Artist Tim White, 68, died April 6, 2020 after a long period of poor health. White was a prolific SF cover artist from the ‘70s through the ‘90s.
Timothy Thomas Anthony white was born April 4, 1952 in Erith, Kent, England. He studied art at the Medway college of Design, and subsequently worked in advertising for two years. He began doing cover paintings for New English Library and Science Fiction ...Read More
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Ten for 2023 by Tim Pratt
I wasn’t on any award juries in 2023, so I’m even less of a completist than usual when it comes to SF and fantasy in 2023. (When reading purely for my own enjoyment I tend to mix a lot of crime, comics, romances, and old stuff I missed the first time around with my shiny new speculative fiction.) Looking over the list of new ...Read More
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Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues, H.S. Valley (Hardie Grant 978-1-76058-75-3, $12.99. 320pp, tp) February 2023.
I first heard about New Zealand writer H.S. Valley’s debut 2021 novel Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues a little over year ago, and was instantly disappointed that I couldn’t acquire it through a US publisher. When I got a notification that review copies were available in the States, ...Read More
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White Cat, Black Dog, Kelly Link (Random House 978-0-59344-995-0, $27.00, 272pp, hc) March 2023.
There are a lot of things you can do with fairy tales, but leaving them alone doesn’t seem to be one of them. Even the Brothers Grimm themselves messed around with the stories they collected, and various redactions, reinterpretations, satires, and improvisations have been with us pretty much as long as the tales themselves. Kelly ...Read More
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Colson Whitehead received a National Humanities Medal, presented by President Biden on March 21, 2023. Whitehead was among 12 honorees for the National Humanities Medals, as well as honorees for National Medals of Arts. “With genre-defying craftsmanship and creativity, Colson Whitehead’s celebrated novels make real the African American journey through our Nation’s continued reckoning with the original sin of slavery and our ongoing march toward a more perfect Union.”
The ...Read More
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August Kitko and the Mechas from Space, Alex White (Orbit 978-0-7564-1483-2, $17.99, 464 pp, tp) July 2022.
August Kitko and the Mechas from Space is the first book in Alex White’s Starmetal Symphony series. It does pretty much what it says on the tin: jazz musician August Kitko finds himself thrown into a battle against mechas from space. The fate of humankind hangs in the balance. It’s excellent fodder ...Read More
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No Enemy but Time: Revised Fortieth Anniversary Edition, Michael Bishop (Fairwood Press 978-1933846194, trade paperback, 326pp, $19.99) August 2022.
Somehow, forty years have slipped by since I first read Michael Bishop’s Nebula-Award-winning novel, scarfing it up eagerly (in its quite appropriately named Timescape edition) as part of my quest to read everything by this intriguing author whom I had first encountered in the pages of Galaxy magazine in 1970. ...Read More
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Suzanne Palmer was born in 1968, just outside Boston MA. She studied at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in studio art focused on sculpture. She began writing fiction seriously in 2001, and attended the Viable Paradise workshop in 2005.
She began publishing SF with “The Ins and Outs of Intergalactic Diplomacy” (2005). “The Secret Life of Bots” (2017) is a Hugo Award winner, ...Read More
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Greetings from the past.
I write these words six weeks before you will read them. I used to do this all the time, back in the glory days of print. Hell, I spent most of the ’90s writing a monthly guide to interesting websites, which came out two months after I submitted it.
I’ve been writing six columns per year for Locus for fourteen years and I have not missed ...Read More
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Timothy Aaron Pratt was born December 12, 1976. He traveled with his mother as a child, living in Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, and West Virginia before settling back in Goldsboro. Pratt went to Appalachian State University in Boone NC, graduating with a BA in English in 1999, and attended the Clarion Writers Workshop that summer. He worked as an advertising copywriter briefly before moving to Santa Cruz CA in 2000. In ...Read More
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Time has selected their 100 must-read books of 2021, selecting titles that “shifted our perspectives, uncovered essential truths and encouraged us forward.” Works of genre interest include:
The editors of The New York Times Book Review selected their ten best books of the year, including The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (HarperCollins) and How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue (Random House).
They also listed 100 Notable Books of 2020, including the following titles of genre interest:
White Smoke, Tiffany D. Jackson (Katherine Tegen Books 978-0063029095, $18.99, 384pp, hc) September 2021.
After her public collapse and a stint in rehab, Marigold, a Black high school track star, is finally getting a second chance. When her artist mom gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a residency that comes with a free house, Mari, her mother, brother, step-father, and step-sister move from coastal California to a rundown Midwestern town. ...Read More
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The Financial Times has announced the five best SF books of 2021, as selected by James Lovegrove:
For more, see the Financial Times website.
While you are here, please take a moment to support
The White Library, Paul Voermans (PS Publishing 978-1-786365-92-4, £25.00, 246pp, hc) November 2020.
Because it happens so rarely, I always get a buzz when my hometown of Melbourne is depicted in genre fiction. It’s even exciting when it’s an alternate version of the city with a different name and a divergent history, provided I can recognise the famous landmarks, the streets, and alleyways. This is the case in Paul ...Read More
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White Fox, Sara Faring (Imprint 9781250304520, $18.99, 432pp, hc) September 2020.
