Several authors of genre interest are recipients of 2020 Literature Fellowships awarded by The National Endowment for the Arts.
Lindsey Drager, Micah Dean Hicks, Ling Ma, Lance Olsen, Anjali Sachdeva, Peng Shepherd, and Emma Törzs are among the writers who received grants of $25,000 each. The grants are meant “allow recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement.” In all, 36 creative writing grants were ...Read More
Rachel Caine, Sword and Pen (Berkley 978-0-451-48924-1, $17.99, 358pp, hc) September 2019. Cover by Katie Anderson.
Things look grim in this fifth and final book in the Great Library series, which picks up right where the previous left off. Jess Brightwell and his friends have finally made it back to the Great Library at Alexandria, and the corrupt Archivist is on the run – but all the powers in Europe ...Read More
Carl Brandon, Jeanne Gomoll, ed. (Union Street Press 978-0-35957-906-8, $16.00, 92pp, tp) June 2019.
There’s a lot going on in the little book called Carl Brandon, a self-published volume edited by Jeanne Gomoll. It collects five texts by various authors: an introduction by Nisi Shawl & K. Tempest Bradford, who co-founded the Carl Brandon Society; an explanatory essay by Terry Carr, who co-founded Carl Brandon himself; “The Cacher ...Read More
Emergency Skin, N.K. Jemisin; Jason Isaacs, narrator (Brilliance Audio, $1.99, digital download, 1 hr., unabridged) September 2019.
SF thriller author Blake Crouch solicited and edited six stories about possible futures for his Forward anthology, all of which are available separately, both as ebooks and audio productions narrated by an array of actors.
My favorite story in the bunch, as well as the greatest text/audio matchup in the series, was ...Read More
The New Yorker 9/30/19 Hexarchate Stories, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris) June 2019. And Go Like This, John Crowley (Small Beer Press) November 2019.
I’m catching up slightly late with one of the New Yorker‘s occasional fantastical stories, this one quite lightly fantastical, though, I am told, set in Cross River, a city in which the author (Rion Amilcar Scott) has written other stories, all with somewhat ...Read More
Capricious SF 7/19 Strange Horizons 9/30/19 Current Futures: A Sci-Fi Ocean Anthology, Ann VanderMeer, ed. (XPRIZE) June 2019.
I wanted to make sure to catch up with Capricious as, according to editor A.C. Buchanan, the magazine will be taking a hiatus through at least the summer of 2020. I feel that Capricious has been putting out some wonderfully innovative short fiction recently, and I’m happy to say that issue ...Read More
Fighters of Fear: Occult Detective Stories, edited by Mike Ashley (Talos 978-1945863523, $29.99, 624pp, hardcover) January 2020
It is a simple and undeniable fact that the past will in many ways always overpower and outweigh the present. It’s a matter involving sheer numbers and mass. The present is a tiny moving window of some quantum of time in which our consciousness lives. To be generous, let’s denominate “the present” ...Read More
The Salem Public Library has honored writer and editor Gardner Dozois (1947-2018) with a plaque installed on January 21, 2020 near its paperback science fiction collection. Dozois was born in Salem MA and lived there until 1966.
The Salem Public Library trustees also unveiled plaques honoring Salem natives Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nathaniel Bowditch.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. ...Read More
The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the final ballot for the 2019 Bram Stoker Awards:
Superior Achievement in a Novel
Superior Achievement in a First Novel
The longlists for the Carnegie Medal for best children’s book and the Kate Greenaway Medal for best illustrations in a children’s book have been announced. Titles of genre interest follow.
Carnegie Medal
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) have released the final ballot for the 2019 Nebula Awards.
Novel
The 2020 Spectrum Awards nominees for the best in contemporary fantastic art have been announced.
Advertising
Book
Finalists for the inaugural Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction were announced as part of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes:
The Bone Ships, RJ Barker (Orbit 978-0-316-48796-2, $15.99, 500pp, tp) September 2019. Cover by Edward Bettison.
