Author: locusmag

Awards News 

SLF Grant Recipients

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The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) announced several grant recipients.

María Isabel Álvarez won the 2019 Gulliver Travel Grant, which gives $1,000 annually to cover airfare, lodging, or other travel expenses. Honorable mentions were Michaux Dempster, Claire Holroyde, and Jenni Zellner.

Del Sandeen won the 2019 Diverse Writers and Diverse Worlds Grants. The Diverse Writers Grant is “intended to support new and emerging writers from underrepresented and underprivileged groups, such as ...Read More

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Commentary Features 

2019 by Tim Pratt

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Most years I read a fair bit of science fiction and fan­tasy, but the majority of my pleasure reading tends to be mystery and crime (I don’t write in those genres, so I can enjoy them without that otherwise inevitable layer of analysis). This year, though, I’m on an award jury cover­ing speculative fiction, and as a result, I’ve read more widely and deeply in my home field than I ...Read More

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Books Reviews Short Fiction 

Paula Guran Reviews Full Throttle: Stories by Joe Hill

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Full Throttle: Stories, Joe Hill (Morrow 978-0-06220-067-9, $27.99, 484pp, hc) October 2019.

Joe Hill’s first collection 20th Century Ghosts – which this reviewer read, reviewed, and then interviewed the author while having no idea he was the son of Stephen King – was full of fresh, genre-bending work. It was a thrill to discover an unknown author with such talent and promise. Of course, Hill went on from there ...Read More

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News Obituaries 

Paul Barnett (1949-2020)

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Scottish author and editor Paul Barnett, 70, who wrote SF mostly as John Grant, died February 3, 2020. In addition to his extensive writing career, he worked in publishing, serving as a commissioning editor at art book publisher Paper Tiger from 1997-2004; for his work there, he won a Chesley Award for best art director in 2002, and received a World Fantasy Award nomination the following year. He edited The ...Read More

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Awards News 

2019 Analog AnLab and Asimov’s Readers’ Awards Finalists

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Finalists for the 2019 Analog Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) and Asimov’s Readers’ Awards have been announced and are available to read online.

Analog Science Fiction and Fact Analytical Laboratory Award Finalists

Best Novella

  • “The Gorilla in a Tutu Principle or, Pecan Pie at Minnie and Earl’s“, Adam-Troy Castro (9-10/19)
  • “The Savannah Problem“, Adam-Troy Castro (1-2/19)
  • “You Must Remember This“, Jay O’Connell (11-12/19)

Best Novelette

  • “A Mate Not a Meal“, Sarina Dorie
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Features 

Photo Story: Celebrating 90 Years of Analog

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Editors, writers, scholars, and fans came together to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Analog Science Fiction and Fact and launch its milestone issue at the Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium in downtown Brooklyn NY on December 12, 2019. Organized by Jason Ellis, assistant professor of English at City Tech, and Emily Hockaday, managing editor of Analog, the event featured an editors’ roundtable, author readings, Analog-focused research paper presentations, ...Read More

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Books Reviews 

Gary K. Wolfe and Ian Mond Review The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes

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The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga 978-1-534-43986-3, $19.99, 176pp) November 2019.

Rivers Solomon’s The Deep has a pretty colorful and convoluted history, but one that suggests how SF and Afrofuturist conceits are increasingly interacting with the broader culture. The idea of a utopian under­water society built by the water-breathing de­scendants of pregnant slaves thrown overboard from slave ships was first conceived by ...Read More

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Awards News 

2019 BSFA Shortlist

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The shortlist for the 2019 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards has been announced.

Best Novel

  • The Green Man’s Foe, Juliet E. McKenna (Wizard’s Tower)
  • Atlas Alone, Emma Newman (Gollancz)
  • Fleet of Knives, Gareth L. Powell (Titan)
  • Children of Ruin, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)
  • The Rosewater Insurrection, Tade Thompson (Orbit)

Best Shorter Fiction

  • To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton)
  • This is
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Awards News 

Uncanny Magazine 2019 Favorite Fiction Reader Poll

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The top five results of the Uncanny Magazine 2019 Favorite Fiction Reader Poll have been announced.

