Month: January 2014

RUSA’s 2014 Reading List Winners

January 31, 2014 admin

The selections for the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) 2014 Reading List have been announced. There were several genre categories included, winners were: Vicious by V.E. Schwab (Tor) in the fantasy category, and Last Days by Adam Nevil (St. Martin’s Griffin) in the horror category, and Love Minus Eighty by Will MacIntosh (Orbit) in science fiction. RUSA is a division of the American Library Association.

For the complete list ...Read More

New Titles & Bestsellers Periodicals

Periodicals, late January

January 30, 2014September 6, 2017 admin Periodicals

Beneath Ceaseless Skies • Literary adventure fantasy, since 2008; publisher and editor-in-chief Scott H. Andrews • Format: Online; PDF and ebook formats • Frequency: biweekly • http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

January 2014— Issue 138-139, cover art by Stefan Meisl • This issue has stories by Dean Wells and K.C. Ball, with a podcast of last issue’s story by Nathaniel Lee. • Issue 138, posted January 9th, has stories by Siobhan Carroll and

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Reviews Short Fiction

Lois Tilton reviews Short Fiction, late January

January 29, 2014May 17, 2018 admin 0 Comments Lois Tilton

I continue unenthused by the stories I’m finding this month. Even the most promising seem flawed in some way that keeps me from recommending them.

Publications Reviewed

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #138-139, January 2014
Tor.com, January 2014
Strange Horizons, January 2014
On Spec, Fall 2013

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #138-139, January 2014

Stories named “Enginesong” and “Evensong” this time. I don’t see the usual thematic connection between the stories in

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2013 BSFA Shortlist

January 29, 2014 admin

The 2013 BSFA Awards shortlist has been announced:

Best Novel

God’s War, Kameron Hurley (Del Rey)
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie (Orbit)
Evening’s Empires, Paul McAuley (Gollancz)
Ack-Ack Macaque, Gareth L. Powell (Solaris)
The Adjacent, Christopher Priest (Gollancz)

Best Short Fiction

Spin, Nina Allan (TTA Press)
“Selkie Stories are for Losers,” Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons)
“Saga’s Children,” E. J. Swift (The Lowest Heaven, Pandemonium)

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New Books, 28 January

January 28, 2014September 6, 2017 admin New Books

* Brown, Pierce : Red Rising (Ballantine Del Rey 978-0-345-53978-6, $25, 400pp, hardcover, February 2014) • Nominal Publication Date: Tue 28 Jan 2014 • Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 978-0-345-53979-3 • Red Rising #1

SF novel, first in a series and the author’s first novel, about a color-coded caste society on Mars. • Random House’s site has this description, which compares it to The Hunger Games and Ender’s

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2013 Apex Magazine Story of the Year

January 28, 2014 admin

Brian Trent’s story “A Matter of Shapespace” was voted the 2013 Apex Magazine Story of the year by fans and readers of the magazine. You can read “A Matter of Shapespace” here. ...Read More

Bestsellers New Titles & Bestsellers

Weekly Bestsellers, 27 January

January 27, 2014September 28, 2017 admin Bestsellers

Ransom Riggs’ Hollow City (Quirk), sequel to his best-selling Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, debuts on three lists, ranking as high as #1 on the Publishers Weekly‘s children’s frontlist fiction list, and #6 on the combined USA Today list.

Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT 02.02 WP 01.19 LAT 01.26 USAT 01.19 PW 01.27 Amz (01.27) UK: Amz UK (01.27) Canada: Amz.ca (01.27) Items on ...Read More Read more

Classic Reprints New Titles & Bestsellers

DiCamillo Wins Newbery

January 27, 2014 admin

Kate DiCamillo’s Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick) won the 2014 Newbery Medal, given by the Association for Library Service to Children (a division of the American Library Association) for last year’s outstanding American children’s book. The award was announced at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia PA. ...Read More

Blinks

Blinks: Lightspeed, KGB photos, VanderMeer, reviews

January 26, 2014August 17, 2017 admin

» Lightspeed Magazine’s Kickstarter campaign has funded a special issue written and edited by women — the June issue, edited by Christie Yant

» Ellen Datlow’s photos from KGB January 15th, with Ennis Drake and Joe Hill

» Jeff VanderMeer is touring for new novel Annihilation, February through April in Seattle, Beaverton OR, San Francisco, NYC, LA, and Little Rock — schedule

» Daily Mail: Harry Ritchie reviews James ...Read More

Classic Reprints, December-January

January 26, 2014 admin

Davidson, Avram : The Phoenix and the Mirror (UK: Gollancz 978-0575130388, £9.99, 240pp, trade paperback, December 2013) • Nominal Publication Date: Thu 12 Dec 2013 • Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780575130395 (First edition: Doubleday, 1969)

Historical fantasy novel that casts Virgil, author of The Aeneid, as an alchemist. • This is a volume in Gollancz’ Fantasy Masterworks series. Gollancz’ site has this description. • Amazon’s “Look Inside”

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Paul Di Filippo reviews Rudy Rucker

January 25, 2014May 17, 2018 admin 1 Comment Paul Di Filippo

A bit over five years ago, Rudy Rucker nearly died. As he recounts in his charming, funny and perceptive autobiography, Nested Scrolls (whose creation was spurred by his brush with mortality), he suffered a brain aneurysm that sent him unconscious to the hospital but which luckily left no permanent physiological fallout.

