Locus Online

Absolution, Jeff VanderMeer (MCD 978-0-37461-659-6, $30.00, 464pp, hc) October 2024.

While I try not to pick favourites, I have been looking forward to this month’s column (and not just because October is my birth month). Jeff VanderMeer, Laura van den Berg, and Jesse Ball are three authors who have made an art form of the weird, and, as you already know, I love my fiction seasoned with a generous ...Read More

Cicada, Tanya Pell (Shortwave 978-1-95956-534-5, $13.99, 192pp, tp) September 2024. Cover by Alan Lastufka.

Tanya Pell’s Cicada is a fun, fast, pulpy horror novel that’s part survival narrative and part crea­ture feature. It’s also a book that’s packed with tips of the hat and the kind of writing that lets you know an author is really a fan of the genre and has a great time doing what they ...Read More

Remember You Will Die, Eden Robins (Source­books Landmark 978-1-72825-603-0, $16.99, 336pp, tp) October 2024. Cover by Erin Fitzsim­mons.

After reading Manuela Draeger’s fascinating novel Kree, about afterlives and reincarnation, and translator and anthologist Anton Hur’s ex­cellent debut novel Toward Eternity, in which artificial intelligences and nanite-transformed humans have found a strange immortality, the centrality of mortality in Eden Robins’s Remem­ber You Will Die is almost refreshing. While ...Read More

Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions, Nalo Hopkinson (Tachyon 978-1-61696-426-9, $15.95, 224pp, tp) October 2024.

Story collections almost never sell as well as novels, but maybe they ought to. A novel is the end product of processes that may have unfolded over months or years, while a collection offers us glimpses into those processes themselves. All of the sixteen stories in Nalo Hopkinson’s Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions were published ...Read More

Playground, Richard Powers (W.W. Norton & Company 978-1-32408-603-1, 383pp, $29.99, hc). September 2024.

Richard Powers is another writer whose work – omnivorous, full-bodied novels of both character and idea – you would think difficult to replicate via generative technologies, but his new novel Playground suggests the man himself is not convinced that will always be the case. Genera­tive tools owned by one of the protagonists, the tech billionaire Todd ...Read More

It’s the week of 11/19/2024 and we’ve got a terrific new week of releases to tell you all about, so come on by if you’re looking to add to your TBR pile! Also, why not support what we do and subscribe to the channel, it’ll keep yourself up-to-date on our weekly content and all the top new SF, Fantasy, and Horror releases slated to hit shelfs!

Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK 978-1035013746, £16.99, 400pp, hc) March 2024. (Orbit US 978-0316578974 , $19.99, 432pp, tp) September 2024. Cover by Lauren Panepinto.

In Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky continues to build fantastical worlds on sturdy non-fantastic-fictional foundations. Where the secondary-world fantasies of The City of Last Chances and House of Open Wounds make use of occupied-city (say, Alan Furst’s The World at Night) or comic-ironic ...Read More

Hampton Height, Dan Kois (Harper Perennial 978-0-06335-875-1, $16.99, 208pp, tp) September 2024. Cover by Jackie Alvarado

Dan Kois’s Hampton Heights: One Har­rowing Night in the Most Haunted Neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is very much like its title in that it shouldn’t work, but it somehow does. Entertaining, touching, and funnier than I expected, this short novel about a group of kids spending a night trying to sell newspaper subscriptions in ...Read More

The Repeat Room, Jesse Ball (Catapult 978-1-64622-140-0, 256pp, $27.00, hc) Cover by Sara Wood. September 2024.

I first came across Jesse Ball back in 2007 when his debut, Samedi the Deafness, was shortlisted for the Believer Book Award (a terrific prize that introduced me to authors as varied as Bennett Sims, Keith Ridgway, Valeria Luiselli, and Danielle Dutton. I miss it… and the magazine). I bought the novel ...Read More

Anderson, Kevin J.: Horror and Dark Fantasy Stories, Volume 2 (WordFire Press 9781680577198, $18.99, 332pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 11/19/2024)

Second volume of horror and dark fantasy stories in Anderson’s short story series, with stories about ancient gods and unleashed demons, resurrected rock stars and bloodthirsty drums, haunted trains, the boogeyman, as well as Bela Lugosi and the real Vlad the Impaler.

Ashta, Lucía: Ride and Die (Podium ...Read More

Auction house Christie’s has announced their “first sale dedicated to Science Fiction and Fantasy,” with bidding open from November 28, 2024 to December 12, 2024.

The auction “will explore the extraordinary history of the genres through the books, objects and artworks that continue to inspire new generations of readers and viewers.”

Highlights include The Dune Bible, “an extraordinary artefact from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic Dune project (estimate: £250,000-350,000);” an “exquisite ...Read More