NASA has named the landing site of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover after SF author Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006). The rover was launched from Cape Canaveral FL on July 30, 2020 and landed in Jezero Crater, Mars on February 18, 2021. The mission will spend at least one Mars year (two Earth years) exploring the landing site region.
For more information, see NASA’s website.
While you are here, please take ...Read More
Within the Wires: Season 5: Voicemail, Jeffrey Cranor & Janina Matthewson; Amiera Darwish, narrator (Night Vale Presents, ten episodes, 3.5 hrs.) <www.nightvalepresents.com/withinthewires> August-December 2020.
The events of 2020 made it difficult for me to establish and hold the focus I needed to listen to audiobooks and write about them. (The super-long column in the January 2021 Locus suggests that I’ve maybe started to get my mojo back.) When I ...Read More
Analog/Virtual: And Other Simulations of Your Future, Lavanya Lakshminarayan (Hachette India 978-9-389-25308-5, Rs399, 310pp, tp) February 2020.
Having thoroughly enjoyed Lavanya Lakshminarayan’s Analog/Virtual: And Other Simulations of Your Future, I’ve decided that all far-future dystopias should be structured as a series of linked short stories. That’s not to say George Orwell missed a trick by neglecting the perspectives of Julia, Mr. Charrington, or O’Brien; 1984 famously generates its ...Read More
Kind of a Big Deal, Shannon Hale (Roaring Brook 978-1-250-20623-7, $18.99, 389pp, hc) August 2020.
When Shannon Hale’s thoughtful Kind of a Big Deal opens, readers quickly discover that protagonist Josie Pie (her stage name), is living the unenviable reality of having peaked in high school. After flaming out in an ill-thought Broadway attempt, she is now the nanny for a sweet little girl whose dynamic mother recently relocated ...Read More
Red Noise, John P. Murphy (Angry Robot 978-0-85766-847-9, $14.99, 448pp, tp) July 2020. Cover by Kieryn Tyler.
It’s easy to find the Western that lurks beneath the surface of Red Noise, the novel-length debut of Nebula Award finalist John P. Murphy. A drifter wanders into a nearly deserted town and finds two sides in a long-term stand-off. Only in this version, the town is a converted asteroid named ...Read More
The Only Living Girl on Earth, Charles Yu (Scribd Originals, subscription required, 43pp) January 2021.
Last year Charles Yu wrote one of my favourite novels of 2020, Interior Chinatown, the deserved winner of the National Book Award. It’s a comic, surreal and emotional story about the struggles of being an immigrant, and the child of immigrants, in America. Yu is not so prolific as to have written another ...Read More
Pocket Workshop: Essays on Living as a Writer, Tod McCoy & M. Huw Evans, eds. (Hydra House 978-0997951073, $17.95, 196pp, pb) February 2021.
Gathered here are 28 essays (six reprints, 22 originals) by instructors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, intended, as Tod McCoy explains in his foreword, as “a way to give back to a community who may not be able to attend the workshop by delivering thoughts ...Read More
Outskirts Poetry has launched The Outskirts Poetry Podcast, a bi-weekly podcast hosted by Jake Tringali and produced by Tringali and Melanie Stormm, which “marries SF Poetry/Fiction and the counterculture… geared toward writers and readers of speculative genre poetry and fiction who enjoy art that thrives at the fringes of society.” Season one guests include D. Scot Miller, Locus‘s own Josh Pearce, and Catherynne M. Valente. For more: <www.outskirtspoetry.com>.
While you ...Read More
Finalists for the 2021 Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction were announced as part of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes:
The prize is sponsored ...Read More
C.J. Cherryh is the winner of the 2021 Robert A. Heinlein Award, given for “outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space,” recognizing her body of work, “with emphasis on her detailed social science and commercial relationship based stories set in the space station rich Alliance-Union universe.” The award is administered by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS).
The winner will receive ...Read More
The results of the annual Clarkesworld readers’ poll for best story and cover art of 2020 were announced in the March 2021 issue:
Best Story
Best Cover
The QueerSciFi.com Flash Fiction Contest is open now through April 30, 2021, with the theme this year of “Ink”.
Tell us about ink (and the stain it leaves) on your characters, the culture, and the world, for better or worse.
We’ll be accepting works from across the queer spectrum, and would love to see more entries including lesbian, trans, bi, intersex and ace protagonists, as well as gay men. We ...Read More
The Memory Theater, Karin Tidbeck (Pantheon 978-1524748333, 240pp, $25.95, hardcover) February 2021
When I reviewed Karin Tidbeck’s story collection Jagannath at The Barnes & Noble Review, I said that it distilled and hybridized “almost every writer in the VanderMeers’ massive anthology The Weird. A century’s worth of potent surrealism and estrangement surge through her veins and onto the page.” With the publication of her new novel, I’ll have ...Read More
Fugitive Telemetry, Martha Wells (Tordotcom 978-1-250-76537-6, $19.99, 176pp, hc) April 2021. Cover by Jaime Jones.
