#Benjamin Rosenbaum

[plausible-fabulist]

So... have I mentioned I'm about to release a 450,000-word Jewish historical fantasy interactive fiction game? Here's an interview I did with my publisher, Choice of Games, about it.

[rhiandoesfandom]

Reading "The Unraveling" by Benjamin Rosenbaum and it's definitely interesting. Especially as someone who has studied gender and sexuality. The world he imagines is very interesting.

[exponentiate]

Only a few chapters in, but The Unraveling (Benjamin Rosenbaum) is killing me.

“It’s not that I think I’m very [other gender]-like, but I also don’t feel very [gender]-like.” (paraphrased)

I’m. suffering lmao

[rhetoricandlogic]

The Unraveling - Benjamin Rosenbaum

I'm pretty sure this book was intended to make A Statement - probably about gender roles and nonconformity, maybe about the wisdom of rebellious youth, I don't know. Unfortunately, the author got so deeply into building this ?future? world and its theoretically sort of human inhabitants that he (ve? ze?) never really got around to telling a story. After I'd finished it - mostly through dogged determination, surely not enjoyment - I discovered a glossary at the back. That might have helped make some sense out of it while I was reading; but by the time I got to it, I didn't even care enough to do more than glance.

Here are the things that can be said with some certainty about this tale: it's set in a future. Maybe ours, maybe not; it's hard to tell. The characters, with one exception whose exceptionality is never made clear, are humanoid - that is, they have arms and legs and faces. But in this future or whatever it is, they have developed the ability to not only alter their appearance on a whim - purple skin with flaming orange eyebrows aren't just for Thundercats anymore! - but also to have multiple (?cloned?) bodies, which all share the same consciousness. More or less.

And oh yes - gender has been completely redefined. And I do mean completely. Aside from one parent whose birthing apparatus is rather amazingly still a womb, cervix, and vagina, there are neither men nor women in this world. Instead, the two genders consist of Staids and Vails. Neither adheres to what we might recognize as 'masculine' or 'feminine', but gender roles seem more rigidly defined than our own era. Staids are apparently the custodians of the lore/knowledge/traditions of this culture; they pass it along via something called the Long Conversation, much as rabbis devote themselves to the Torah. Vails, on the other hand, are strictly forbidden from knowing anything about this Conversation, to the point where references to its obscure and complex commentaries cannot be spoken in their presence.

And then along come our heroes(heroines?) to shake everything up. Do they fall in love? It seems so, but then again, this seems somehow taboo. Do they get involved in some sort of artistic endeavour that changes everything? Well, the cover says so; but aside from an overly descriptive and rather impossible-sounding parade, we never learn much about that artistic statement. Instead, we get descriptions of designer genitals. We get names that are as silly as they are long, and never any hint of what the names mean. We get far too many whining, petulant arguments amongst Fift's parenting cohort - couples are no longer A Thing in the future, I guess; everyone lives in some variety of polycule. In short, we have absolutely nothing to serve as a touchstone, nothing familiar, nothing we might relate to other than the woes of young lovers.

How did this society get to be the way it is? Dunno. Why are Fift and Shria's actions so shocking? Because the author said so. Who is the alien, what makes them alien, how can anyone even tell when people are scarlet and silver and have beards and breasts? Ya got me, champ. Reading this book was like wading through a muddy bog with shoulder-high weeds on every side. It takes forever to get anywhere, and when you do, it looks no different from where you started. If there was an intent behind setting this in such a society, it got lost the first time someone took out a spoon for no reason we're ever allowed to know. If you subscribe to spoon theory, be advised it will take more of them than you may have to spare to make any sort of sense out of this one. I recommend giving it a miss.

[snapbookreviews]

Spring 2023 Behind the Scenes

This spring I read a wide range of genres, such as xianxia and Western fantasy, classic and classic-feeling literature, post-apocalyptic ttrpgs and more.

Soooo…… I have some big, exciting stuff coming up in the next few months. Patrons are aware, but it’s going to be impacting my reading habits pretty significantly, likely starting with the Summer 2023 quarterly reading post, which will cover June-August. I should also be able to announce it by then! In more relevant notes, I’m thinking I’m going to start having the substacks take a back seat, I…

[fellamarsh]

#3. The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum

"O person! O child of fate! Have you wondered if This is the World For You? Why not find out?"

