Locus Online

Architects of Memory, Karen Osborne (Tor 978-1-250-21547-5, $17.99, 336pp, tp) August 2020.

Imagined futures where corporations have remade societies so that they always provide a profit are a common backdrop for speculative fiction. That isn’t a value judgement, mind. There are only so many backdrops to go around, and this future feels increasingly likely with each passing day.

In Karen Osborne’s version, Architects of Memory, Ash is a ...Read More

Clown in a Cornfield, Adam Cesare (HarperTeen 978-0062854599, $17.99, 352pp, hc) August 2020.

I’ve not previously read the work of Adam Cesare, but I was drawn to his new teen horror novel, Clown in a Cornfield, because of its strik­ing red and black cover, of a cornfield fashioned in the image (you guessed it) of a grinning clown. It’s a cover that gave me pleasing flashbacks to the ...Read More

The Memory of Souls, Jenn Lyons (Tor 978-1-250-17557-1, $27.99, 640pp, hc) August 2020.

Like The Obsidian Tower, Jenn Lyons’s The Memory of Souls (the third volume in her Chorus of Dragons quartet) focuses as much on individual characters and relationships as it does on the great events in which they are caught up. At the heart of this series is a strong suspicion towards power (either embodied in ...Read More

Hench, by Natalie Zina Walschots (William Morrow 978-0062978578, 416pp, $27.99, hardcover) September 2020

Have we reached Peak Deconstruction of Superheroes yet? One could reasonably argue that the trend harks back at least as far as Mad magazine’s “Superduperman” and “Batboy and Rubin” parodies from 1953. Marvel and DC both poked fun at the conventions of the genre during the Sixties, with titles like The Inferior Five and Not Brand ...Read More

Divergence, C.J. Cherryh (DAW 978-0-756-41430-6, $26.00, 339pp, hc) September 2020. Cover by Todd Lockwood.

C.J. Cherryh’s Divergence is not a minor book, but after 20 previous entries in this long-running series, your faithful reviewer is reduced to recommending the entire Foreigner sequence yet again and assuring those already familiar with its pleasures that even after so many books, Cherryh’s hand has not lost its cunning and that there are ...Read More

Seven of Infinities, Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean 978-1-59606-976-3; $40.00, 176pp, hc) October 2020.

I’ve always been impressed by the ways in which different genres can use each other, especially in the hands of an adroit writer who is also an adroit reader. Alix E. Harrow is one example and Aliette de Bodard, who adapted “Beauty and the Beast” into a far-future post colonialist fable with In the Vanishers’ Palace ...Read More

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the winners of the 2020 Elgin Awards, presented for the best poetry chapbook and the best full-length poetry book in the speculative genre. The Elgin Awards are named after the founder of SFPA, Suzette Haden Elgin.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell (Hogarth US & UK) won the 34th Arthur C. Clarke Award, announced online. Serpell receives a check for £2,020 and an engraved bookend.

Other finalists were:

Of the Blood by Cameo Renae (self-published) is on five-title shortlist for the 2020 Kindle Storyteller Award. The award, inaugurated in 2017, comes with a £20,000 prize and “is open to writers publishing in English in any genre, who publish their work through Kindle Direct Publishing” on Amazon.co.uk.

For more information, see the award page.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or ...Read More

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) announced that ICFA 42, scheduled for March 17-20, 2021, will be held as an online-only event, instead of in person. This is the first 2021 virtual-only announcement we’ve seen for the con circuit.

Dale Knickerbocker, president of the IAFA, said,

The Board has been monitoring the ongoing situation with the pandemic closely and has met twice this summer to consider ...Read More

Pine by Francine Toon (Doubleday) has won the 2020 McIlvanney Prize, given by the Scottish writing festival Bloody Scotland “to the best Scottish Crime book of the year.” Toon receives a £1,000 prize “and nationwide promotion in Waterstones.” Judges were Stuart Cosgrove, James Crawford, and Karen Robinson.

For more information, see the Bloody Scotland website.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or ...Read More

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang (One World) and How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang (Riverhead) are among the honorees of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, “a se­­lection of five fiction writers under the age of 35 whose debut work promises to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape.” Each winner receives $1,000 and will be honored in an online ceremony on October 20, ...Read More

How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It, K.J. Parker (Orbit 978-0-316-49867-8, $16.99, 400pp, tp) August 2020.

Many years on, the walled city in K.J. Parker’s Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City is still under siege. The city still needs to be defended from Ogus, the leader of a rival empire who is keen on wiping out every last person in the Robur empire, most of ...Read More

The winners of the 2020 Ditmar Awards for Australian SF were announced in an online ceremony on September 18, 2020:

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury 978-1-635575637, $27.00, 244pp, hc) September 2020.

