Locus Online

A Brightness Long Ago, Guy Gavriel Kay (Berkley 978-0-451-47298-4, $27.00, 448pp, hc) May 2019.

At the risk of oversimplification – well, no, to be honest, with the intent of oversimplification – the fantastic genres have a long and complex relation­ship with historical fiction, but they often tend to use it to provide templates for their own preoc­cupations. Horror seems to love the Middle Ages, with its demons and tortures and ...Read More

Lightspeed 4/19 Clarkesworld 3/19 Strange Horizons 3/19 Tor.com 2/19, 3/19

The strongest story in April’s Lightspeed magazine is Caroline M. Yoachim‘s “The Archronology of Love“. In the space of a short novelette, Yoachim does three things and does them very well: introduce a complicated new concept, develop a mystery plot, and portray a woman almost broken by grief over the death of her partner. The new concept ...Read More

The War Within, Stephen R. Donaldson (Berkley 978-0-399-58616-3, $28.00, 564pp, hc) April 2019.

Steven R. Donaldson has been putting his characters through hell for decades. The War Within, the second volume of The Great God’s War, does not provide any relief.

This book is set 20 years after the first volume. Prince Bifalt married Princess Estie, and they’ve become the rulers of their respective kingdoms, Belleger and Amika, ...Read More

Not for Use in Navigation, Iona Datt Sharma (Self-published, $5.25, 210pp, eb) March 2019. Cover by Katherine Catchpole.

I read Iona Datt Sharma’s short-fiction collection Not for Use in Navigation almost by accident, at the end of a chain of happy coincidences that both led me to learn about its existence and to read it in a single sitting. Datt Sharma is a writer at the beginning of their ...Read More

F&SF 3-4/19 Galaxy’s Edge 3/19 Zyzzyva Winter ’18 Interzone 3-4/19 Mythic Journeys, Paula Guran, ed. (Night Shade) May 2019.

Sometimes I fail to mention stories that may not be earthshaking, but are good fun. In the March-April F&SF, for example, I enjoyed several stories greatly, without necessarily, say, putting them on my prospective Hugo Award nomination list. To wit: Gregor Hartmann‘s “The Unbearable Lightness of Bullets” ...Read More

Joanna Ruth Meyer, Echo North (Page Street 978-1-62414-715-9, $17.99, 391pp, hc) January 2019.

Fairytales, myths, and even a ballad mix in this lyrical young-adult novel about a young woman lured by a wolf to his magical house, where she finds herself trapped, forced to stay. Echo’s an interesting character: scarred on her face as a child by a wolf she tried to free from a trap, she’s grown up used ...Read More

WisCon 43 was held May 24-27, 2019 at the Concourse Hotel in balmy Madison WI, with Charlie Jane Anders and G. Willow Wilson as guests of honor. There were 940 full memberships sold, plus 51 teen/youth/child memberships (including many donated and assisted memberships). Programming offered 109 panels, solo presentations, and roundtables, focused on SF/F literature, diversity, feminism, disability, criticism, and more. There were 14 group readings plus GoH readings for ...Read More

“Treason Properly” by J.J. Cragun won the sixth annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, announced July 6, 2019 during SpikeCon in Layton UT. Second place went to “In the House of Rain and Gale” by Joelle Douthit and third place went to “In the City of Dreadful Joy” by Misha Burnett.

Other nominees were:

The British Library has acquired the 300-box archive of Granta, covering 40 years since the relaunch of the magazine in 1979. The archive contains back issues as well as correspondence and manuscripts from authors including Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Doris Lessing, and Susan Sontag.

Granta publisher and editor Sigrid Rausing said:

I am delighted that the Granta archive has found a permanent ...Read More

Sourcebooks sold 45% ownership of the company to Penguin Random House. PRH will be a “collaborative inves­tor,” with founder and CEO Dominique Raccah working closely with Madeline McIntosh, CEO of Penguin Random House US. Both have seats on the newly created board of directors. There are no immediate changes planned to “leader­ship, management, publishing autonomy, or entrepreneurial culture” at Sourcebooks, which hopes to double in size.

While you are here, ...Read More

Exhalation, Ted Chiang (Knopf 978-1-101-94788-3, $25.95, 358pp, hc) May 2019.

It’s not exactly as though Ted Chiang’s prolificacy is getting out of hand, but it might be worth noting that his long-awaited new collection Exhalation contains nine stories, while his previous collection Stories of Your Life contained only eight. On the other hand, that earlier collection covered the first 11 years of his career, while the new one covers ...Read More

Cressida Cowell has been named the 2019-2021 Waterstones Children’s Laureate. “Selected by a panel made up of librarians, critics, writers, literature development workers and booksellers, the role is awarded to an outstanding children’s author or illustrator with a passion for fostering a new generation of writers, artists and readers.”

