Locus Online

Inscape, Louise Carey (UK: Gollancz 978-1473232747, £14.9920, 432pp, trade paperback) January 2021

Some genetically talented, culturally nurturing families produce writers across multiple generations, or multiple sibling iterations in the same clade. Famous literary lineages are almost too numerous to name. John le Carré and Nick Harkaway. Stephen King and progeny. Nathaniel and Julian Hawthorne. The McCaffreys. Peter and Emma Straub. The Powys clan; the LaFarge clan. And on and ...Read More

Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing 978-1-250-76702-8, $19.99, 192pp, hc) October 2020. Cover by Henry Sene Yee.

P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout is a wildly imaginative, superbly written narrative about friendship, magic, and fighting racism that occupies a strange interstitial space between historical fiction, fantasy, and body hor­ror. It is also a smart reimagining of history that pushes current racial tensions to the forefront and forces readers to ...Read More

Doors of Sleep, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot 978-0-857-66874-5, $14.99, 272pp, tp) January 2021.

Tim Pratt’s last trilogy from Angry Ro­bot, the Axiom (The Wrong Stars, The Dreaming Stars, and The Forbidden Stars), was precisely the kind of space opera romp guaranteed to delight me. Fast paced, and with a rag-tag crew of heroes and a selection of batshit weird dangers, it drove an appealing course ...Read More

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020, Diana Gabaldon & John Joseph Adams, eds. (Mariner 978-1328613103, $16.99, 432pp, tp) November 2020.

It’s always seemed to me that John Joseph Ad­ams’s Best American Science Fiction and Fan­tasy series, now in its sixth volume, has served a somewhat different if equally important purpose than the more traditional year’s best volumes which have been a staple of SF publishing for more ...Read More

The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson (Del Rey 978-0593135051, $28.00, 336pp, hc) August 2020.

Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds is built on a solid SFnal idea: a shadowy genius has figured out how to travel between parallel Earths and is raiding them for information and resources. There’s a catch, of course. The only humans who can make the jump between the worlds are those who don’t have a ...Read More

London Centric, Ian Whates, ed. (NewCon Press) March 2020. Uncanny 11-12/20 On Spec #114 Pulp Literature Summer ’20 The New Yorker 11/9/20

Here’s an intriguing new anthology from Eng­land’s NewCon Press, London Centric: Tales of Future London, edited by Ian Whates. The anthology is mostly exactly what it says, a collec­tion of looks at a future London, but one of the very best stories is mostly set in ...Read More

ALAN WHITE won the 2020 Rotsler Award for “long-time won­der-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the science fiction community.” The award is sponsored by the Southern Califor­nia Institute for Fan Interests, and includes a $300 honorarium.

Editor and author PATRICE CALDWELL and author and artist MOLLY KNOX OSTERTAG are on the 2021 Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Media category.

GILLIAN CHANDLER won the 2020 A. ...Read More

Rebellion Publishing has announced a new novella imprint, Solaris Satellites, edited by David Thomas Moore. The first publications will be Pollen From A Future Harvest by Derek Künsken, These Lifeless Things by Premee Mohamed, and The Difficult Loves of Maria Makiling by Wayne Santos, releasing later this year.

Moore says, “Novellas are where the genre is at right now: a neat little package, with more room to breathe than a ...Read More

The 2021 Philip K. Dick Award nominees have been announced:

The finalists have been announced for the inaugural Gotham Book Prize, given for best New York City-based novel. Titles of genre interest include Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (Ecco) and The City We Became by N.K Jemisin (Orbit).

The $50,000 prize was created in July 2020 by Bradley Tusk and Howard Wolfson to “support New York City and its arts community by recognizing what makes the city so ...Read More

The 20-title longlist for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize has been announced, including the following titles of genre interest:

“The Box” by Lennixx-Nickolai Treat Bad Moccasin is the winner of the 2020 Imagining Indigenous Futurisms Award. The $1,000 prize is given by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) to “emerging authors who use science fiction to address issues of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.”

“Calling Line 17” by Paul Johnson was selected as a shortlist story. The judge for 2020 was Andrea Hairston. Winners were originally ...Read More

Uncanny 9-10/20 Black Static 9-10/20 The Dark 9/20, 10/20 Nightmare 10/20, 11/20 Tor.com 9/2/20

Uncanny #36 offers five rewarding originals. T. Kingfisher‘s terrific science fictional retelling of Hansel and Gretel, “Metal Like Blood in the Dark“, is a grim but triumphant tale.

The engaging “Anchorage” by Samantha Mills involves a spacefaring crew beset with guilt, a librarian of sorts who also serves as a confessor ...Read More

Washington STEAM Multilingual Academy (WSMA) in Pasadena CA announced a new science fiction writing contest named in honor of alumnus Octavia E. Butler. Last year, the school renamed its library after Butler as well. Librarian Natalie Daily said,

It’s the idea of [Butler] representing a very, unique way of integrating science and the arts, and bringing that to the world and her award-winning writing. And we want to inspire our ...Read More

The Clerk, Guillermo Saccomanno (Open Letter 978-1-948-83025-6, $15.95, 138pp, tp) September 2020.

