Locus Online

The Scarab Mission, James L. Cambias (Baen 978-1982192396, hardcover, 288pp, $18.00) January 2023

This rousing, unstoppable, non-stop adventure follows Cambias’s The Godel Operation (reviewed here), which introduced his cosmos of the Billion Worlds: a future where our Solar System is overstuffed with a zillion habitats, polities and species (human and other wise), some struggling for supremacy, others just following their mundane blisses. It’s a definite post-scarcity—if not even posthuman—environment, ...Read More

The Atlas Paradox, Olivie Blake (Tor 978-1-250-85509-1, $27.99, hc, 416pp) October 2022. Cover by Jamie Stafford-Hill.

Blake returned in October with the latest installment in The Atlas series, The Atlas Para­dox, and quickly tossed readers into more intrigue with the Society of Alexandrians and the drama surrounding its newest members. Fans of the first book, The Atlas Six, will be well aware of the major twist and ...Read More

Knot of Shadows, Lois McMaster Bujold (Subterranean 978-1-64524-114-0, hardcover, 160pp, $45.00) January 2023.

It’s time for another nigh-aleatory pairing of two novellas, as we dip into the current state of this fascinating artform, which, it has been said, is almost ideal for works of fantastika: long enough for worldbuilding and deep speculations; short enough not to grow wearisome or bogged down.

Today’s offerings both come from the fabulous Subterranean ...Read More

Kaleidotrope 10/22 Diabolical Plots 10/22 F&SF 11-12/22

Kaleidotrope’s October issue is positively burst­ing with flash fiction – twenty stories in all. The focus on shorter works gives the issue a breadth of ideas while allowing readers to move quickly from piece to piece, from world to world. It’s a speculative smorgasbord mixing fantasy, sci­ence fiction, and horror of all stripes and flavors. Ziggy Schutz provides a story of fae and ...Read More

The Lies of the Ajungo, Moses Ose Utomi (Tordotcom 978-1-25084-906-9, $19.99, 96pp, hc) March 2023. Cover by Alyssa Winans & Christine Foltzer.

Indebted to the wicked Ajungo Empire, all citi­zens of the City of Lies have their tongues cut out when they turn 13. Not only do they sacrifice their blood, but their history. In return for their tribute, they receive just enough water from the Ajungo to keep ...Read More

The Future is Female! Vol 2: the 1970s: More Classic Science Fiction by Women, Lisa Yaszek, ed. (Library of America 978-1-59853-732-1, $27.95, 450 pp, hc) October 2022.

I scraped into the 1970s with just a couple of months to spare and, although I’ve done a fair amount of reading from the time, I’m not going to claim any expertise in assessing what is the best, or even what is ...Read More

Woohoo! A new year and a new week of books! Took a minute to get it online. but here it is: go see what’s coming out!

#sff #newbooks ...Read More

Beyond the Burn Line, Paul J. McAuley (Gollancz 978-1-39960-371-3, £22.00, 455pp, hc) September 2022.

Paul McAuley also makes use of bifurcated time­lines in Beyond the Burn Line, but on a much vaster scale, and he also considers the global ef­fects of the Anthropocene Era, already relegated to the mists of ancient history as his tale rather modestly begins. Eventually we learn that the “burn line” is the historians’ ...Read More

Singer Distance, Ethan Chatagnier (Tin House 978-1-95353-443-9, $27.95, hc, 280pp) October 2022.

In the slightly altered Earth history of Ethan Chatagnier’s Singer Distance, Mars made contact in 1896, but not in the way readers may likely expect. Rather than the bold arrival of a spacecraft, this interplanetary communication was prefaced by a Dutch astronomer’s large scale art carving of parallel marks in a Tunisian desert in 1894. When ...Read More

The Dark 9/22, 10/22 Nightmare 10/22 The Deadlands 10/22, 11/22

The Dark 89 offers its usual four originals. In ‘‘The Eighth Cigarette’’ by Lisa Cai, a woman who, in one of her previous lives was inspiration for Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème (published in 1887), takes revenge for the decades the author’s fiction had impact on the West’s understanding – or rather misunderstanding – of Asian women and culture. A real ...Read More

Author Paul La Farge, 52, died of cancer on January 18, 2023. His novel The Night Ocean (2017) was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist.

Paul Bayard La Farge was born November 17, 1970 in New York City, and was a graduate of Yale University. He taught writing at Bard College, Wesleyan, and the University of Leipzig, and from July 2020 was a member of the faculty at Bennington College. Debut ...Read More

The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) has announced that artist Sejuti Bala is the winner of their 2023 Illustration of the Year. “Look for Bala’s artwork on our site, as well as future SLF newsletters, promo, and other content!”

Bala said, “To an astronaut the vacuum of space is the frontier of setting sail, and in this piece, I imagine a lost astronaut, an untethered explorer and the awe of getting ...Read More

The judges for the 2023 World Fantasy Awards have been empaneled.

Weasels in the Attic, Hiroko Oyamada (New Directions 978-0-81123-118-3, $13/95, 96p, hc) October 2022.

