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Clockwork Boys, T. Kingfisher (Argyll Produc­tions 978-1614504160, $12.95, 262pp, tp) March 2018.

The Wonder Engine, T. Kingfisher (Argyll Productions 978-1614504177, $24.95, 318pp, hc) March 2018.

In case like me, you didn’t know: the Hugo and Nebula Award winning writer/artist/chicken wrangler Ursula Vernon reserves the name T. Kingfisher for her works that are better suited to an adult audience. Her Clocktaur War books are decidedly that – but not in a ...Read More

Spectral Evidence, Gemma Files (Trepidatio 9781947654181 $15.95, 212pp, tp) February 2018.

Spectral Evidence, Gemma Files’s excellent new collection, is her first such book since 2004’s The Worm in Every Heart (2014 did bring We Will All Go Down Together, which assembled a number of shorter works, but it did so in the interest of fashioning them into a larger whole, a kind of hyper-novel, which is a different, though clearly ...Read More

I Still Dream, James Smythe (The Borough Press 978-0007541942, £12.99, 400pp, hc) April 2018.

James Smythe’s gripping, decades-spanning new novel I Still Dream begins with 17-year-old Laura Bow hiding a recent phone bill from her parents. She knows it’s a delaying tactic: her stepfather will eventually discover the charges she’s racked up, but access to the phone is a must-have. The year is 1997, the Internet has entered the mainstream, ...Read More

William B. Wolfe, The Phantom Files: Twain’s Treasure (Dreaming Robot Press 978-1-940924-29-8, $12.95, 247pp, tp) July 2018.

Mark Twain provides the focus for this amusing middle-grade fantasy novel, which follows a boy trying desperately to hide the fact he can see ghosts. Alex April can’t always tell the dead from the living, and that gets him into trouble because the ghosts always want things from him, and aren’t necessarily rational ...Read More

Leech Girl Lives, Rick Claypool (Spaceboy Books 978-0-9987120-7-9, $13.95, 322pp, tp) September 2017.

Art Inspector Margo Chicago (named in honor of boundary-pushing art creator Judy Chicago) is in a pickle. She’s trapped outside of the Bublinaplex, a geodesic dome city that protects its residents from the giant fungi and other unsavories that slither and ooze through the landscape. Outside is not a great place to be, if you are a ...Read More

The Sacerdotal Owl and Three Other Long Tales, by Michael Bishop (Fairwood Press 978-1933846729, $17.99, 280pp, trade paperback) August 2018

Vividly do I recall purchasing the 1970 issue of Galaxy magazine that contained Michael Bishop’s first story sale, “Piñon Fall.”  After all, I was only sixteen years old at the time, and in the midst of my own personal Golden Age of SF immersion.  Liking the eerie and evocative ...Read More

The Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the 2018 Dwarf Stars Award winners.

Finalists for the National Book Awards (NBA) fiction category have been announced, including works by authors of genre interest:

The 2018 fiction judges are Chris Bachelder, Laila Lalami (chair), Min Jin Lee, Laurie Muchnick, and Chinelo Okparanta. Each finalist will receive a prize of $1,000, a medal, and a citation; ...Read More

The Folio Society Readers’ Choice 2018 survey is now open for public voting. The 15-title finalist list includes several works of genre interest:

The winning stories will be included in The Folio Book of Great Short Stories, to be published in September ...Read More

Haruki Murakami, who was shortlisted for The New Academy Prize in Literature, has asked to be withdrawn from consideration, explaining that “his preference is to concentrate on his writing, away from media attention.”

The prize was founded by Swedish journalist Alexandra Pascalidou with the intent of providing an international literature award since the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature is not being awarded. The New Academy plans to dissolve in December ...Read More

The five-title BBC National Short Story Award shortlist has been announced, with works by authors of genre interest including “To Belong To” by Kerry Andrew and “Sudden Traveller” by Sarah Hall.

The winner will be announced at an award ceremony at Cambridge University on October 2, 2018. The winning writer will receive £15,000, and the other shortlisted authors will each get £600. All five stories will be broadcast with author ...Read More

The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) has selected Steven Barnes as this year’s recipient of the Forry Award for lifetime achievement in the SF field. The award, named for Forrest J Ackerman, has been presented annually since 1966. Past winners include Ray Bradbury, Andre Norton, Roger Zelazny, and Connie Willis.

