Spotlight on Raya Golden

Raya Golden has a unique and stylized vision and brings her work into the world using a variety of mediums ranging from watercolors to digital multimedia. In 2014 she did a comic based on George R.R. Martin’s story ‘‘The Meathouse Man’’. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for best graphic novel. In 2015 she released her first full length graphic novel, Star­port, an adaptation of a 1994 TV ...Read More

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Photo Story: Hexagon Retreat XV

The 15th Hexagon Retreat was held in April 2024 in Crozet VA.

Photographer: Scott H. Andrews

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy ...Read More

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Spotlight on: Lindsay Ellis

LINDSAY ELLIS is an author, media critic, and Hugo-nominated video essayist. She also was the co-host of the PBS digital series “It’s Lit!”. After earning her bachelor’s in Cinema Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she earned her MFA in Film and Television Production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts with a focus in documentary and screenwriting. She lives in Long Beach, CA. Apostles of Mercy is her ...Read More

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M.R. Carey: Vertical Freedom

MICHAEL R. CAREY was born in Liverpool, England in 1959. He attended St. Peter’s College, Oxford, where he studied English, and worked as a teacher for 15 years before becoming a professional writer.

His career began as a comics writer in the 1990s, first for smaller companies and later for Marvel and DC. He is best known for the Lucifer series (1999-2006) and his run on Hellblazer (2002-2006). The Unwritten, ...Read More

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SF in Ukraine: On Fantasy Tropes and Romanticizing Reality

I fell in love with fantasy at age seven thanks to the Harry Potter series. I remember read­ing at school, in between the lessons, and at home. I even drew the lightning scars on my very willing classmates, so life could feel more the way I thought it should be: heroes – valiant; stakes – to save the whole world; evil – the most vicious you can imagine. What fantasy ...Read More

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Victor Manibo: Space Thriller

VICTOR MANIBO was born in Manila, Philippines where he lived until moving to Jersey City NJ at age 23 to attend law school. He graduated from Cardozo School of Law with a concentration in constitutional law and civil rights, and he works in private practice as an immigration lawyer.

Manibo’s debut SF noir novel, The Sleepless, was published in 2022, and his second book, Escape Velocity, will be published ...Read More

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Malka Older: Perspective Shift

MALKA ANN OLDER was born October 30, 1977. She attended Harvard for undergrad, where she studied literature, and has a master’s degree in international relations and economics from the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. She got her doctorate in political science at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, where she did work on governmental disaster responses. Older is an expert in humanitarian aid and international development ...Read More

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Norwescon 46

Norwescon 46 was held March 28-31, 2024 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Seattle Airport in SeaTac WA; the theme was ‘‘Into the Wylde.’’ Guests of honor were Charles Vess (artist), Dr. Raychelle Burks (science), and Kate Alice Marshall (spe­cial guest of honor). Writer Guest of honor Jim Butcher was unable to attend due to COVID. Clarkesworld was the spotlight publisher, represented by Neil Clarke. The weekend included hundreds of ...Read More

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Cory Doctorow: No One Is the Enshittifier of Their Own Story

No one was more surprised than I was when the American Dialect Society named ‘‘enshittification’’ – my dirty little coinage to describe how everything on the internet is (suddenly, simultaneously) getting (much) worse – to be its Word of the Year. But though the news was a surprise, it was a very pleasant one.

My early writings on enshittification focused on its symptoms, the way platforms decay. The progression of ...Read More

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2024 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

The 45th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) took place March 13-16, 2024 at the Marriott Orlando Airport Hotel Lakeside, with a theme of “Whimsy.” Academics, writers, publishers, editors, artists, students, independent scholars, and more participated, with 327 people attending (comparable to last year’s count, though still down significantly from 2019’s pre-COVID levels) with 239 presenters on the academic track and 89 invited cre­ative guests. Guests of ...Read More

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Ken MacLeod: So Many Shocks

KENNETH MACRAE MACLEOD was born August 2, 1954 in the Western Isles of Scotland. He attended Glasgow University, earning a degree in zoology in 1976, then studied biomechanics at Brunel University outside London. He took a decade-long break from reading SF, and became a computer programmer for ten years. In 1988 he completed a Master’s degree in Biomechanics.

