Locus Online

Hospital, Han Song (Amazon Crossing 978-1-54203-947-5, $28.99, 414pp, hc) March 2023.

Summarising the plot of Hospital by Chinese author Han Song (translated by Michael Berry) is a near-impossible task, yet I’m willing to give it a crack. The novel begins in the far future with the SS Mahamayuri heading to Mars to find one of the many Buddhas scattered across the Universe. But after landing on the Red Planet, ...Read More

Don’t Fear the Reaper, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga 978-1-98218-659-3, $27.99, 464pp, hc) February 2023.

“It’s starting again.”

Welcome home, Jade. Well, Jenni­fer – Jade’s not herself right now. Not after several years in the injustice system. That experience has beaten her all out of shape – out of her true self. She’s started to think that safety lies in denying who she was – is – the one with ...Read More

Diabolical Plots 3/23 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/9/23, 3/23/23 GigaNotoSaurus 3/23

Diabolical Plots celebrated March with a special issue on telepathy dubbed Diabolical Thoughts, guest-edited by assistant editor Ziv Wities. All four works in the issue circle influence, mind control, and mental communication. As with The Desert’s Voice is Sweet to Hear” by Carolina Valentine, which finds Zazy moving through a desert that wants to embrace her like an ...Read More

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, Roshani Chokshi (Morrow 978-0-06-320650-2, $27.99, hc, 304pp) February 2023. Cover by Elena Masai.

Roshani Chokshi has an exceptional ability to write dramatically different but wonderful books. Her Gilded Wolves series, aimed at older teens, is solidly in ‘‘magical James Bond-ian’’ territory (if such a thing exists) and follows a group of misfit gifted teens who break into places that seem im­possible to ...Read More

Under My Skin, K.J. Parker (Subterranean 978-1-64524-079-2, $50.00, 680pp, hc) March 2023.

Under My Skin is the third major collection from K.J. Parker, and like Academic Exercises in 2014 and The Father of Lies in 2018, it’s a hefty one. This is mostly because Parker tends to favor novella and novelette-length stories, and four of the 13 stories here – ‘‘Mightier Than the Sword’’, ‘‘My Beautiful Life’’, ‘‘Prosper’s Demon’’, and ...Read More

Analog 3-4/23 Asimov’s 3-4/23

The lead novella in the March/April Ana­log is ‘‘The Tinker and the Timestream’’ by Carolyn Ives Gilman. Rustem is a young man learning to be the tinker of his colony, which is tenuously living under the threat of a solar eruption wiping them out at any minute. Interstellar travelers arrive, travel­ing in a fascinatingly complex way involving time currents and bubbles of slow ...Read More

Check out what is coming out this week, in SF, fantasy, and horror!

Greetings from beyond the paywall! We have been posting new content monthly on our Patreon Archive Feed – scans of vintage Locus and audio clips from author interviews and more – and wanted to share a little of what that feed looks like by making some of our earlier posts public. Check out this post featuring a letter from Anne McCaffrey.

In addition to all the benefits of lower tiers, ...Read More

The shortlist for the annual Arthur C. Clarke Award, celebrating the best science fiction novel published in the UK, has been announced:

The winner will be ...Read More

Winners for the Roswell Award for short science fiction have been announced.

The 2023 winners for the ITW Thriller Awards were announced June 3, 2023 at ThrillerFest XVIII in New York City, as well as synchronously on Twitter. Winners of genre interest include Sundial by Catriona Ward (Macmillan) for Best Hardcover Novel.

For more information see the ITW website.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We ...Read More

The 2022 Aurealis Awards winners, recognizing the best in Australian speculative fiction, have been announced.

Winners for the 2023 Sir Julius Vogel Awards have been announced by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ).

The 2023 shortlist for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for Best Published Novel was announced June 1st, 2023. Titles and authors of genre interest include Going Zero by Anthony McCarten (Harper) and The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury). Voting is open from June 1st to August 31st. The winner of the £10,000 prize will be announced on October 18th at an awards ceremony in London. ...Read More

Pennies from Heaven, James P. Blaylock (PS Publishing 978-1786368843, trade paperback, 304pp, $21.00) December 2022

I find it incredibly hard to believe that so many years have passed. But databases don’t lie. The Internet Science Fiction Database informs me that PS Publishing issued its first title in 1999—and since then has produced nearly one thousand more! That is some kind of dramatic major milestone for any small press, as ...Read More

Our Share of Night, Mariana Enriquez (Granta 978-1-78378-673-2, £18.99, 736pp, hc) October 2022. (Hogarth US 978-0-45149-514-3, $28.99, 608pp, hc) February 2023. Cover by Debbie Glasserman.

Once in a while a novel comes along that makes you think it was written just for you. That’s how I felt about Mariana Enriquez’s Our Share of Night, a superb novel beautifully translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell. A sprawling epic ...Read More