Void Black Shadow, Corey J. White (Tor.com Publishing 978-0–7653-9692-1, $3.99, 218pp, eb). March 2018. Cover by Tommy Arnold.
Void Black Shadow, the sequel to Corey J. White’s explosive Killing Gravity and the second volume in the Voidwitch Saga, isn’t what you might call measured, not by a long chalk. Hectic is one word for it. Breakneck another.
Mariam “Mars” Xi is a living weapon, a “voidwitch.” A genetically designed psychic ...Read More
Uncanny 1-2/18
Anathema: Spec from the Margins 12/17
Kaleidotrope Winter ’18
The Dark 1/18
Mythic Delirium 1-3/18
Although more concerned with character than plot, Elizabeth Bear‘s “She Still Loves the Dragon” (Uncanny) still tells the love story of a knight-errant and a dragon. (“She still loves the dragon that set her on fire.”) Since love stories often turn dark and end bittersweet, I feel justified in praising it here. Compelling, ...Read More
Mapping the Bones, Jane Yolen (Philomel 978-0-399-25778-0, $17.99, 418pp, hc) March 2018.
I should point out up front that Jane Yolen’s powerful young-adult Holocaust novel Mapping the Bones is a straight historical without overt fantastic elements, although – like her earlier Briar Rose – it’s woven around the armature of a classic fairy tale, in this case “Hansel and Gretel”. Almost inevitably, considering its subject, it’s a horror story, and ...Read More
The Hollow Girl, Hillary Monahan (Delacorte 978-1-5247-0186-4, $17.99, 272pp, hc) October 2017.
Author Hillary Monahan takes readers into the world of the Romany people in this brutal blending of realistic fiction and fantasy. Set at some point of the Welsh past (there are no mentions of electronic devices or cars), The Hollow Girl follows the story of Bethan and her grandmother, Drina, the clan’s revered and fearsome wise woman. While ...Read More
Origamy, by Rachel Armstrong (NewCon Press 978-1910935781, $14.99, 256pp, trade paperback) April 2018
When she is not wearing her fiction-writer hat and offering us her debut SF novel, Dr. Rachel Armstrong is performing her duties as Professor of Experimental Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, University of Newcastle, and, like some character out of an early William Gibson novel, lecturing via TED Talks about “living buildings” ...Read More
Tender, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer) April 2017.
Analog 1/18
Asimov’s 1-2/18
Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/4/18
Uncanny 1-2/18
Slate 1/17/18
New Haven Noir, Amy Bloom, ed. (Akashic) June 2017.
I am continuing to catch up on some 2017 stuff I missed. For example, Sofia Samatar‘s collection Tender is one of the best collections I’ve seen in some time. This exceptional debut collection includes two new stories, “An Account of the Land ...Read More
StokerCon, sponsored by the Horror Writers Association, was held at the Biltmore in Providence RI, March 1-4, 2018. HWA president Lisa Morton said, “It’s hard to beat hundreds of horror-lovers huddled together in a supposedly haunted hotel while a Nor’easter rages outside.” Guests of honor were Ramsey Campbell, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Victor LaValle, Elizabeth Massie, Sam Weller, and Craig Engler; Jeff Strand was emcee. Morton said, “This was our third ...Read More
“A Series of Steaks” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad was named Best Story in the annual Clarkesworld readers’ poll. “Sea Change” by Matt Dixon, from the June 2017 issue, won Best Cover Art.
For more, including finalists, see the Clarkesworld site.
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 ...Read More
Semiosis, Sue Burke (Tor 978-0-7653-9135-3, $25.99, 336pp, hc) February 2018.
Beyond all else, Sue Burke’s Semiosis is a book about biochemistry and about the subtle dance that all living things perform to get the chemical building blocks they need to survive.
On this planet and in our actual reality, humans have the brains to think through how to get what they need. We’re experts at exploiting our environment, which is, ...Read More
The shortlist for the 2018 Man Booker International prize includes two titles of genre interest:
The award is given “annually for a single work of fiction, translated into English and published in the UK.” The £50,000 prize is divided equally among the author ...Read More
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has announced a list of approved names for features on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. The list includes mountains named after Octavia E. Butler and Arthur C. Clarke, as well as craters named for characters in works by L. Frank Baum, Stanislaw Lem, and Jules Verne.
