The Endeavour Award committee has announced the suspension of the 2021 award for books published in 2020. In a statement, they said,
Several reasons have led to the suspension. The Covid 19 situation has made it more difficult to run our preliminary judging. In addition to problems stemming from the pandemic, additional problems have contributed to the need to suspend the Award.
We expect to begin collecting books published during ...Read More
Beneath Ceaseless Skies 9/24/20 Omenana 8/20
Beneath Ceaseless Skies has so many excuses to celebrate! There are the big round number celebrations, like issue number 300 back in March, as well as September’s calendar anniversary. All the more opportunity to appreciate a venue that has steadfastly brought us excellent fiction from a broad range of writers, always expanding the remit of “literary adventure fantasy” in secondary world settings. September brings ...Read More
Rise of the Red Hand, Olivia Chadha (Erewhon 978-1645660101, $18.95, 384pp, hardcover) January 2021.
Olivia Chadha’s heartfelt, adroit, brisk and thoughtful debut novel proves that everything old is new again. While its “Clutian Real Year” (i.e., the headspace and zeitgeist that birthed it and which provided its themes) is definitely 2020, its soul and blood and sinews are somewhere back in 1985, with the nascent Neuromancer. It’s nth-generation ...Read More
The Extraordinaries, TJ Klune (Tor Teen, 978-1-250-20365-6, $18.99, 399pp, hc) May 2020.
TJ Klune follows up The House in the Cerulean Sea with another compelling human drama that is set in a world like our own, but with a few unexpected fantasy elements. In Cerulean Sea it was people with magical abilities; this time around, in The Extraordinaries, it’s somewhat unconventional superheroes. Teen Nick Bell lives with his ...Read More
Anthropocene Rag, Alex Irvine (Tor.com Publishing 978-1-250-26927-0, $14.99, 256pp, tp) March 2020.
I’m still not certain what actually happened in Alex Irvine’s Anthropocene Rag – but I do know that this journey into the heart of a transformed-by-nanotech America is a fascinating ride to take. In the end, that may be all that matters.
Irvine’s America is one where the Boom – essentially, programmable bits of tech that are ...Read More
Underneath the Oversea, Marc Laidlaw (Freestyle, $6.99, eb) October 2020.
Here’s an experiment I wish I could conduct. I would strip all identifying data from Marc Laidlaw’s new fantasy novel, Underneath the Oversea, and then hand the raw text to a number of savvy lovers of fantastika. I’m willing to bet that many of them would react by saying something along these lines: “Wow! This must be some ...Read More
Rest and Be Thankful, Emma Glass (Bloomsbury 978-1-526-60107-0, £12.99, 144pp, hc) March 2020.
While I know it’s odd to say anything remotely positive about 2020, I found this to be an incredible year for fiction and especially sophomore novels from some of the UK’s brightest authors, including Daisy Johnson, Sophie Mackintosh, Megan Hunter, and now Emma Glass. Peach, Glass’s debut novel published in 2018, was an ambitious, if ...Read More
Finalists for the 2020 Children’s and Young Adults Bloggers’ Literary Awards (Cybils) have been announced. Books of genre interest follow.
Young Adult Speculative Fiction
Writer Anton Strout, 50, died unexpected on December 30, 2020. Strout was an author of urban fantasy, best known for his Simon Canderous series. He was also the host of the Once and Future Podcast, where he interviewed authors beginning in 2014, producing more than 200 episodes. He worked in publishing as well, as a longtime sales rep for Penguin Random House.
Anton Strout was born January 24, 1970 in ...Read More
Amazon Publishing may shift their longstanding stance against allowing libraries to lend their ebooks. The company is said to be in “active discussions” with the Digital Public Library of America to alter its policies. Amazon is reportedly “testing a number of different models” and may lend books as early as 2021, with a spokesperson saying, “We believe libraries serve a critical purpose in communities across the country, and our priority ...Read More
The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde: An Illuminated Edition, Oscar Wilde & Yuko Shimizu (Beehive Books 979-1-948886-01-7, $100.00, 140pp, hc) April 2020. Cover by Yuko Shimuzu.
Historically, small presses have been the refuge of non-mainstream writers and artists, whose work they have nurtured and promoted. In the SFnal field they have provided an important home for many award-winning writers (I’m looking at you, Tachyon). In addition to Tachyon Publications ...Read More
Knopf Random House Canada is splitting apart: beginning in 2021, Knopf Canada and Random House Canada will operate independently again (they were combined in 2009). Publisher Anne Collins will become executive editor and vice-president of Random House Canada on January 4, 2021. CEO Kristin Cochrane says, “I believe the time is right to have space for each to build on its past successes and pave the way for the future. ...Read More
Leonardo 2, Stéphane Levallois (NBM/Louvre éditions 978-1-681122-64-9, $29.99, 96pp, hc) October 2020. Cover by Stéphane Levallois.
