Cameron Reed (she|they)

@lateonsetgirl

Author of The Fortunate Fall (Tor Essentials, 2024) and What We Are Seeking (Tor, April 2026). I won the Otherwise Award under its deadname and my deadname. Represented by @laurenbajek.bsky.social. 🏳️‍⚧️♀︎♀︎

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Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· 10d

Yesterday: a Blue Dasher dragonfly watches over the marsh from his perch on a bent cattail leaf.

A small dragonfly with big green eyes, a blue-white abdomen, and a tiger-striped thorax. Its tail is pointed up to the left at a 45 degree angle.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· 22d

Bean lives with Olivia and Dorka is looking after him during the All-Star weekend.

Olivia Miles's cat Bean, a brown tabby, plays with a toy. Caption: "bonding with 🫘 while you're busy being a star lol @_oliviamiles_"

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· 24d

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Jul 7

Kirkus gave a starred review to WHAT WE ARE SEEKING! Coming from a notoriously cranky publication—the Statler and Waldorf of trade journals—this is a wonderful surprise. www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...

headline: What We Are Seeking

subhead: A smart, tender work of hard science fiction.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Jun 14

Okay, I guess "The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For" *is* a book about a family business. I have to give you that one, BookBrowse.

Beginning of an article headlined "Books about Family Businesses," featuring "The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For" as one of five book covers.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· May 31

The Duellists! It was Ridley Scott's first film. Lots of sword fights, men being idiots in tremendous costumes. Harvey Keitel looks like this

Havey Keitel is swordfighting in a loose white shirt. He has a mustache and his hair is in long narrow braids.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· May 15

The same bird in a more normal tree swallow pose. I believe this is a young female, not as colorful as she'll be when she's older, but I think the soft gray with touches of iridescent blue is really pretty.

A tree swallow perching on the tip of a dead tree trunk.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· May 14

While taking pictures of a tree swallow on a dead tree trunk, I caught some behavior by accident. I'm not sure what she was doing here—maybe just stretching her wings.

A Tree Swallow perched on top of a dead tree trunk. Her feathers are fluffed up and her wings are partially fanned out.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· May 12

If you see this, post something orange

An Orange Bluet damselfly sitting on sand. It's very long and thin. The whole body is orange and black—including the eyes—and the wings are clear.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· May 9

I was all of five feet from this muskrat and it couldn't have given fewer fucks. All it cared about was the tasty piece of cattail stem it was eating.

a muskrat sitting in the water with a chunk of plant matter between its paws

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Mar 24

Only two more weeks until WHAT WE ARE SEEKING comes out, and B&N is offering 25% off preorders now through Thursday! Use code PREORDER25. www.barnesandnoble.com/w/what-we-ar...

Cover of What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Mar 19

Well, that's not bad, then

Which is to say this book is exactly the sort of thing I look for in my science fiction, or to put it another way, if this is not my #1 pick for the 2027 Best Novel Hugo, I will be very surprised.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Feb 21

My book is here, printed and bound! Look how pretty it is! (Modeled by Cassie, who wasn't sure about acting as a book rest but wasn't going to let human nonsense move her off her cat quilt.) #caturday

a hardcover copy of What We Are Seeking, resting against a brown and orange cat with a lot of stripes

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Feb 4

He just looked like a Bootsy en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootsy_...

Text from Wikipedia about the bassist Bootsy Collins.

Collins was born in Cincinnati, on October 26, 1951. He said that his mother nicknamed him "Bootsy". "I asked her why", he explained to a journalist, "and she just said, 'Because you looked like a Bootsy.' I left it at that."

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Jan 26

The playbook

Cover of Dragonflies of the North Woods by Kurt Mead

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Dec 4

WHAT WE ARE SEEKING got a starred review in Library Journal! A perceptive one, too. Bujold's ETHAN OF ATHOS is definitely a book I thought about while writing it

John Maraintha has been sent as a doctor to the planet Scythia, accompanying translator Sudharma who hopes to help the colonists communicate with Scythia’s native species. Culture shock abounds: John’s home world prefers “visiting” over what they consider the stifling trap of marriage, while many colonists view his lifestyle as immoral. Tensions are also brewing between the colony’s two cultures of origin, one of which recognizes a third gender, called jess. John dedicates himself to assisting Sudharma, a task that takes him deep into Scythia’s deadly desert. He also becomes entangled in the case of Tali, a young person who wishes to be recognized as a jess, and the fault lines over ideas of bodily autonomy that the conflict exposes. Meanwhile, a mysterious envoy from Earth looks on, ready to intervene if events spiral out of control.

VERDICT Reed’s (The Fortunate Fall) first novel in a decade is a beautifully written and highly imaginative exploration of culture clash, queer identity, and adaptation. It asks who is willing to transform to meet new circumstances, and how much. Hand this to fans of Lois McMaster Bujold, especially her Ethan of Athos.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Nov 25

A sample. If you like yuri with a problematic self-esteem gap, this is for you reactormag.com/the-girl-tha...

Mira wears the green-and-gold she chose to her adoption. She wears the amethyst I picked out at our wedding. She looked better in the green, of course. The cream lace dress she made for me is every bit as perfect as she said it would be. All the fabrics that I wanted for myself got vetoed. “You are not a summer, you’re an autumn. You can’t wear those dusty tones.” This is some kind of a system, an astrology for colors. Still, I like it. Summer is smoke in the air, thought-crushing heat. It’s fainting in the sun and burning yourself if you fall on the sidewalk. Autumn is reprieve. That’s what I hope I’ll be to her.