After finishing his thesis, he tried his hand at fiction, producing first ...Read More

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Spotlight on Sara Felix

Sara Felix is a Hugo Award winning mixed media artist who creates with inks, acrylics, resin and sometimes clay. She is an editor for the Hugo Award winning fanzine Journey Planet and has been also nominated for her work for the past few years. She has designed two Hugo Award bases, one with Vincent Villafranca in 2018 and one on her own in 2016, and has created four Lodestar ...Read More

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Nalo Hopkinson: What the Magic Is

NALO HOPKINSON was born December 20, 1960 in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew up there and in Trinidad and Guyana, though she also spent some time in the US as a child. Her father was noted Guyanese poet Muhammad Abdur-Rahman Slade Hopkinson. She moved with her family to Toronto, Canada in 1977, where she lived until relocating to Riverside CA in 2011. She earned a Master’s degree in Writing Popular Fiction ...Read More

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SF in India: Indian Science Fiction Magazines

In the West, science fiction has been shaped by magazines like Astounding, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Locus, Galaxy, Amazing Stories, Ana­log, Lightning Speed, Destiny, Galileo, Asimov’s, F&SF, New Worlds, Vertex, and others. Editors like Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell took a keen interest in directing the respective authors to write stories as the days demanded. Unlike in the West, India has had no history of science fiction magazine in general ...Read More

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Spotlight on Richard A. Kirk

Richard A. Kirk is an author, illustrator, and visual artist. He is the author of novels The Lost Machine and Necessary Monsters, and illustrated collection Magpie’s Ladder. Illustrated novel Tailor of Echoes was published in early 2022. He has illustrated works by Clive Barker, Christopher Golden, Frank Herbert, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Thomas Ligotti, China Miéville, the rock band Korn, and others. Kirk’s artwork is exhibited and collect­ed internationally. ...Read More

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Wayward Wormhole

The inaugural Wayward Wormhole workshop was held November 1-21, 2023 at Castle de Llaés in Gurb, Spain.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and ...Read More

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Moses Ose Utomi: Unreal Element

MOSES OSE UTOMI was born July 26, 1988 in San Bernardino CA and grew up in Las Vegas NV. He studied psychology as an undergrad, then attended Sarah Lawrence College, where he earned a MFA in creative writing. Utomi is also a lifelong martial artist.

He began publishing work of SF interest with “The Story of a Young Woman” (2018, as Ose Utomi). His short work also includes the Forever ...Read More

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Spotlight on Anne Perry of Arcadia

You’re the publishing director for the SF/F imprint at Quercus in the UK (formerly known as Jo Fletcher Books). We understand you’re relaunching with a new vision and name. Tell us about it.

I was very lucky when I started at Quercus; Jo Fletcher Books was 11 years old and well-established, and had a reputation for being particularly strong in epic fantasy, having launched authors like Sebastien de Castell, Peter ...Read More

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SF in Brazil

Latin American SF in The New York Times

Emily Hart’s piece ‘‘Science Fiction from Latin America, With Zombie Dissidents and Aliens in the Amazon’’ was published in The New York Times on July 10, 2023, and claimed the attention of the Brazilian SF community. Hart writes out of Colombia, and deals in her piece with that country and with Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, and Brazil. Her starting point ...Read More

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Shelley Parker-Chan: All the Others

SHELLEY PARKER-CHAN was born in New Zealand and is of Malaysian-Chinese heritage. They studied engineering and anthropology, and did graduate work on war crimes and restorative justice. Parker-Chan was an international development advisor on issues of human rights, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights in Southeast Asia, and worked extensively in several countries in Asia. They now live in Melbourne, Australia.

Debut She Who Became the Sun appeared in 2021, launching ...Read More

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Spotlight on Manzi Jackson

Manzi Jackson is a contemporary visual Artist based in Kigali, Rwanda.

