Blanca & Roja, Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel & Friends 978-1-250-16271-7, $17.99, 367pp, hc) October 2018.
Anna-Marie McLemore follows up her gorgeously crafted novel Wild Beauty with an equally lush and luminous take on the fairy tale of “Snow White and Rose Red”. Blanca & Roja is the story of two sisters who labor under a generational curse. One is light and the other is dark. One is agreeable, the ...Read More
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The Booker Prize has a new sponsor: charitable foundation Crankstart, created by venture capitalist Sir Michael Mortitz and his wife Hariett Heyman. They have agreed to sponsor the prestigious awards for five years, beginning in 2020. Crankstart takes over from the former sponsor, hedge fund Man Group, which has contributed £25 million to the prize since its sponsorship began in 2002, including £1.6 million for the 2019 prize.
The Booker ...Read More
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Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice (ECW Press 978-1-77041-400-6, $14.95, 224pp, tp) October 2018.
Moon of the Crusted Snow is a book on the cusp. It’s not a preface to apocalypse, and it’s not the postscript; it takes place during the moment in which a society realizes that one kind of life is over, and another kind of life is going to be the norm. Rice isolates and ...Read More
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Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller (Ecco) is this year’s John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner for the best science fiction novel published in 2018, and “When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis” by Annalee Newitz (Slate.com 12/18) is the winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short fiction of 2018.
Other finalists were:
John W. Campbell Memorial Award
Semiosis, Sue Burke (Tor) A Spy ...Read More Read more
Several times over the 13 years that I’ve been writing this column, I’ve railed against the toxic myth that science fiction is a predictive literature, a way to know the future. Science fiction writers are not fortune tellers, and that’s obvious because no one is a (real) fortune teller, because the future is unknowable, and because the future changes based on what we do.
With that said, there are two ...Read More
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The Black God’s Drums, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing) September 2018. Alice Payne Arrives, Kate Heartfield (Tor.com Publishing) November 2018. Alice Payne Rides, Kate Heartfield (Tor.com Publishing) March 2019. Aeota, Paul Di Filippo (PS Publishing) February 2019.
The recent Nebula Award nominations alerted me to some work I’d missed. A couple of the novella nominees came out from Tor.com Publishing late last year. Both are very ...Read More
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The July 2019 issue of Locus has interviews with Ben H. Winters and R.F. Kuang. Awards news covers the 2019 Locus, Ditmar, and Lambda Literary winners, and finalists, longlists, and/or ballots from the Campbell Memorial, Chesley, Mythopoeic, Sunburst, Aurora, and Eugie awards. There are photos and reports covering the 2019 SFWA Nebula Conference, WisCon 43, and The Outer Dark Symposium ...Read More
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The Hound of Justice, Claire O’Dell (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-269933-6, $15.99, 328pp, tp) July 2019. Cover by Brandon Bourdages.
Claire O’Dell burst onto the near-future science fiction scene last year with A Study in Honor, the opening volume in the Janet Watson Chronicles. A Study in Honor, which I reviewed for this publication, was a tense, compelling near-future thriller, set in a United States in the throes of ...Read More
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The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners of the 2019 Locus Awards during the Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 29, 2019.
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
WINNER: The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor) Record of a Spaceborn Few, Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager US; Hodder & Stoughton) If Tomorrow Comes, Nancy Kress (Tor) Revenant Gun, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris US; Solaris UK) Blackfish City, ...Read More Read more
Nightmare 2/19, 3/19 The Dark 1/19, 2/19 Uncanny 1-2/19 Black Static 1-2/19
Six weeks into 2019 (as I write) and I’m at the fast dwindling point where I foolishly feel I have a handle on most of the new fiction….
Nightmare #77 offers two original stories: “Quiet the Dead” by Micah Dean Hicks and “58 Rules to Ensure Your Husband Loves You Forever” by Rafeeat Aliyu ...Read More
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This year marks the 10th Anniversary of Hal-Con Japan, which took place at the Kawasaki International Center, April 13-14, 2019, with international guest of honor Lavie Tidhar and Japanese guest of honor Misato Hisa. Past years have included writers like Ken Liu, Ann Leckie, Hannu Rajaniemi, Joe Haldeman, and Alastair Reynolds, with the goal of broadening the science fiction community here in Japan and fostering a more inclusive approach to ...Read More
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Dark Constellations, Pola Oloixarac (Soho Press 978-1-61695-923-4, $26.00, 216pp, hc) April 2019.