In the far distant future, Fift Brulio Iraxis finds zirself caught in the middle of an art piece-turned-revolution, zir teenage struggles suddenly thrust to the forefront of zir rigid society. Torn between zir family's safety and staying true to zir feelings and zirself, whatever choices ze makes will ripple outward and effect zir entire world.

Take Karhide from Left Hand of Darkness, turn it into a circus, and shove it into a kaleidoscope, and you'll be close to the world of The Unraveling. Chock-a-block with new scifi terminology, neopronouns, and rapidly shifting perspectives (most characters have two or more bodies!), it can be a bit hard to wade into, but if you give it a chance it is an incredibly rewarding, deeply heartfelt read.

My Top Five Books of the Year

#5. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

I absolutely adored this book. The visuals, the environment, the dreamy quality to it all... the slow unraveling of the mystery of the House and its inhabitants... the metaphysical themes... Piranesi was haunting and exquisite and I highly recommend it. 

[sinceileftyoublog]

Jake Xerxes Fussell Live Show Review: 10/17, Empty Bottle, Chicago

Jake Xerxes Fussell

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Over the years, Jake Xerxes Fussell's repertoire and sound have expanded, though he's never lost sight of his exploratory ethos. On his self-titled debut and sophomore effort What in the Natural World, he introduced himself as a contemporary troubadour, an interpreter who used original arrangements to surface the universal meaning out of old songs. 2019's Out of Sight was his first record with a full band, 2022's Good and Green Again his first to combine traditional songs with wholly original compositions. In July, Fussell brought it all together on his debut album for Fat Possum, When I'm Called; it's an album featuring a murderer's row of collaborators and songs that Fussell constructed backwards, coming up with melodies and riffs before adapting them to folk songs that fit.

On When I'm Called, legends Fussell knew who may or may not have met each other, like cowboy artist Maestro Gaxiola and painter, musician, and folklorist Art Rosenbaum (a mentor of Fussell's who passed away in 2022), are intimate bedfellows. Fussell lifts from the public domain, Benjamin Britten, and found poetry on a scrap of paper. Returning are close collaborators like James Elkington, in the producer's chair and playing seemingly everything from synth to harmonica, as well as Joan Shelley, singing alongside Fussell's baritone on "Cuckoo!". Uniting with Fussell for the first time are guitar luminary Blake Mills, whose abstract tones nestle between Fussell's acoustic guitar and Elkington's pedal steel on "Going to Georgia", and Hunter Diamond, whose woodwinds pop up just when you need them most, like a consistent smiling face around the neighborhood. In general, on When I'm Called, more than ever, the band gets room to meander, to take in their surroundings.

Fussell & Ben Whiteley

How, then, would Fussell, who usually plays solo, adapt the arrangements not just to a live stage, but for a crowd who has had months to take in the recorded versions? Indeed, Thursday's show at the Empty Bottle featured the youngest crowd I've ever seen at a Fussell headlining show. Some of that, perhaps, had to do with the venue itself and the start time of his set (after 10 P.M.). But something tells me, at this point, people are less inclined to hear beloved old songs and more amped for Fussell specifically, the guitar player who picks bright-eyed on "Jump for Joy", the singer who belts, "Well, wake up woman, take your big leg off of mine," on "Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing on a Sweet Potato Vine?". (I went to get a beer at the bar as he sang, passing by a crowd member cackling, turning to their friend and declaring, "I love that line!") Well, for one, Fussell didn't play solo this time. He was always accompanied by bassist Ben Whiteley, who plays on When I'm Called. Whiteley's steady plucking eased us into "Michael Was Hearty", and his rhythms buoyed Fussell's chugging guitars on an unexpected, but great cover of Nick Lowe's new wave classic "I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass". As we were in Chicago, Elkington, too, joined Fussell on stage for a number of songs, providing contrasting guitar textures on "Cuckoo!" Even The Weather Station's Tamara Lindeman, all the way from Toronto, was in the crowd and came on for backing vocals.

