Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verse and other works of genre fiction, was stabbed Friday, August 12, 2022, just before giving a lecture in upstate New York.
Rushdie, 75, is still hospitalized with serious injuries, including a damaged liver, severed nerves in an arm, a seriously damaged eye he might lose. He was taken off a ventilator over the weekend and is “on the road to recovery,” according ...Read More
The Book of Living Secrets, Madeleine Roux (Quill Tree Books 978-0-06-294142-8, $17.99, 400pp, hc) March 2022.
If you are looking for a YA take on Lovecraftian horror, then Madeleine Roux’s The Book of Living Secrets is here to fulfill your needs. The title doesn’t start out as a date with Cthulhu however, as Adelle and Connie present themselves as two typical teenagers growing up in Boston with a shared ...Read More
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey 978-0-59335-533-6, $28.00, 320pp, hc) July 2022.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is not a prequel or sequel to H.G. Wells’s classic short novel The Island of Doctor Moreau. It’s a reboot. And like all good reboots, Moreno-Garcia takes the key ingredients – Moreau’s “study of the plasticity of living forms,” his alcoholic assistant Montgomery, an isolated environment, ...Read More
Clarkesworld 5/22 The Sunday Morning Transport 5/22 Future Tense 4/22
Two of my favorite stories in Clarkesworld for May are translated. “The Possibly Brief Life of Guang Hansheng” by Liang Qingsan (translated by Andy Dudak) features a rather melancholy narrator who becomes obsessed with an early science fiction author, Guang Hansheng, after seeing a snippet of his work in a museum. He begins a course of obsessive research, ...Read More
The Damage Done, Michael Landweber (Crooked Lane Books 978-1643859477, $27.99, 352pp, hc) March 2022. Cover by Patrick Sullivan.
Michael Landweber’s The Damage Done is a gripping mosaic novel that explores the way violence towards each other seems to be part of our DNA and what would happen to the world if we suddenly found ourselves unable to be violent to one another. At once a narrative about many lives ...Read More
The Merciless Ones, Namina Forna (Delacorte 978-1-9848-4872-7, 464pp, $17.99, hc) May 2022.
Former outcasts turned warriors and liberators, Deka and her friends are back on the battlefield in The Merciless Ones, sequel to The Gilded Ones (reviewed here May 2021), this time to free the rest of the goddesses and women in Otera. As the Nuru, or only full-blooded daughter of the goddesses, Deka is the strongest of ...Read More
Samovar 4/22 Strange Horizons 4/18/22, 5/2/22, 5/9/22 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 5/5/22, 5/19/22
April also saw the release of a new issue of Samovar, the sibling publication to Strange Horizons that specializes in speculative stories and poetry in translation. Among the works in the issue, Azrin Fauzi (translated by Ali Aiman Mazwin) captures a weird and compelling journey of three people on the island of Malaysia in “Panorama People ...Read More
Spend a few minutes with us and find out about all of the SF/F/H books hitting shelves this week. Our latest New Books video is up!
We’ve got cats in space, more baking weirdness, horror, alien archeological digs, non-fiction about fantasy, and more! Give us a few minutes and we’ll catch you up on the top books that are slated to hit bookstore (and Amazon) shelves for August 2, ...Read More
Chicon 8 has partnered with author Tamora Pierce to bring children and teenagers to Worldcon in a program called Tamora’s Legends:
Ms. Pierce is sponsoring VIP ACCESS for 20 kids and teens ages 10-17 to Chicon 8: The 80th World Science Fiction Convention for the weekend of September 3rd-4th 2022! Half the sponsored VIPs will be chosen from a local Chicago community organization, and half via online application and lottery. ...Read More
Dragon Con has announced the ballot for the 2022 Dragon Awards.
Best Science Fiction Novel
Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)
Publisher, entrepreneur, and showman Robert “Bob” Self, 55, died August 3, 2022, as the result of an accident at Mono Lake in California.
Born August 5, 1966, Bob had a background in the entertainment industry and worked behind-the-scenes with a number of magicians, comedians, and illusionists. In 2003 he and his wife Rani — a professional costume designer for various TV series including The Orville — formed Baby Tattoo, Inc., ...Read More
Writing app ProWritingAid is running a free online event, Science Fiction Writers’ Week, August 29 – September 2, 2022. The event will include:
Speakers include authors Samit Basu, Emmi Itäranta, ...Read More
Gallant, V.E. Schwab (Greenwillow 978-0-06-283577-2, $18.99, 352pp, hc) March 2022. Cover by David Curtis.
Victoria Schwab’s Gallant is a dark confection, a tale that shares tropes with gothic classics (a curse, ghosts, a house of faded glamour that is shrouded in mystery) and pins its hope for a happy ending on a tortured heroine who is haunted by the secrets of a past she never knew. There is a ...Read More
PulpFest has announced the winner for the 2022 Munsey Award, given “to an individual or institution that has bettered the pulp community.”
Nominees were selected by the general pulp community, with the winner selected by a vote of past Lamont,
Tom Doherty Associates, a division of Macmillan, is rebranding as Tor Publishing Group, effective immediately.
