The Crown Prince of Jupiter Cover Reveal, Recent Favorites, and Forthcoming Work
Cover Reveal for How the Crown Prince of Jupiter Undid the Universe, or, the Full Fruit of Love’s Full Folly
One of the cool things about publishing a story with tordotcom is that they do full cover designers for everything, even their short stories. For my forthcoming story “How the Crown Prince of Jupiter Undid the Universe, or, the Full Fruit of Love’s Fully Folly,” Bill Mayer did this absolutely amazing cover, which 100% captures the vibes of the story.
(I’m 90% sure that the Jupiter and Sun depicting on this image are actually to scale, which makes it even cooler. Note that in the story the Crown Prince of Jupiter is actually a microscopic being of metallic hydrogen, not an old-fashioned gentleman with Jupiter for a head… though maybe he should be.)
It’s just a lovely cover, and I’m really excited for the story’s release on October 12th.
Some writing I’ve been enjoying lately
I recently finished Second Spear by Kerstin Hall, the second book in her Mkalis cycle (along with The Border Keeper, which I mentioned in a previous newsletter). It’s a wonderful book, a weird character study, and a chance to view the phantasmagoria of Mkalis through the eyes of a local rather than a stranger. I grew quite attached to Tyn which brings me to the problem with the book. The problem with the book is that it is the most recent release in the cycle, so now I have to wait for the next one, which is nearly impossible.
I just read If Not, Winter, Anne Carson’s translation of all extant Sappho fragments. It’s an excellent translation, and does some very cool structural things to show the reader all of the ambiguous characters, missing pieces, and other document problems that conventional translation practice tries to hide. It’s really exciting for me to see this showcased as part of the translation, since it’s so integral to the modern experience of working with ancient texts. (I don’t have experience working with Greek texts, but I have worked some with Classical Chinese texts which can have similar difficulties.) Also, just an excellent piece of writing, as one would expect from Anne Carson.
I am extremely late to this party, but Carmen Maria Machado’s memoir The Dream House is as good as everyone says it is, if not moreso. Despite being a literary memoir, it is also incredibly fantastical, in the way that all stories of interpersonal abuse are necessarily fantastical and particularly are all necessarily fairy tales. She’s absolutely aware of this necessity as well, and throughout the story adds a footnote every time that a fairy tale motif emerges from the true-life experiences.
I have so much more I want to say about this, but it will probably wait until I write an essay about Tales of the Great Sweet Sea and my relationship to the fairy tale canon.
Forthcoming stories in October
I have two stories coming out in October: How the Crown Prince of Jupiter Undid the Universe, or, the Full Fruit of Love’s Full Folly will be out on tor.com October 12th, and The Tragic Fate of the City of O-Rashad will be out in Lightspeed at some point during the month. I’ll write to let you know about both pieces when they come out (although I might combine the post if they’re close together in time.)