2026 Philip K. Dick Award Nominee: OUTLAW PLANET

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Here’s the second of my posts reviewing the nominees for the 2026 Philip K. Dick Award. A reminder–the awards are made by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and will be presented at Norwescon‘s annual conference on April 3, 2026.

The Nominees

Outlaw Planet by M. R. Carey (Orbit)

Find it HERE.

In this New Weird/Neo-Western, sentient animals (the Wise Peoples) have taken over the world. Other animals (understock) are just. . .animals. Kind of like how Goofy is a talking dog but he, a dog, has a dog, Pluto, who is just a dog. (Wait–I promised I wouldn’t talk about Disney. . .) Humans, known as Pugfaces, are outcasts congregating in clans resembling Native American tribes. But the rest of the characters in this far-future vision of the U.S. are right out of Owen Wister’s The Virginian, crossed with the dark and often gothic humor of the Coen brothers’ 2018 film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs–except they’re animals–with a touch of China Mieville’s The Iron Council thrown in. Thronging the pages are wolves, bears, birds, prairie dogs, you name it. Prim dog schoolmarm Elizabeth from the east heads west by stagecoach and then by katy wagon. (Wagon pulled by a katydid. A large one.) Gets held up by murderous bandit (bear). Ends up in a two-horse (er. . katydid) town at the end of the middle of nowhere. During a plot development that parallels the U.S. Civil War pretty directly (but with animals), prim Elizabeth evolves into Dog-Bitch Bess, the fearsome renegade.

Going against the usual grain of talking animal stories, there is no cutesy stuff in this novel. Nothing twee about this one. It’s not all grim and serious, though. There are jokes. For example, the mayor, a wolf, is described as having a smile “three parts avuncular to two parts blow-your-house down.” Mostly, though, the whole thing is told totally straight-faced.

Okay, I’m lying. That’s just what PART of the book is about. Interwoven with with Bess’s story, a series of field reports from a completely different set of characters inhabiting what seems to be a completely different world starts changing the narrative. It’s pretty jarring. This second narrative takes a completely different tone. The characters are completely different kinds of characters. the whole genre is completely different–hard military SF. The world the author builds is completely different. The contrast with the talking-animals-out-west story is shocking.

Yet as the novel moves forward, the reader begins to realize how ingeniously the author weaves these two disparate story lines together. I doubt many writers could bring something like this off, and Carey does it, brilliantly. I am in awe of his skill. I’m going to have to read other books of his to see if he does anything similar–he is a new author for me. That’s what I love about these lists–a regular reader like me, no particular expertise in the genre, finds many new and delightful books and authors to treasure.

In retrospect, I see clues from the very beginning of the animal narrative that point to the emergence and development of the second story line. Bess’s encounter with one of the Pug-faces at one of the mysterious dream-towers that dot the landscape is one. Another is all the chatter about the Precursors and their prized relics, especially a Precursor weapon that appears early in the book.

This was a fun book to read, and quite thought-provoking. In many ways, it is a cautionary tale. But don’t think Orwell and Animal Farm. This animal book is very different. No THIS ANIMAL = THIS KIND OF HUMAN, or not directly. Actually, I’ve always found Animal Farm kind of ham-handed (bad pun) in its satire. Carey’s novel is much subtler and cuts, in my opinion, much deeper.

NEXT UP: Casual by Koji A. Dae (Tenebrous Press)

2026 Philip K. Dick Award Nominee SUNWARD, by William Alexander: a review

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Here’s my first post reviewing the nominees for the 2026 Philip K. Dick Award. A reminder–the awards are made by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and will be presented at Norwescon‘s annual conference on April 3, 2026.

The Nominees

Sunward, William Alexander, Saga Press

cover of the science fiction novel Sunward by William Alexander
Find out more HERE.

This novel is what you might call “cozy SF.” The cozy subgenre is having a moment these days. HERE is a great explanation. William Alexander is well-known as a children’s author. Here, he translates his engaging vision to an adult SF readership. The book’s afterword tells us it originated as a short story. Then it morphed into this short novel.

Sunward is a whimsical and heartwarming tale of found family, the human fear of robots (Meat vs. Machine), and Newton’s First Law of Motion. Also the nobility of the postal service. It reads a bit like a children’s book, which makes sense, given its author. I found it fun, but a bit too twee. That’s just me. You may love it. People have compared it to the fascinating novels of Becky Chambers and Martha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries. (The book’s marketing copy compares it to Ursula LeGuin. No way. Unless you’re thinking of Catwings, I guess.)