The first thing everyone is going to notice about Piranesi, Susanna Clarke’s long-awaited second novel following her enor­mously popular Jonathan Strange and Mr Nor­rell, is that it’s something like a third the length of that blockbuster. The second is that it bears no direct relation to the densely imagined magical 19th century of that novel and of ...Read More

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/18/20 Strange Horizons 6/2/20, 6/8/20 Samovar 4/20 Mithila Review #14

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #306 opens with ”Kill the Witchman” by William Broom. A man is drugged and brainwashed with a mission to kill the witchman and his son. As he hunts them he lives in an almost eternal present with no idea of the past and little conception of the future. When he finds ...Read More

Red Dust, Yoss (Restless Books 978-1632062468, $16.99, 208pp, tp) July 2020.

Red Dust, Yoss’s latest novel to be translated into English, is an entertaining yarn narrated by a positronic robot (or “pozzie”) named Ray­mond in honour of its favourite author. Alongside its fellow automatons, Raymond guards the corridors and docking bays of space-station, the William S. Burroughs, under the eagle-eye of the Galactic Trade Confederation, and its mem­ber ...Read More

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) has appointed Jake Cumsky-Whitlock of Solid State Books in Washington DC and Melanie Knight of Books Inc. in San Francisco CA to the board, to serve until board elections in April 2021. This follows changes to bylaws which “bring the number of board members to 13 (from 11) and that require the board to include at least four booksellers who are Black, Indigenous, or People ...Read More

Longlists for the National Book Awards (NBA) in the Fiction, Young People’s Literature, and Translated Literature categories have been announced, including titles of genre interest.

The Fiction category includes Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (Ecco), If I Had Two Wings by Randall Kenan (Norton), A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet (Norton), and Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (Pantheon).

The Young People’s Literature category includes King and the Dragonflies ...Read More

Publisher Two Dollar Radio won the 2020 Voice of the Heartland Award, given “to individuals and organizations who uphold the value of independent bookselling and who have made a significant contribution to bookselling in our combined regions.” The award is given by the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association (GLIBA) and the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association (MIBA). Nominating bookseller Gary Lovely of Book Loft in Columbus, OH called them “a shining ...Read More

Co-editors Coral Alejandra Moore and Eliana González Ugarte announced the creation of Constelación Magazine, “a bilingual magazine of speculative fiction.”

Publishing quarterly, each themed issue will feature original artwork. Stories can be submitted in either English or Spanish; selections will be translated and published in both. Submissions for the first issue open in October, concurrent with the launch Kickstarter.

Joining Moore and Ugarte on staff are Christina Jurado and Libia ...Read More

A Wicked Magic, Sasha Laurens (Razorbill 978-0-593-11725-5, $17.99, 368pp hc) July 2020.

The problems for best friends Dan and Liss began when they found an old book in the lo­cal giveaway box in their small North Coast California town. With almost all of its pages blank, they couldn’t resist the appeal of what was printed: “A Spell for the Making of Naive Witches”. They followed the directions and something ...Read More

Author Terry Goodkind, 72, died September 17, 2020. Goodkind was a bestselling writer of epic fantasy.

Born January 11, 1948 in Omaha NE, Goodkind lived in Maine with his wife, Jeri, before they settled near Lake Las Vegas NV. He began publishing his popular Sword of Truth series with novel Wizard’s First Rule (1994) and continued with Stone of Tears (1995), Blood of the Fold (1996), Temple of the Winds ...Read More

John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Publishers, will be leaving the company and its parent, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, on January 1, 2021 due to “disagreements regarding the direction of Macmillan.” Sargent has held the position since 2012, after originally joining Holtzbrinck in 1996 as CEO of St. Martin’s Press. Don Weisberg, president of Macmillan US Trade, will take Sargent’s place as CEO. Susan Winslow will move from general manager to president ...Read More

Greg Hullender of Rocket Stack Rank announced that he will be taking an indefinite break from reviewing short stories.

This month marks five years since we started the site, and so it seemed like a good time to pause. Eric will continue to operate the site, producing monthly lists of stories for 11 magazines (with blurbs from the publisher or a few sentences from the story) and aggregating recommendations from ...Read More

The New York Public Library announced Bryan Washington’s Lot (Atlantic) as the winner of its Young Lions Fiction Award for 2020. The $10,000 prize is awarded by a panel of judges “each year to a writer age 35 or younger for a novel or a collection of short stories.” 2019’s winner was Ling Ma’s Severance (Farrar, Straus, Giroux).

For more information, see the official website.

While you are here, please ...Read More