Since that time, Rucker’s been on a creative tear, as if to thumb his nose at the Reaper. He’s

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Samatar Wins Crawford Award

January 24, 2014 admin

The winner of the 2014 Crawford Memorial Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for an outstanding first fantasy book, is Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria (Small Beer Press). According to award administrator Gary K. Wolfe, the novel won broad support from the nominating committee. The other books included on this year’s Crawford shortlist are Yoon Ha Lee’s story collection Conservation of Shadows ...Read More

New UK Books, 24 January

January 24, 2014 admin

* Ings, Simon : Wolves (UK: Gollancz 9780575119734, £14.99, 304pp, trade paperback, January 2014) • Nominal Publication Date: Thu 16 Jan 2014 • Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9780575119901

SF novel about a new technology, Augmented Reality, that overlays the real world with digital images. • Orion’s site has this description, which calls it “A chilling literary dystopia for those who love Iain Banks and J.G. Ballard.” •

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2013 Kitschies Shortlists

January 24, 2014 admin

Finalists for the 2013 Kitschies, awarded to “the year’s most progressive, intelligent, and entertaining works of genre literature published in the U.K.” have been announced.

Red Tentacle (Novel)

Red Doc>, Anne Carson (Jonathan Cape)
More Than This, Patrick Ness (Walker)
A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon (Jonathan Cape)
The Machine, James Smythe (HarperCollins/ Blue Door)

Golden Tentacle (Debut ...Read More

Roundtable

Roundtable on "Planetary Writing" and SF in 2014

January 24, 2014September 6, 2017 admin 6 Comments Discussions

In The Economist‘s recent “The World in 2014” issue, Jonathan Ledgard writes:

“Dystopian literature will lose out to more optimistic fare in 2014. In part this shift is attributable to readers’ fatigue with mutant, vampire and (particularly) zombie stories. Mostly, though, it reflects a move in the popular consciousness from civilisational angst to the question of preserving biodiversity.”

Later, Ledgard concludes, “2014 will mark the rise of planetary writing: high ...Read More

Roundtable

Roundtable on “Planetary Writing” and SF in 2014

January 24, 2014September 6, 2017 admin 6 Comments Discussions

In The Economist‘s recent “The World in 2014” issue, Jonathan Ledgard writes:

Later, Ledgard concludes, “2014 will mark the rise of planetary writing: high ...Read More

Gary K. Wolfe reviews Leena Krohn

January 23, 2014May 17, 2018 admin 0 Comments Gary K. Wolfe

For the past decade or so, thanks in part to the well-received work of writers like Johanna Sinisalo and Hannu Rajaniemi, Finnish SF and fantasy seem to have enjoyed a bit of a renaissance, at least in terms of availability to English readers (like all such renaissances, it’s probably just one that we didn’t know about earlier). Now Cheeky Frawg, the cheeky imprint from Ann and Jeff VanderMeer which brought

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Paul Di Filippo reviews Chang-rae Lee

January 22, 2014May 17, 2018 admin 1 Comment Paul Di Filippo

What exactly is a dystopian novel? One would think that in this era, when the mode is so favored and the term is bandied about so promiscuously, we would have a firmer handle on the topic. But it seems to me that many novels are blithely dubbed dystopias when they are really something else, and that this misapplication of category distorts a true understanding of such mis-labeled books.

Utopias came

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New Books, 21 January

January 21, 2014September 6, 2017 admin New Books

* Golden, Christopher : Snowblind (St. Martin’s 978-1250015310, $25.99, 320pp, hardcover, January 2014) • Nominal Publication Date: Tue 21 Jan 2014 • Ebook ISBN [link to Amazon Kindle edition]: 9781466840904 • UK edition: Headline 978-1472209580 (Thu 16 Jan 2014)

Horror novel (the author’s first in more than a decade), about a small New England town facing a winter storm that evokes memories of a huge blizzard twelve years before.

