San Diego bookshop Mysterious Galaxy is in danger of closing after 27 years. The staff recently received word that they are losing the lease for their shop on Balboa Avenue, and have 60 days to move.
It is with heavy hearts that we share that unless a new buyer and new location are found immediately, Mysterious Galaxy will be forced to close its doors.
For nearly 27 years, Mysterious Galaxy ...Read More
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Your newly released novel Fate of the Fallen is the start of a new series. Tell us about the book, the world, and your plans for the series.
Fate of the Fallen is a story about the internal conflicts that humans, as a species, experience. It begins with the basic balance between civilization and nature then turns inward toward the struggles of the heart. It confronts the value of survival ...Read More
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FKA USA, Reed King (Flatiron Books 978-1-25010-889-0, $27.99, 480pp, hc) June 2019.
Whether Reed King’s FKA USA works for you is going to depend on who you are as a reader. To some extent, this is true of any book in the world, but it’s particularly true for this book, a sprawling, self-conscious novel of the American apocalypse inspired by equal parts David Foster Wallace and The Wizard of ...Read More
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The Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College is open to submissions for its 2020 Literary Arts Awards now until December 31, 2019. Results will be announced in spring 2020, with $5,000 awarded to each winner in playwriting, established author, and debut author categories. The playwriting prompt is, “What does it mean to be a human in a computerized world?”
For more information, see the Neukom Institute website.
While ...Read More
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Andy Duncan has stepped down as SFWA Member at Large because the position “deserves to be held by someone who can devote much more time and energy to the job than I can.” He will continue “serving the organization in other capacities” and remains “committed to the mission of SFWA.” He is replaced by James Beamon, one of the runners-up in the election.
While you are here, please take a ...Read More
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The Future of Another Timeline, Annalee Newitz (Tor 978-0-7653-9210-7, $26.99, 352pp, hc) September 2019.
Stories about time wars, or temporal wars, or change wars (in Fritz Leiber’s classic formulation), along with related tales about time police, time guards, time patrols, time referees, or even just time nudniks, have gotten so ubiquitous that even Sarah Connor must be getting bored. Collectively, they constitute a kind of sub-subgenre somewhere in the ...Read More
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This review doesn’t need to lead with much of a recap, because you’ve seen it all before: evil AI sends a killer robot back in time to assassinate the future savior of humankind. Plucky human resistance sends a protector back in time to stop the killer robot (from the future!). Carnage. Mayhem. Explosions.
The difference this time is that the evil AI is called “Legion” instead of “Skynet,” the target ...Read More
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Amazon.com published its yearly array of lists to promote the best books of 2019, with editors’ selections in various categories.
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese) was the Amazon editors’ “#1 pick for best book of 2019.” Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing) was the editors’ pick for best science fiction and fantasy book of the year.
For complete lists in each category, see Amazon’s site. ...Read More
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Barnes & Noble announced the eight finalists for its inaugural Book of the Year award. Titles of genre interest include The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese) and Mythos by Stephen Fry (Chronicle). Finalists were selected by committee from a list of titles nominated by Barnes & Noble booksellers. B&N CEO James Daunt said:
The Barnes & Noble Book of the Year is unlike any other U.S. literary prize, ...Read More
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Five Midnights, Ann Dávila Cardinal (Tor Teen 978-1-250-29607-8, $17.99, 288pp, hc) June 2019.
Welcome to the seedy side of Puerto Rico, where at an early age teens are roped into gangs and drug dealing, the economy is under perpetual attack by greedy US business interests, and a terrifying murderer is on the prowl. It looks like a couple of young men walking on the wrong side of the law ...Read More
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Following various allegations of late payments, non-payment, harassment of authors and staff, and other improprieties (as documented extensively at File 770), Sandra Kasturi & Brett Savory have stepped down from all publishing-related duties at ChiZine Publications, effective immediately. Christine Harkin is now interim publisher, and can be reached by email for author-related requests. Kasturi and Savory said:
It is important to us that we clear all outstanding arrears as soon ...Read More
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Kirkus has announced its selections for Best Fiction of 2019, including titles and authors of genre interest in several categories:
Best Science Fiction and Fantasy
George R.R. Martin received the 2019 Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination Award “for creating engrossing worlds of science fiction and fantasy” at the Unleash Imagination 2019 awards ceremony and dinner, held October 17, 2019 at Harman Hall in Washington DC. Scott Shannon of Random House presented the award, which is sponsored by the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation.
