Locus Online

Ninth Step Station, Malka Older, Curtis C. Chen, Jacqueline Koyanagi, & Fran Wilde (Serial Box 978-1-68210-589-4 $13.99, 324pp eb) March 2019. Cover by Christine Barcellona.

Ninth Step Station is one of two new science fiction serial offerings from publisher Serial Box this year. (The other is The Vela, starting in March.) Cre­ated by Malka Older and written by Older, Fran Wilde, Curtis C. Chen, & Jacqueline Koyanagi, Ninth ...Read More

Famous Men Who Never Lived, K Chess (Tin House Books 978-1947793248, $24.95, 324pp, hc) March 2019.

Over the last couple of years, there’s been a wave of debut authors from outside the field putting a fresh twist on genre staples. In An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon explored slavery, race, and gender on a generation starship; Ling Ma’s Severance employed an apocalyptic killer-flu to critique and satirise late-stage ...Read More

The Tesla Legacy, K.K. Pérez (Tor Teen 978-1-250-08489-7, $17.99, 368pp, tp) March 2019.

K.K. Pérez’s The Tesla Legacy presents a familiar but always compelling premise: what if you are not the person you think you are? In this case, high school senior Lucy thinks she knows herself very well. She’s a former homeschooler now happily ensconced in public school, living just outside New York City, where she pursues an ...Read More

Spectrum 25: The Best In Contemporary Fantastic Art, John Fleskes, ed. (Flesk, 978-1-64041-007-7, $45.00, 304pp, hc) November 2018. Cover by Paul Bonner.

Spectrum 25 is up to its usual standard of excel­lent production values and varied, fascinating fantastic artwork from around the globe. Spec­trum honors artists in its respectful reproduction and placement of their work throughout the book. Art is crammed in every inch, including on jacket flaps ...Read More

The Bird King, G. Willow Wilson (Grove Press 978-0-8021-2903-1, $26.00, 416pp, hc) March 2019.

G. Willow Wilson seems to be pivoting away from her World Fantasy Award-winning first novel Alif the Unseen, which resonated with many readers, I suspect, because of its shrewd combina­tion of contemporary cyberhacking and ancient magic (a bit like R.A. MacAvoy’s Tea with the Black Dragon a generation ago). That novel was also peppered ...Read More

Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit 978-0316452533, $15.99, 608pp, trade paperback) May 2019.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s opener in this series, Children of Time, snapped up the Clarke Award for its year of publication, and it’s easy to see why. The book combines Stapledonian vistas with intimate human dramas, along with top-notch conceptualizations of an alien civilization. Toss in an Armageddon-extinction scenario, a generation starship, and a half-bonkers AI-posthuman godling, ...Read More

Lightspeed 1/19, 2/19 See the Elephant #4 Future Science Fiction Digest #1

January’s Lightspeed opens with a mythic science fictional novelette by A. Merc Rustad, “With Teeth Unmake the Sun“. It features war between immortal godlike beings, one of whom commands a wolf who can unmake planets, stars, and solar systems. While it is an agent of destruction, it has its own yearnings (and its own very ...Read More

Seanan McGuire, That Ain’t Witchcraft (DAW 978-0-7564-1179-4, $7.99, 432pp, pb) March 2019. Cover by Aly Fell.

Antimony “Annie” Price’s adventures continue in this eighth volume in the InCryptid series. She and her cryptid friends, still on the road after their harrowing adventures at Lowryland theme park, finally find a safe place to stop for a while in Maine. But this is Stephen King country, where their rental house hides secrets, ...Read More

While Gods Sleep by L.D. Colter (Tam Lin) won the Colorado Book Award in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category, and Del Toro Moon by Darby Karchut (Owl Hollow) won in the Juvenile Literature category.

Winners were announced May 18, 2019 at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities in Arvada CO. For more information, including complete list of winners, see the awards website.

While you are here, please take a ...Read More

Winners for the Tomorrow Prize and Roswell Award for short science fiction have been announced. The five finalists for each had their stories read by celebrity guests during LitFest Pasadena.

Tomorrow Prize for short science fiction by LA county high school students:

Roswell Award for short ...Read More

The Rosewater Insurrection, Tade Thompson (Orbit 978-0-316-44908-3, $15.99, 378pp, tp) March 2019.

Tade Thompson’s wildly original first novel Rose­water, with its political savvy, its problematic main character, its inventive notion of alien contact, and its colorful setting of the improvised city of Rosewater – which grew up around an alien dome near Lagos, Nigeria – also seemed to challenge some readers with its shifting timelines and questions of ...Read More

The New Visions Award writing contest for YA/middle grade novels and graphic novels by authors of color and indigenous/Native writers is open to submissions through August 31, 2019. The winning submission will receive a $2,000 cash prize and a publishing contract from the Tu Books imprint of Lee & Low Books, and an Honor Award winner will receive $1,000. For details and rules: <www.leean­dlow.com/writers-illustrators/new-visions-award>.

While you are here, please take ...Read More

Permafrost, Alastair Reynolds (Tor.com Pub­lishing 978-125-030356-1, $14.99, 176pp, tp) March 2019.

