Macmillan (parent company of Tor, Tor.com Publishing, St. Martin’s, and others) has instituted layoffs company-wide, reduced pay for some employees, and has frozen hiring effective April 2 in response to the projected impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The salary reductions are expected to last through June, and only impact those making more than $60,000 a year, with greater reductions for higher salaries; senior executives are on half pay, while others ...Read More
The Freedom Artist, Ben Okri (Head of Zeus 978-1788549592, 14.99, 368pp, hc) February 2019. (Akashic Books 978-1617757914, $30.95, 336pp, hc) February 2020.
Sometimes it feels like all anyone is publishing these days is dystopian fiction. I get why. As I write, Boris Johnson has just won a landslide election victory in the United Kingdom assuring a hard-Brexit and further cuts to the country’s social welfare system; in Australia, the ...Read More
Sirenia Digest #164, #165, #166 Black Static 11-12/19 The Dark 11/19, 12/19 Uncanny 11-12/19 Nightmare 12/19 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 12/5/19
I mention Sirenia Digest here from time-to-time in case readers are unaware of it. Author Caitlín R. Kiernan started offering it monthly to subscribers long before Patreon became a way to help support a writer. What does it contain? Here’s a recent sampling. Despite the fact Kiernan had vowed never ...Read More
Asimov’s 1-2/20 Analog 1-2/20 Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 11/19 On Spec #112
The first 2020 issue of Asimov’s is anchored by two novellas – the latest episode of Allen M. Steele‘s series about a human colony on a planet of Tau Ceti and the colonists’ interaction with the doglike intelligent species that controls the planet, “The Palace of Dancing Dogs” – these are enjoyable somewhat old-fashioned adventures ...Read More
A Queen in Hiding, Sarah Kozloff (Tor 978-1250168542, $12.99, 496pp, tp) January 2020.
The Queen of Raiders, Sarah Kozloff (Tor 978-1250168566, $16.99, 512pp, tp) February 2020.
A Broken Queen, Sarah Kozloff (Tor 978-1250168665, $16.99, 448pp, tp) March 2020.
The Cerulean Queen, Sarah Kozloff (Tor 978-1250168962, $16.99, 512pp, tp) April 2020.
Sarah Kozloff is a chair of film studies at Vassar College, where she’s apparently been teaching ...Read More
Silver, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island 978-1937197285, $19.00, 414 pp, tp) November 2019. Cover by Sarah Anne Langton. [Order from Mythic Island Press, PO Box 1293, Kula HI 96790; <mythicislandpress.com>.
Linda Nagata has also been revisiting old territory, turning from the near-future military-SF of the Red trilogy and The Last Good Man to the very far future of the Nanotech Succession books of the 1990s. Her new sequence builds on ...Read More
The Queen of Nothing, Holly Black (Little, Brown 978-0-316-31042-0, $19.99, 300pp, hc). November 2019.
Holly Black brings her Folk of Air trilogy to a glorious conclusion with the intense, dramatic, and thoroughly satisfying The Queen of Nothing. If she was not already firmly acknowledged as one of the most impressive names in contemporary fantasy, then this title will surely put to rest any doubts. The tightly written plot, ...Read More
The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the recipients of three awards for 2019.
The 2019 Richard Laymon President’s Award, “presented to a member who has served HWA in an exemplary manner and shown exceptional dedication to the organization,” will go to Rena Mason. The winner is chosen by HWA’s sitting president.
Leslie S. Klinger is the winner of the 2019 Silver Hammer Award, presented “to an HWA volunteer who ...Read More
Numerous upcoming conventions and literary events have been postponed or canceled as part of efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes respiratory illness COVID-19. The situation remains in flux as the full extent of the pandemic remains to be seen. We will update this story and our convention listing with further information about cancellations and postponements as it becomes available.
Sam J. Miller will judge the $5,000 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards in the debut author and open author categories.
A shortlist will be selected by Tarek El-Ariss, Jessica Flack, Peter Orner, Eric Schaller, and Dan Rockmore, the creator of the award program. The shortlist will be announced in May, with final winners chosen by Miller and announced in June 2020 at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
For more information, ...Read More
Winners of several awards given by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) have been announced.
“The Soviet Anthropocene: Desiccation, Desertification, and Environmental Horror in Dmitri Svetozarov’s Dogs” by Brittany Roberts won the Walter James Miller Memorial Award, given to the “best ICFA student paper devoted to a work or works of the fantastic originally created in a language other than English.”
“White Hope” by Julia
Talk Like a Man, Nisi Shawl (PM Press 978-1-62963-711-2, $14.00, 114pp, tp) November 2019.