For more information, see the Clarke Foundation website.
While you are here, please take ...Read More
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Blood Orbit by K.R. Richardson (Pyr) has won the 2019 Endeavour Award, announced during Orycon 41 on November 8, 2019 at the Red Lion Hotel in Portland OR. Other finalists were:
The award is given “for a distinguished science ...Read More
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Robert Rick McCammon was born July 17, 1952 in Birmingham AL, where he has lived all his life. He received a BA in journalism from the University of Alabama in 1974, and worked on the copy desk at a local paper before becoming a full-time writer.
McCammon began his career as a horror writer, and wrote numerous acclaimed and bestselling novels as Robert R. McCammon. His debut Baal appeared in ...Read More
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Apex 5/19 Clarkesworld 7/19 Lackington’s Spring ’19
Issue #120 marks the passing of Apex Magazine. After a major health concern, editor Jason Sizemore has put the magazine on indefinite hiatus, but the final issue goes out in style with guest editor Maurice Broaddus elaborating on the theme of Afrofuturism with a mixture of original and reprint stories and essays. The three original stories cast a very wide net, starting with ...Read More
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Poisoned Pen Press (the mystery imprint at Sourcebooks) will launch a new line, the Haunted Library of Horror Classics, edited by Eric J. Guignard and Leslie S. Klinger and conceived by Lisa Morton. The first title will be a new trade paperback edition of The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (1911), out in January 2020. Each book will include a new introduction by horror authors including Ramsey Campbell, ...Read More
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The Grand Dark, Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-267249-0 $26.99, 419 pp, hc) June 2019.
Richard Kadrey’s new novel is a departure from his usual contemporary-setting dark fantasies, or maybe not. Set in a SF version of a middle-European city (Lower Proszawa) after one war has finished, where everyone knows that a new one is on the way, it has the feeling of an alternate world that is very close ...Read More
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Time’s Demon, D.B. Jackson (Angry Robot 978-0-85766-793-9, $14.99, 490pp, pb) May 2019. Cover by Jan Wessbecher.
D.B. Jackson’s Time’s Demon is the second book in a series, the Islevale Cycle, that began with Time’s Children. I had been under the impression that it was the second book in a duology, but events proved this assumption wrong. It does its readers the courtesy of recapping the events of the ...Read More
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Rick Riordan appeared at Bookworks in Albuquerque NM on September 27, 2019 as part of the eight-city tour for his new book The Tyrant’s Tomb (Disney-Hyperion). He was joined by New Mexico authors J.C. Cervantes and Rebecca Roanhorse, who both have titles published or forthcoming from Disney’s Rick Riordan Presents imprint.
This story and more like it in the November 2019 issue of Locus.
While you are here, please take ...Read More
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The Fox and Dr. Shimamura, Christine Wunnicke (New Directions 978-0-81122-624-0, $15.95, 160pp, tp) April 2019.
The Fox and Dr. Shimamura is a puzzling, unsettling book. It has the feel of a story told half-asleep, with clear details and vague overall effect. What begins in promising magical realism veers into surrealist historical fiction, leans toward medical interests, and is likely to leave most readers behind with that turn. Christine Wunnicke ...Read More
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Ed Kramer, co-founder of Dragon Con and convicted child molester, is in legal trouble again, this time in a complicated computer hacking case that involves various figures in the Georgia legal system. Superior Court judge Kathryn Schrader has been indicted, along with Kramer, a private investigator named TJ Ward, and a former sheriff’s deputy named Frank Karic. Schrader alleges that Gwinnett County district attorney Danny Porter hacked her computer (which ...Read More
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Frozen Hell, John W. Campbell, Jr. (978-14794-4283-6, $29.99, 159pp) June 2019. Cover by Bob Eggleton.