Fussell

It's easy to say that what is usually a lonesome affair turned into a party, given that the number of people on stage at any given moment quadrupled from its usual number. The more I thought about it, though, whether it's four musicians crowding around each other or just Fussell perched on a stool, his shows are always communal. On Thursday, the most affecting and memorable moments of the night were spontaneous. Out of Sight's "Jubliee" started as a singalong and felt like a full-on hymnal towards the end, the crowd repeating, "Swing and turn, Jubilee / Live and learn, Jubilee," like it was a mantra of keeping-on. And then there was "Donkey Riding", a traditional song which does not (yet) have a studio version, inspiring the biggest, and somehow still most polite sing-and-clap-along of the night. The moment the crowd seemed to get a tad too rowdy, we shushed each other so we could hear one last instrumental flourish, one last guitar lick from the artist who continues to give us gifts we didn't even know we already had.

[victoriajanssen]

Nebula Award Finalists for 2024 works:

Nebula Award for Novel

Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory, Yaroslav Barsukov (Caezik SF & Fantasy) 

Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)

Asunder, Kerstin Hall (Tordotcom) 

A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)

The Book of Love, Kelly Link (Random House; Ad Astra UK)

Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia UK)

Nebula Award for Novella

The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom)

The Tusks of Extinction, Ray Nayler (Tordotcom)

Lost Ark Dreaming, Suyi Davies Okungbowa (Tordotcom)

Countess, Suzan Palumbo (ECW)

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, Sofia Samatar (Tordotcom)

The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock)

Nebula Award for Novelette

The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video, Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 5/24)

Katya Vasilievna and the Second Drowning of Baba Rechka, Christine Hanolsy (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 4/18/24)

Another Girl Under the Iron Bell, Angela Liu (Uncanny 9-10/24)

What Any Dead Thing Wants, Aimee Ogden (Psychopomp 2/24)

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being, A.W. Prihandita (Clarkesworld 11/24)

Joanna’s Bodies, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Psychopomp 7/1/24)

Loneliness Universe, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 5-6/24)

Nebula Award for Short Story

The Witch Trap, Jennifer Hudak (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 9/24)

Five Views of the Planet Tartarus, Rachael K. Jones (Lightspeed 1/24)

Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld 2/24)

Evan: A Remainder, Jordan Kurella (Reactor 1/31/24)

The V*mpire, PH Lee (Reactor 10/23/24)

We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read, Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed 5/24)

Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction

Daydreamer, Rob Cameron (Labyrinth Road)

Braided, Leah Cypess (Delacorte)

Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed, José Pablo Iriarte (Knopf)

Moonstorm, Yoon Ha Lee (Delacorte; Solaris UK)

Puzzleheart, Jenn Reese (Henry Holt)

The Young Necromancer’s Guide to Ghosts, Vanessa Ricci-Thode (self-published)

Nebula Award for Game Writing

A Death in Hyperspace, Stewart C Baker, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Isabel J. Kim, Sara S. Messenger, Naca Rat, Natalia Theodoridou, M. Darusha Wehm, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Infomancy.net)

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Hidetaka Miyazaki (From Software)

The Ghost and the Golem, Benjamin Rosenbaum (Choice of Games)

1000xRESIST, Remy Siu, Pinki Li, Conor Wylie (Fellow Traveller Games)

Pacific Drive, Karrie Shao, Paul Dean (Ironwood Studios)

Restore, Reflect, Retry, Natalia Theodoridou (Choice of Games)

Slay the Princess -- The Pristine Cut, Tony Howard-Arias, Abby Howard (Black Tabby Games)

Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast, Jay Dragon, M Veselak, Mercedes Acosta, Lillie J. Harris (Possum Creek Games)

Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

Doctor Who: "Dot and Bubble" by Russell T. Davies (BBC)

Dune: Part Two by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve (Warner Bros)

I Saw the TV Glow by Jane Schoenbrun (A24 Films LLC)

KAOS by Charlie Covell, Georgia Christou (Netflix)

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5 by Mike McMahan (Paramount+)

Wicked by Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox (Universal Pictures)

[choiceofgames]

“The Ghost and the Golem” and “Restore, Reflect, Retry” are Finalists for Best Game Writing in the 60th Annual Nebula Awards

We are thrilled to announce that The Ghost and the Golem, by Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Restore, Reflect, Retry by Natalia Theodoridou finalists for Best Game Writing in the 60th Annual Nebula Awards, and both games are on sale for 40% off until March 20th!

The Ghost and the Golem is a 450,000 word historical fantasy novel by Benjamin Rosenbaum. Can your magic amulet save your Jewish village from destruction? Uncover the truth and forge alliances with soldiers, bandits, anarchists, and demons!