The Bone Ships is RJ Barker’s fourth novel, the first in a new series after his well-received Wounded Kingdom trilogy. I haven’t read the Wounded Kingdom books (Age of Assassins, Blood of Assassins, and King of Assassins), which makes The Bone Ships my first encounter with Barker’s work. I ...Read More
The New York Public Library is celebrating its 125th anniversary with a list of “125 Books We Love,” chosen by a team of librarians. The list includes many titles of genre interest.
The sixth annual BooktubeSFF Awards Shortlists have been announced. The awards are judged by the YouTube SFF fandom community.
Best Science Fiction
Best Fantasy
The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo (Flatiron Books 978-1-250-17545-8, $26.99, 384pp, hc) February 2019.
Author Yangsze Choo takes readers on an immersive ride into the past with her entertaining mystery-fantasy adventure, The Night Tiger. Set in 1931 Malaya, the novel combines one young boy’s quest to fulfill the deathbed wish of a revered elder with a young woman’s attempt to return a souvenir dismembered finger to the lecherous creep ...Read More
The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced their second annual Summer Scares Reading list.
ADULT
YOUNG ADULT
MIDDLE GRADE
Betsy Wollheim is the recipient of the 2020 Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (AKA the Skylark Award). The award was presented by the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) at Boskone 57, held at the Westin Boston Waterfront, February 14-16, 2020.
The Skylark is given to “some person, who, in the opinion of the membership, has contributed significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field ...Read More
Anyone, Charles Soule (Harper Perennial 978-0062890634, $21.99, 400pp, hc) December 2019.
I’ve been avidly reading Charle Soule’s work since I ended my decades-long comics book hiatus in 2011. I began with Soule’s run on DC’s Swamp Thing and then, when I migrated to Marvel comics, enjoyed his take on Thunderbolts, the Inhumans, and Daredevil. I was particularly fond of his creator-owned series, the wildly inventive and gonzo Letter 44 ...Read More
Gingerbread, Helen Oyeyemi (Riverhead 978-1-59463-465-9, $27.00, 272pp, hc) March 2019.
Make no mistake: Helen Oyeyemi’s sixth novel is literary fiction, with a profound central metaphor and wandering, unfixed storylines. Its language is heady and attention-getting: “Flowers wilt and shed mottled petals, mold blooms greenish-white on chocolate truffles, and Harriet’s gingerbread hunkers down in its tin, no more attractive than the day it arrived, but no more repellent either.” But ...Read More
The Initiate, James L. Cambias (Baen 978-1-98212-435-9, $25, 288pp, hardcover) February 2020
Producing four superior novels in six years, starting with A Darkling Sea in 2014 and extending to the current one in 2020, James Cambias seems to have hit his stride, but not his peak. We can only anticipate many more fine books to follow.
Indicative of his desire always to be expanding his range, Cambias’s newest is ...Read More
All Worlds Are Real, Susan Palwick (Fairwood Press 978-1-933846-84-2, $17.99, 320pp, tp) November 2019.
In her introduction to All Worlds are Real, Jo Walton correctly notes that Susan Palwick is “definitely not as well known as a writer this good ought to be at this point in her career.” While one reason for this is that she’s not been especially prolific – four novels and one prior collection ...Read More
Audible and the publishers who sued them over their planned Captions program – which creates scrolling, machine-generated text that displays while their audiobooks are playing – have reached a settlement. Audible’s lawyer Emily Resbaum wrote to the court on January 13, 2020 that “We are pleased to inform the Court that the parties have resolved their disputes. The parties respectfully request until January 21 to allow the parties to obtain ...Read More
Gollancz publisher Anne Clarke is leaving the Orion imprint after one year in the post. Marcus Gipps is receiving a promotion to publishing director. Gipps worked as a bookseller for ten years before joining Gollancz in 2011, and most recently held the title of editorial director of Gollancz and SF Gateway. Gipps will work with deputy publisher Gillian Redfearn and will report to Orion managing director Katie Espiner.
Rachel Winterbottom ...Read More
The Bookseller has announced 30 from 30, a “super list” of 30 books from the past 30 years of British Book Awards winners as finalists for a one-off award for the best book of the past three decades. Titles of genre interest include Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Myer (Little, Brown), Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (Bloomsbury), Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (Scholastic), and The Lovely Bones ...Read More