When F. Orlin Tremaine, editor of Astounding Stories, was promoted to supervision of Street & Smith’s magazine division in 1937, his hand-picked successor was one of his star authors, a young man named John W. Campbell, Jr. Despite being a popular author, Campbell was struggling with the unreliable income of a freelance writer; he ...Read More
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The Weight of the Stars, K. Ancrum (Imprint 978-1-250-10163-1, $18.99, 375pp, hc) March 2019.
It is impossible for me to review K. Ancrum’s The Weight of the Stars without first mentioning Seanan McGuire’s stunner of a blurb. She wrote: “This book is starlight on broken concrete, it’s flowers on a broken rooftop, and it’s a masterpiece.” If you are a fan of McGuire (and good God, why wouldn’t you ...Read More
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The Down Under Fan Fund (DUFF) to send fans from Australasia to Worldcon will not have a race in 2019:
2019 is an awkward year for a Down Under Fan Fund race from the US to Australasia given that 2020 is slated to be Worldcon in New Zealand, and a 2020 race from Australasia to North America is not likely to have the time and energy given that Worldcon. As ...Read More
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Miracles & Marvels: Stories, Tim Pratt (The Merry Blacksmith Press, 978-1-69571-634-6, $14.95, 289pp, pb) November 2019.
Patreon fiction is the dark matter of our field: it’s hard to tell how much there is, and how substantial it is. Many writers have established Patreons, and many of them offer regular original stories to their supporters; and since that counts as first publication, many or most of those stories never make ...Read More
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The Luminous Dead, Caitlin Starling (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-284690-7, $16.99, 415pp, tp) April 2019.
One of my favorite movies is Neil Marshall’s The Descent (2006), about a group of women who enter an unexplored cave system and discover unspeakable subterranean horrors – so when I say Caitlin Starling’s The Luminous Dead is like a science fiction version of The Descent, but even more claustrophobic and harrowing, recognize it as ...Read More
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Winners of the 2019 Prix Utopiales Awards were announced at the Nantes International Science Fiction Festival, held October 31 – November 4, 2019 at the Nantes Convention Center in Nantes, France.
Prix Utopiales
Subterranean Press has announced that Navah Wolfe will acquire and edit novellas for release in 2021 and beyond. Wolfe says, “I’ve admired the work Subterranean Press has been doing for years, so it’s an honor to get to work with them to publish original fiction. I’m really looking forward to publishing great novellas in Subterranean’s famously gorgeous editions.” She will be open to agented submissions and will also be soliciting ...Read More
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[All opinions expressed by commentators, guest bloggers, reviewers, and interviewees are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Locus magazine or its staff.]
At the Hugo Awards ceremony at this summer’s Dublin Worldcon, Jeannette Ng was presented with the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Ng gave an outstanding and brave acceptance speech in which she called Campbell – the award’s namesake and one of ...Read More
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Internment, Samira Ahmed (Little, Brown 978-0-31652-269-4, $17.99, 400pp, hc) March 2019.
Internment is a breathless novel of our political moment. In that vein, it succeeds completely: it spools out the logical conclusion to the fearmongering and intolerance that currently gathers at rallies and shouts on Twitter, and it posits, with no small amount of real-life proof, that only the people who are teenagers right now have the capacity to ...Read More
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The World Fantasy Awards winners for works published in 2018 have been announced. The awards were presented November 3, 2019 during World Fantasy 2019 (WFC) at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport Hotel in Los Angeles CA.
The Lifetime Achievement Awards, presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field, went to Hayao Miyazaki and Jack Zipes.
The World Fantasy Awards winners are:
Best Novel