Alastair Reynolds is one of a handful of authors writing science fiction today who can boast of having worked for a space agency as a scientist (as part of the European Space Research and Technology Centre). His long-form fiction has tended towards far-future science fiction, space operas with sprawling future histories and a strong interest in the influence ...Read More

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) announced the winners of the 2018 Nebula Awards during the 53rd Annual Nebula Banquet on Saturday, May 18, 2019 at the Marriott Warner Center, Woodland Hills CA.

Novel

WINNER: The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)

The European Parliament passed the Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive, a unified set of laws governing intellectual property rights in the European Union, by a vote of 348 to 274. The law will not go into effect unless the European Council passes it with a “formal endorsement,” via a simple majority. Once that happens, each country will have to implement the law by 2020. The version passed includes ...Read More

The winners for the 2018 Analog Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) and Asimov’s Readers’ Awards have been announced. Most are available to read online.

Analog Science Fiction and Fact Analytical Laboratory Winners

Best Novella

Best Novelette

Tiamat’s Wrath, James S.A. Corey (Orbit 978-0-316-33287-3, $30.00, 528pp, hc) March 2019. Cover by David Dociu.

There is an empire at the center of the eighth (and projected next-to-last) volume of James S.A. Corey’s Expanse sequence. Tiamat’s Wrath continues the story of the Laconian Empire (begun in Persepolis Rising, 2017), founded by a rebel admiral who is ambitious to have all of humankind under his rule and himself ...Read More

Winners of the Tolkien Society Awards 2019 were announced at the society’s annual dinner on April 6. The awards “recognize excellence in the fields of Tolkien scholarship and fandom, highlight­ing our long-standing charitable objective to ‘seek to educate the public in, and promote research into, the life and works of”‘ J.R.R. Tolkien. The society’s trustees choose the shortlist, with winners chosen by the membership.

Best Artwork

Smoke & Summons, Charlie N. Holmberg (47North 9781503905436, $24.95, 332pp, hc) February 2019.

Charlie Holmberg has carved out a suc­cessful niche as a writer of speedy, fan-pleasing novels in a small constellation of fantasy genres. Smoke & Summons, the first book in the new Numina series, continues her work in the same field: it’s an urban fantasy set against a sooty metropolis, making use of religious corruption, ...Read More

Ellen Klages’s novel Out of Left Field (Viking) is the winner of the $10,000 Children’s History Book Prize, presented by the New York Historical Society. The award “honors the best children’s historical literature in the United States and encourages authors to continue to create engaging and challenging narratives that provide a window into the past for middle readers and their families.”

For more information, see the prize’s website.

While you ...Read More

The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling, illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger (Arthur A. Levine 978-1-338-26218-6, $34.99, 159pp, hc) October 2018. Cover by Lisbeth Zwerger

An unexpected pairing of author and artist has yielded a big payoff in The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling with illustration by inter­nationally acclaimed illustrator Lisbeth Zwerger. This is surely one of the most impressive tie-in products to the Harry Potter ...Read More

The five judges for the 2019 Philip K. Dick Award have been announced. Works of science fiction published as paperback originals in the US during the year 2019 are eligible for the award.

Thomas A. Easton, 84 Commonmwealth Ave, Dedham MA 02026-1425

Karen Heuler, 13 Antler Drive, Sandyston NJ 07826 (until October 31) / 80 Charles Street Apt. 3R, New York NY 10014-6110 (after October 31)

Mur Lafferty, 8311 Brier ...Read More

Uncanny 1-2/19 F&SF 1-2/19 Interzone 1-2/19 Galaxy’s Edge 1/19 Granta Autumn ’18

Uncanny in January-February features a challenging story from Fran Wilde. (The last time I wrote about Wilde’s work I called both stories I covered “challenging.” I am sure I did it on purpose, and I am even surer Wilde does it on purpose.) “A Catalog of Storms” is built around names given to different kinds ...Read More

General Strike by Norman Spinrad (Self-published 978-1091528574, $7.00, 61pp, trade paperback) March 2019.

Outside the Gates by Molly Gloss (Saga Press 978-1534414983, $24.99, 128pp, trade paperback) January 2019.

Too Fat to Go to the Moon by Rob McCleary (Zero Books 978-1785352317, $13.95, 160pp, trade paperback) April 2019.

More Walls Broken by Tim Powers (Subterranean 978-1596068865, $25.00, 136pp, trade paperback) February 2019.

The widespread interest in—and production of—novellas continues apace. Large ...Read More

Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) has announced a new retreat, Camp Writerhaven, for writers of all genres. Two sessions are offered from June 20-23 and July 14-20, 2019 to be held at the Rockvale Writers Colony in College Grove TN. Craft classes taught by award-winning writers are available during both sessions.

For more information, or to apply, see the MTSU website or contact mtsuwrite@mtsu.edu.

While you are here, please take ...Read More

Shortlists for several Society of Authors (SoA) fiction awards have been announced, including titles and authors of genre interest.

Betty Trask Prize and Awards

The Betty Trask Prize and Awards gives £26,250 “for a first novel by a writer under 35” and is ...Read More