In my humble opinion, the best surrealist fic­tion being published today is coming out of Japan, spearheaded by female authors like Yoko Tawada, Sayaka Murata, Yōko Ogawa, and Hiromi Kawakami. Included in that list is the elusive and discombobulating work of Hiroko Oyamada, whose third book, Weasels in the Attic, has been translated into ...Read More

Tor posted a statement online after receiving widespread criticism on social media in December 2022, criticism based on its cover reveal of Christopher Paolini’s Fractal Noise that appears to include AI-gen­erated graphics. Many illustrators and artists are understandably troubled by the implications of AI-generated images, both because of the po­tential to take creative work away from human artists, and because the AI tools are trained on artwork that is usually ...Read More

The Last Dreamwalker, Rita Woods (Forge 978-1-25080-561-4, $27.00, 272pp, hc) Sep­tember 2022.

Layla Hurley spends most of her life avoid­ing her nightmares. Whether through anxiety pills, wine, or a combination of those, she would do anything to sleep through the night without experiencing another lucid dream. But after her mother’s death, Layla learns that her nightmares are not chance recurrences, but a gift passed down from her family through ...Read More

Direwood, Catherine Yu (Page Street Publishing 978-1-64567-612-6, $18.99. 288pp, hc) Septem­ber 2022.

Sisters Fiona and Aja are part of the only Chinese American family in their entire suburban town. It’s the 1990s, the era of grunge and disillusion­ment, and no one is more disillusioned than Aja. Or so she thinks. Fiona is the golden child. She is the perfect daughter beloved by everyone in town. Aja, meanwhile, is rough ...Read More

Several authors and works of genre interest are among the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) 2023 Edgar Awards finalists.

Best Paperback Original

• Quarry’s Blood, Max Allan

Chengdu Worldcon 2023, the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Chengdu, China, has announced a delay and a new convention hotel and venue:

Chengdu Worldcon 2023… will be held on October 18-22, 2023 (5 days in total), at the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum in Jingrong Lake, Pidu District, Chengdu. Sheraton Chengdu Pidu and Wyndham Grand Chengdu will be the new convention headquarter hotels for the accommodation.

The ...Read More

The Nightland Express, J.M. Lee (Erewhon 978-1-64566-003-3, $18.95, hc, 368pp) October 2022. Cover by Jeff Langevin.

In J.M. Lee’s The Nightland Express, it is 1860, and Jessamine Murphy and Ben Foley have each answered an advertisement from the Pony Express:

Special Assignment. St Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. Two Riders Wanted. Young, Skinny, Wiry Fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans ...Read More

Mr. Breakfast, Jonathan Carroll (Melville House 9-871-61219-992-4, $27.99, 272pp, hc) January 2023.

With all of the original and idiosyncratic voices in SFF these days, it’s tempt­ing and maybe a bit lazy to casually describe an author as sui generis. But when folks have been saying this for more than 40 years, as is the case with Jonathan Carroll, it begins to sound like a pretty solid verdict. No doubt ...Read More

Navah Wolfe has joined Astra House imprint DAW Books as executive editor. Wolfe said:

I’ve been reading and loving DAW books for as long as I can remember. DAW has published some of my all-time favorite writers, old and new—so it’s an honor and a privilege to join the DAW team. I’m excited to publish more wonderful writers and books on DAW’s list!

Wolfe has over 15 years as an ...Read More

PodCastle 7/5/22 PseudoPod 9/9/22, 9/16/22 Weird Horror Fall ’22

PodCastle 742: “The Morning House” by Kate Heartfield deals with the shifting perceptions of reality involved with an aging parent suffering from dementia and, well, shifting reality.

PseudoPod 828: “Taxiptómy” by Shannyn Campbell presents a consideration of a “con­troversial art of deliberately causing the death of a human as part of a public performance, before preparing and ...Read More

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (Tor) and Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon (MCD; #Merky) won the 2021 Otherwise Award (formerly the James Tiptree, Jr. Award), given annually to works of science fiction or fantasy that “expand and explore our understanding of gender.” The winners will receive $1,000 in prize money, a specially commissioned piece of original artwork, and chocolate.

SFWA has opened registration for the 2023 Nebula Conference and Award Ceremony, to be held May 12–14, 2023, both online and in-person at the Sheraton Park Hotel at the Anaheim Resort in Anaheim CA.

Registrations may be purchased at this link. Registration for the online portion of the conference is $150.00 and includes access to broadcasts of the weekend’s panels and the subsequent archive, mentorship opportunities, the Nebula Awards ...Read More

Fairy Tale, Stephen King (Scribner 978-1-66800-217-9, $32.50, 608pp, hc) October 2022. Cover by Kyle Kabel.

The fact that Stephen King can still surprise us is further proof that he’s one of the best living writers, and I say that as someone who recently reviewed the two new and very surprising Cormac McCarthy novels. King’s career is full of books that play across genres and exist in a unique spectrum ...Read More

The Horror Writers Association‘s 2023 Horror University Online is currently open for registration for the next quarter (February, March, and April 2023). They are offering virtual workshops on a variety of topics for “horror writers everywhere interested in refining their writing, learning new skills and techniques, or perfecting their manuscript presentation.”

Live courses include:

• The Master Plotting Crash Course with John Skipp, February 6
• Decoding Screenwriting with L. Marie Wood,