At this point, everyone knows about Murderbot. If you don’t know about Murderbot, what rock have you been hiding under? (Is it a comfy rock? I could use a nice rock-based holiday, away from all the news. And the pandemic.) Martha Wells’s Fugitive Telemetry is the sixth outing in the award-winning Murderbot Diaries. It ...Read More
Deuces Down, George R.R. Martin & Melinda Snodgrass, eds. (Tor 978-1-250-22720-1, $28.99, 352pp, hc) January 2021.
Deuces Down is both the 16th and 30th book in the Wild Cards series. The anthology was first published in 2002; this new version is refreshed with added stories by Carrie Vaughn, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and Caroline Spector. Although referred to on the title page as a mosaic novel, it remains – despite ...Read More
The Jack L. Chalker Young Writers’ Contest is open to original science fiction and fantasy submissions by Maryland students “no younger than 14 and no older than 18 years of age.” First, second, and third prizes are $150, $100, and $50, respectively, and the deadline for submissions is March 31st, 2021.
The contest is run by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) and “Judges shall be drawn from the membership
Dissipatio H.G.: The Vanishing, Guido Morselli (New York Review Books 978-1681374765, $15.95, 120pp, tp) December 2020.
On the eve of his 40th birthday, a man decides to end his life. He tells us that 40 is “a point of passage… when maturity begins to decline toward old age. I wanted to be off while I was still thirty-nine, if only technically.” He chooses to drown himself up in the ...Read More
“My Gardening Journal: Tales from a Psychic Gardener” by Jazmin Collins is the winner of the 2021 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. The award is “given annually to the best short-story written in the science fiction or fantasy genres by a full-time undergraduate college student,” and is accompanied by a $500 cash prize, publication in Asimov’s, and an invitation to ICFA (International Conference ...Read More
Sascha Stronach and Yilin Wang will guest edit issues of SFWA’s The Bulletin for 2021. Stronach will edit issue #218 (September 2021), and Wang will edit issue #219 (December 2021). SFWA editor-in-chief Michi Trota said, “I’ve admired Sascha’s and Yilin’s work in SF/F and am excited they’ll be bringing their unique visions and perspectives to shape their issues of The Bulletin.”
For more information, see SFWA’s website.
While you are ...Read More
Don’t Tell a Soul, Kirsten Miller (Delacorte 978-0-525-58120-8, $20.99, 384pp, hc) January 2021.
Kirsten Miller’s outstanding thriller Don’t Tell a Soul is not only a first-rate mystery, it also manages to address just what it is about certain ghost stories, specifically those involving dead girls, which are so culturally pervasive. The novel’s protagonist has a special affinity for these girls and how their personal histories and true motivations are ...Read More
The Society of Time, John Brunner (edited by Mike Ashley) (The British Library 978-0712353823, 288pp, hardcover) November 2020
Was John Brunner’s life a tragedy? In some undeniable senses, yes. Possessed of enormous talents, but also an array of character faults, he became his own worst enemy and his later-era career suffered immensely—in large part due to one poor decision to stake too much effort and hopes on a mainstream ...Read More
Results of the 2021 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Science Fiction Studies have been announced:
World Science Fiction Studies
Utopian Studies
For more information, see
Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind (Ecco 10/20) This paranoid, apocalyptic SF novel is generating a lot of buzz and ending up on Best of Year lists. Who do we trust when the power goes out? Vacationing in a rented home, Amanda and Clay are about to find out when a couple, claiming to be the owners, knock on the door and say New York City is under blackout.
Lightspeed 11/20, 12/20 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 10/8/20, 10/22/20 Strange Horizons 10/5/20, 10/12/20
Lightspeed’s November issue breaks from the usual format to offer a single science fiction novelette instead of the usual pair of shorter pieces. “Schrödinger’s Catastrophe” by Gene Doucette is worth it, as special agent Alice is sent to rescue/recover a research vessel that was exploring a totally empty quadrant of space. It went silent after sending ...Read More
Bacchilega, Cristina, Orme, Jennifer, eds.: Inviting Interruptions: Wonder Tales in the 21st Century
(Wayne State University Press 978-0-8143-4700-3, $92.99, 254pp, formats: hardcover, trade paperback, ebook, Feb 23, 2021)
Anthology of stories, comics, and visual texts intended to challenge the popular heteronormative/happy ending perception of fairy tales. Each entry includes editorial notes and further critical resources.
Galland, Nicole: Master of the Revels
(HarperCollins/Morrow 978-0-06-284487-3, $29.99, 552pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, ...Read More
Winners of the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) SF/F short story contest were announced at Boskone 58, held online, February 12-14, 2021. Prizes included certificates of achievement, books from NESFA Press, and free membership to a future Boskone convention.
