Jeanne Gomoll is the winner of the 2017 Rotsler Award for “long-time artistic achievement in amateur publications of the science fiction community.” The award was announced during Loscon 44 in Los Angeles CA, November 24-26, 2017.
The award is sponsored by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, and includes an honorarium of $300. The Rotsler judges are Mike Glyer, John Hertz, and Sue Mason.
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Horizon, Fran Wilde (Tor Books 978-0765377876, $27.99, 416pp, hc). September 2017. Cover by Tommy Arnold.
Fran Wilde’s Horizon marks the end of her Bone Universe books – at least for now. Horizon follows last year’s Cloudbound and 2015’s award-winning Updraft for a strong conclusion to this powerful trilogy about bone towers, social upheaval, and building the kind of society you want to live in.
Updraft was a novel about ...Read More
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The City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-267810-2, $25.99, 544pp, hardcover) November 2017
Even disregarding the familiar spectacle of publishers eagerly emulating the bestsellers of their rivals, we can notice that book people like mini-trends. So does the culture in general. No harm to the phenomenon, really, it’s just the way humans operate. Let something fresh become even modestly successful and suddenly the marketplace perceives a hitherto-unrecognized demand, ...Read More
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Star-Begotten: A Life Lived in Science Fiction, James Gunn (McFarland 978-1-4766-7026-3, $25.00, 209pp, tp) November 2017. Cover photo by Jason Dailey.
I hope I might be excused for injecting personal notes into a review of James Gunn’s autobiography, Star-Begotten: A Life Lived in Science Fiction. As I read it, I couldn’t help noticing how many times and in how many ways my life in SF was affected by ...Read More
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New titles published today are by Michelle Belanger, Ian Douglas, Spencer Ellsworth, Kari Maaren, G.D. Penman, and Jon Skovron. ...Read More
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The Black Tides of Heaven, JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing 978-0-7653-9541-2, $3.99, 240pp, tp). September 2017. Cover by Yuko Shimizu. The Red Threads of Fortune, JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing 978-0-7653-9539-9 $3.99, 216pp, tp). September 2017. Cover by Yuko Shimizu.
JY Yang’s first two Tensorate novellas, The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune, provide an interesting contrast to In Evil Times. Although the world ...Read More
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Provenance, Ann Leckie (Orbit, 978-0-316-38867-2, $26.00, 393pp, hc) September 2017. Cover by John Harris.
Ann Leckie’s Provenance takes place in the same far future as her Ancillary novels and shares some of that trilogy’s underlying issues: legal versus actual identity and citizenship status; the burdens, benefits, and oddities of cultural artifice or convention; the ways that polities can be subverted or perverted. But there are no ancillaries or emerging ...Read More
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My brother is one of those guys who has a joke for every situation, so when he texted me an x-ray of a human shoulder that wasn’t fully connected, I texted back a question mark and a couple of confused emojis. Looking for the punchline, right? He replied with, “Oops,” followed by the observation that it is difficult to perform basic hygiene tasks, or really to do anything, after you’ve ...Read More
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Two big debuts this week: Brandon Sanderson’s Oathbringer (Tor), ranking #1 at both New York Times and Publishers Weekly, and Andy Weir’s Artemis, ranking as high as #6. ...Read More
Read moreThe nominations for the 2018 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award longlist have been announced, and include several works and authors of genre interest.
The Real-Town Murders, Adam Roberts (Gollancz 978-14-73221-45-1, £16.99, 234pp, hc). August 2017.
Adam Roberts’s The Real-Town Murders is his version of a locked-room mystery, which is to say, it is both familiar and strange by equal turns. It is also delightful.
What is familiar is the set-up. Alma, a near-future private investigator, is delivered a case about a body found in the trunk of a car. Given that these ...Read More
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Creatures of Will and Temper, Molly Tanzer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/John Joseph Adams 978-1-328-71026-0, $16.99, 368pp, trade paperback) November 2017
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The Strange Bird, Jeff VanderMeer (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 978-0-374-714932 $2.99, 86pp, eb) July 2017.
Jeff VanderMeer’s short novel The Strange Bird is a spinoff from the novel Borne, with the same background: a wrecked, far-future Earth, now being devastated by techno/magical, quasi-mythic Company Wars. The title character was conjured in a lab where what had been a woman is turned into a creature that’s part avian and ...Read More
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A Flight to the Future, Kathryn Cramer, ed. (XPrize/ANA). The Best of Subterranean, William Schafer, ed. (Subterranean Press) July 2017.
A Flight to the Future is a multimedia project edited by Kathryn Cramer (although Eric Desatnik is also listed as “Creator and Producer”). Sponsored by XPrize and the Japanese airline company ANA, A Flight to the Future collects 30 very short stories, many by leading science fiction authors, ...Read More
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In Evil Times, Melinda Snodgrass (Titan 978-1-7832-9584-5, $14.95, 400pp, pb). July 2017. Cover by Alex Ronald.
I wanted to have good things to say about In Evil Times, sequel to Melinda Snodgrass’s The High Ground (2016). Instead, I found reading it to be a very alienating experience. This is not, I hasten to add, because of any insufficiency in Snodgrass’s prose or skill as a novelist. Rather, it’s ...Read More
Read more» Barnes and Nobles’ Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2017 includes titles by Naomi Alderman, James Bradley, N.K. Jemisin, John Kessel, Annalee Newitz, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jeff VaderMeer, and many others
» NY Times’ 100 notable books includes novels by Omar El Akkad, Victor LaValle, Mohsin Hamid, Paul Auser, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, Naomi Alderman, and N.K. Jemisin, and Edmund Gordon’s biography of Angela Carter
» LA Review of ...Read More
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A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison, Nat Segaloff (NESFA Press 978-1610373234, $35.00, 416pp, hc) July 2017.