Pola Oloixarac’s second novel, Dark Constellation, translated by Roy Kesey, spans a one-hundred-forty-year period, beginning in 1882. Plant biologist Niklas Bruun is the youngest member of an expedition charting the archipelago of Juba and specifically the volcanic crater of Famara. There he discovers a plant, Crissia pallida, whose properties will, enigmatically, “remain all but unknown until ...Read More
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Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, K.J. Parker (Orbit 978-0316270793, $15.99, 384pp, tp) April 2019.
K.J. Parker (AKA Tom Holt) does just what it says on the tin in Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. In true Parker style, he comes at the topic from an unexpected angle. The perspective is not a royal, nor a peasant, nor a proper soldier. Instead, our hero is Orhan, ...Read More
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Nathan Ballingrud, Wounds (Saga 4/19) This collection – “Six Stories from the Border of Hell” – gathers some of the author’s best dark work, including original story “The Butcher’s Tale” and “The Visible Filth” (2015), adapted as 2019 horror film Wounds. His first collection, North American Lake Monsters (2013), won a Shirley Jackson Award and was nominated for British Fantasy, Stoker, and World Fantasy Awards.
Ashok K. Banker, ...Read More
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Big Cat and Other Stories, Gwyneth Jones (NewCon 978-1-912950-15-7, £24.99, 240pp, hc) April 2019. Cover by Vincent Sammy.
Gwyneth Jones has been writing fiercely intelligent SF for decades, and, despite a few high-profile awards (a Clarke, two World Fantasy Awards, a BSFA, a Tiptree, and a Philip K. Dick), she never seems to have attained the broad, appreciative readership that her fiction warrants (in 2001, she even received one ...Read More
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Mark Teppo has announced that Underland Press is open to novel submissions. He’s looking for SF, fantasy, dark fantasy, and “noir mystery with a tinge of otherworldliness,” between 75,000 and 100,000 words in length. Submit to <editors@underlandpress.com> with a brief cover letter “that hits the highlights.” Teppo also welcomes submissions to anthology Eighteen in his “loosely tarot-themed” series, due out in late 2020. The 18th tarot card, the Moon, is ...Read More
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An Illusion of Thieves, Cate Glass (Tor 978-1-250-31100-9, $16.99, 352pp, tp) May 2019. Cover by Alyssa Winans.
When I first heard about Cate Glass’s An Illusion of Thieves – a fantasy novel, part heist, part political thriller, and part coming-of-age story in a setting inspired by late medieval Italy – I had no idea that Glass was a pen name for notable author Carol Berg, whose novel-writing career began ...Read More
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Shortlists for the 2019 Prix Utopiales and Prix Utopiales Jeunesse Awards have been announced:
Prix Utopiales
BonheurTM, Jean Baret (Le Bélial) Colonies, Laurent Genefort (Le Bélial) Helstrid, Christian Léourier (Le Béllial) Les derniers jours du Nouveau-Paris, China Miéville (Au diable vauvert) Dans la toile du temps, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Denoël)Prix Utopiales Jeunesse
In Real Life: Déconnexion, Maiwenn Alix (Milan) La Voie Verne, Jacques ...Read More Read more
Destroy All Monsters, Sam J. Miller (Harper Teen 978-0-06-245674-8, $17.99, 400pp, tc) July 2019.
I suppose the first thing to be noted about Sam J. Miller’s third novel, Destroy All Monsters, is that it has nothing to do with the venerable Toho kaiju film with that title, even though there are a few dinosaurs wandering about. They mostly show up in the “Darkside,” a version of reality occupied ...Read More
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Kaaron Warren was born July 3, 1965 in Melbourne Australia.
She began publishing SF with “White Bed” in 1993, and has since published over a hundred stories, including Aurealis Awards winners “A Positive” (1998) and “Air, Water and the Grove” (2013); Ditmar Award winners “Fresh Young Widow” (2005), “The Grinding House” (2005), and “Crisis Apparition” (2018); Stoker Award finalist “All You Can Do Is Breathe” (2011); and World Fantasy Award ...Read More
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The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster; Rainn Wilson, narrator (Listening Library 978-1-98488701-6, $25.00, 4 CDs, 4.75 hr., unabridged [also available as a digital download]) March 2019.
