Locus Online

Orange World and Other Stories, Karen Rus­sell (Knopf 978-0525656135, $25.95, 288pp, hc) May 2019.

Given my taste for narratives that straddle the literary and the fantastic, it might come as a surprise to know that I’ve never read Karen Russell’s fiction. It’s not that I haven’t been aware of her work; it’s hard to ignore the Pulitzer she was a finalist for in 2012 for her debut novel Swamplandia! ...Read More

Dan Stout, Titanshade (DAW 978-0-7564-1486-3, $26.00, 403pp, hc) March 2019. Cover by Chris McGrath.

A diplomat is murdered and Carter, an honest homicide cop out of favor, decides to bull his way through the halls of power and privilege to solve the case, getting into lots of trouble along the way, helped by his newbie partner. What makes this mystery so much fun is the off-kilter version of the 1970s ...Read More

Intimations of Death by Felix Timmermans (Valancourt Books 978-1948405409, $15.99, 152pp, trade paperback) July 2019

The past is a seemingly inexhaustible trove of forgotten wonders. At least so the current literary rediscovery and reprint bonanza would tell us. (With concurrence from the music world, where lost tapes of fabulous concerts resurface regularly.) Formerly rare and unobtainable and legendary volumes such as The Ship That Sailed to Mars and The Temple ...Read More

A Brightness Long Ago, Guy Gavriel Kay (Berkley 978-0-451-47298-4, $27.00, 448pp, hc) May 2019.

At the risk of oversimplification – well, no, to be honest, with the intent of oversimplification – the fantastic genres have a long and complex relation­ship with historical fiction, but they often tend to use it to provide templates for their own preoc­cupations. Horror seems to love the Middle Ages, with its demons and tortures and ...Read More

Lightspeed 4/19 Clarkesworld 3/19 Strange Horizons 3/19 Tor.com 2/19, 3/19

The strongest story in April’s Lightspeed magazine is Caroline M. Yoachim‘s “The Archronology of Love“. In the space of a short novelette, Yoachim does three things and does them very well: introduce a complicated new concept, develop a mystery plot, and portray a woman almost broken by grief over the death of her partner. The new concept ...Read More

The War Within, Stephen R. Donaldson (Berkley 978-0-399-58616-3, $28.00, 564pp, hc) April 2019.

Steven R. Donaldson has been putting his characters through hell for decades. The War Within, the second volume of The Great God’s War, does not provide any relief.

This book is set 20 years after the first volume. Prince Bifalt married Princess Estie, and they’ve become the rulers of their respective kingdoms, Belleger and Amika, ...Read More

The North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation (NCSFF) announced the winner of the 2019 Manly Wade Wellman Award on July 12, 2019 during ConGregate 6 held at the Red Lion Hotel in High Point NC. The award recognizes “outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors.”

Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019) is the winner of the 2019 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, intended to bring attention to lesser-known SF and fantasy authors. This year’s judges were Barry Malzberg, Mike Resnick, and Robert J. Sawyer. The award was announced July 12, 2019 during Readercon 30 at the Quincy Marriott in Quincy MA.

For more information about the award, see the Cordwainer Smith Foundation website.

While you are here, please take ...Read More

Tasha Suri won the Brave New Words Award on the strength of her debut novel Empire of Sand  (Orbit). The award was announced by Starburst magazine at a ceremony during the Edge-Lit 8 festival, held July 13, 2019 at QUAD in Derby, UK. The award goes to an individual, not a specific work, so the titles listed are “examples that most define the creators output.” Other finalists were:

The 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards winners have been announced. The awards — for outstanding achievement in horror, psychological suspense, and dark fantasy fiction — were presented July 14, 2019 at Readercon 30 at the Quincy Marriott in Quincy MA.

Novel

Not for Use in Navigation, Iona Datt Sharma (Self-published, $5.25, 210pp, eb) March 2019. Cover by Katherine Catchpole.

I read Iona Datt Sharma’s short-fiction collection Not for Use in Navigation almost by accident, at the end of a chain of happy coincidences that both led me to learn about its existence and to read it in a single sitting. Datt Sharma is a writer at the beginning of their ...Read More

F&SF 3-4/19 Galaxy’s Edge 3/19 Zyzzyva Winter ’18 Interzone 3-4/19 Mythic Journeys, Paula Guran, ed. (Night Shade) May 2019.

