Winners for the 2018 Ignotus Awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Hugo Awards), honoring the best works published in Spain last year, have been announced.
Novela extranjera (Foreign Novel)
Return to the Hollow Earth, by Rudy Rucker (Transreal Books 978-1940948324, $22.95, 270pp, trade paperback) August 2018
Like Adam Roberts, a peer whom he matches in speculative chops and daring, Rudy Rucker seldom repeats himself. Yes, he’s given us a couple of series—the Ware Tetralogy and the duology consisting of Postsingular and Hylozoic—but the bulk of his output has been singletons, with each book utterly different from all ...Read More
Space Unicorn Blues, T.J. Berry (Angry Robot 978-0857667816 $12.99), 384pp, tp) July 2018. Cover by Lee Gibbons.
I finished reading T.J. Berry’s debut novel, Space Unicorn Blues, and said to myself (and several other people): “Maybe Angry Robot Books is becoming the publisher of queer, feminist, sometimes-angry, sometimes-funny, anti-imperialist novels that we didn’t know we deserved.” Because Berry’s Space Unicorn Blues can join a list that includes (in the UK, ...Read More
Infinity’s End, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris 978-1-78618-106-0, $14.99, 347 pp, tp) July 2018. Cover by Adam Tredowski.
For seven years and six volumes, editor Jonathan Strahan has been devising a consistently strong original anthology series that has engineered, reached, met, and bridged infinity from the edge onward (or inward?), and even gone to war in it. Now, in the seventh and last of the Infinity Project anthologies, we have reached ...Read More
Gail Carriger, Competence (Orbit US 978-0-316-43388-4, $26.00, 309pp, hc) July 2018. Cover by Don Sipley & Michael Roberts.
The steampunk fun ramps up in this third volume in the Custard Protocol series, a spin-off from Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series. This time, the main focus shifts to Primrose Tunstell, purser of the airship The Spotted Custard and style-conscious friend of Captain Prudence Akeldama. Their airship needs repairs, and the damage is ...Read More
Tor.com 6/20/18, 7/11/18
Clarkesworld 7/18
Fireside 7/18
Giganotosaurus 7/18
Strange Horizons 7/30/18
July also brings a special issue of Strange Horizons, with six stories guest edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Erin Roberts & Rasha Abdulhadi. The issue focuses on the Southeastern USA and writing by black, indigenous, and POC authors. I only saw four before this issue went to press, but they all pack a punch. Christopher Caldwell‘s “Hide Me ...Read More
Condomnauts, Yoss; translated by David Frye (Restless Books 978-1632061867, $16.99, 208pp, tp) July 2018.
The instant I saw the cover of Yoss’s Condomnauts on Twitter I knew I was going to read it. Cherry red lips caught in a moment of ecstasy; the teeth and tongue replaced by a starfield. It’s a cover, matched with a lurid title, that promises alien sex, not a subgenre I generally gravitate toward – ...Read More
» LA Times: Scott Bradfield reviews Alec Nevala-Lee’s Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction
» Guardian: Colin Burrow reviews The Black Prince by Adam Roberts – wonderful homage to Anthony Burgess
» Scott Edelman’s World Fantasy Convention Guest of Honor Speech, about inclusion ...Read More
Winners for the 2018 National Book Awards have been announced and include authors and works of genre interest.
Isabel Allende received the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters lifetime achievement award, presented by author Luís Alberto Urrea.
Fiction
Young People’s Literature
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead) is on the six-title shortlist for the 2018 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. The $25,000 prize “is open to authors of any ethnicity or nationality as long as the writing is about South Asia and its people.” The judges for 2018 are Claire Armitstead, Firdous Azim, Tissa Jayatilaka, Rudrangshu Mukherjee (chair), and Nandana Sen. The winner will be announced at the Tata Steel ...Read More
Winners for the 2018 Books Are My Bag (BAMB) Readers Awards have been announced, including some titles and authors of genre interest in the following categories:
Novel
Young Adult
Shortlisted stories for the inaugural FutureBook short fiction contest, in partnership with The Pigeonhole reading app, have been announced:
Finalists were chosen from 36 entries, judged by FutureBook associate editor Molly Flatt, The Pigeonhole founder Anna Jean Huges, and Arthur C. Clarke
...Read More
Kirkus has announced its selections for Best Fiction of 2018, including titles and authors of genre interest in several categories:
Best Science Fiction and Fantasy
Redemption’s Blade, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris 978-1781085790, $11.99, 520pp, tp) July 2018.
