Black Mouth, Ronald Malfi (Titan 978-1-78909-865-5, $15.95, 448pp, tp) July 2022.
Ronald Malfi is one of the most consistent purveyors of great horror fiction, and Black Mouth is a superb addition to his outstanding oeuvre. A creepy novel about a man getting kids to kill other kids, Black Mouth is a gritty narrative about battling alcoholism and inner demons, leaving the past behind, and the power of friendship. It’s ...Read More
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Hooked, A.C. Wise. (Titan 978-1-78909-683-5, $15.95 336pp, tp) July 2022.
With Hooked, A.C. Wise returns to the exploration of a very dark version of J. M. Barrie’s Neverland that she began in her debut novel, Wendy, Darling (Titan, 2021). Eight years have passed since a grown-up Wendy rescued her daughter Jane from Peter Pan and brought real death to Neverland. It is 1939 and Jane is in London ...Read More
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Analog Science Fiction and Fact
Bliss Montage, Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-0-37429-351-2, $26.00, 240pp, hc) September 2022.
Ling Ma’s debut novel, Severance, was one of my top-five books of 2018. Seven months before the pandemic, Ma told the story of a fungal infection originating in China that spreads rapidly across the world and compels the infected to repeat the same mindless tasks before they drop dead from exhaustion and malnutrition. Not only ...Read More
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King of War by Peter Gibbons (self-published) is on the five-title shortlist for the 2022 Kindle Storyteller Award. The award, launched in 2017, includes a £20,000 prize and “is open to writers publishing in English in any genre, who publish their work through Kindle Direct Publishing” on Amazon.co.uk.
The winner will be announced in October after the shortlist is judged by a jury panel.
For more information, see the award ...Read More
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The 2022 shortlist for the Diverse Book Awards has been announced. The awards were created “to highlight the best of the diverse voices published in the UK & Ireland during 2021, both traditionally and self-published.” Titles and authors of genre interest follow.
Best Adult
Best Young Adult
An Earnest Blackness, Eugen Bacon (Anti-Oedipus Press 978-0-99-915358-1, $18.95, 124pp, hc) August 2022. Cover by D. Harlan Wilson.
In An Earnest Blackness, computer scientist, critic, and speculative fiction author Eugen Bacon offers 12 critical essays on “blackness, Afrofuturism, colonialism, historicity, and (mis)recognition,” among other topics. Bacon’s sweeping lived and academic experiences are evident not only in her knowledge of the genre, but in her intimate experiences with some ...Read More
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SF in SF returned to in-person readings on June 13, 2022 for the first time since cancelling their March 2020 event. The June event included readings by Sam J. Miller and Kimberly Unger and a Q&A with the audience. Cliff Winnig moderated. Books were available for purchase thanks to Bookshop West Portal; Tachyon Publications sponsored the event. Proceeds went to the American Bookbinders Museum. For more information on SF in ...Read More
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The Silverberg Business, Robert Freeman Wexler (Small Beer 978-1-61873-201-9, $17.00, 271pp, tp) August 2022.
Probably the first thing SFF readers need to know about Robert Freeman Wexler’s The Silverberg Business is that it has nothing to do with any legendary grand masters of the field. Instead, it’s one of the mostly deeply weird novels I’ve read in some time, at times hallucinatory and dreamlike, at other times gritty and ...Read More
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The BBC Younger Writers’ Award, run with the University of Cambridge, has announced their 5-title shortlist. The award “challenges young people in the UK aged between 14-18 years to submit stories of up to 1,000 words”. Titles of genre interest include:
The shortlist was announced live on BBC Radio 1, and the winner will be announced live on Radio 4 on October 4. ...Read More
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The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) has announced the 2022 winners of its annual research awards.
The SFRA Award for Lifetime Contributions to SF scholarship
The SFRA Innovative Research Award
Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service
Mary Kay Bray Award (tie)
SFRA Book Award
Ames, Alison: It Looks Like Us
(Page Street 978-1-64567-618-8, $18.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, September 27, 2022)
Young-adult horror novel. Teens interning at an Antarctic research base face something that looks human.
Anderson, Taylor: Artillerymen: Hell’s March
(Ace 978-0-593-20074-2, $28.00, 480pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, September 27, 2022)
Alternate-world military SF novel, second in the Artillerymen series set in the world of the Destroyermen series. American soldiers from 1847 ...Read More
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The Extractionist, Kimberly Unger (Tachyon 978-1-61696-376-7, $17.95, 290pp, tp) July 2022.
When Eliza McKay is contracted by a shadowy government agency, all of her instincts scream this job will be like no other, and, in Kimberly Unger’s latest novel, The Extractionist, we quickly learn McKay is spot on. McKay is the titular extractionist, a freelance super-hacker who specializes in rescuing people stuck in the “Swim,” a fully immersive ...Read More
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The winner for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction story has been announced by the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction.
MacDowell has awarded Fellowships to 129 artists, chosen from 2,948 applicants. Artists of genre interest include Eve Ewing, Yan Ge, Laird Hunt, Nneoma Ike-Njoku, M.L. Krishnan, Kiki Petrosino, Terese Svoboda, and C Pam Zhang.
Says Executive Director Philip Himberg:
This incoming artist cohort brings us a sense of optimism and exhilaration at a time when our world needs it. MacDowell panelists selected these remarkable innovators from the largest pool of ...Read More
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The Strand Magazine has announced the winners of the 2022 Strand Critics Award. Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby (Flatiron) won the award for Best Novel. Nelson DeMille and Sandra Brown both won Lifetime Achievement Awards.