Going back to the country’s independence in 1816, Argentina has been a rich source of genre and genre-adjacent fic­tion. Most will be aware of Jorge Luis Borges – the father of magical realism – but there’s also Silvina Ocampo, Carlos Gardini, and An­gélica Gorodischer, whose 1979 mosaic novel Trafalgar was finally translated into English in 2013 thanks ...Read More

Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline (Ballantine 978-1524761332, $28.99, 384pp, hardcover) November 2020

I am not often bowled over by first novels, but I admit to being very delighted and impressed with Ernest Cline’s bestseller, Ready Player One, when it appeared nearly ten years ago. I was then a judge for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and cast my vote to ensure it got on the shortlist as ...Read More

The late Michael Crichton’s production company, publisher, and archive, Crich­tonSun, has announced a partnership with Range Media Partners to develop new TV series and an adaptation of an unpublished work. CrichtonSun president Sherri Crichton says, “We’re thrilled to have found true creative partners at Range. They share our passion of preserving the Crichton legacy and we look forward to tapping into their imagina­tive minds and exciting pool of talent to ...Read More

Snow, Glass, Apples, Neil Gaiman & Colleen Doran (Dark Horse 978-1-50670-979-6, $17.99, unpaginated, hc) August 2019. Cover by Colleen Doran.

Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover, Trina Rob­bins (It’s Alive 978-1-7325915-2-3, $24.99, 80pp, hc) September 2019. Cover by Trina Robbins.

Nordic Tales: Folktales from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark, Ulla Thynell (Chronicle Books, 978-1-4521-7447-1, $22.95, 160pp, hc) August 2019. Cover by Ulla Thynell.

Snow, Glass, Apples ...Read More

Author and publisher Storm Constantine, 64, died January 14, 2021 following a long illness. She was best known as the author of the Wraeththu series, and as the publisher of Immanion Press, founded in 2003, which published her own work and that of other authors including Tanith Lee, Michael Moorcock, and Brian Stableford.

Born October 12, 1956 in Stafford, England, Constantine attended art school in the 1970s, and worked in ...Read More

The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, Garth Nix (Katherine Tegen Books 978-0-06-268325-0, $19.99, 416pp, hc) September 2020.

In a version of 1983 London that is just a bit not-like the actual 1983 London, Susan Arkshaw is looking for her father. Her mother, whose memories of Susan’s conception are fond but hazy, can provide only the vaguest of clues as to his identity, thus prompting her summertime quest. Susan’s plan to ...Read More

Amara Hoshijo has joined Saga Press as an editor. She previously worked on science fiction titles at Soho Press including The Seep by Chana Porter, Annie and the Wolves by Andromeda Romano-Lax, and the forthcoming Midnight, Water City by Chris McKinney. Saga editorial director Joe Monti said,

Amara has a keen perspective and a high level of enthusiasm for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror that will be a boon to ...Read More

Reconstruction, Alaya Dawn Johnson (Small Beer 978-1-618731777, $17.00, 278pp, tp) No­vember 2020.

Like a number of writers who have arrived with a splash in the last decade or two, Alaya Dawn Johnson seems to have written nearly as many novels as short stories. That’s not actually the case, of course – her website lists seven novels, and her first collection, Reconstruction, contains ten stories – but it’s probably ...Read More

Goldilocks, Laura Lam (Orbit 978-0-316-46286-0, $27.00, 244pp, hc) May 2020.

Laura Lam’s Goldilocks opens with five women stealing a small space shuttle, one that will get them to a space station in Earth’s orbit. From there, they’ll hijack the Atalanta, a much larger ship able to travel faster than the speed of light (or so they think), which they’ll pilot to Cavendish, a “Goldilocks” planet that should support human ...Read More

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced six recipients of its $500 diversity grants, given “to underrepresented, diverse people who have an interest in the horror writing genre, including, but not limited to writers, editors, reviewers, and library workers.” The recipients are Jacqueline Dyre, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Gabino Iglesias, Nicole Givens Kurtz, Tejaswi Priyadarshi, and Sumiko Saulson.

The grants are funded in part by NoveList, LibraryReads, ARRT, and RA for ...Read More

Submissions are now open for the Imagine 2200 short story contest. The theme is “Climate fiction for future ancestors.”

The contest is run by Fix, Grist‘s “solutions lab,” and will be judged by authors Adrienne Maree Brown, Morgan Jerkins, and Kiese Laymon. They are seeking entries between 3,000 and 5,000 words “that envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress.”

First prize is $3,000, second prize $2,000, and third ...Read More

Pacific Storm, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island Press, 978-1937197339, $14.00, 264 pp, tp) October 2020.

Linda Nagata made her reputation with far-far-future adventures featuring near-magical nanotechnology and post-human characters, but in the last few years she has also developed a strong line of closer-to-home sce­narios. This day-after-tomorrow work has veered toward military SF in her Red Trilogy (2013-15) and toward the technothriller in The Last Good Man (2017), both of ...Read More