Locus Online

Perihelion Summer, Greg Egan (Tor.com Pub­lishing 978-1-250-31378-2, $10.39, 215pp, tp) April 2019.

Once again the imagination of disaster is upon us, haunting our dreams and filling our entertainments with scary scenarios. What is disaster that we should be mindful of it in an entertainment? Or, to be precise, what is there in scary, disaster-haunted storytelling that goes beyond the threats and thrills followed by the relief that comes from ...Read More

Theater of Spies, S.M. Stirling (Ace 978-0-399-58625-5, $16.00, 464pp, tp) May 2019.

Since the 1980s, S.M. Stirling has been writing novels that revel in the minutiae of technological development, generally with a militaristic bent and frequently with an alternate-history (or alternate-present) setting. This attention to technological minutiae accom­panies an interest in cultures and societies, and the ways in which those cultures approach military conflict. Theater of Spies, a ...Read More

New Suns, Nisi Shawl, ed. (Solaris 978-1-78108-578-3, $15.99, 279pp, tp) March 2019.

New Suns is subtitled “Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color”. I hope it’s not news to anyone that there are a lot of people of color who write spectacular speculative fiction. This book includes writers of Hispanic heritage, those from all over Asia, those of Native American heritage, and of course African and African-American writers. It ...Read More

Gather the Fortunes, Bryan Camp (John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 978-1-328-87671-3, $24.00, 384pp. hc) May 2019.

Last year, I reviewed Bryan Camp’s first novel (and the first of his Crescent City novels), The City of Lost Fortunes. Even though I found that novel flawed, I still looked forward to the next one in the series. Camp had invented an interest­ing alternate New Orleans, and his idea of the ...Read More

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

Rosewater by Tade Thompson (Orbit) won the 33rd Arthur C. Clarke Award, announced July 17, 2019 during a ceremony at Foyles Bookshop in London, UK. Thompson receives a check for £2,019 and an engraved bookend.

Other finalists were:

Winners of the fifth annual BooktubeSFF Awards have been announced. The awards were created “as a way to encourage more engagement among the emergent SFF fandom community on YouTube,” and the judges are “booktubers,” or “YouTube creators whose channels focus on books and reading.”

Nominees were chosen from 281 reader ballots, with winners voted on separately by readers and judges. For categories with differing results, both selections were named as ...Read More

Intimations of Death, 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

Compelling Science Fiction has switched to a subscription model with the June issue, their 13th. Publisher Joe Stetch wrote, “New issues will only be available to people who subscribe to the magazine or buy individual issues. Full issues will no longer be posted for free on the website, although the stories that have already been posted will remain up.” He explains, “Moving to a purchase-only model was a difficult decision, ...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 ...Read More

The 2019 Illinois Science Fiction in Chicago (ISFiC) short fiction contest for unpublished writers of science fiction and fantasy is open to submissions through September 1, 2019. First prize includes $300 and publication in the Windycon 2019 program book and on the ISFiC website.

For details and rules, see the ISFiC site.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We ...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

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

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