The Ursula K. Le Guin Literary Trust has announced the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, a new award to launch in 2022. The annual $25,000 cash prize will be given to “a single book-length work of imaginative fiction.”
This award is intended to recognize those writers Ursula spoke of in her 2014 National Book Awards speech—realists of a larger reality, who can imagine real grounds for hope and ...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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The 2022 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award contest is open until February 1, 2022. Co-sponsored by Baen Books and the National Space Society, the contest is for stories of near-future space exploration. This year, the focus is on “Moon bases, Mars colonies, orbital habitats, space elevators, asteroid mining, artificial intelligence, nano-technology, realistic spacecraft, heroics, sacrifice, adventure.”
The grand prize includes publication on the Baen website at “normal paying rates ...Read More
Fan and convention organizer Mary Kay Kare, 69, died in early October 2021 of a blood infection.
Mary Kay Jackson was born July 1, 1952, and grew up in Oklahoma, where her interest in fandom began. In the late 1970s, she was a member of the Norman Oklahoma SF Society, and edited their fanzine, Red Dust. She later lived in Ohio, Seattle, and San Jose. Kare was a conrunner, co-chair ...Read More
Switch, A.S. King (Dutton 978-0-525-55551-3, $17.99, 225pp, hc) May 2021.
Award-winning author A.S. King excels at surrealist explorations of society, and her latest novel, Switch, is no exception. For Tru Becker and everyone else on Earth, time stopped on June 23, 2020. Every day is like every day, and in this ‘‘fold in time and space’’ the planet keeps spinning but nothing changes. To stave the fear such ...Read More
Libraries Connected announced “The 100 Novels that Shaped our New World”, a reading list chosen by over 400 library staff members and users. The list “follows the BBC Novels that Shaped our World library campaign” and features many titles of genre interest, including Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (Bloomsbury), The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton), Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine ...Read More
Anathema 5/21 Baffling 7/21 Clarkesworld 4/21 Dark Matter 1-2/21 Fireside 7/21 Fiyah Spring ’21 Strange Horizons 7/19/21 Tor.com 3/3/21
One of the best parts about being a reviewer is that I get to read a lot of short speculative fiction every month from a lot of different publications. Happily for me and other lovers of short SFF/H, Locus is letting me put all that reading to even more good use ...Read More
This One Sky Day by Leone Ross (Faber & Faber) is included in the six-title shortlist for the 2021 Goldsmiths Prize.
The £10,000 is given for a book by a British or Irish author that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.” This year’s judges are Fred D’aguiar, Kamila Shamsie, Nell Stevens (chair), and Johanna Thomas-Corr. The winner will be announced November 10, 2021.
For more
The Confession of Copeland Cane, Keenan Norris (The Unnamed Press 978-1-951-21325-1, $28.00, 288pp, hc) June 2021.
The Confessions of Copeland Cane poses the question: when is a dystopia not a dystopia? The answer: when there’s no notable difference to a person’s lived experience. The America Cope describes is clearly one sliding at break-neck speed toward a fascist police state with a pervasive, all-seeing propaganda machine masquerading as a media conglomerate. ...Read More
Finalists for the National Book Awards (NBA) in the Fiction, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature categories have been announced, including titles and authors of genre interest.
The Fiction category includes Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr (Scribner), Matrix by Lauren Groff (Riverhead), Zorrie by Laird Hunt (Bloomsbury), and Hell of a Book by Jason Mott (Dutton).
The Translated Literature category includes When We Cease to Understand the World by ...Read More
