Summary: <a href="https://www.apexbookcompany.com/collections/alpha-print/products/plague-birds?variant=39479218929801"></a>This week, Patrick and Tracy welcome back <a href="http://www.jasonsanford.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jason Sanford</a>, author of <a href="https://www.apexbookcompany.com/collections/alpha-print/products/plague-birds?variant=39479218929801" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PLAGUE BIRDS</a>.<br> About <a href="https://www.apexbookcompany.com/collections/alpha-print/products/plague-birds?variant=39479218929801" target="_blank" rel="noopener">PLAGUE BIRDS</a>: Glowing red lines split their faces. Shock-red hair and clothes warn people to flee their approach. They are plague birds, the powerful merging of humans and artificial intelligences who serve as judges and executioners after the collapse of civilization.<br> And the plague birds’ judgment is swift and deadly, as Crista discovered as a child when she watched one kill her mother.<br> In a world of gene-modded humans constantly watched over by benevolent AIs, everyone hates and fears the plague birds. But to save her father and home village, Crista becomes the very creature she fears the most. And her first task as a plague bird is hunting down an ancient group of murderers wielding magic-like powers.<br> As Crista and her AI symbiote travel farther from home than she ever imagined, they are plunged into a strange world where she judges wrongdoers, befriends other outcasts, and uncovers an extremely personal conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions.<br> About <a href="http://www.jasonsanford.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jason Sanford</a>: Jason Sanford is an award-winning author and a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Born and raised in the American South, he currently lives in the Midwestern U.S. with his family. His life’s adventures include work as an archaeologist and as a Peace Corps Volunteer.<br> Jason has published more than a dozen of his short stories in the British SF magazine Interzone, which once devoted a special issue to his fiction. His fiction has also been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fireside, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Tales of the Unanticipated, and other places. Books containing his stories include multiple “year’s best” story collections, the Tachyon anthology The New Voices of Science Fiction, and original anthologies such as Bless Your Mechanical Heart.<br> Two collections of Jason’s short stories have been released: Never Never Stories and Heaven’s Touch and Other Science Fiction Dreams.<br> Jason’s awards and honors include being a three-time finalist for the Nebula Awards (in the categories of Best Novella, Best Novelette and Best Short Story) and a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. Jason has also received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and three Interzone Readers’ Polls for best story of the year. His stories have been named to multiple Locus Recommended Reading Lists along with being translated into a number of languages including Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Italian and Czech.<br> Jason co-founded the literary journal storySouth, through which he ran the annual Million Writers Award for best online fiction. His critical essays and book reviews have been published in SF Signal, The New York Review of Science Fiction, The Pedestal Magazine and other places. He formerly wrote a regular column for the Czech SF magazine XB-1.<br> This week’s picks:<br> <br> * Jason: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Species-Other-Stories/dp/1885030711">On the Origin of Species and Other Stories by Bo-Young Kim</a><br> * Patrick: <a href="https://disneyplusoriginals.disney.com/show/dug-days" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Dug Days (Disney+)</a><br>...
