Locus Online

Fan Fiction, Brent Spiner (St. Martin’s 9781250274366, $27.99, 256pp, hc) October 2021.

Acclaimed actor Brent Spiner’s debut novel Fan Fiction is, as the cover boasts, not a memoir but a Mem-Noir: an avant-garde mystery loosely based on actual events that [may or may not have] happened to Spiner during the course of filming Star Trek: The Next Gen­eration, where he played android Commander Data, and received some incredibly ...Read More

Body Shocks, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Tachyon Pub­lications 978-1-61696-360-6, $17.95, 384pp, tp) October 2021. Cover by John Coulthart.

Once in a while, an anthology comes along that demands we alter the standard review format. Body Shocks, edited by Ellen Datlow, is one of those rare books. Yes, there are stories that will get individual attention later, but this book accomplishes two things that deserve to be mentioned first. The ...Read More

My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga 978-1-982137-63-2, $26.99. 416pp, hc) August 31, 2021.

I am not a fan of slasher films, but I know enough – as just about anyone with any pop cultural awareness does – to soundly appreci­ate Stephen Graham Jones’s use of the subgenre he so brilliantly employs in My Heart Is a Chain­saw. Not being a slasher aficionado means there’s at ...Read More

Eat Your Heart Out, Kelly Devos (Razorbill 978-0-593-20482-5, $18.99, 352pp, hc) June 2021.

Just when you thought no one needed another zombie novel, author Kelly Devos gives readers Eat Your Heart Out, a terror-filled foray into weight-loss camp that will not be soon forgotten. Personally, I’ve never understood the appeal of zombie stories, but I was intrigued by Devos’s premise and completely won over by her charac­ters. I knew ...Read More

Bewilderment, Richard Powers (Norton 978-0-393-88114-1, $27.95, 288pp, hc) September 2021.

I first became aware of Richard Powers’s work when his novel, Generosity: An Enhance­ment, was nominated for a Clarke Award back in 2011. However, it wasn’t until the publication of The Overstory in 2019 that I read a book by Powers. If Goodreads is any indication, I’m not alone. Having written 11 novels over more than three decades ...Read More

The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories, Nina Allan (Titan 978-1-789091755, $15.95, 480pp, tp) September 2021.

Not very many lines of SF criticism get widely quoted, but Susan Wood’s long-ago observation that ‘‘Ursula K. Le Guin makes maps’’ is one of them, and it helped kick off a discussion of fantasy maps that isn’t over yet. It came to mind about halfway through Nina Allan’s major retrospective collection ...Read More

The 2021 Aurora Awards winners were announced October 16, 2021 during a livestreamed ceremony organized by Ottawa’s Can*Con convention.

Results for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction of 2020 have been announced by the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. The award is traditionally presented during the annual Campbell Conference Awards, but was instead announced online.

HarperCollins has announced reorganization plans for the recently acquired Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. They will have four imprints, which will see ‘‘see increased focus and investment, with the majority of acquiring editors remaining in place.’’ Mariner will publish most of the adult books, and will absorb Custom House. The Clarion and Versify imprints will retain their names as part of the new Clarion Group. Graphic novels from the Etch imprint will ...Read More

Gary Paulsen, 82, died October 13, 2021 at home in Tularosa NM of cardiac arrest. Paulsen was best known for his YA novels about wilderness survival, notably Hatchet (1986).

In all, he wrote more than 200 titles, with numerous SF works (adult and YA) among them, beginning with The Implosion Effect (1976) and including The Green Recruit (1978), The Night the White Deer Died (1978), Meteorite Track 291 (1979), Compkill ...Read More

N.K. JEMISIN was named as one of the 100 most influential people of 2021 by Time. See the full list on their website.

NANCY PEARL will receive the 2021 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, to be presented November 17, 2021 at the National Book Awards ceremony in New York. Pearl is the influential librarian who created the ‘‘One Book, One City’’ program.

SUSANNA ...Read More

Penguin Random House imprints Pantheon and Schocken Books will no longer be divisions of Alfred A. Knopf, but will instead operate as an imprint alongside Vintage/Anchor, Doubleday, and Knopf, as equal parts of the Knopf Doubleday publishing group. In the announcement, group president and publisher Maya Mavjee noted that the imprints will be hiring for several new editorial positions. Recent hires include executive editor Naomi Gibbs, editorial director Denise Oswald, ...Read More

Strange Horizons 5/31 The Deadlands 6/21 khōréō 6/21 The Economist 6/25/21

At the end of May Strange Horizons put out a special issue dealing with transgender themes. Along with nine poems and three non-fiction ar­ticles are three original short stories. My favorite is ‘‘Women Want Me, Fish Fear Me’’ by Paris Green. In this future, genemods based on different animals are fairly common, and the narrator’s are ...Read More

Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, Andrew Nette & Iain McIntyre, eds. (PM Press 978-1629639321, $59.95, 224pp, hc) October 2021.

