Seven Days in the Genre Trenches: 28 July – 4 August 2026 (news roundup).
Another week, another skip’s-worth of spaceships, séances and sentient hair to sift through. Comic-Con dust is still settling in San Diego, the publishing conveyor belt hasn’t so much as paused for breath, and somewhere out there Wolverine is having a very bad day. Here’s what actually happened, minus the hype merchants.
Books: The Conveyor Belt Never Stops
The week opened on the 28th with a proper genre buffet. A Tangled Magic by Andrea Eames gives us a heroine locked in a tower with hair that moves of its own accord and a telepathic raven for company — Rapunzel by way of a horror anthology, and no less charming for it. Over in YA, Sophia Hannan’s We Were Never Here promises the kind of horror that makes sleepovers a bad idea, while Jesse Aragon’s The Demon Star has poor Ysira Natkis clawing her way back from death only to find aliens, cultists and gods all queuing up to end the world — ambitious even by apocalypse standards. If that all sounds exhausting, Sarah Beth Durst’s Sea of Charms offers cosy fantasy romance as the palate cleanser, and Juliet Blackwell’s The Séance Garden brings a ghost mystery for anyone who likes their hauntings with a side of horticulture. Two days later, Caleb Sierra’s The Wetworks Miracle turned up to remind everyone that eldritch horror and ecological dread make excellent bedfellows.
Then, right on cue for the 4th of August, Richard Swan delivered what’s shaping up to be the month’s big talking point: The Infinite State, opener of a new series called The Decurion Saga. It’s a widowed party loyalist, a disgraced investigator and a hypersled pilot all trying to slip the leash of a fascist state, and early reviewers have been reaching for 1984 and The Expanse in the same breath — which is either a triumph of world-building or a sign the dystopia genre has officially run out of new adjectives. Same day, Jaclyn Moriarty’s Time Travel for Beginners arrived to pick apart the small moments that steer a life, and Laura E. Weymouth’s The Castle & the Cloister gave us women from very different stations bonding over shared misery in a suitably epic fantasy setting — because nothing brings people together like a good castle-based ordeal.
Screen: Comic-Con Hangover
San Diego Comic-Con ran the 23rd through the 26th, so the fallout landed squarely in our window. The standout reveal for genre telly fans was Blade Runner 2099, which finally showed its hand with a first trailer starring Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer, plus a confirmed premiere of 25 November on Prime Video. Rick Deckard’s replicant-hunting descendants, apparently, still can’t catch a break.
DC’s Lanterns got its own moment in Hall H, with the Manhunters confirmed as the season’s central menace and a tease that Red Lanterns might be prowling somewhere in the wings. The show — Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan and John Stewart, with Kelly Macdonald and Nathan Fillion rounding out the cast — lands on HBO Max on 16 August, and James Gunn’s own pitch remains the best one-liner going: “True Detective, but space cops.”
Elsewhere, Hulu confirmed Futurama Season 14 lands 3 August with two “XXXL-sized” specials, proof that Bender is, if anything, becoming more indestructible with age. And over at Prime Video, the Fourth Wing adaptation is still quietly casting its leads under the codenames Iris and Rowan — which tells us precisely nothing except that someone in casting has a sense of humour and no intention of leaking anything before they’re good and ready.
Industry Gossip and the Deals Desk
Publishers Weekly’s deal sheets kept ticking along nicely. Penguin snapped up Still Lost, a science fiction story collection from YouTuber-turned-author Sam A. Miller (of Sam O’Nella Academy fame) — further proof that the pipeline from video essay to book deal is now fully operational. Amistad, meanwhile, picked up Christine Platt’s Keepers of Random Things, a dystopian tale built around a nationwide lottery for reparations, while Kensington’s Erewhon imprint landed Prince of Night by Brittney Arena, the opener of a new romantasy duology, and Bloomsbury’s Archer imprint bought The Body Remembers by Gabe Converse for the horror shelves. Genre publishing, in short, remains in rude health and thoroughly omnivorous.
For the diary: Worldcon 84 (LAcon V) touches down in Anaheim on 27–31st August 2026, so anyone still needing a costume, a panel pitch or a decent pair of walking shoes has about three weeks left to sort themselves out.
And for once — genuinely, refreshingly — nobody of note in the SF/fantasy/horror family left us this week. We’ll take the quiet while it lasts.