Restore, Reflect, Retry is a 90,000 interactive horror novel by Natalia Theodoridou. You’ve played this game before. It’s a haunted game about a haunted game. You may not remember, but the game remembers you. I remember you.

To celebrate, we are also putting every previous Nebula Finalist game on sale:

The Bread Must Rise Vampire: The Masquerade—Sins of the Sires The Luminous Underground The Road to Canterbury The Magician’s Workshop Rent-A-Vice The Martian Job

Check out our Nebula Finalists bundle on Steam for an even bigger discount!

This is the seventh year that there has been a Nebula award for game writing—and the sixth year that Choice of Games authors have been finalists. Past Choice of Games Nebula finalists are: James Beamon and Stewart C. Baker for The Bread Must Rise, Natalia Theodoridou for Vampire: The Masquerade—Sins of the Sires and Rent-A-Vice, Phoebe Barton for The Luminous Underground, Kate Heartfield for The Road to Canterbury and The Magician’s Workshop, and M. Darusha Wehm for The Martian Job.

We also want to congratulate Choice of Games authors Stewart C. Baker, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Naca Rat, Natalia Theodoridou, and M. Darusha Wehm for being finalists this year for their writing on the game A Death in Hyperspace.

Since 1965, the Nebula Awards have been given annually to the best works of science fiction and fantasy published that year, as voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). The 60th Annual Nebula Awards ceremony will be streamed live during the 2025 Nebula Conference, June 7, 2025. Stay tuned for more!

[rhiandoesfandom]

Just finished the book I was reading, The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum and I have no idea how some science fiction authors just do a one shot book like that.

It ended sort of satisfyingly but some authors create worlds I want to see a million more stories in. If I were an author I don't know if I could move on from this amazing world I'd built.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played DREAM ASKEW / DREAM APART ?

Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum

Queer strife amid the apocalypse and Jewish fantasy of the shtetl. Two games about belonging outside belonging that use only tokens and are GM-less. No dice no masters, PbtA.

[lgbtqreads]

Hi! I’m working on a project at work, and we’re looking for books featuring nonbinary characters/characters who use neopronouns where their queerness isn’t a main focus of the book. Do you have any recs?

Hmm, I think In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu and The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley would fit that nicely, as would The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum, though maybe the latter is a little more gender identity-centric. I'll also throw The Lifeline Signal by RoAnna Sylver out there - it's technically the second in the series, set in the same locale as the first, but I don't think you need to have read the first one, seeing as they have different casts.

[exponentiate]

Thank you for articulating this; it’s something that bugs me in a lot of recent speculative fiction. Like it’s not even that your story has to be ABOUT queerness and oppression, but when people are touting a book as like “it’s a super fun story, it’s EXCITING, it’s QUEER,” and it manages to completely avoid talking about issues of identity AT ALL?? In this day and age?? I like space laser battles as much as the next guy, but your story’s not “queer” just because you picked one character to have a wife at home (not pictured) while she’s off doing space opera things, and another character to go through and change all the she/her pronouns to xe/xyr. Even the commonly-applied label “queernormative” feels very silly to me, like, is it queer or is it normative?

I feel like a sentiment growing in popularity is that queer people want stories were queerness is incidental, because they're tired of stories about struggling against oppression and want something more escapist. But I've been reading some speculative fiction recently where the queerness of characters is completely unremarked upon, and finding it deeply unsatisfying. It feels less like like escapism to me and more like a gaping hole in the worldbuilding. It's not an issue that the societies depicted are queer-neutral or queer-positive, it's that there is like nothing addressing what those societies think about sexuality, gender, and family systems at all. There's a lot of interesting ways you can write about third genders and same-sex societies/relationships in speculative culture and ignoring all of it entirely to plaster over a surface level modern queer culture veneer is just tragic, in my opinion

[aaronsrpgs]

A new episode of RTFM! @maxwellander and I continue our quest to find the cure for "D&D Brain." This time, our delicious medicine is Dream Askew/Dream Apart by Avery Alder and Benjamin Rosenbaum.

[annleckie]

Here to recommend The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum. Like, I think some of y'all would seriously enjoy it.

[jamesdavisnicoll]

The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum

Fift's society is very nearly a utopia, so why won't Fift stop silently complaining and accept the narrow role provided?