So, this has been an exhausting week in every sense of the word. This past weekend, my partner and I were in Huntsville again, this time to finalize final arrangements after his mother passed away earlier last week. We actually made it home by mid-week, but we’re really only just now getting more or less recovered and settled back in at home, partly because we’ve ended up adopting his mother’s cat, Isabelle, and it’s taking her a while to get settled. The bad news is that we’re not entirely done with Huntsville. We’re still going to have to go back in a couple of weeks for at least another day or two in order to finish going through his mom’s house. The good news is that that should be about it, and life should soon be pretty much back to normal (plus cat).

Unfortunately, this has made for another profoundly unproductive week. I haven’t even managed to finish my usual Game of Thrones recap, though I do plan to have it finished before this week’s episode airs. I’ll also be back to live/drunk-tweeting the episode this week. Sadly, last week it was all we could do to use our cell data to stream the show to where we were camping in Huntsville.

Finally, I should have something approaching a normal book reviewing schedule from here on out. I’ve got several reviews nearly finished, and I’ve already made a decent start on my summer reading list. Now I just need to get caught up on writing, which will be happening soon. I actually expect this week to be a good one for productivity, as I don’t have a ton else to do for the first time in a long while. On the bright side, though I didn’t get any real writing done this week, I did do a good deal of reading, including internet reading.

This week marks the 200th anniversary of the dream that inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. There’s a writing contest, judged by Elizabeth Bear, being held to celebrate, and there’s never a bad time to reflect upon the influence of Shelley’s novel and its continuing relevance.

In sad news this week, Lois Duncan has passed away at age 82. I don’t know anyone of my generation who isn’t at least passingly familiar with her work, which has functioned as an entry point to genre for teens for many years.

The finalists for this year’s John W. Campbell Memorial Award have been announced.

Nalo Hopkinson announced an altogether new award, the Lemonade Award, “an annual kindness award to recognize five people and groups who in the previous year have done something that makes positive change in science fiction community.”

Joe Sherry continues his Hugo reading at Nerds of a Feather. This week he rated the Best Novel finalists.

Feminist Frequency broke down the gender balance of the games showcased at this year’s E3. It’s not encouraging. Which isn’t surprising, but still.

Carrie Fisher is getting an advice column over at The Guardian.

The Toast finally tells us what it would be like if Oscar Isaac was your boyfriend.

There’s a brand new Laura Mvula album, and it’s incredible, obviously.

The Mary Sue interviewed Kameron Hurley.

Sofia Samatar was interviewed over at the Bookslinger.

This week marked the release of Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit, which I haven’t gotten around to quite yet, but is one of my most anticipated new releases of 2016. Lee has been making the rounds of the SFF blogosphere to promote the book, and it’s done nothing but whet my appetite for it.

• Yoon Ha Lee guest post at Terribleminds: 5 Things I Learned While Writing Ninefox Gambit
• SFF in Conversation at the Book Smugglers: Yoon Ha Lee on Being Trans
• The Big Idea: Yoon Ha Lee
• Yoon Ha Lee at the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog: Better Sci-Fi Through Gaming

File 770 interviewed Cixin Liu about The Three-Body Problem and Chinese sci-fi.

Juliette Wade guest-posted at Ann Leckie’s blog to talk about the world building in Ancillary Justice.