The plot is intricate and engaging. In the far future, the main station on Luna has been destroyed–by robots? The captain of a postal service space ship is the unassuming daughter of the Moon queen, which makes her a moon princess. She has a bureaucrat brother with a stick up his hoo-ha, but Captain Tova has no political ambitions of her own. She just wants to keep peacefully delivering the mail and fostering baby robots so they become socialized enough to fulfill their functions. And no, she does not aspire to advancement in the postal service. The top-rung people carrying the top-secret messages too often get themselves killed.

Then hysteria over the unproven robot conspiracy to blow up Luna puts the captain’s latest charge, an exceptionally bright and promising robot named Agatha Panza von Sparkles, at risk of having her whole personality wiped. “Captain Mom” is determined to save her current baby robot and all of her other far-flung robot fosters. Meanwhile, a flotilla of religious zealots is converging on the sun, there’s a conspiracy involving a dead body, and a robot production of Twelfth Night wows the crowd. Did I mention a talking parrot and a crazy pirate hat? Captain Moon Princess Mom finds herself in the thick of it.

Sunward really is a cute, fun, brisk read. And I love Twelfth Night, so there’s that. Does Alexander’s novel fulfill the mission of the Philip K. Dick Award–to honor the best science fiction paperback original published during the award year? Does it honor the legacy of Philip K. Dick, who has been compared to Thomas Pynchon and Franz Kafka? You tell me.

Speculative Fiction Awards Season Coming Up!

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Every year around this time, I start getting notifications about the major speculative fiction awards and their lists of nominees. Reading through these short-lists of nominees is an excellent way to discover some great new books, often by authors you either don’t know or know you should know.

In previous years, I’ve reviewed the short-listed novels for the Nebula and Hugo Awards, the two most well-known speculative fiction awards with the longest history–and then two others. I’ve read and reviewed the short-listed novels of the Locus Award (a problem because there’s too much there, and they include horror, which I don’t read). I’ve read the short list several years running of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and I’ve always found that list an excellent source of books I want to read. Last year, I included the World Fantasy Award.

One more piece of information about these awards posts: with a few exceptions, I only read nominated novels. The awards nominations include so much other wonderful stuff–short fiction, poetry, movies, more. But this blog is MOSTLY about novels, and novels are long. Even though I’m a fast reader, it takes me a while to read them all. And I don’t review any novel I haven’t read, cover to cover. So I stick (mostly) to novels.

This year I plan to review the 2026 short-listed Best Novel nominees for:

  • The Philip K. Dick Award, sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society. This list is new to me this year–nominees already announced, award to be presented at Norwescon‘s annual conference in Seattle, April 3, 2026
  • The Nebula Awards, as always–nominees to be listed on March 15, award to be presented at the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association) annual conference in Chicago, June 3-7
  • The Hugo Awards, as always–nominations close on March 28, 2026, award to be presented at 2026 Worldcon (LACon V), Aug. 27-31
  • The World Fantasy Awards, as I did last year–nominations close on April 20, 2026, award to be presented at The World Fantasy Convention in Oakland, CA, Oct. 22-27

Since The Philip K. Dick Award is coming up fairly soon, and first, I am reviewing the short-listed novels in the next few weeks. They are:

About the Philip K. Dick Award

Named in honor of SF great Philip K. Dick, the nominees are selected by the Philadelphia SF Club, and the award is hosted and presented at Norwescon’s annual meeting.

Some of these books are long! If you want to read the nominees ahead of the award, get reading!

Next up: My review of William Alexander’s Sunward.

WARNING: Since the advent of ChatGPT and other AI “tools” for “writers,” scammers have been flooding book-buying channels with AI-slop “books.” Beware. In the case of a book meant to provide information, AI-generated books can actually hurt you by providing false, hallucinated information. For example, an AI foraging guide to wild plants can actually kill you by misidentifying poisonous plants.

But what about regular books? What about novels? They sock you between the eyes with bad generic writing. And they are almost always a cash grab by lazy posers out to make a buck. Your buck.

Here is an excellent guide to identifying and avoiding AI-generated books: https://www.kentonlibrary.org/blogs/post/buyer-beware-identifying-ai-slop-books/ As always, when in doubt–ask a librarian. They are the human beings who KNOW and best of all, KNOW HOW TO FIND OUT.

Here’s my promise. This blog will never use AI to “write” any of its content. Just today, I read a blog article that was so bad, I was sure it must have been generated by AI. It seems to have been written by an actual person. So–no guarantees! I, an actual human, apologize in advance (don’t you hate that horrible canned phrase?) for any bad writing you might see here.

But readers! Keep yourself safe from AI. Your body, and also your brain cells and eyeballs, will thank you.