  • “Away With the Wolves“, Sarah Gailey
  • (tie): “The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power“, Karen Osborne and “A Mindreader’s Guide to Surviving Your First Year at the All-Girls Superhero Academy“, Jenn Reese
  • “A Catalog of Storms“, Fran Wilde
  • “How the Trick Is Done“, A.C. Wise
  • “This Is Not My Adventure“, Karlo Yeager Rodríguez

    • Sarah Gailey ...Read More

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    Awards News 

    2020 Splatterpunk Awards Nominees

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    Nominees have been announced for the Splatterpunk Awards, “honoring superior achievement for works published in 2019 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.”

    Best Novel

    • Carnivorous Lunar Activities, Max Booth III (Cinestate/Fangoria)
    • Killer Lake, W.D. Gagliani & David Benton (Deadite)
    • Reception, Kenzie Jennings (Death’s Head)
    • Lakehouse Infernal, Christine Morgan (Deadite)
    • Merciless, Bryan Smith (Grindhouse)
    • Toxic Love, Kristopher Triana (Blood Bound)
    • They Kill,
    ...Read More Read more
    Awards News 

    2020 Dell Award Winner

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    “Imitation Game” by Rona Wang is the winner of the 2020 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. The award is “given annually to the best short-story written in the science fiction or fantasy genres by a full-time undergraduate college student,” and is accompanied by a $500 cash prize, publication in Asimov’s, and an invitation to ICFA (International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts), ...Read More

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    Awards News 

    2020 Compton Crook Award Finalists

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    The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) has announced the finalists for the 2020 Compton Crook Award:

    • Here and Now and Then, Mike Chen (Harlequin/Mira)
    • The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix Harrow (Redhook)
    • The Outside, Ada Hoffman (Angry Robot)
    • A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor)
    • A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley)

    The award honors the best first SF/fantasy/horror novel of the ...Read More

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    Commentary Features 

    2019 by Colleen Mondor

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    I read a lot of great young adult SF/F books in 2019 and was most struck by the diversity of subjects that came across my desk. There continues (thank­fully) to be no dominant theme in YA fantasy, a welcome departure from the past. With the excep­tion of a cluster of titles set in Paris (which is fine; what’s not to like about Paris?), it’s really impossible to point in any ...Read More

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    Features Interviews Slider 

    Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone: Letter Space

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    Amal El-Mohtar was born December 13, 1984 in Ottawa, Canada, and grew up there, apart from two years spent in Lebanon, where her family is from. She began publishing short fiction with “The Crow’s Caw” (2006) and has published scores of stories and poems, nota­bly Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award winner “Seasons of Glass and Iron” (2016, also a World Fantasy, Sturgeon Memorial, and Aurora Award final­ist), Nebula Award finalists ...Read More

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    Books Reviews 

    Adam Roberts Reviews The Quantum Garden by Derek Künsken

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    The Quantum Garden, Derek Künsken (Solaris 978-1781085714, $11.99, 300pp, tp) October 2019.

    I reviewed Künsken’s debut novel The Quan­tum Magician for Locus and was, I can be honest, unsurprised Solaris elected not to use my summary judgment as a cover-blurb, viz.: “It’s not Proust but it passes the time.” Now here’s the follow-up volume: The Quantum Garden, Quantum Evolution #2. It is more of the same. If you ...Read More

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    Books Reviews 

    Russell Letson and Gary K. Wolfe Review Agency by William Gibson

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    Agency, William Gibson (Berkley 978-1-101-98693-6, $28.99, 416pp, hc) January 2020.