The Strand Critics Awards recognize “excellence in the field of mystery fiction and publishing”, and are judged by critics and journalists from NPR, AP, Kirkus, CNN, and The Boston Globe.
For a full list ...Read More
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The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the results of the election for its open officers’ positions. John Edward Lawson was elected President, and Becky Spratford was re-elected Secretary. Linda Addison, James Chambers, and Ellen Datlow were all re-elected to the Board of Trustees.
The election team volunteers were Rhonda Jackson Joseph, Nicole Kurtz, and Lisa Marie Wood. The Ballot Master was Angel Leigh McCoy, and the election verifiers were
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has announced the winners of the 2022 Elgin Awards, presented for the best poetry chapbook and the best full-length poetry book in the speculative genre. The Elgin Awards are named after the founder of SFPA, Suzette Haden Elgin.
StokerCon 2023 has announced new Guests of Honor joining the previously announced guests. Owl Goingback, Jewelle Gomez, and Alma Katsu will all be joining Stokercon as Guests of Honor, June 15-18, 2023 at the Sheraton Pittsburgh Hotel at Station Square in Pittsburgh PA.
For more information, see the official website.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on ...Read More
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Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager 978-0-06302-142-6, $27.99, 560pp, hc) August 2022.
With Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution, the multi-award nominated R.F. Kuang travels to 1830s Oxford University to build a tale about a tower built on languages whose fate is all but guaranteed. Her story about ...Read More
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Elizabeth Bear, The Origin of Storms (Tor 6/22) This final volume of the Lotus Kingdoms trilogy (set in the same world as her earlier Eternal Sky series) showcases her rich worldbuilding and dazzling imagination, and brings the interwoven stories of her vividly realized characters to a satisfying conclusion.
Becky Chambers, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Tordotcom 7/22) Chambers began the Monk & Robot series with the thoroughly ...Read More
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Hard Places, Kirstyn McDermott (Trepidatio 978-1-68510-057-5, $22.95, 312pp, tp) July 2022.
The year was 1994 and I was attending the monthly meeting of the Melbourne Horror Society at the Māori Chief Hotel in South Melbourne. Issue #3 of Bloodsongs – Australia’s first professional horror fiction magazine – had just been released, and the members, which included the periodical’s two editors, were poring over copies and discussing the content. Sitting ...Read More
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Ring of Fire Press, the publishing company founded by the late Eric Flint, is closing. Flint’s widow Lucille Robbins posted:
Our Fellow Members of the Ring of Fire Press Family,
It has taken the staff and the family to both assess and absorb the sad passing of our friend and mentor, Eric Flint. In the wake of his passing, we have looked at the financial realities of the publisher 1632, ...Read More
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A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, Foz Meadows (Tor 978-1-25082-913-9 Tor. 544 pp, hc July 2022).
Content warning: rape, sexual assault.
A Strange and Stubborn Endurance has a lot going on: court politics, diplomatic disasters, arranged marriages, and a bit of magic sprinkled throughout. A lot going on isn’t always a bad thing, but in this case, it’s certainly a lot to mull over. Lord Velasin vin Aaro, a gay ...Read More
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Author Hilary Mantel, 70, died September 22, 2022. She was best known for historical novels, including the celebrated Wolf Hall trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, but she also wrote a few works of genre interest, including debut novel Every Day Is Mother’s Day (1985), Fludd (1989), and Beyond Black (2005).
Mantel was born July 6, 1952 in Glossop, Derbyshire, England. She attended the London School of Economics and ...Read More
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SF writer Matthew Mather, 52, died suddenly on September 13, 2022. He was best known for his technothrillers, including CyberStorm (2013).
Mather was born September 28, 1969 in Sheffield UK and raised in Montreal, Canada. As an adult, he split his time between Montreal and Charlotte NC. In addition to writing, he worked in cybersecurity and as a hardware and software developer and technology consultant.
His first novel was The ...Read More
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Amazon has announced changes to a controversial policy which allowed readers to return ebooks for an automatic refund within seven days of purchase, whether they’d read the book or not. Once the new policy is implemented, automatic refunds will be limited to books where under 10% of the book has been read.
A statement from the Authors Guild said,
The Authors Guild is proud to report that our discussions with ...Read More
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The Unbalancing, R.B. Lemberg (Tachyon 971-1-61696-380-4, $17.95, 246pp, tp) September 2022.
Back in 2015, R.B. Lemberg published in Strange Horizons a poem titled ‘‘Ranra’s Unbalancing’’, part of their ongoing Birdverse series of stories and poems that eventually gained wider recognition (and award nominations) with the novella The Four Profound Weaves a couple of years ago. Despite some intriguingly cryptic elements (it’s apparently addressed to someone inexplicably obsessed with quince), ...Read More
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Josh: I hyped up the previous Predator movie because it was so over-the-top and ridiculous, just straight out campy fun. Prey is a completely different pace, and I actually enjoyed it a lot more.
Arley: We were talking about how Nope is a departure in vibe from Jordan Peele’s previous movies, and I felt like this was a departure in vibe from the usual Predator movie. Especially the first third ...Read More
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The 12-title shortlist for the new PEN Presents award has been announced, including the following authors of genre interest:
The inaugural award “aims to fund literary translators’ work of creating samples, give publishers better access to titles from underrepresented languages and regions, and ...Read More
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With Jo Fletcher stepping down from Jo Fletcher Books, the imprint she founded 11 years ago, Anne Perry will be taking over as publishing director.
Quercus fiction publisher Cassie Browne says of the hire:
We are all completely over the moon to be welcoming Anne to Quercus Fiction as the new imprint head of Jo Fletcher Books.
Anne’s reputation as one of the very best in the SFF community is ...Read More
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