezi’s debut novel, Freshwater, is born “with one foot on the other side.” And as the hypnotic chorus of “We” comes to tell us, this means she will go mad. What follows is an intense and brutal journey of a woman who struggles to find her footing […]

Relatable Heroes: Minority Representation in Genre Fiction

Posted by Augur Blog
On May 29, 2019

By Radhika Tyagi Of the thirty-nine books I read in 2018, eight were written by people of color, eleven were written by women, fourteen featured female protagonists, and fifteen featured minority protagonists (that’s almost forty percent!). While I actively seek out books written by and about women and minorities, the growing availability of these books […]

This Little Everything: Trauma’s Persistent Presence in Natalia Hero’s Hum

Posted by Augur Blog
On May 24, 2019

Reviewed by Kate Finegan The hummingbird in Natalia Hero’s debut novel, Hum, is persistent, inescapable, an ever-present reminder of what the narrator has endured, even when she doubts her own experience. In reliving that night, trying to remember if she said “No” or only meant to, her thoughts are cut short. She “can’t stay with […]

Beautiful and Challenging Work: A Conversation on Speculative Poetry, Part 3

Posted by Augur Blog
On May 22, 2019

By Terese Mason Pierre This is the final part of Augur’s blog series on speculative poetry. I wanted to talk to the poetry editors of speculative lit magazines about their thoughts on this kind of work. First, we discussed what made a poem speculative. Then, we spoke about the kinds of speculative poetry we liked […]

Larissa Lai’s “Rachel” and Cyborg Identity

Posted by Augur Blog
On May 17, 2019

By Ben Berman Ghan Larissa Lai’s short story “Rachel” is a brilliant blended retelling of both Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) and Ridley Scott’s film adaptation Blade Runner (1982). It operates as a sort of mutated replicant text of its source material, becoming what post-humanist Donna Haraway, whom Lai quotes […]

Witchcraft and Matrix Glitches: A Conversation on Speculative Poetry, Part 2

Posted by Augur Blog
On May 15, 2019

By Terese Mason Pierre In Part 1 of this series, the poetry editors of Strange Horizons (Romie Stott), FIYAH (Brandon O’Brien) and I talked about what we thought made poems speculative. The conversation shed light on our personal and professional experiences with this amazing kind of literature. Here, we’ll move into what we value about […]