For decades, people (myself included) have asked Harlan Ellison when he might get around to writing an autobiography, bringing together in one volume those voluminous anecdotes and memoirs that have peppered his speeches, introductions, and essays almost since his first story collections and convention appearances. His response, at least when ...Read More
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New books listed today include novels by Damien Broderick (updating John Brunner), S.A. Chakraborty, W. Michael Gear & Kathleen O’Neal Gear, Robert Guffey, Dean Koontz, Rachel Neumeier, and Yoshiki Tanaka; plus an anthology by Paula Guran, a collection by Charlaine Harris, and nonfiction by D. Harlan Wilson about J.G. Ballard. ...Read More
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The Last Magician, Lisa Maxwell (Simon Pulse 978-1-4814-3207-8, $18.99, 500pp, hc) July 2017. Cover by Craig Howell & Cliff Nielsen.
The Last Magician is billed as YA and its chief protagonist is a girl in her late teens, but Lisa Maxwell doesn’t write down or pull many punches. Only after reviewing Belcher did I notice how the dialog sidesteps around Anne Bonny’s favorite word, while allowing an occasional “shit.” ...Read More
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Andy Weir was first hired as a programmer for a national laboratory at age 15 and has been working as a software engineer ever since. He is also a lifelong space nerd and a devoted hobbyist of subjects like relativistic physics, orbital mechanics, and the history of manned spaceflight. First novel The Martian was a bestseller and was adapted as a popular feature film. New novel Artemis is out this ...Read More
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With no debuts or major shifts this week, the highest ranking genre title on general lists this week remains … ...Read More
Read moreJane Langton and Peter Lovesey have been named 2018 Grand Masters by the Mystery Writers of America, along with William Link. For more information, including MWA Raven and Ellery Queen award winners, see their official website.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like ...Read More
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Winners for the 2017 Endeavour Award, given to a novel or single-author collection by a Pacific Northwest writer, were announced:
The 2017 judges were Ginjer Buchanan, John R. Douglas, and
Author Kim Stanley Robinson won the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation’s Imagination in Service to Society Award. He will be recognized at a ceremony during the Unleash Imagination – Shape the Future conference on December 9, 2017 at George Washington University in Washington DC.
Prior Arthur C. Clarke award recipients include authors Margaret Atwood, Larry Niven, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Sir Kenneth Robinson, as well as scientists and leaders of ...Read More
Read moreWinners for the 2017 Ignotus Awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Hugo Awards), honoring the best works published in Spain last year, were announced at the 2017 Hispacon, held November 17-19, 2017 in Madrid, Spain:
Novela extranjera (Foreign Novel)
Science Fiction World magazine and Storycom held the 28th 银河奖 Yinhe (Galaxy) Awards November 11, 2017 in Chengdu, China. This year’s winners include:
Best Novel
Best Novella
Best Short Story
Best New Writer
Best Art
The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisen (Orbit 978-0-316-22924-1, $16.99, 420pp, tp) August 2017.
N.K. Jemisin ups the ante even more in The Stone Sky, finishing The Broken Earth trilogy with the fate of the planet in just a few hands and time running out. Here millennia of history and lore stand behind gritty dramas of the moment – though perspective shifts feel even more jarring when all foreground action ...Read More
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Lightspeed 8/17, 9/17 Tor.com 8/17 Apex 7/17 Interzone 7-8/17 McSweeney’s #49
There’s a good set of stories in the August Lightspeed. Ashok Banker‘s “Tongue” is an uncomfortable and rather over-the-top satire on the horrors of a traditional Indian marriage, set on an asteroid. The over-the-top elements are part and parcel of satire, though I also thought the portrayal of Indian culture seemed a wincing cliché, as did ...Read More
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Much to my surprise, I actually enjoyed watching Justice League, which can be appreciated as unpretentious fun, featuring likable characters and some moments of genuine humor. To be sure, it is not an ideal film, but the concept of bringing together popular superheroes to battle against common foes is appealing enough to overcome the recurring infelicities that have marred almost all of the recent films in the DC Extended ...Read More
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Upon This Rock: Book 1 – First Contact, David Marusek (A Stack of Firewood Press 978-0-9988633-0-6, $9.99, 574pp, eb). June 2017.
David Marusek’s first big impact on the SF/F landscape was 2005’s Counting Heads, a book about genetic engineering peopled with strong, interesting characters and a meandering yet purposeful plot. The sequel Mind Over Ship dropped four years later. Then, apart from publishing a couple of quiet short ...Read More
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» Washington Post’s Best Books of 2017 include titles by George Saunders and Naomi Alderman; Everdeen Mason’s 5 best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2017 are by David Burr Gerrard, Maggie Shen King, John Kessel, Neal Stephenson & Nicole Galland, and N.K. Jemisin
» Washington Post: Everdeen Mason reviews S.A. Chakraborty, Liz Ziemska, Rachel Neumeier
» The Verge: A Guide to Fantasy and Science Fiction Made for Black People, ...Read More
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