The names were proposed by NASA’s New Horizons team which conducted the first survey of Charon in 2015. The full ...Read More
Actor LeVar Burton (Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Reading Rainbow) is featuring several science fiction authors in his podcast tour, LeVar Burton Reads LIVE! including Nnedi Okorafor, Charlie Jane Anders, and Nalo Hopkinson. Each live event includes a conversation with the author and a reading of their story by Burton. Okorafor was featured in an event on March 23, 2018 at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago IL. Anders ...Read More
Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories, Vandana Singh (Small Beer 978-1-618-73143-2, $16.00, 336pp) February 2018.
For the past 15 years or so, Vandana Singh has been producing consistently interesting and often brilliant short fiction, and her name is often among those mentioned in celebrations of SF’s growing diversity. But “diversity” can have a number of meanings, and, as beautifully demonstrated in her new collection Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories, diversity in ...Read More
The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) was awarded $50,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), announced April 9, 2018. The endowment is to “ensure the preservation of nearly 30,000 pounds of correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and memorabilia from author Ray Bradbury” under the lead of the center’s director, Jonathan R. Eller.
“The Center is home to more than 100,000 pages of published and ...Read More
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead) has won the inaugural Aspen Words Literary Prize, announced during a ceremony held April 10, 2018 at the Morgan Library in New York NY. The $35,000 prize is awarded to “an influential work of fiction focused on vital contemporary issues.” Finalists and winner were chosen by jurors Stephen L. Carter, Jessica Fullerton, Phil Klay, Alondra Nelson, and Akhil Sharma. Hamid will also be the ...Read More
Astrid & Greg Bear have founded the Poul and Karen Anderson Memorial International Travel Fund, covering travel costs for one international student from outside North America to attend the Clarion West Six Week Summer Workshop. The recipient of the 2018 fund is Ted Mahsun from Ipoh, Malaysia. The travel fund will provide $1,000 annually for ten years and was established in honor of Astrid Bear’s parents.
Instructors for the 2018 ...Read More
The Armored Saint, Myke Cole (Tor.com Publishing 978-0-7653-9595-5, $17.99, 208pp, hc) February 2018. Cover by Tommy Arnold.
Staying with our theme of “dark, with military overtones,” we have Myke Cole’s The Armored Saint, out of Tor.com Publishing’s novella line. Like Ironclads, it’s a slender volume – it tops out at 206 pages in paperback – but unlike either Ironclads or Clockwork Boys, it doesn’t feature any amount of travel. Instead, ...Read More
Winners of the Shimmer Program’s Worldcon 76 Attending Funding for Chinese fans have been announced. Lin Jiayu (Mackenzie Lin) and Shi Ran (Sharon Shi) will each receive RMB 10,000 (approximately $1,600) to attend and staff Worldcon 76. This year’s winners were chosen by Worldcon Facilities DDH Mike Willmoth and winner of the Worldcon 75 Attending Funding Yang Sumin.
The Shimmer Program is funded by Storycom, “the first professional story commercialization ...Read More
Catherynne M. Valente’s Space Opera and titles by Alex Bledsoe, Aliette de Bodard, Justina Ireland, Josh Malerman, Ilana C. Myer, Sam Peters, David J. Schow, and Matt Wallace. ...Read More
Pride and Prometheus, John Kessel (Saga 978-1-5344-1121-0, $27.99, 371pp, hc) February 2018. Cover by Robert Hunt.
In my 2017 wrap-up essay elsewhere in this issue, I wonder at and wander around the matter of sequels, prequels, series, and common-background-setting books. All these present particular challenges to a reviewer: how to deal with a work that may begin in medias res (or, god-help-us, on the far side of a cliff-hanger), or ...Read More
The shortlist for the 2018 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, honoring the best SF/F work published in France in 2017, has been announced:
French Novel
Foreign Novel