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Announcements

Mars Madness Exhibit in Arizona

January 21, 2014 admin

The Mars Madness exhibit, subtitled “Sci-Fi, Popular Culture and Ray Bradbury’s Literary Journey to Outer Space” opened today and will be on display until August 1, 2014 in the Special Collections at the University of Arizona, 1510 E. University Blvd., Tucson, AZ. An array of Ray Bradbury material will be on display, including original works by the author, works of others who influenced him, pulp SF magazines, photos of Mars, ...Read More

Bestsellers New Titles & Bestsellers

Weekly Bestsellers, 20 January

January 20, 2014September 28, 2017 admin Bestsellers

Trade paperback editions of two books debut this week: Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life (Little, Brown), ranking #1 on the New York Times‘ trade paperback list, and George Saunders’ Tenth of December: Stories (Random House), ranking #5 on the same list.

Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT 01.26 WP 01.19 LAT 01.19 USAT 01.12 PW 01.20 Amz (01.20) UK: Amz UK (01.20) Canada: Amz.ca (01.20) Items on ...Read More Read more

Faren Miller reviews Jeanette Winterson

January 19, 2014May 17, 2018 admin 2 Comments Faren Miller

Tropes like royal pomp, treason, and fear of magic all came to fantasy from human history, and writers can still make good use of dusty annals. Jeanette Winterson’s short novel The Daylight Gate (published in the UK last year) tackles the jittery years of Protestantism’s first hold in England, where mobs could view both witches and Catholics with the deep suspicion we now reserve for Arab terrorists. Guy Fawke’s scheme

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Blinks

Blinks: reviews from LA Review of Books, SFGate, Toronto Star; Concatenation

January 18, 2014August 17, 2017 admin

» LA Review of Books: Andrea Hairston on Africa SF; Min Hyoung Song on Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea

» SFGate: Ted Gioia reviews Richard Powers’ Orfeo: “with scientific reality getting stranger with each passing year, Powers shows once again in this new book, one of his finest yet, that he can keep up with the pace”

» Toronto Star: Alex Good reviews Jo Walton, Adam Sternbergh, ...Read More

New Titles & Bestsellers Periodicals

Electronic and Print Periodicals, mid-January

January 18, 2014September 6, 2017 admin Periodicals

Analog Science Fiction and Fact • Science fiction and nonfiction; published since 1930 (originally Astounding); edited, since April 2013, by Trevor Quachri • Format: Print • Frequency: Near-monthly (10 issues/year) • http://www.analogsf.com/

April 2014— Vol. 134 No. 4, $4.99, 112pp, cover art by Julie Dillon • This issue has the conclusion of a serial by Karl Schroeder, a novelette by Jordan Jeffers, and short stories by Don Webb, Eric

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Russell Letson reviews Joe Haldeman

January 17, 2014May 17, 2018 admin 0 Comments Russell Letson

Joe Haldeman’s Work Done for Hire is a tricky book to review, thanks to its membership in the intrigue/mystery/pursuit family, the pleasures of which include having to withhold from the reader answers to various questions about who is doing bad things and how they’re doing them. So I am constrained from describing or discussing much of what I enjoyed about various plot twists and turns and devices, or speculating about

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Reviews Short Fiction

Lois Tilton reviews Short Fiction, mid-January

January 16, 2014May 17, 2018 admin 0 Comments Lois Tilton

If this year goes on as it has begun, my 2014 Year’s Best list is going to be awfully short. Fortunately, we have Interzone, with a good issue. Also a nice independent novella by Octavia Cade, from the Masque imprint.

Publications Reviewed

Interzone, Jan-Feb 2014
Analog, April 2014
Asimov’s, March 2014
Lightspeed, January 2014
Trading Rosemary, by Octavia Cade

Interzone, Jan-Feb 2014

Seven stories in this issue, which

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Features Spotlight

Spotlight on Galen Dara, Artist

January 14, 2014May 15, 2018 admin 0 Comments Spotlight

Galen Dara has created art for Fireside, Lightpseed, Goblin Fruit, Lovecraft eZine, Scapezine, Apex magazine, Dagan Books, and Edge Publishing. Recently she illustrated the cover of the War Stories anthology, edited by Jaym Gates & Andrew Liptak; the cover of The Future Embodied, edited by Mae Empson & Jason Andrews; and the cover of Glitter & Mayhem, edited by John Klima & Lynne M. Thomas. She is currently

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Publishing

New SF Imprint: Simon451

January 14, 2014 admin

Simon & Schuster has announced the launch of a new adult SF/F imprint, Simon451. The imprint will publish both print and e-book formats, but will focus on e-book originals and digital-first publishing, and will also experiment with publishing short stories and serials, as well as reissuing backlist titles as e-books. Senior editor Sarah Knight will run the imprint, which launches in October 2014 with A Vision of Fire, first ...Read More

Landis Wins 2014 Heinlein Award

January 14, 2014January 9, 2019 admin

Geoffrey A. Landis is the winner of the 2014 Robert A. Heinlein Award, given for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space. Winners are chosen by a committee of SF authors chaired by Michael F. Flynn, and receive a plaque, a sterling silver medallion, and two lapel pins, all featuring the likeness of Robert A. Heinlein. The award will be presented ...Read More