There’s plenty of humor and wisdom for the adult listener to discover in this new recording of the classic Phantom Tollbooth, one of the most beloved books from my childhood. Young Milo finds most things that adults want to teach him dull, silly, ...Read More
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Edges, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island 978-1-937197-27-8, $18.00, 411pp, tp) April 2019. Cover by Sarah Anne Langton. [Order from MythicIslandPress.com, PO Box 1293, Kula HI 96790-1293; <mythicislandpress.com>.]
Linda Nagata’s first four novels – Bohr Maker (1995), Tech-Heaven (1995), Deception Well (1997), and Vast (1998) – constituted a long future history, eventually labelled the Nanotech Succession. Edges is the first volume of an extension of that series, a sequence bearing the ...Read More
Read moreBestselling author Nora Roberts filed a lawsuit in a Rio de Janeiro, Brazil court on April 24, 2019, accusing Brazilian author Cristiane Serruya of multiple counts of plagiarism. She alleges that Serruya copied text from Roberts and other writers for her novels, which are “a literary patchwork, piecing together phrases whose form portrays emotions practically identical to those expressed in the plaintiff’s books.” Roberts is seeking damages for 3,000 times ...Read More
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Fiyah Winter ’19 Lightspeed 3/19 Future Tense 1/19 Abyss & Apex 1st Quarter ’19 Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores 1/19
Fiyah has its first unthemed issue with #9, which also marks a transition as founding editor Justina Ireland moves on and DaVaun Sanders joins Troy L. Wiggins on the editorial team. The stories here are all over the genre landscape, from fantasy to SF with more than a little surrealism ...Read More
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The Book of Flora, Meg Elison (47North 978-1-54204-209-3, $14.95, 322pp, tp) April 2019.
Meg Elison’s The Book of Flora is the final novel of a trilogy that began with The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, one of my favourite novels of 2014 and a deserved winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. A plague of post-apocalyptic proportions has wiped out most of humanity, but particularly mothers and newborns. ...Read More
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Irene Gallo has been promoted to Vice President, Publisher of Tor.com, effective immediately. Gallo joined Tor 26 years ago where she rose to become head of the art department. She was also one of the founders of the Tor.com website and involved in the creation and launch of the Tor.com imprint.
Gallo says,
To all my art friends. For better or worse, you are not rid of me! I will ...Read More
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Godzilla: King of the Monsters has a lot of things in it that will please Godzilla fans, and plenty that will piss them off. It is a sequel to 2014’s Godzilla, which was directed by Gareth Edwards, and picks up shortly after that movie’s destruction of San Francisco and Godzilla’s subsequent disappearance. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler), who lost his son in the attack, wants Godzilla and all other “Titans” ...Read More
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Cast in Oblivion, Michelle Sagara (Mira 978-0-7783-0784-6, $16.99, 538pp, tp) February 2019. Cover by Glenn Mackay & Shane Rebenschied.
Michelle Sagara has a long career behind her under at least two names. Her House War series as Michelle West is ongoing, and she’s been writing the Chronicles of Elantra series as Michelle Sagara for going on 15 years now. Cast in Oblivion comes to us as the 14th novel ...Read More
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Norwescon 42 was held April 18-21, 2019 in SeaTac WA at the DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport. The theme was “Never Forget Your Towel.” Guests of honor were Mary Robinette Kowal (writer), Tran Nguyen (artist), Dan Koboldt (science), and Nancy Pearl (special guest). Subterranean Press was the spotlight publisher, represented by COO and managing editor Yanni Kuznia. Neil Clarke was honored professional.
Norwescon 43 will be held April 9-12, 2020 ...Read More
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Analog 3-4/19 Asimov’s 3-4/19 Uncanny 3-4/19 Black Infinity Fall ’18
The March-April issue of Asimov’s is a special issue in memory of their great former editor Gardner Dozois, who died about a year ago. As such, it includes his Nebula Award-winning story “The Peacemaker“, many brief memoirs of his effect on writers, and, of course, plenty of new stories. There is a novella from Greg Egan, ...Read More
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Locus senior editor 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. ...Read More
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