Hello, my little space elevators! In today’s round-up of recent sci-fi and fantasy links, I have updates to share about the Locus Award finalists, a new Animorphs adaptation helmed by Ryan Coogler, and a new story from Anjali Sachdeva. Plus, I’m really curious—would you wear an invisibility cloak?
My SFF reads for this week are A Song of Legends Lost by M. H. Ayinde and The Inn at the Foot of Mount Vengeance by Chiara Bullen. Also, check out the cover reveals for The Thrice-Bound Fool by Christopher Buehlman and Bigfoot Confidential by Jasmine Kuliasha.
Ryan Coogler to Produce an Animorphs TV Series Reboot
Just a few weeks ago, it was announced that Academy Award winner Ryan Coogler is rebooting The X-Files. Now, the news has also been shared that he will be producing a reboot of another sci-fi classic franchise: Animorphs.
The middle grade series was created by Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant. It’s about a group of teenagers who have an encounter with an alien and later discover they have the ability to change into different animals. They have to use their powers to fight an alien invasion.
Animorphs was first adapted into a show that ran on Nickelodeon for two seasons, from 1998 to 2000. Coogler’s reboot is in early development at Disney+. According to Entertainment Weekly, “The Testaments and The Summer I Turned Pretty scribe Bayan Wolcott has been attached to write and executive produce the series for 20th Television. Proximity Media’s Simone Harris, vice president and head of TV, and Dezi Gallegos, director of TV development, will also oversee the project.”
The show’s official logline reads, “Animorphs follows a group of teenagers who uncover a hidden threat lurking beneath their everyday lives, all while juggling relationships, curfews, and the chaos of high school.”
Imagine if Animorphs and The X-Files morphed! And the only animal Mulder could change into was a fox? Waaaaait, what if everyone except Mulder could morph into a fox??! I obviously need to write for this show.
The 2026 Locus Finalists Have Been Announced!
Congratulations to all the finalists for the 2026 Locus Awards! They are an annual set of awards voted on by readers of Locus magazine. The winners will be announced on May 30, 2026, in a ceremony with MCs Sarah Gailey and Maggie Tokuda-Hall, and guests of honor Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, and Nnedi Okorafor.
There are 17 categories, including best horror novel, best science fiction novel, best fantasy novel, and best novella.
Finalists include Luminous by Silvia Park, The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas, Slow Gods by Claire North, Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders, Starstrike by Yoon Ha Lee, Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou, and The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran and translated by Gene Png.
Read the New Short Story “Chimera” from Anjali Sachdeva!
Holy cats, was I ever excited when I learned there was a new short story out from Anjali Sachdeva. Her 2018 collection, All the Names They Used for God, is one of my favorite books! IT’S SO GOOD. (Seriously, go read it right now. I’ll wait here.) (Never mind, I’m gonna go read it again.)
In her new story, “Chimera,” a mother is watching a reality show where contestants create genetically modified plants and animals to win challenges, while also dealing with day-to-day stuff, like talking to her kids on the phone and thinking about Thanksgiving. You can read an excerpt below and the whole story at Uncanny Magazine! (After that, read an interview with Anjali Sachdeva.)
Savita has never liked Thanksgiving. The ostentatiousness of it, the excess of foods dripping in fat and sugar, of eating until you felt ready to burst, never sat well with her. When the kids were little they would beg for the traditional American meal—just once, Ma—but she refused. Instead, she sat them down to dishes of daal and subji and butter chicken as if it were any other day. She knew they cadged leftovers from their school friends, hunkered over in other mothers’ kitchens lapping up reheated mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce: So be it. As they got older she learned to make her peace with the day as a time they’d all be together, even if she didn’t like the celebration itself. A day when even the stingiest of employers would grant a vacation, when the schools and colleges were closed, and she could ask everyone to make their way back home for the weekend. That was good while it lasted.
Now, with the holiday three weeks away, she finds herself descending into the pall that grips her every year. Without really meaning to she will spend less and less time with John, leave him at the breakfast table to do the crossword alone or slip down to the coffee shop at the corner and nurse a cup of their bitter dark roast for an hour or more. She turned sixty-five in March and decided it was time to try more new things if she didn’t want to get old before her time. For the most part she has done well with it, learning knitting and Thai cooking and a smattering of Spanish. But since November started she hasn’t wanted to do much more than sit cocooned in blankets and watch television on her laptop in the guest room, grinding through the hours until she feels tired enough to sleep.
Tonight she is watching Chimera, a reality show where contestants create genetically modified plants and animals to meet a variety of challenges. It’s a standard elimination-style competition, painfully formulaic, but she’s already watched enough shows devoted to contestants finding love or making clothes or baking increasingly elaborate cupcakes; why not this? Halfway through the opening credits Meera calls, and Savita turns the sound down and talks to her, watching half-heartedly as a host and a trio of judges make their way onto the screen, followed by the contestants. Most of them wear the marks of their profession on their bodies. They sport custom-colored eyes or stripes of lizard skin across their limbs, colonies of decorative fungus or vines of flowers growing through their hair. Only one appears totally unmarked, a tall, brown-skinned man named Jay with swooping cheekbones and wide-set eyes. He looks South Indian, perhaps, or Sri Lankan, but there’s something in his features that is unplaceable. Handsome, though, without all the glitter and fuss.
“What have you been up to this week?” Meera says.
“Oh, I don’t know. The usual.”
And to close…
Check out what Issac Asimov thought about 1984 by George Orwell.
Okay, star bits, now take the knowledge you have learned here today and use it for good, not evil. If you want to know more about books, I talk about books pretty much nonstop (when I’m not reading them), and you can hear me say lots of adjectives about them on the BR podcast All the Books! and on Instagram.
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