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» Washington Post, Michael Dirda: Can’t get enough Game of Thrones or Star Wars? New ...Read More
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New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, edited by Nisi Shawl (Rebellion) won the Brave New Words Award, announced by Starburst magazine during Octocon 2020, the National Irish Science Fiction Convention, held online October 9-11, 2020. Other finalists were:
Winners for the 2020 Geffen Awards for best science fiction and fantasy published in Hebrew were announced by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy during Icon 2020, held online October 6-8, 2020.
Best Translated Fantasy Book
I spent all summer building a pond in the backyard with my spouse. It was the perfect project to take my mind away from the world outside of the fence, a world I increasingly only experience virtually.
I could try and avoid the news, but the news is the world around me. The news is neighbors who have big parties. The news is the asshole at the grocery store who ...Read More
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Deeplight, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children’s Books 978-1-509-83695-6, £12.99, 448pp, hc) October 2019. (Abrams 978-1-419-74320-7, $19.99, 432pp, hc) April 2020.
Author Frances Hardinge’s latest fantasy, Deeplight, takes elements of Charles Dickens and Jules Verne and blends them into a world where the old and mysterious gods are now just carcasses in the depths of the sea, and a young teen must rely on his wits to survive. The adventures ...Read More
Read moreResults of the 2020 Fantastiknovelltävlingen, a Swedish “Fantastic Short Story Competiton” organized by writers’ email list SKRIVA, have been announced. First, second, and third place all resulted in ties.
First Place
Second Place
Third Place
Edited to add: The official joint statement issued by Demos Parneros and Barnes & Noble Inc. reads as follows: Former CEO Demos Parneros and Barnes & Noble have amicably settled all claims regarding his termination in 2018. This matter has been resolved with no judicial determination of wrongdoing. The terms of the settlement are confidential. Dated: October 14, 2020.
Former Barnes & Noble CEO Demos Parneros has failed in his ...Read More
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Five percent of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s employees (166 people) agreed to take part in a voluntary early retirement incentive program. The offer was open to all US employees age 55 or up with at least five years at the company (about 18% of employees qualified). Most left effective September 4, 2020. The cost of the incentives is around $13.5 million, and should save HMH 17 or 18 million dollars per ...Read More
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The World Fantasy Convention 2020 committee issued an apology via Twitter on October 7 after coming under fire online for their programming choices and descriptions, and added to the thread in subsequent days:
Regarding the program that went out this week: We are sorry that our program caused hurt and concern, thank you to those that commented. We are working with our team and panelists to amend this and will ...Read More
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Born in London, England, Ho Che Anderson was named after the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutionaries Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. Anderson began his career as the author of numerous graphic novels, including King, a biography of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.; the horror thriller Sand & Fury; and the science fiction action-adventure Godhead. Anderson wrote and directed his first feature in 2018, the supernatural ...Read More
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Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Blumhouse Books/Anchor Books 978-0-525565-75-8, $16.95, 480pp, tp) June 2020.
Ellen Datlow anthologized cinema-related horror in 2014 tapping reprints in The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen. This time she compiles original stories written for Final Cuts. Up-to-date stories allow for the use of new media, and a few of the authors do ...Read More
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Winners for the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards for Speculative Fiction have been announced:
Open Category
American Poet Louise Glück has won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” Glück was named US Poet Laureate in 2003 and often draws inspiration from classical mythological figures. The 2020 prize amount is 10 million Swedish kronor, equal to about 1.1 million USD. Glück will give her Nobel lecture in the United States due to coronavirus travel ...Read More
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The administrators of the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF) have decided that “it’s not feasible or sensible to run a 2021 race” due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The general expectation of expert epidemiologists is that the pandemic will continue to rage well into 2021. For example, the British government has announced that they expect severe restrictions, including the bans on public events, to be in place for another half year. We ...Read More
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Results for the British Fantasy Society’s (BFS) short story competition have been announced:
First prize is £100 and a year’s membership in the BFS. Second prize is £50 and a year’s membership. Third prize is £20. All three stories will be published in BFS Horizons. Judges this year were Charlotte Bond, Lucy
Tor.com 6/24, 7/1, 7/8, 7/15, 7/22/20 Strange Horizons 6/29/20 Abyss & Apex 2nd Quarter ’20 Deep Magic Spring ’20
As usual, Tor.com‘s stories range far and wide, across and over and through genres as it suits them and their team of editors. “The Night Soil Salvagers” by Gregory Norman Bossert describes the creatures who help maintain a city by hauling away its waste; we get a taste of ...Read More
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Originally pitched as “a Russian Alien,” this low-budget SF horror film opens on a promising scene: it’s 1983, and two cosmonauts orbit the Earth in a Soyuz capsule. Their spacesuits are exactingly replicated from the real deal, and the Soyuz interior is also Cold War authentic, down to the fonts on the control panel. A wooden doll floats gently around the two men, serving as a zero gravity indicator. ...Read More
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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) will discontinue science fiction and fantasy imprint John Joseph Adams Books, launched in February 2016. Editor John Joseph Adams says,
We’ve still got several books forthcoming, and those will still be published, but nothing new beyond those, alas. Cheers to all of the authors who went on this ride with me, and to all who bought & read.
