Locus Online

Fugitive Telemetry, Martha Wells (Tordotcom 978-1-250-76537-6, $19.99, 176pp, hc) April 2021. Cover by Jaime Jones.

At this point, everyone knows about Murderbot. If you don’t know about Murderbot, what rock have you been hiding under? (Is it a comfy rock? I could use a nice rock-based holiday, away from all the news. And the pandemic.) Martha Wells’s Fugi­tive Telemetry is the sixth outing in the award-winning Murderbot Diaries. It ...Read More

Deuces Down, George R.R. Martin & Melinda Snodgrass, eds. (Tor 978-1-250-22720-1, $28.99, 352pp, hc) January 2021.

Deuces Down is both the 16th and 30th book in the Wild Cards series. The anthology was first published in 2002; this new version is refreshed with added stories by Carrie Vaughn, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and Caroline Spector. Although re­ferred to on the title page as a mosaic novel, it remains – despite ...Read More

Dissipatio H.G.: The Vanishing, Guido Mor­selli (New York Review Books 978-1681374765, $15.95, 120pp, tp) December 2020.

On the eve of his 40th birthday, a man decides to end his life. He tells us that 40 is “a point of passage… when maturity begins to decline toward old age. I wanted to be off while I was still thirty-nine, if only technically.” He chooses to drown himself up in the ...Read More

Don’t Tell a Soul, Kirsten Miller (Delacorte 978-0-525-58120-8, $20.99, 384pp, hc) January 2021.

Kirsten Miller’s outstanding thriller Don’t Tell a Soul is not only a first-rate mystery, it also man­ages to address just what it is about certain ghost stories, specifically those involving dead girls, which are so culturally pervasive. The novel’s protagonist has a special affinity for these girls and how their personal histories and true motiva­tions are ...Read More

The Society of Time, John Brunner (edited by Mike Ashley) (The British Library 978-0712353823, 288pp, hardcover) November 2020

Was John Brunner’s life a tragedy? In some undeniable senses, yes. Possessed of enormous talents, but also an array of character faults, he became his own worst enemy and his later-era career suffered immensely—in large part due to one poor decision to stake too much effort and hopes on a mainstream ...Read More

Lightspeed 11/20, 12/20 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 10/8/20, 10/22/20 Strange Horizons 10/5/20, 10/12/20

Lightspeed’s November issue breaks from the usual format to offer a single science fiction nov­elette instead of the usual pair of shorter pieces. “Schrödinger’s Catastrophe” by Gene Doucette is worth it, as special agent Alice is sent to rescue/recover a research vessel that was exploring a to­tally empty quadrant of space. It went silent after sending ...Read More

Jackie Fallis is the recipient of this year’s Working Class Writers Grant, presented by the Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF). The $1,000 grant is given annually to assist working class, blue-collar, poor, and homeless writers who “have been historically underrepresented in speculative fiction, due to financial barriers which have made it much harder for them to have access to the writing world.”

Jackie Fallis is from Ontario, California. They write speculative ...Read More

The Audio Publishers Association has announced the 2021 Audie Awards finalists, recognizing excellence in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment.

Audie finalists of genre interest follow.

Blackthorn Winter, Liz Williams (NewCon 978-1-912950-79-9, $15.99, 348pp, tp) January 2021.

One of last year’s most appealing fantasies, Liz Williams’s Comet Weather, introduced us to the redoubtable Fallow sisters, each balancing the challenges of life in contemporary England with a family heritage entwined with fae, ghosts, alternate dimensions, demons, star-sprites, and even time travel. The sequel, Blackthorn Winter, again brings the sisters back to Mooncote, the family ...Read More

The Big Score, K.J. Parker (Subterranean 978-1-64524-000-6, $40.00, 104pp, hc) March 2021.

The Big Score sounds like a title from the golden age of sleazy paperbacks, or maybe a high-octane, low-budget action flick. In fact, it was both, and I suspect K.J. Parker either knew this or didn’t care in choosing it for the latest novella set in his hilari­ously corrupt version of Renaissance Europe, which has shown a ...Read More

The British Fantasy Society has announced the winners for the 2020 British Fantasy Awards:

Hench, Natalie Zina Walschots; Alex McK­enna, narrator (HarperAudio 978-0-062-97860-8, $29.99, digital download, 14.25 hr., unabridged) September 2020.

In a world where superheroes and supervillains are part of everyday society, Anna scrapes by as a data-entry temp for low-level evildoers. In the course of one of these gigs, her smarmy boss, the Electric Eel, asks her to attend a press conference, which turns out to be a live-streamed demonstra­tion of ...Read More

The Norma K. Hemming Award, “given to mark excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class or disability in a speculative fiction work (e.g. science fiction, fantasy, horror) by Australian citizens and/or residents,” will not be held in 2021.