Sara Faring’s last novel, The Tenth Girl, blended the gothic setting of an isolated and haunted castle-like school with a stunning science fiction twist that elevated the plot to a whole new level. Her latest, White Fox, could not be more different in setting and characters, and yet it also provides an excellent twisty narrative and ...Read More
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Alan White is the winner of the 2020 Rotsler Award for “long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the science fiction community.” The award is normally announced during LOSCON. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, LOSCON 47 has been delayed until November 26-28, 2021.
The award is sponsored by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests (SCIFI), and includes an honorarium of $300. The Rotsler judges this year were ...Read More
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In this installment, Locus will be taking a look at two indie films that found their way into our inbox: full-length LX 2048 and short film The Speed of Time, both available on streaming services, and both offering up a slightly different selection than what we’re used to seeing in theatrical releases.
Josh: Let’s cover LX 2048 first. I think when I initially emailed you about it, I said ...Read More
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A fresh batch of young mutants has arrived, but don’t call them X-Men just yet, and don’t call them superheroes, either. After surviving a freak storm that kills every person on her reservation, including both of her parents, Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt) finds herself in a nearly abandoned hospital occupied by four other teenagers — Rahne (Maisie Williams), Illyana (Anya Taylor-Joy), Roberto (Henry Zaga), and Sam (Charlie Heaton) — and ...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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The James White short story competition will not be held in 2020, due to “technical issues with the current website, and problems caused by a certain global crises.”
The competition, founded in 2000, is open to non-professional writers. Winners receive £200 and publication in Interzone. Award administrator Martin McGrath said,
We have been put off this decision for months, hoping (perhaps increasingly foolishly) that we could come up with a ...Read More
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Colson Whitehead has been awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, which honors “an American literary writer whose body of work is distinguished not only for its mastery of the art but also for its originality of thought and imagination.” Whitehead, 50, is the youngest recipient of this lifetime achievement award, and was selected “based on nominations from more than 60 distinguished literary figures, including former winners of ...Read More
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Colson Whitehead has won the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for his book The Nickel Boys (Doubleday). Given by The Orwell Foundation, the prize recognizes “outstanding novels and collections of short stories first published in the UK that illuminate major social and political themes, present or past, through the art of narrative.”
The judges for 2020 were Tom Gatti, Jude Kelly (chair), Sarah Shaffi, and Matthew Sperling. Winners receive ...Read More
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On a September morning in 2001, I watched from my fire escape in Brooklyn as the second World Trade Center tower fell. In the hours and days and weeks that followed, as the ash and debris rained down from the sky, as the stench of death permeated my neighborhood, as the countless hand-written missing person fliers went up, as soldiers with machine guns began to appear in train stations, I ...Read More
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Nina Allan was born May 27, 1966 in Whitechapel, London, and grew up in the Midlands and West Sussex. She attended the University of Reading and the University of Exeter, and earned her master’s in literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. She has worked in record stores and as a bookseller.
Allan began publishing SF with “Coming Around Again” in 2002. Notable stories include British Science Fiction Association Award finalists ...Read More
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The Forbidden Stars, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot 978-0-85766-769-4, $8.99, 400pp, pb) October 2019. Cover by Paul Scott Canavan.
Tim Pratt’s Axiom novels (The Wrong Stars, The Dreaming Stars, and now The Forbidden Stars) have delighted me since almost the first chapter of the first book, back in 2017. They’re a very modern iteration of action-heavy pulp, with appealing characters and worldbuilding that hints at more ...Read More
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Wanderers, Chuck Wendig (Del Rey 978-0399182105, $28.99, 800pp, hc) July 2019.
My prior knowledge of Chuck Wendig came mostly from his blog and his amusingly profane social media presence – Wanderers is the first novel of his I’ve read. It won’t be the last.
The premise is pure narrative candy: people in rural Pennsylvania begin to sleepwalk, heading west. At first there’s just one walker, but she’s soon joined ...Read More
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The James White Award Short Story competition has announced this year’s winner:
A special commendation was also given to Donoghue.
Maskill receives £200 and publication in Interzone. His story will also be translated into Italian and published ...Read More
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The James White Award Short Story competition has announced this year’s shortlist, drawn from 355 submissions:
The James White Award is open to previously unpublished stories between 1,000 and 6,000 words in length by non-professional authors. The winner ...Read More
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Intimations of Death, Felix Timmermans (Valancourt Books 978-1948405409, $15.99, 152pp, trade paperback) July 2019
The past is a seemingly inexhaustible trove of forgotten wonders. At least so the current literary rediscovery and reprint bonanza would tell us. (With concurrence from the music world, where lost tapes of fabulous concerts resurface regularly.) Formerly rare and unobtainable and legendary volumes such as The Ship That Sailed to Mars and The Temple ...Read More
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Tim Pratt has a new book coming out in October: The Forbidden Stars (Angry Robot), the dazzling space opera sequel to Philip K. Dick Award finalist The Wrong Stars and The Dreaming Stars! Here’s a first look at the cover, with art by Paul Scott Canavan.
From the publisher: The ancient alien gods are waking up, and there’s only one spaceship crew ready to stop them.
Aliens known as ...Read More
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Snow White Learns Witchcraft, Theodora Goss (Mythic Delirium) February 2019.
Theodora Goss‘s Snow White Learns Witchcraft is a selection of stories and poems recasting traditional fairy tales. This has been a consistent source of inspiration for Goss – I recall reviewing her first published story, “The Rose in Twelve Petals”, in one of my first columns in these pages. That story (a Sleeping Beauty take) is in this ...Read More
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