The imprint published work by Bryan Camp, Hugh ...Read More
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Tor/Tom Doherty Associates announced that executive editor Beth Meacham will be retiring at the end of 2020. Meacham joined Tor in 1984 as editor-in-chief. Tor president and publisher Fritz Foy said,
We’re delighted that Beth will continue to edit a small number of projects for us on a consulting basis. But most of her list will be moving to other editors as she prepares for her retirement.
While you ...Read More
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The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, M. John Harrison (Gollancz 978-0575096356, £20.00, 272pp, hc) June 2020.
Despite the watery spectacle implied by the title, there are no lost continents dramatically erupting from the waves in M. John Harrison’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, but there is a lot of water. The title comes instead from a rather obscure lecture called “Thoughts in a Gravel Pit” ...Read More
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“The Grotesques” by Sarah Hall won the 2020 BBC National Short Story Award. The award comes with a £15,000 prize and was announced live on BBC Radio 4 Front Row on October 6, 2020. This year marks the fourth time Hall was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, and she is now the first writer to ever win the award twice, having previously won in 2013.
Judges for ...Read More
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N.K. Jemisin is one of 21 MacArthur Foundation Fellows selected for 2020. Each “genius grant” recipient receives a no-strings-attached “stipend of $625,000… paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years.”
Jemisin is broadening the spectrum of participants in speculative fiction’s creation and surrounding fandom through her published works as well as her world-building workshops, frequent interviews, and active presence on social media. While engaging readers with grippingly paced narratives, ...Read More
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The Loop, Ben Oliver (Chicken House 978-1-338-58930-6, $18.99, 369pp, hc) April 2020.
In Ben Oliver’s The Loop, Luka has been in the prison known as The Loop for 736 days. Every day he wakes up in his solitary cell; works out; eats forgettable food; talks to the computer that runs the prison; spends one hour outside where he cannot see anyone but at least can speak to his ...Read More
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Finalists for the National Book Awards (NBA) in the Fiction, Young People’s Literature, and Translated Literature categories have been announced, including titles of genre interest.
The Fiction category includes Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (Ecco), A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet (Norton), and Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (Pantheon).
The Young People’s Literature category includes King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender (Scholastic) and The Way Back by ...Read More
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The 2020 Illinois Science Fiction in Chicago (ISFiC) short fiction contest for unpublished writers of science fiction and fantasy is open to submissions through November 13, 2020. First prize includes $300, publication in the Windycon 47 program book and on the ISFiC website, and membership and accommodations for Windycon 47. Up to two honorable mentions will each receive an “American 1 oz. Silver Coin.”
The contest is open to applicants ...Read More
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The European Science Fiction Society (ESFS) Hall of Fame Awards, Achievement Awards, and Chrysalis Award winners were announced during Futuricon, the 2020 Eurocon, held online October 2-4, 2020.
European Grand Master
Hall of Fame Awards:
Best Author
Three Kings, George R.R. Martin & Melinda M. Snodgrass, eds. (HarperVoyager UK 978-0-00-83614-8, £20.00, 560pp, hc) May 2020.
Three Kings is a mosaic novel by five authors: Melinda M. Snodgrass, Peadar Ó Guilín, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Caroline Spector & Peter Newman, published, for now, only in the UK (a US edition from Tor won’t be out for at least a year). It is the 29th volume in the Wild ...Read More
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Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower (Grand Central), first published in 1993, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list at #14 on the paperback fiction list for the week ending August 29, 2020 (printed September 13, 2020). It was her first appearance on the list. Butler, who died in 2006, was a MacArthur Fellow and winner of numerous literary and genre awards.
While you are here, please take ...Read More
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