It’s been more than a decade since Nisi Shawl’s only previous collection, Filter House, and since much of her short fiction has appeared in small-press publications that often have to be sought out, her new chapbook from PM Press provides an enticing glimpse into the fiction of an author most widely known for the ...Read More
NPD Bookscan released numbers on sales from 2010 to 2019 and listed the top ten bestselling titles of that decade. E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey titles took the top three slots (15.2 million for Fifty Shades of Grey, 10.4 million for Fifty Shades Darker, and 9.3 million for Fifty Shades Freed, all from Random House), with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic) in fourth place ...Read More
Nominees for the Brave New Words Award have been announced by Starburst magazine:
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has announced Kevin Wabaunsee as their new managing editor, Lauren Raye Snow as their new art director, and Beth Dawkins as their new volunteer coordinator. Wabaunsee will support editor-in-chief Michi Trota in overseeing SFWA’s publications and communications channels; Snow will oversee visual aspects, including graphics, branding, and design; and Dawkins will work to ensure that volunteers and services are placed where ...Read More
Suicide Woods, Benjamin Percy (Graywolf 978-1-644-45006-2 $16.99. 216pp. tp) October 2019.
Benjamin Percy’s writing is immaculate. Each word seems so carefully chosen the reader cannot imagine a synonym that would better suit. This slender volume is not a fast read. With such craft, a reader must slowly savor the nine stories and the single novella in Percy’s third collection. All are relentlessly dark, but the darkness springs from a ...Read More
Clarion West is offering free writing workshops for teens and adults on a first come, first served basis. The classes and writing sprints will run from March 30 – April 24, 2020. Instructors include K. Tempest Bradford, Marie Brennan, Tobias Buckell, Curtis Chen, Andy Duncan, Eileen Gunn, Elizabeth Hand, James Patrick Kelly, Fonda Lee, Henry Lien, Seanan McGuire, Ian Muneshwar, Brooks Peck, Laurie Penny, Erin Roberts, Nisi Shawl, James Sutter, ...Read More
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) announced that they were able to negotiate an advantageous settlement with their hotel after COVID-19 fears forced them to cancel ICFA 41. IAFA president Dale Knickerbocker said, “To give you an idea just how important this is, we could have been on the hook for a $130,000 payment (not a deposit) even if they had not invoked penalty clauses, which ...Read More
Forced Perspectives, Tim Powers (Baen 978-1-9821-2440-3, 384pp, hardcover) March 2020
When I reviewed the first book in this series, Alternate Routes, for Asimov’s, I said the novel “continues Powers’s invigorating investigations into spirits from the vasty deep, employing an approach and tone he has not previously offered. As is to be expected, after such a long and vital congress with specters, Powers brings his A-game to the page.” ...Read More
Valentina Gosetti & Eliza Kent are the winners of the 2020 Jamie Bishop Memorial Award, given by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) “for a critical essay on the fantastic written in a language other than English.” Their winning essay is “Maribas et la sorcellerie masculine” [Maribas and Male Witchcraft], published in Revue Bertrand 9/19.
They receive $250, an honorary plaque, and one year’s membership in
The YA Book Prize 2020 shortlist includes several titles and authors of genre interest:
The YA Book Prize is awarded to a YA title written by an author living in the UK or Ireland. Finalists and winners are selected by ...Read More
Andrea Lawlor and Ling Ma are among the winners of the 2020 Whiting Awards, which annually gives $50,000 each “to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.” The award is funded by the Whiting Foundation, created by New York investor and philanthropist Flora Ettlinger Whiting in 1971. Recipients of the award are selected by an anonymous committee appointed by the Foundation.
For more information, including the complete list ...Read More
War Girls, Tochi Onyebuchi (Razorbill 978-0-451-48167-2, $18.99, 464pp, hc) October 2019.
War Girls is a meditation on culture and conflict. It’s action-driven but complex, brutal but brilliant.
A strong opening in a stark, discomfiting setting introduces Onyii, a girl who has known war for most of her life. A handful of lines establish her dissonance with her own body, her social group, and her situation as a “war girl” ...Read More
Dracopedia Field Guide, William O’Connor (Impact 978-1-4403-5384-0, $26.99, 159pp, hc) May 2019. Cover by William O’Connor.
Over the course of William O’Connor’s 20-plus-year career, he won many industry awards, was nominated for a Chesley, and created over 3,000 illustrations for gaming and publishing businesses including Wizards of the Coast, Impact Books, Blizzard Entertainment, WhiteWolf/CCP, Lucas Films, and Activision. He also devoted his time to writing and illustrating the best-selling ...Read More
The 2019 Aurealis Awards shortlist, recognizing the best in Australian speculative fiction, has been announced.
Best Science Fiction Novel
Winners of the 2020 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award have been announced.
Judges for the contest were David Drake and the editors of Baen Books.
The Grand Prize winning story will be featured on the Baen website in June 2020. The author ...Read More
Trinity Sight, Jennifer Givhan (Blackstone 978-1-53855-672-6, $25.99, 288pp, hc) October 2019.
There’s a lot to love about Trinity Sight, a dense debut novel packed with Native stories and myths, conceived and plotted as carefully as a nationwide conference, full of organic stakes and interesting characters. There are also significant imperfections: an author who gets too far ahead of her audience sometimes, a narrator whose stubborn streak makes her ...Read More