He dabbles in surrealist and magi­cal concepts, displayed in his ability to portray the full magical breadth of his subjects with breathtaking, colorful technique.

He’s currently focusing on a body of portrait and figurative works depicting dreamy energy that draws us into a rich and vibrant realm.

His use of flower-draped muses in astronaut suits are characterized in a ...Read More

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Cory Doctorow: Capitalists Hate Capitalism

In conflict, we find clarity.

We all hold contradictory views: We love our families, but they drive us crazy. We want more housing in our cities, but we don’t want our property values to decrease with expanded supply. We want better schools, but we recoil from a 0.1% municipal levy to fund them.

It’s normal to hold contradictory views, but when those views come into conflict, how we act shows ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Charles Payseur

2023 was certainly… a year for short speculative fiction. Another amazing year in terms of the quality and quantity of stories pub­lished, but also a challeng­ing year as many venues have faced increased fi­nancial pressures and de­creasing returns from social media, as well as personal losses and national and international tragedies. While the year might seem like it went out like a lamb, it’s possible that the full impact from ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Graham Sleight

I’m always reluctant to pick out trends when sum­marising a year’s books for Locus. There are too many contingencies at play in what gets published when, and so much is dependent on which fraction of the torrent of SFF books I’ve managed to read. But this year, I do feel confident in one judgment: It was a really fine time to be reading books of the fantastic. The works I’m ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Russell Letson

Long Games, Nightmares, and Retrospectives by Russell Letson

I look into the tea leaves – well, the coffee grounds – at the bottom of the year’s cup and find no wisdom or insight into either the state of the field or even my own reading patterns. As usual. Nevertheless, I am more than content with where my nose-following and stumbling around in the dark have taken me in 2023, across ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Niall Harrison

Every once in a while, in defiance of all the cacoph­ony of the actual world, the federated genres of the fantastic can still produce a work whose single novum speaks with a clarity that demands attention. Such a work is Sin Blaché and Hel­en Macdonald’s Prophet, a highly readable technothriller-romance with two screenplay-ready protagonists, elevated by their investigation into the titular substance. Prophet causes people to experience an irresist­ible ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Jake Casella Brookins

2023 wound up being a strange reading year for me. I started the year with a big move: from Chicago back to beautiful Buffalo, NY. While it’s wonderful to be back east and closer to the mountains, being so far from Chicago’s amazing literary scene has been hard. I’ve particularly missed the wonderful speculative book clubs I was part of there – Think Galactic and the Chicago Nerd Social Club ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Archita Mittra

Once upon a time, bad things happened and even­tually, things got better. While this might be true for certain stories, real life, plagued by ongoing pandemics and genocides, rarely offers such neat con­clusions. Perhaps that is why we repeatedly turn to art – not only to find escape and solace, but also, wisdom, empathy, and more urgently so, the will to resist and survive, despite the odds. And as the ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Arley Sorg

2023 was a bummer: We published our final issue of Fantasy Magazine in October. All the same, it was a wonderful issue, and a strong way to go out. But there was no shortage of excellent short fiction to be found elsewhere. Be­sides the many intriguing magazines regularly putting out stories, there was a wealth of books that folks who love short fiction should consider picking up.

My caveat: These ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Alexandra Pierce

2023 by Alexandra Pierce

2023 was a really good year for books! I’m going to focus on the books I loved that were written by women and nonbinary folk.

SEQUELS

It was a pretty good year for sequels. I would be a paid-up member of the Murderbot fanclub if one existed (let me know if I’ve missed that memo), so Martha Wells’s System Collapse was a welcome end-of-year ad­dition to ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Liz Bourke

Looking Back on 2023 by Liz Bourke

If there’s a theme that unites the books I enjoyed reading most this year, it’s power, vio­lence, and survival. The dam­age that violence inflicts on those who suffer it, and those who wield it, and the ambigui­ties and challenges inherent in the ethical uses of power.

Of course, some of them were also just plain fun.

Three books stand out most. One is ...Read More

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