    In Agency, William Gibson has produced a sequel to The Peripheral – or as much of a sequel as can be expected of a story space built, not on one alternate history or timeline, but on branching sets of them. Of course, the “multiple alternate histories” enabling device has been around SF for decades, going back as far ...Read More

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    Legal News 

    Barnes & Noble Legal News

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    Barnes & Noble has requested a jury trial in the age discrimination lawsuit filed by Barbara Tavres in the US Dis­trict Court in Northern California. Tavres was fired on September 6, 2019 after a career that be­gan in 2006, and claimed Barnes & Noble fired her because of her age, and also used policies, practices, and procedures which disproportion­ately affected employees age 40 and older. She seeks class action status. ...Read More

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    Commentary Features 

    Mr. Russell’s Neighborhood by Russell Letson

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    Let’s try a different metaphor for this annual make-sense-of-the-field exercise: a ramble through my science-fictional reading neighborhood, which is a virtual space instantiated from the manifold of all-the-books-published and distinct from the neighborhoods described elsewhere in these pages by my colleagues. As I have pointed out nearly every year of the 30 I’ve been writing these wrap-ups, my reading is not statistically or demographically or subculturally representative – it’s the ...Read More

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    Books Reviews 

    Ian Mond Reviews Jakarta by Rodrigo Márquez Tizano

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    Jakarta, Rodrigo Márquez Tizano (Coffee House Press 978-1566895637, $16.95, 160pp, tp) No­vember 2019.

    The fact that Rodrigo Márquez Tizano’s debut, Jakarta, (originally published in 2016 and trans­lated by the always brilliant Thomas Bunstead) does not take place in Indonesia is one of the least puzzling aspects of this hallucinogenic novel. The setting is the city of Atlantika, a crumbling dys­topia, struggling to recover from the Z-Bug, the latest ...Read More

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    News Publishing 

    PRH Belongs to Bertelsmann

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    German conglomerate Bertelsmann is now the sole owner of Penguin Random House after Pearson sold them its 25% owner­ship stake for an estimated $675 million. The deal is expected to be complete in the spring. Pearson owned Penguin, and Ber­telsmann owned Random House, before the merger in 2012, at which point Bertels­mann had a 53% share and Pearson 47%. Pearson later sold 22% of its shares to the other company ...Read More

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    Announcements News Publishing 

    Hachette Acquires Disney Titles

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    Hachette Book Group (HBG) has acquired more than 1,000 Disney Book Group titles for the Little, Brown Books for Young Readers line, including numerous titles that have not yet been published, roughly doubling the imprint’s backlist. The deal encompasses YA and middle-grade titles, as well as board books, picture books, and graphic novels.

    Disney will continue to publish works that can be developed “across multiple platforms and media,” and will ...Read More

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    Awards News 

    2020 PEN/Faulkner Longlist

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    We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (One World) and The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson (Grove) both appear on the 2020 Pen/Faulkner Longlist, this year with ten titles instead of five. The prize “honors the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year.” This year’s judges are Patricia Engel, Ru Freeman, and Porochista Khakpour.

    The list will be shortened to five finalists in ...Read More

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    Features 

    Photo Story: SF at Philadelphia Museum of Art

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    On December 22, 2019 the Philadelphia Museum of Art cel­ebrated SF with an afternoon of read­ings hosted by Lawrence M. Schoen and featuring David Walton and Sally Wiener Grotta, held in conjunction with the Designs for Differ­ent Futures exhibit (details at <philamuseum.org/calendar/exhibition/designs-different-futures>).

    This story and more like it in the February 2020 issue of Locus.

    While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or ...Read More

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    Books Reviews 

    Colleen Mondor Reviews Minor Prophets by Jimmy Cajoleas

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    Minor Prophets, Jimmy Cajoleas (Amulet 978-1-4197-3904-0, $18.99, 368pp, hc) September 2019.