Sometimes I fail to mention stories that may not be earthshaking, but are good fun. In the March-April F&SF, for example, I enjoyed several stories greatly, without necessarily, say, putting them on my prospective Hugo Award nomination list. To wit: Gregor Hartmann‘s “The Unbearable Lightness of Bullets” ...Read More

“Treason Properly” by J.J. Cragun won the sixth annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, announced July 6, 2019 during SpikeCon in Layton UT. Second place went to “In the House of Rain and Gale” by Joelle Douthit and third place went to “In the City of Dreadful Joy” by Misha Burnett.

Other nominees were:

The British Library has acquired the 300-box archive of Granta, covering 40 years since the relaunch of the magazine in 1979. The archive contains back issues as well as correspondence and manuscripts from authors including Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Doris Lessing, and Susan Sontag.

Granta publisher and editor Sigrid Rausing said:

I am delighted that the Granta archive has found a permanent ...Read More

Joanna Ruth Meyer, Echo North (Page Street 978-1-62414-715-9, $17.99, 391pp, hc) January 2019.

Fairytales, myths, and even a ballad mix in this lyrical young-adult novel about a young woman lured by a wolf to his magical house, where she finds herself trapped, forced to stay. Echo’s an interesting character: scarred on her face as a child by a wolf she tried to free from a trap, she’s grown up used ...Read More

Sourcebooks sold 45% ownership of the company to Penguin Random House. PRH will be a “collaborative inves­tor,” with founder and CEO Dominique Raccah working closely with Madeline McIntosh, CEO of Penguin Random House US. Both have seats on the newly created board of directors. There are no immediate changes planned to “leader­ship, management, publishing autonomy, or entrepreneurial culture” at Sourcebooks, which hopes to double in size.

While you are here, ...Read More

Exhalation, Ted Chiang (Knopf 978-1-101-94788-3, $25.95, 358pp, hc) May 2019.

It’s not exactly as though Ted Chiang’s prolificacy is getting out of hand, but it might be worth noting that his long-awaited new collection Exhalation contains nine stories, while his previous collection Stories of Your Life contained only eight. On the other hand, that earlier collection covered the first 11 years of his career, while the new one covers ...Read More

Cressida Cowell has been named the 2019-2021 Waterstones Children’s Laureate. “Selected by a panel made up of librarians, critics, writers, literature development workers and booksellers, the role is awarded to an outstanding children’s author or illustrator with a passion for fostering a new generation of writers, artists and readers.”

Cowell said:

I’m honoured to be chosen to be the 11th Waterstones Children’s Laureate and I will try and justify your ...Read More

“Skinned” by Lesley Nneka Arimah (McSweeney’s #53) won the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing. The £10,000 prize “is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English” and was announced during a ceremony on July 8, 2019 at the University of London’s Senate House in London, UK. Additionally, four shortlisted authors each received £500. Judges for 2019 were Sefi Atta, Peter Kimani (chair), Margie Orford, Scott ...Read More

Collision, J.S. Breukelaar (Meerkat Press 978-1-946154-17-0, $16.95, tp, 220pp) March 2019.

You may have encountered a story by J.S. Breukelaar here and there, or even her novels American Monster (2014) or Altheia (2017). Whether her name is familiar or not, her debut collection, Collision: Stories, should be on your “must read” list. Breuke­laar, an American living in Sydney, Australia, writes in a clean, incisive style with razor-sharp opening ...Read More

Columbus 2020 NASFiC has won the bid to host the next North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC), to be held August 20-23, 2020 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Convention Center in Columbus OH. There were no other registered candidates.

Confirmed guests of honor include author guests Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, artist guest Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, editor guest Christopher J. Garcia, science guest Marc Millis, fan guests Sue ...Read More

The Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) has announced the winner of the 2019 Prometheus Award for Best Novel, honoring works published in 2018 that “examine the meaning of freedom.”

Best Novel Award

The 2019 Chesley Awards winners have been announced:

Best Cover Illustration: Hardcover

Winners of the Heinlein Society’s annual undergraduate scholarships for the 2019-2020 academic year were announced July 7, 2019. This year’s winners are Charles Boyle, Rosemary Lach, and Faith Rovenolt. The scholarship awards $2,000 to each recipient.

Lach received the Virginia Heinlein Memorial Scholarship, which is dedicated to female candidates majoring in engineering, math, or science. Rovenolt received the Dr. Jerry Pournelle Memorial Scholarship, and Boyle received the Dr. Yoji Kondo ...Read More

The Chaos Function, Jack Skillingstead (John Joseph Adams 978-1-328-52615-1, $24.00, 294pp, hc) March 2019.

Jack Skillingstead’s The Chaos Function invites us to think about the tangle of paths that lead into or away from any given Bad Place, and how hard it is to avoid going down them. It is set ten years from now in a world that differs from the present mainly in improvements in smartphone technology. ...Read More