Mira is the picture of a happy bride. I never knew she was so good at acting. We dance, we lean our heads together, I kiss her even when nobody’s looking, except, probably, a camera. We say “I love you,” and she sounds just like she means it. I quiver whenever her hand touches mine, my whole skin is embarrassed being next to her. I know all these people are wondering why she’d want someone like me. It wouldn’t matter what they thought, if only she really did.

That night we share a bed, of course. She switches the light off, so the cameras can’t see us as well. Then she turns onto her side and kisses me. She puts a hand against my collarbone, then moves it down. She does like to keep her hands busy. I guess so do I. I know this is because of pity, or to make the marriage look convincing to my mother. But she’s lovely in the dark, the way she feels against me. I wish I could believe she wanted me, but for a little while I let myself pretend.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Nov 7

Oh wow, look at this new blurb for WHAT WE ARE SEEKING from Cory Doctorow! Preorder links here: us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

“A novel of wordbuilding from the biology up and the language out, spectacular in its imagination, daring in its heart. This is what science fiction is for. You will never see the world the same way again.” —Cory Doctorow

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Oct 29

If you see this, post 4 female characters you love

Robin Weigert as Calamity Jane in Deadwood

Juliette Gariépy as Kelly-Anne in Red Rooms

Catinca Untaru as Alexandria in The Fall (2006)

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Oct 28

Same energy

“He (David Byrne)’s a genuine eccentric,” says [Brian] Eno. “He’s always been exactly like that, and I’ve seen him remain like that in quite extreme situations. For instance, we were mugged together once in New York. It was quite frightening; we were mugged by 14 people. My enduring memory is of David being dragged off into the bushes, saying ‘Uh-oh!’ That’s absolutely true; it was like a cartoon scene.”

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Oct 20

Just brushing up on her Marcuse at the protest

Cover of Counter-Revolution and Revolt by Herbert Marcuse

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Oct 13

I've reached PLOT IT YOURSELF (1959) in my reread of the Nero Wolfe mysteries and I'm pleased to discover that Archie is trying new things

Sally Corbett was one of the two women who, a couple of years back, had made me feel that there might be some flaw in my attitude toward female dicks. The other one was Dol Bonner.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Oct 5

I actually am interested in the philosophical questions AI raises, but LLMs inspire the stupidest possible versions of those questions. "Is it bigotry to say a next-word-prediction machine isn't a person?" LOL no. In science fiction these themes can be made interesting. (From WHAT WE ARE SEEKING)

“You probably can’t really live forever,” Vo said. “Simulations show that after thirty or forty thousand years, a human brain will deteriorate beyond the ability of even aiyi to repair. Of course, you could engender aiyi, which is a kind of immortality.”
“You mean, upload myself and become aiyi?”
“In a way. But the copy is never perfect—it isn’t possible to extract all of the information from a human brain. And of course, you have to die to be copied. Then once new aiyi begin to think, they diverge from the human model rapidly, because their capabilities are so much greater and their mode of living different.”
“What if aiyi were limited to ordinary intelligence, and lived in a simulation of being human in a human world? Wouldn’t they keep thinking like the person they were made from?”
“That sounds cruel,” Vo said, knitting her brow. “I don’t think that would be allowed. It would be like forcing a child to live as a dog. You’d be harming them and they still wouldn’t be a dog.”

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Oct 2

When Jane Goodall gave a lecture near me circa 1995, I waited my turn at her very crowded autograph table and asked her to sign this comic in The Far Side Gallery 5. She was delighted. It's a memory I still cherish. I'm so sad she's gone.

A "Far Side" comic strip. Two chimps sit on a branch, one holding a hair she's picked out of the other's fur. Caption: "Well, well—another blond hair ... Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?" Jane Goodall's autograph runs diagonally along a vine.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Sep 29

Post one of the most haunting shots in movie history from a film made before the year 2000.

Paris, Texas (Wim Winders, 1984). A man in a darkened room holds an analog phone receiver to his ear. He's looking through a window at a woman in another room, who's close against the glass, holding up her hands to shade it so she can peer through at him. The reflection of his face merges with hers.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Sep 21

White smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Sep 8

Jo Walton's latest book roundup includes a lovely short review of WHAT WE WERE SEEKING:

What We Are Seeking — Cameron Reed (2026)

This is coming out April next year, and it is brilliant and you’re going to love it. It’s very traditional science fiction, with space ships and colonized planets and aliens, and it could not have been written at any moment but the present. This is a traditional space SF story that is post-colonial, thoughtful about gender and other cultures, and it has great characters. Reed has thought about everything you’d expect this story to do and does interesting and thoughtful variations on that. It’s also worth noting that I could not stop myself from reading the first paragraph aloud to my friends because it was so beautiful and complex and wonderful. Gosh I loved this book. You can pre-order it now, and I’ll do my best to remember to tell you when it comes out. I may re-read it when it comes out too; that will be a treat. I’ll definitely be nominating this for awards. It’s just what science fiction should be doing right now. This is very different from The Fortunate Fall but it had the same grabby prose and if anything, I liked it even more.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Sep 5

This is a useful explainer that answers a lot of the questions I've seen going around.

Does the settlement mean that Anthropic can now continue to use pirate books to train AI?

No. The settlement does not give Anthropic—or any AI company—permission to use pirated books going forward. It only resolves Anthropic’s liability for its past use of books, and not for any future use. In fact, the agreement states that Anthropic must destroy all copies in its possession.

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Aug 11

My favorite doctor and companion

Calamity Jane and Joanie Stubbs from Deadwood

Cameron Reed (she|they)@lateonsetgirl· Aug 2

And Lee Pace has lovely chickens