    Minor Prophets by Jimmy Cajoleas is presented as a thriller with slight supernatural elements. In the opening pages, teen Lee recounts how he has long suffered from prophetic visions, many of which have come true. One of those visions strikes hard after his mother and stepfather have a loud fight and she roars off in her car, declaring, ...Read More

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    Films 

    “VIOLET, YOU’RE TURNING VIOLET, VIOLET!” Arley Sorg and Josh Pearce Discuss Color Out of Space

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    This adaptation of the 1927 H.P. Lovecraft short story stars Nicolas Cage as Nathan Gardner, who lives in a secluded area of New England with his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson), daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), and sons Benny and Jack (Brendan Meyer and Julian Hilliard). All Gardner wants to do is raise alpacas and enjoy some fine bourbon, but when a meteorite crashes onto his land one night, his plans go ...Read More

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    Awards News 

    2020 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize Shortlists

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    Shortlisted titles for the 2020 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize have been announced in the Illustrated Books, Younger Fiction, and Older Fiction categories, including the following of genre interest:

    Older Fiction

    • Internment, Samira Ahmed (Little, Brown)

    Younger Fiction

    • The Middler, Kirsty Applebaum (Nosy Crow)
    • Asha & the Spirit Bird, Jasbinder Bilan (Chicken House)
    • Charlie Changes Into a Chicken, Sam Copeland (Puffin)

    Winners in each category, and one ...Read More

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    Awards News 

    Goingback and Ligotti Win HWA Lifetime Achievement Award

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    Owl Goingback and Thomas Ligotti will be given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association (HWA).

    The Lifetime Achievement Award is given annually to “individuals whose work has substantially influenced the horror and dark fantasy genres.” The HWA said, “When more than one award winner is determined, the rules require a unanimous vote from all committee members. Thus, the winners were recognized as highly deserving individuals for their ...Read More

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    Commentary Features 

    2019 in Review by Adrienne Martini

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    These end-of-the-year lists always flummox me, mostly because I never quite know what I’m supposed to write about. Should it be the big titles, the ones that made such a splash that you couldn’t help but notice them? Or should they be the smaller titles that only made a little ripple? That last group is full of the titles that make my reader’s heart sing because they show the writer’s ...Read More

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    Books Reviews 

    Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The House of Sundering Flames by Aliette de Bodard

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    The House of Sundering Flames, Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz 978-1-47322-340-0, £16.99, 560pp, tp) July 2019. (JABberwocky Literary Agency 978-1-625674-61-6, $16.00, 386pp, tp) September 2019.

    I’m sure that someone, somewhere, has pointed out a possible relationship between fantasy trilo­gies and the structure of classical sonatas or symphonies, with the final movement recapitu­lating major themes while accelerating the pace and leading toward an aggressively dramatic climax, but Aliette de Bodard’s Dominion ...Read More

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    Books Reviews 

    Near Future Speculator: Paul Di Filippo Reviews Unamerica, Rule of Capture, The Warehouse, and Future Tense Fiction

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    Unamerica, Cody Goodfellow (978-1732124059)

    Rule of Capture, Christopher Brown (978-0062859099)

    The Warehouse, Rob Hart (978-1-9848-2379-3)

    Future Tense Fiction, edited by Kirsten Berg, Torie Bosch, Joey Eschrich, Ed Finn, Andrés Martinez and Juliet Ulman (978-1944700959)

    The world is running a fever, and science fiction is the thermometer, if not also the febrifuge. That is, whenever the genre is not busy gallivanting across the galaxy, science fiction can, ...Read More

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    Reviews Short Fiction 

    Karen Burnham Reviews Short Fiction: Lightspeed, New Myths, Factor Four, and Transcendent 4

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    Lightspeed 11/19 New Myths 9/19 Factor Four 7/19 Transcendent 4, Bogi Takács, ed. (Lethe Press) October 2019.

    Dominica Phetteplace returns to Robot Coun­try, an area near the US/Mexico border that robots have claimed and essentially shut off to outsiders and surveillance, in “Her Appetite, His Heart” in November’s Lightspeed. Javi is on a romantic quest to find his ex-girlfriend Isla, whom we met in the previous story ...Read More

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    Awards News 

    Muir Wins Crawford Award

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    Tamsyn Muir’s novel Gideon the Ninth (Tor.com Publishing) is the winner of the 2020 Crawford Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) for a first book of fantasy fiction. The awards committee named The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK) as “a close runner-up.”

    Other finalists were The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons (Tor) and Silver

    ...Read More Read more