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

Applications are open for the 2018 Tiptree Fellowships until October 31, 2018. Each year, the Tiptree Motherboard awards $500 each to two creators who “are doing work that is changing the way we think about gender through speculative narrative.”

For more information, or to apply, see the official website.

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

Mercedes Lackey was briefly hospitalized in early August while attending Gen Con in Indiana after she became dizzy and began hallucinating. While she at first feared she was having a stroke, she later realized she was a having a reaction to furniture, carpet, paint, and other materials outgassing in a newly renovated hotel room. She was out of the hospital in time to do her scheduled signing, and is recovering ...Read More

A new organization, Asia SF Association, has been established, with Cixin Liu as president. The organization has members from China, Egypt, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, and other countries. The group first met at APSFCon, held May 18-19, 2018 in Beijing, China, and held a general meeting online in July 2018 to announce the president and board members. In addition to Liu, Latssep of Science Fiction World ...Read More

Vivian Shaw, Dreadful Company (Orbit US 978-0-316-43463-8, $15.99, 323pp, tp) July 2018. Cover by Will Staehle.

Dr. Greta Helsing goes to Paris for a medical conference on treating supernatural sorts and natu­rally runs into monsters, from an unexpected little wellmonster in her sink, to some overly cliché goth vampires with pretentious names and a leader with an old grudge against Lord Ruthven. He’s only in Paris long enough to take ...Read More

Finalists have been announced for the Digital Book World 2018 Awards across 52 categories. Finalists of genre interest include:

Alien Virus Love Disaster: Stories, Abbey Mei Otis (Small Beer 978-1-618-73140-1, $16.00, 238pp, tp) August 2018.

As I’ve mentioned before, the better small presses cultivate a curatorial sensibility, a distinct personality which can be a reliable indicator that, whatever this new book is, it’s probably at least interesting. Small Beer Press is near the top of this list, and Alien Virus Love Disaster is a good example of what they ...Read More

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

The Translated Literature longlist includes: Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated by Tina Kover (Europa Editions); Comemadre by Roque Larraquy, translated by Heather Cleary (Coffee House); Wait, Blink: A Perfect Picture of Inner Life by Gunnhild Øyehaug, translated by Kari Dickson (Farrar, Straus, Giroux); The Emissary by ...Read More

Mercedes Lackey, The Hills Have Spies (DAW 978-0-7564-1317-0, $27.00, 360pp, hc) June 2018. Cover by Jody A. Lee.

Lackey returns to Valdemar with this first book in the Family Spies series, the ninth novel featuring Herald Mags, now a father with three children. His eldest, Perry, is only 13, but has been training to follow in his father’s footsteps all his life, and though he has yet to be Chosen ...Read More

Christopher Priest’s An American Story, Sjón’s CoDex 1962, and titles by Holly Black & Cassandra Clare, Glen Cook, Susan Forest & Lucas K. Law, Sara Hanover, Dean Koontz, Malka Older, Parker Peevyhouse, Angus Watson, and Scott Westerfeld ...Read More

The Audio Publishers As­sociation has announced that the Audie Awards will no longer hold their gala event during Book Expo, with the 2019 awards moving to March 4 in order “to improve our chances of gathering media attention” and to “increase visibility and also make the night less expensive for attendees,” according to APA president Linda Lee. The ceremony will be held in New York, though a venue has not ...Read More

The Million, Karl Schroeder (Tor 978-1-250-18542-6, $14.99, tp) August 2018. Cover by Jan Weßbecher.

Karl Schroeder’s novella The Million belongs to the future designed for his previous novel, Lockstep (2014), a setting that I still find strongly reminiscent of that branch of 1950s and ’60s SF in which One Big Idea generates a whole society (a cousin to Kingsley Amis’s “comic inferno” model). Again there is a strong dose of ...Read More

Finalists for the 2018 Imadjinn Awards have been announced, including several titles of genre interest:

Abrams has purchased The Overlook Press, with some em­ployees (notably publisher Tracy Carns) set to remain after the transition. The move began in August 2018, with Abrams taking immediate control of all editorial, marketing, and business elements, and planning to take over sales and distribution once existing service contracts run out – Overlook is currently distributed by Nor­ton, while Abrams is distributed by Hachette Book Group.

The Overlook Press was ...Read More