The Melbourne-based duo of writers/editors Andrew Nette & Iain McIntyre follow up their two previous PM Press volumes, Girl Gangs, Biker Boys, and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, 1950 to 1980 (2017) and Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture ...Read More

The Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Award) is currently accepting applications for the Otherwise Fellowships, providing $500 grants for “writers, artists, scholars, media makers, remix artists, performers, musicians, or something else entirely. If you are doing work that is changing the way we think about gender through speculative narrative – maybe in a form we would recognize as the science fiction or fantasy genre, maybe in some other way – ...Read More

The Heinlein Journal was chosen as one of six winners for the Editorial category in Communication Arts’ 62nd annual design competition. This win comes after the Heinlein Journal‘s recent redesign.

Managing Editor and Designer Mark Bult says

This redesign matches the quality of the publication with the stature of its authors and their scholarship…. We’ve enlivened the publication with a new masthead and typography, plus more photos and new, custom ...Read More

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE) has launched its Fourth Edition. The online edition of the essential reference work was sponsored by Orion/Gollancz from 2011-2021, but is now published by SFE Ltd and Ansible Editions.

Editors John Clute and David Langford say of the move:

With the release of the Fourth Edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, we have a new publisher and a new web server; but ...Read More

Half Sick of Shadows, Laura Sebastian (Ace 978-0-593-200513, $27.00, 448pp, hc) July 2021.

Elaine is surrounded by heroes, and she knows how each of them will fall: Morgana the sorcer­ess, Lancelot the knight, Gwen the queen, and Arthur the king; all powerful pieces on a chess board waiting to be toppled by their own doing. Despite her great power of Sight, there is nothing Elaine can do but gaze ...Read More

Canadian author, editor, and scholar Douglas Barbour, 81, died September 25, 2021 of lung cancer.

Douglas Fleming Barbour was born March 21, 1940 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He co-edited Tesseracts 2 (1987) with Phyllis Gottlieb, and wrote many essays, reviews, and letters for fanzines and SF journals. Barbour’s dissertation was “Patterns of Meaning in the SF Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ and Samuel R. Delany, 1962-1972″, ...Read More

The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) has selected composer John Williams as this year’s recipient of the Forry Award for lifetime achievement in the SF field. Williams created the scores for SF and fantasy films including the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, and installments of the Jurassic Park and Harry Potter film series.

The award, named for Forrest J ...Read More

Analog 7-8/21 Asimov’s 7-8/21 Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 6/21

The cover story in the July-August Analog is Marie Vibbert’s novella, ‘‘The Unlikely Heroines of Callisto Station’’. The hero­ines of the title are Lottie, whom we meet as she is reluctantly accepting treatment for bipolar epi­sodes from a nice psychologist named Saravit; and Xiao Fung, a maintenance worker (and Saravit’s girlfriend). Xiao doesn’t like Lottie and Lottie either ...Read More

Stephen King joined forces with Humble Bundle to raise money for the American Civil Liberties Union, offering a digital download of new King story ‘‘Red Screen’’ on a pay-what-you-want basis (with a $5 minimum) from September 10-16, 2021. One hundred percent of the proceeds went to the ACLU. The book was downloaded by 18,236 readers, and raised a total of $142,457.85. This is the first ‘‘Humble Exclusive,’’ a new program ...Read More

The Rock Eaters: Stories, Brenda Peynado (Penguin 978-0-143135623, $16.00, 288pp, tp) May 2021.

Brenda Peynado’s first collection, The Rock Eaters, places her in that growing cadre of talented short fic­tion writers who seem equally comfortable in venues as diverse as The Georgia Review and Tor.com, and whose voice is just as distinctive when writing about real-world poverty and student debt or about grim futures in which people take ...Read More

SF writer Lou Antonelli, 64, died October 6, 2021 at home in Clarksville TX.

Antonelli began publishing short fiction in the early 2000s. Notable short works include Asimov’s Reader’s Award finalist “A Rocket for the Republic” (2005), Sidewise Award nominee “Great White Ship”, and Hugo Award finalist “On a Spiritual Plane” (2014). In all he published over 100 stories, some collected in Fantastic Texas (2009), Texas & Other Planets (2010), ...Read More