Redemption’s Blade, like Adrian Tchaikovsky’s unrelated 2016 novella Spiderlight, is heavily influenced by the Tolkien tradition in epic fantasy. Unlike Tolkien, though, Tchaikovsky’s work is interested in – for want of a better word – the humanity of people on both sides of a war between “light” and “darkness”: the flaws and the good points on both sides of ...Read More
Amazon.com published its yearly array of lists to promote the best books of 2018, with editors’ selections in various categories.
A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos (Europa) was the editors’ pick for best science fiction and fantasy book of the year. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt) was the editors’ pick for best young adult book of the year.
For complete lists in each category, see ...Read More
Cixin Liu was presented with the Imagination in Service to Society award during the Arthur C. Clarke “Unleash Imagination” awards ceremony and dinner, November 8, 2018 at the Sidney Harman Hall in Washington DC. The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation also presented its Lifetime Achievement award to Irwin Jacobs and the Innovator award to Jill Tarter.
For more information, see the Clarke Foundation website.
While you are here, please take a ...Read More
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) announced changes to the Nebula Awards rules, effective November 15, 2018: associate members of SFWA have been granted full voting privileges, where previously this was limited only to active members, and Game Writing has been added as a new Nebula Award category.
Further updates were also announced, including changes to the Ray Bradbury and Andre Norton Awards. For more information, see ...Read More
Prometheus Books has sold SF imprint Pyr and crime fiction imprint Seventh Street to Start Publishing. Prometheus was founded in 1969, exclusively publishing non-fiction, before launching Pyr in 2005 and Seventh Street in 2011. Publisher Jonathan Kurtz said the sale will allow Prometheus “to more fully engage with the diverse readers in our core categories and maximize the potential of our extensive back catalog.”
Start Publishing president Jarred Weisfeld told ...Read More
Legendary comics writer and editor Stan Lee, 95, died November 12, 2018 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles CA.
During his long tenure at Marvel Comics, Lee helped create iconic characters like the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, and Spider-Man. His groundbreaking collaborations with artist Jack Kirby include the Avengers and Thor. Lee popularized the “Marvel Method” of comic writing, which emphasized close collaboration between writers and artists. Under ...Read More
The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), which administers the prestigious Carnegie Medal and Kate Greenaway Awards for the best British children’s books, has promised to take immediate action to improve the diversity of their selections. The award, launched in 1935, has never been won by a black, Asian, or minority ethnic (BAME) writer, and the 20 authors on the 2017 longlist were all white.
After an outcry ...Read More
K.D. Edwards, The Last Sun (Pyr 978-1-63388-423-6, $17.00, 363pp, tp) June 2018. Cover by Micah Epstein.
The last scion of a once-powerful house works as an investigator/agent in this entertaining first novel, a sort of urban fantasy set in a world that mixes modern technology (cell phones) with a strangely different culture. In this world, refuges from war-torn Atlantis used money and magic to turn Nantucket into New Atlantis, mostly ...Read More
New issues of Abyss & Apex, Aphelion, Aurealis, Clarkesworld, The Dark, Galaxy’s Edge, GigaNotoSaurus, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Shimmer, and Uncanny ...Read More
Members of the British Science Fiction Association may nominate works for the 2018 BSFA Awards until December 31, 2018. Nominations may be made online here.
BSFA has changed the rules for the Best Novel category:
To bring it into line with all the other awards, we are dropping the publication location requirement for novels. Previously novels were only eligible if they were published for the first time in the UK ...Read More
F&SF 7-8/18
Stonecoast Review Summer ’18
Fireside Quarterly 9/18
Pulp Literature Summer ’18
The July-August F&SF features an impressive novella from a new writer, L.X. Beckett, “Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling“. Drow Whiting is a journalist and (for now) failed musician, and he’s in serious trouble, because a prominent singer just tried to commit suicide because of a bad review he wrote. That’s bad enough (says this reviewer!), but ...Read More
The winner of the 2018 Endeavour Award has been announced:
The award “honors a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book, either a novel or a single-author collection, created by a writer living in the Pacific ...Read More
Estcon 2018 was another wonderful summer event, held in the same location, Udu Farm in Estonia. Estcon is possibly the only science fiction convention in the world held primarily in the open air. The farm offers a camping area and two large farmhouses with multiple bedrooms as well as two dozen “camping huts,” each fitted with three beds, a small refrigerator, and a covered area with picnic bench and grill ...Read More
David G. Barnett will be awarded the 2019 J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award by Splatterpunk Awards founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene.
The Lifetime Achievement Award “honors individuals who have upheld, impacted and contributed to the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.” The award will be presented during the second annual Splatterpunk Awards, presented during Killercon 2019 in Austin, Texas.
For more information, see the official announcement.
[via File770] ...Read More