President and publisher Devi Pillai said, “Although the Tor name has always been associated with science fiction and fantasy, our list has included titles beyond that genre since our inception. With this name change and continued growth, the Tor name will now stand for quality in various types of genre publishing, with each imprint representing ...Read More
The Embroidered Book, Kate Heartfield (HarperVoyager 978-0-00838-059-5, $28.99, 672pp, hc) May 2022.
After reading Kate Heartfield’s thoroughly engrossing The Embroidered Book, with its account of the secret role of magic in European politics around the time of the French Revolution, I made the mistake of checking out what Wikipedia had to say about such topics as ‘‘secret history’’ or ‘‘historical fantasy.’’ Not too surprisingly, the depth and consistency ...Read More
Finalists for the 2022 Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) Small Press Award for Short Fiction have been announced:
Omenana 4/22 Samovar 4/22 Analog 5-6/22
In its 21st issue, Omenana continues to bring a fascinating mix of fantasy, science fiction, and horror from African writers. “Madam Aisirhiowen’s Greatest Invention” by Amadin Ogbewe is an interesting story of a woman who transformed herself into a cyborg ruler. When we meet her she is deposed and staying with her great-granddaughter, building something with her minions. It’s pretty ominous, but ...Read More
Hokuloa Road, Elizabeth Hand (Mulholland 978-0316542043, hardcover, 368pp, $28.00) July 2022.
In days of yore, when the actual internet was merely science fiction, curious fans found out scarce biographical tidbits about their favorite authors in whatever manner they could: from fanzines, or dustjacket flaps, or occasional media articles and even the rare autobiographical essay. Heinlein lived on a walled estate in Colorado Springs. Poul Anderson, Frank Herbert and Jack ...Read More
Echo, Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Tor Nightfire 978-1-250-75955-9, $29.99, 416pp, hc) February 2022.
Reviewing the work of Thomas Olde Heuvelt is no easy task, and Echo, his latest, is no different. Translated from the Dutch by Moshe Gilula, this is a complex, creepy, atmospheric, labyrinthine monster that comes in at more than 400 pages.
Echo by Thomas Olde Heuvelt is a novel about many things; grief, trauma, unconditional love, ...Read More
The first Trigon Awards were announced by Spiral Tower Press, honoring “the past, present, and future of science fiction, fantasy, and horror” in three categories.
Literary Achievement: David C. Smith for sword-and-sorcery writing.
Scholarly Achievement: Bobby Derie for Lovecraft scholarship.
Special Achievement: The Cromcast, a podcast about Robert E. Howard.
The awards were presented July 30, 2022 at SpiralCon 1 in Newport News VA. Awardees were selected ...Read More
The Girl Who Outgrew the World, Zoje Stage (Lethe 978-1-59021-523-4, $15.00, 180pp, tp) May 2022.
Eleven-year-old Lilly is having a growth spurt. Only this is no ordinary, normal march towards adolescence. In Zoje Stage’s new novella, The Girl Who Outgrew the World, the title itself reveals the scale and pace of Lilly’s development, a mysterious, monstrous, and inexplicable surge that baffles and frightens her father, her friends, her ...Read More
The twenty-one winning titles for the PEN Translates awards have been announced, including the following titles and authors of genre interest:
The Doloriad, Missouri Williams (MCD x FSG Originals 978-0-37460-508-7, $17.00, 240pp, tp) March 2022.
Missouri Williams’s debut novel, The Doloriad, comes close to pipping Mónica Ojeda’s Jawbone as the most disturbing book I’ve read this year (note, I said close; Jawbone still holds the crown). It’s a post-apocalyptic story where an unknown cataclysm, possibly environmental (though it’s never made clear) has wiped out humanity. Well, almost. In a ...Read More
Cover Reveal!
Today’s cover reveal is from CamCat Books: a gorgeous and mystical cover for Brandon Ying Kit Boey’s debut novel Karma of the Sun.
Praise for the Book
“A hero’s journey for the end of the world, Karma of the Sun is a must-read for anyone reckoning with where we are now and where we will go next.” —Erin Swan, author of Walk the Vanished Earth
“With ...Read More
The lawsuit filed by the US Department of Justice to stop the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster has gone to trial this week.
Publishers Weekly has been covering the case: Monday featured opening arguments and testimony by Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch for the government, giving an overview of the book business and discussing how the merger would have a deleterious effect on competition.
Tuesday’s proceedings ...Read More
Lakelore, Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel and Friends 978-1-250-62414-7, $18.99, 304pp, hc) March 2022. Cover by Carolina Rodriguez Fuenmayor.
The delicate contemporary fantasy Lakelore uses author Anna-Marie McLemore’s familiar lush language to describe a strange and beautiful world beneath a lake and the two teenagers who explore it. The magic elements are subtle and largely expressed through the papier-mâché construction of alebrije, Mexican folk art sculptures of imaginary creature which come ...Read More
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki has been announced as guest of honor for the 44th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA), with Isiah Lavender III announced as guest scholar.
ICFA 44, hosted by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA), will take place March 15-18, 2023 at the Marriott Orlando Airport Lakeside in Orlando FL.
For more information, see the convention website.
While you are here, ...Read More
