The sixth annual BooktubeSFF Awards winners were announced in an online ceremony on August 30, 2020. The winners were voted on separately by readers and judges. For categories with differing results, both selections were named as winners.
Best Science Fiction
Best Fantasy
Winners of the 2020 Prix Bob Morane have been announced.
Romans francophones (French Novels)
Roman traduit (Translated Novels)
Phoenix Extravagant, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris 978-1-78108-794-7, $24.99, 416pp, hc) October 2020.
Yoon Ha Lee is well known for his science fiction and his short fiction. His debut novel, Ninefox Gambit, won the 2017 Locus Award for Best First Novel, and was also nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke Awards. His second and third novels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun, picked up Hugo nominations ...Read More
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The winners for the 2020 Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic have been announced:
Adult Fiction
Young Adult Fiction
Dance on Saturday: Stories, Elwin Cotman (Small Beer Press 978-1618731722, 304pp, trade paperback) September 2020.
I have been unfortunate enough to miss Elwin Cotman’s two previous collections, The Jack Daniels Sessions EP and Hard Times Blues. But now that I’ve latched onto his third, Dance On Saturday, and enjoyed the ever-lovin’ pants off it, I can solace myself by contemplating the untapped reservoir of heartfelt gonzo Cotmanesque ...Read More
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Flyaway, Kathleen Jennings (Tor.com Publishing 978-1-25026-049-9, $19.99, 176pp, hc) July 2020.
The remarkable imagination of Kathleen Jennings is familiar to, I’d guess, many thousands of people across the world. Her work as an illustrator has garnered her multiple awards and nominations, and she has designed book covers for Small Beer Press, Tor.com Publishing, and other presses. Her work feels like Quentin Blake crossed with Jane Austen, with a whisper ...Read More
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What’s this? Locus reviews a rom-com? Well, how does an infinite time loop and random dinosaurs grab you?
One November day in Palm Springs, wedding guest Nyles (Andy Samberg) falls through a mysterious portal in a cave and then, Groundhog Day-style, finds himself repeating the entire wedding day all over again. He’s trapped in a time loop that resets whenever he goes through the portal, falls asleep, or dies. ...Read More
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Dangerous Remedy, Kat Dunn (Head of Zeus 978-1-78954-364-3, £12.99, 430pp, hc) August 2020.
Dangerous Remedy is a much-discussed debut novel from translator and podcast host Kat Dunn: I say much discussed, because I first heard of it in flattering terms as ”LGBT fantasy meets The Scarlet Pimpernel,” and I’ve heard much in its favour since. The advance praise may have had the effect of setting my expectations too ...Read More
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The Internet Archive has demanded a jury trial in the lawsuit brought by four publishers alleging “willful mass copyright infringement” in the form of IA’s “National Emergency Library”, which offered unlimited borrows of over a million ebooks. The IA insists that fair use and the first sale doctrine make its actions lawful: “The Internet Archive’s [controlled digital lending] program is sheltered by the fair use doctrine, buttressed by traditional library ...Read More
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Sisters, Daisy Johnson (Riverhead Books 978-0-593-18895-8, $26.00, 224pp, hc) August 2020.
In my review of Sophie Mackintosh’s second novel Blue Ticket, I noted that her first book, The Water Cure, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2018. The other debut novelist who snagged a Booker nomination that year, getting as far as the shortlist, was Daisy Johnson with Everything Under, a gender-fluid retelling of ...Read More
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Gregory Benford & Larry Niven, Glorious (Tor 6/20) Two legends of hard SF reunite for the third (and possibly final) book in the Bowl of Heaven series, about humans on a colony ship contending with an immense extraterrestrial artifact – and dealing with some truly alien aliens.
Max Brooks, Devolution (Del Rey 6/20) Brooks is best known for World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, ...Read More
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Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing 978-1-250-31322-5, $26.99, 512pp, hc) August 2020. Cover by Tommy Arnold.
Harrow the Ninth is Tamsyn Muir’s second novel, a direct sequel to last year’s Gideon the Ninth, a novel with a strong voice and appealingly batshit worldbuilding that left me with distinctly mixed feelings at its conclusion: a conclusion that blunted the strength of what came before and left me with ...Read More
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The University of Glasgow is launching its Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic (CFF) with an online lecture by Ellen Kushner and a panel featuring Brian Attebery, Robert Maslen, and Terri Windling. The event will be held as a Zoom webinar on September 16, 2020 and is free and open to the public.
For more information, and to book tickets, see the CFF website.
While you are here, please take ...Read More
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The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced new diversity grants, “open to underrepresented, diverse people who have an interest in the horror writing genre, including, but not limited to writers, editors, reviewers, and library workers.” Through funding from NoveList, LibraryReads, ARRT, and RA for All, four grants of $500 each will be offered in 2020. “The number of grants awarded in the future is subject to the amount of funds ...Read More
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Mordew, Alex Pheby (Galley Beggar Press 978-1-913-11102-1, £14.99, 604pp, tp) August 2020.