If we ever needed art, we need it now. Discussing art books in a time of plague may seem frivolous, but there’s an argument to be made that any distraction becomes precious during times of extreme stress. Also valuable is the reminder of the sublime and ingenious ways humans can transmute powerful emotions ...Read More
Entanglements: Tomorrow’s Lovers, Families, and Friends, Sheila Williams, ed. (MIT Press 978-0-26253-925-8, 240pp, $19.95, tp) September 2020.
Artificial intelligence, genome tampering (eugenics), sex bots, and other forms of technology descend upon the middle class in Entanglements, an anthology from Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov’s. Originally launched in 2011 by MIT Technology Review, Twelve Tomorrows is an annual anthology series that explores the role of technology in near and ...Read More
The House of Styx, Derek Künsken (Solaris 978-1786183200, $8.99, eb,) August 2020. (Solaris 978-1781088050, 608pp, $27.99, hc) April 2021.
One of the most notable aspects of Derek Künsken’s short work to date has been a fascination with rigorous worldbuilding, often featuring the extreme, and the politics that often result from adaptation to said environments. These aspects are central to his new novel, The House of Styx, first in ...Read More
It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Jonathan Strahan chooses The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Gary K. Wolfe says, “At times The Ministry of the Future seems bent on exploding the notion of what a novel can be. Of Robinson’s 106 chapters, some are narrated by anonymous characters who never show up again (such as one of the pilots in India’s aerial seeding program), some ...Read More
Judges for the 2021 Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction have been announced: Indra Das, Saad Z. Hossain, and Malka Older.
The annual award is open to original fiction of 10,000 words or fewer written in English by authors who must be “currently residing in Pakistan, or be of Pakistani birth/descent.” Submissions are open now through July 31, 2021. The winning story will receive $500 and publication on the award website, ...Read More
The Blade Between, Sam J. Miller (Ecco 978-0-06-296982-8, $26.99, 384pp, hc) December 2020.
In both of Sam J. Miller’s YA novels, The Art of Starving and Destroy All Monsters, Hudson High School – presumably a version of the same small-town high school that Miller attended in upstate New York – is nearly as powerful an antagonist as the supernatural forces that threaten Miller’s outsider heroes. With The Blade ...Read More
It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Arley Sorg selects Burning Roses by S.L. Huang, saying, “To simply say this is a tale of Red Riding Hood and Hou Yi misses the brilliance displayed within the confines of a very slender volume.”
You can read Katharine Coldiron’s review online or in the October 2020 issue of Locus. ...Read More
It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Liz Bourke picks The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso: “I was a fan of Caruso’s work to start with, but with The Obsidian Tower she’s hit another level in terms of prose and tension. This is a truly excellent fantasy, and an epic beginning for a new trilogy. I can’t wait to see what she does next.”
Read Liz’s full review online ...Read More
Several titles of genre interest made The Atlantic‘s list of the 15 best books of 2020: Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, translated by Jamie Chang (Liveright), and Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (Pantheon).
For the full list, see The Atlantic‘s website.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring ...Read More
The Midnight Circus, Jane Yolen (Tachyon Publications 978-1-616-96340-8, $16.95, 256pp, tp) November 2020.
The prolific, multi-award-winning Jane Yolen is a bona fide legend and, at least to those of us on the darker side of genre, has long been noted for what Theodora Goss calls – in her excellent foreword – the darkness “in much of her work, both fiction and poetry, because her writing is grounded in history ...Read More
It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Russell Letson selects Pacific Storm by Linda Nagata: “in Pacific Storm, she explores an increasingly relevant near-future-nightmare territory, one that sits comfortably (or uncomfortably) next to recent work by Christopher Brown (Rule of Capture, Failed State), Greg Egan (Perihelion Summer), Nancy Kress (Sea Change), and even the political-satirical side of Charles Stross (Dead ...Read More
It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Josh Pearce picks By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar. Ian Mond calls it “a jolt of pure entertainment, a brilliant, revisionist blend of magic, crime syndicates, and Kung-fu knights.”
Read Ian’s full review online or in the April 2020 issue of Locus, and Gary K. Wolfe’s review online or in the June 2020 issue of Locus. ...Read More
Entertainment Weekly has released their list of the 10 best books of 2020, compiled by Leah Greenblatt and David Canfield. Titles of genre interest include The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf) in the top spot, Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (Ecco) at number four, and Memorial by Bryan Washington (Riverhead) at number five.
For the full list, see EW‘s website.
While you are here, please ...Read More
The Saints of Salvation, Peter F. Hamilton (Del Rey 978-0-399-17888-7, $32, 528pp, hardcover) November 2020.
One shameful sensation experienced by the over-burdened reviewer—or by any reader, I suppose, with more books than time—is how many series of novels one begins but then abandons, due solely to time constraints. For instance, after complete enjoyment of their predecessors, I have been unable to make time to read the fourth book in ...Read More
The new Science Fiction and Fantasy Rosetta Awards (SFFRA) were launched December 26, 2020, “initiated and organized by a group of SFF enthusiasts with faith to promote and recognize the SFF literatures from various cultures and languages along with the efforts of those authors and translators.”
The awards will be given in long- and short-form categories, as well as a special service award category. Eligible works must be science fiction ...Read More