Cowell said:

I’m honoured to be chosen to be the 11th Waterstones Children’s Laureate and I will try and justify your ...Read More

“Skinned” by Lesley Nneka Arimah (McSweeney’s #53) won the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing. The £10,000 prize “is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English” and was announced during a ceremony on July 8, 2019 at the University of London’s Senate House in London, UK. Additionally, four shortlisted authors each received £500. Judges for 2019 were Sefi Atta, Peter Kimani (chair), Margie Orford, Scott ...Read More

Collision, J.S. Breukelaar (Meerkat Press 978-1-946154-17-0, $16.95, tp, 220pp) March 2019.

You may have encountered a story by J.S. Breukelaar here and there, or even her novels American Monster (2014) or Altheia (2017). Whether her name is familiar or not, her debut collection, Collision: Stories, should be on your “must read” list. Breuke­laar, an American living in Sydney, Australia, writes in a clean, incisive style with razor-sharp opening ...Read More

Columbus 2020 NASFiC has won the bid to host the next North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC), to be held August 20-23, 2020 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Convention Center in Columbus OH. There were no other registered candidates.

Confirmed guests of honor include author guests Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, artist guest Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, editor guest Christopher J. Garcia, science guest Marc Millis, fan guests Sue ...Read More

The Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) has announced the winner of the 2019 Prometheus Award for Best Novel, honoring works published in 2018 that “examine the meaning of freedom.”

Best Novel Award

The 2019 Chesley Awards winners have been announced:

Best Cover Illustration: Hardcover

Winners of the Heinlein Society’s annual undergraduate scholarships for the 2019-2020 academic year were announced July 7, 2019. This year’s winners are Charles Boyle, Rosemary Lach, and Faith Rovenolt. The scholarship awards $2,000 to each recipient.

Lach received the Virginia Heinlein Memorial Scholarship, which is dedicated to female candidates majoring in engineering, math, or science. Rovenolt received the Dr. Jerry Pournelle Memorial Scholarship, and Boyle received the Dr. Yoji Kondo ...Read More

The Chaos Function, Jack Skillingstead (John Joseph Adams 978-1-328-52615-1, $24.00, 294pp, hc) March 2019.

Jack Skillingstead’s The Chaos Function invites us to think about the tangle of paths that lead into or away from any given Bad Place, and how hard it is to avoid going down them. It is set ten years from now in a world that differs from the present mainly in improvements in smartphone technology. ...Read More

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #273, #274 Mithila Review #10 Diabolical Plots #47, #48 Mad Scientist Journal Winter 2019

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #273 brings us two coming-of-age stories, although they’re very different. “Through the Doorways, Whiskey Chile” by S.H. Mansouri is told in a twisted landscape of weirdo magic and a moonshiner Whiskey King. Brady Nokes is the king’s son; his Momma died when he was young and his father ...Read More

Fleet of Knives, Gareth L. Powell (Titan Books 978-1-785655210, $14.95, 406pp, pb). February 2019.

Fleet of Knives is the sequel to BSFA Award-winning author Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War, in which sentient ex-warship Trouble Dog and her crew – including Captain Sal Konstanz – fell face first into trouble associated with their job for the House of Reclamation (an apolitical interstellar organisation dedicated to search and rescue), ...Read More

The 2019 SFWA Nebula Conference was held May 16-19 at the Warner Center Marriott Woodland Hills in sunny Califor­nia for the first of two years. There were 465 warm bodies of the record-breaking 475 registered members, compared to 356 in 2018. The hotel was comfortable, with spacious mingling areas, a well-appointed bar, and eateries within a few (albeit large) blocks.

Each attendee received a logo-adorned bag stuffed with books. The ...Read More

Nomads, Dave Hutchinson (NewCon Press 978-1-912950-00-3, £15.99, 84pp, hc) February 2019. Cover by Peter Holinghurst. Morpho, Philip Palmer (NewCon Press 978-1-912950-01-0, £15.99, 117pp, hc) February 2019. Cover by Peter Holinghurst. The Man Who Would Be Kling, Adam Roberts (NewCon Press 978-1-912950-04-1, £15.99, 57pp, hc) March 2019. Cover by Peter Holinghurst. Macsen Against the Jugger, Simon Morden (NewCon Press 978-1-912950-07-2, £15.99, 63pp, hc) March 2019. Cover by ...Read More

David Drake, The Storm (Baen 978-1-4814-8369-8, $25.00, xii+274pp, hc) January 2019. Cover by Todd Lockwood.

Lord Pal of Beune returns for more far-future Arthurian adventures in this sequel to The Spark. Pal’s still not entirely comfortable among the lords and ladies in Dun Add, where Jon the Leader rules the Commonwealth of Mankind. Pal’s happy to be a Champion, and believes in Jon’s vision of many lands united by ...Read More

Blanca & Roja, Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel & Friends 978-1-250-16271-7, $17.99, 367pp, hc) October 2018.

Anna-Marie McLemore follows up her gorgeous­ly crafted novel Wild Beauty with an equally lush and luminous take on the fairy tale of “Snow White and Rose Red”. Blanca & Roja is the story of two sisters who labor under a generational curse. One is light and the other is dark. One is agreeable, the ...Read More