I’ve been eagerly awaiting Alex Pheby’s Mordew – the first volume in a new epic fantasy trilogy – since publisher Galley Beggar Press announced it more than a year ago. (If you have the spare cash, I highly recommend subscribing to Galley Beggar Press, one of the best small press publishers who produce gorgeous, award-winning books.) I ...Read More
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F&SF 7-8/20 Analog 5-6/20 Asimov’s 5-6/20 Uncanny 5-6/20 Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices, Kenneth Schneyer (Fairwood Press) July 2020.
The new F&SF features a delightful piece by Madeleine Robins, ”‘Omunculus”, a retelling of My Fair Lady set in a steam-punkish alternate history with the role of Eliza taken by a robot. It’s very funny as it reimagines Eliza and Higgins in this permutation and ...Read More
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The Ray Bradbury Centennial Read-a-Thon was held on August 22, 2020 on the hundredth anniversary of Ray Bradbury’s birth, featuring a complete reading of Fahrenheit 451, plus introductions and speeches. Participants include members of the Waukegan Park District, the Library of Congress, the Los Angeles Public Library, and other libraries across the country, as well as authors Steven Barnes, P. Djèlí Clark, Tananarive Due, Neil Gaiman, Marlon James, Kij ...Read More
Read moreAustralian editor and fan John Bangsund, 81, died August 22, 2020 of complications from COVID-19. He lived in Preston, Victoria, Australia.
Born 1939 in Melbourne, Bangsund was active in Australian fandom beginning in 1963, and was a driving force in the scene through the 1980s. He was crucial in organizing the 1975 Worldcon in Melbourne, and served as toastmaster there. He was a charter member of the Nova Mob, a ...Read More
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The 2020 Chesley Awards nominees have been announced:
Best Cover Illustration: Hardcover
Malorie, Josh Malerman (Del Rey 978-0-59315-685-8, $28.00, 320pp, hc) July 2020.
Malorie is a sequel to Josh Malerman’s first book, Bird Box (2014), so I need to warn you there are spoilers below. If you haven’t read Bird Box or seen the Netflix version of it (which differs from the book), you are hereby notified. That said, I can’t imagine many people have escaped at least a meme or ...Read More
Read moreThe Science Fiction Fan Groups’ Association of Nippon (SFFAN) has announced the winners for the 2020 Seiun Awards (the Japanese equivalent of the Hugo Awards), honoring the best original and translated works published last year in Japan.
Best Translated Novel
Seven of Infinities, Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press 978-1-59606-976-3, $40.00, 176pp, hc) October 2020. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri.
Aliette de Bodard is an author whose works I both like (in several cases, the word adore may be more appropriate) and admire. Seven of Infinities is her latest novella, out from Subterranean Press. Set in the same acclaimed Xuya universe as the award-winning The Tea Master and the Detective, ...Read More
Read moreEbook pirate site KISS Library received a temporary restraining order from Judge Marsha J. Pechman in Washington district court. The order was requested by Penguin Random House, Amazon Publishing, and members of the Authors Guild. The Ukraine-based company’s assets have been frozen insofar as possible, and their websites are already down. The plaintiffs allege the identities of those running the company have been deliberately hidden, and the judge ruled to ...Read More
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The Worst of All Possible Worlds, Alex White (Orbit 978-0-316-41214-8, $16.99, 544pp, tp) July 2020.
Alex White’s The Worst of All Possible Worlds is the ”what happens next” for their Salvagers trilogy. The final volume in this high-stakes, high-octane space-opera-with-magic series, it sees the crew of the Capricious in a final showdown with the so-called gods of the Harrow for the fate of the universe, and it reminds me ...Read More
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Dispersion, Greg Egan (Subterranean Press 978-1-59606-989-3, $40.00, 158pp, hc) August 2020. Cover by David Ho.
In Dispersion, Greg Egan returns to a familiar but hardly comfortable mode: a variation on the guess-my-world’s-rules story in which the rules in question generate a world that is so fundamentally unlike ours that no amount of homely detail can entirely balance its alienness. The homely part includes the ordinary aspects of the ...Read More
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Winners and runners-up for the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award have been announced:
Winners
Runners-up
ALAN DEAN FOSTER began composing classical music in April, and has completed several short pieces, a symphony, and a symphonic suite. His Nightwish suite is online at <www.facebook.com/alandeanfoster>.
COLSON WHITEHEAD won the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. At 50, he is the youngest author to receive that lifetime achievement award ever. Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys (Doubleday) won the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, presented July ...Read More
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The Book of Dragons, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-287716-1, $35.00, 576pp, hc) July 2020. Cover by Rovina Cai.
I have to confess that I never quite shared the childhood love of dragons that Jonathan Strahan describes in his introduction to The Book of Dragons. It always seemed to me that dragons were too cool to be really scary, and yet too scary to be adorable, no matter ...Read More
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Winners for the This Is Horror Awards 2019 have been announced:
Novel of the Year
Novella of the Year