This decision has been made due to several factors, including COVID-19, juror fatigue, and administrative changes. Please note that all 2020 and 2021 publications will be eligible when ...Read More

Author Charles Yu, in collaboration with TaiwaneseAmerican.org, has created the Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes, “intended to encourage and recognize creative literary work by Taiwanese American high school and college students, and to foster discussion and community around such work.”

Submissions are open to fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction, and “must be from writers of Taiwanese heritage (or writers with other significant connection to Taiwan), ...Read More

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the final ballot for the 2020 Bram Stoker Awards:

Superior Achievement in a Novel

In That Endlessness, Our End, Gemma Files (Grimscribe 978-0-578-75976-0, $20, 342pp, tp) January 2021.

Fifteen recent (the earliest appears to have been published in 2017) stories by Canadian writer Gemma Files combine to make a terrifically ter­rifying collection, In That Endlessness, Our End. Files doesn’t exactly expose the horror found in the mundane because, once the thin veneer of normalcy is scratched, very little is mundane about her ...Read More

Crosshairs, Catherine Hernandez (Atria 978-1-982-14602-3, $27.00, 272pp, hc) December 2020.

Catherine Hernandez’s vivid, angry, outspoken dystopian novel, Crosshairs, begins in a base­ment somewhere in Toronto. There we meet Kay, a self-identified “Queer Femme Jamaican Filipino man” hiding behind a furnace, sleeping on a bed made from cardboard, and spending his days narrating a “Whisper Letter” to his “beauti­ful Evan.” He recounts the sheer joy of dancing to Liberace’s ...Read More

His Dark Materials: Serpentine, Philip Pullman; Olivia Colman, narrator (Listening Library 978-0-59339842-5, $8.00, digital download, 25 min., unabridged) October 2020.

Waiting for the third Book of Dust novel is hard, especially after the gorgeous gut-punch that was 2019’s The Secret Commonwealth. To help tide us over, Pullman offers us this extremely brief prelude to that work, written several years ago to benefit a charity auction. In this story, ...Read More

Spellbreaker, Charlie N. Holmberg (47North 978-1-54202009-1, $14.95, 322pp, tp) November 2020.

The primary protagonist of Charlie N. Holmberg’s latest novel, Spellbreaker, has had a difficult life. Elsie Camden was mysteriously abandoned as a young child and subsequently delivered to a workhouse. She later became a servant for a truly odious master and now, although she is thankful to be a valued assistant for a stonemason and artist, she ...Read More

Following reports of calls for political violence on Baen’s Bar, the online forum of Baen Books, and the subsequent temporary closure of the board by publisher Toni Weisskopf, Discon III, the 2021 Worldcon, has announced that it has removed Weisskopf as guest of honor.

Chair Bill Lawhorn sent a press release on February 19:

DisCon III condemns the violent and hostile content found within Baen Books’ forums. We also cannot ...Read More

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 11/20 Bourbon Penn 11/20 Conjunctions Spring ’20

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet has been one of my favorite magazines for a long time, always publishing work unlike anything you’ll read else­where. The November issue is largely given over to a novella from Sarah Langan, “You Have the Prettiest Mask“. It’s either a timely story or a weirdly untimely story! It’s told by Cathy Lerner, ...Read More

The Original, Brandon Sanderson & Mary Robinette Kowal; Julia Whelan, narrator (Recorded Books 978-1-98006289-9, $19.99, digital download, 4 hr., unabridged) September 2020.

This novella, currently available only in audio, is a tight, exciting thriller, blended with emotional nuance and plenty of food for thought.

In the near future, we have become a world of lotus eaters. The global government provides an income to everyone, so no one has to ...Read More

The longlists for the Carnegie Medal for best children’s book and the Kate Greenaway Medal for best illustrations in a children’s book have been announced. Titles and authors of genre interest follow.

Shreya Ila Anasuya, Eleyna Sara Haroun, and FS Hurston are the 2020 recipients of the Otherwise Fellowship (formerly the Tiptree Fellowship). Each winner will receive a $500 grant, and work produced as a result of this support will be recognized and promoted by the Otherwise Award.

“The Otherwise Award celebrates works of speculative fiction that imagine new futures by exploring and expanding our understanding of gender roles. Through the Fellowship ...Read More

Nominees have been announced for the Splatterpunk Awards, “honoring superior achievement for works published in 2020 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.”