The Year in Review 2023 by Alex Brown

2023 by Alex Brown

In an unintentional yet perfect synchronicity of events, I’m writing this 2023 speculative fiction wrap-up on the last day of the year with a glass of Martinelli’s while waiting for the ball to drop. It was a strange, contradictory year, one with several professional wins and sev­eral more personal hardships. Going through my reading log, I got through more books this year than I thought I ...Read More

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2023 Hugo, Lodestar, and Astounding Voting

Chengdu Worldcon, the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, received 1,674 valid ballots, down from 2,235 at Chicon 8. There were 1,847 valid nominating ballots (1,843 electronic, four paper), up from 1,368.

Nomination statistics weren’t released until the very last of the 90 days allowed, just before our deadline. They don’t include author names for nominees, and generally don’t offer explanations for why several items were dropped as “not eligible.” To ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by A.C. Wise

The Year in Review 2023 by A.C. Wise

It’s been an odd year for me, reading-wise. I served as a World Fantasy Award judge, which was a won­derful experience, but meant a large portion of my year was devoted to works originally published in 2022. As a result, I feel – even more than I normally do – like I missed out on tons of fantastic work published in 2023, ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Ian Mond

2023 in Review: Best. (Reading). Year. Ever.

I’ve remarked on the book-lag I experienced since the COVID lockdown, which saw my reading drop off a steep cliff. In 2023, I’ve felt more like my book-loving self, reading close to 90 books (compared to 60 last year). It helps that this has been an extraordinary year for fiction, the best I’ve experienced since penning reviews for Locus. I’m aware recency bias ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Colleen Mondor

2023 in Review by Colleen Mondor

There is a bit of a haunted story in my paternal fam­ily history that has preoc­cupied me since my father first shared hints of it when I was a teenager. We were talking about his father, my Pepere, who was born in Quebec and emigrated at the age of 13, with his family, to Rhode Island. I heard a few brief anecdotes over the ...Read More

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Martha Wells: System Rebuild

MARTHA SUSAN WELLS was born September 1, 1964 in Fort Worth TX. She attended Texas A&M University, graduating with a BA in anthropology. She lives in College Station TX with her husband.

Her debut fantasy novel The Element of Fire (1993) began the Ile-Rien series, which includes The Death of the Necromancer (1998) and the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy The Wizard Hunters (2003), The Ships of Air (2004), and The ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Paul Kincaid

One of Those Years

It has been one of those years that come along ir­regularly in which, wherever we look, we come upon liter­ary treasures.

No fans of the short story, for instance, should com­plain about a year in which we have been gifted with new collections by Kate Atkinson and Steven Millhauser. Both writers, incidentally, who should be far better known among readers of the fantastic. Kate Atkinson’s first ...Read More

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Howard Waldrop Fishing by Dave Myers

When Howard taught at Clarion West, he’d tell students that they would only learn to write by writing, a lesson he also applied to fishing. We ended his first stint with two days of fly fishing on the nearby Cedar and Snoqualmie Rivers. Howard later wrote he had found Oz, prompting him in 1995 to move to the Oso General Store on the North Fork of the Stillaguamish, about an ...Read More

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The Year in Review 2023 by Gary K. Wolfe

One of my favorite open­ings of any novel is that of Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, in which he describes navi­gating a bookstore filled with Books You Haven’t Read, including “Books You Needn’t Read”, “Books Read Even Before You Open Them Because They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written”, “Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read ...Read More

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Spotlight on Winona Nelson

Artist/writer Winona Nelson was born in 1983 and grew up in Duluth MN. She has drawn all her life and began painting digitally as a teenager. She studied classical real­ism and art for the entertainment industry at the Safehouse Atelier in San Francisco.

Winona is a queer, Two Spirit Indigenous per­son, and her fine art often focuses on the stories and history of her tribe, the Ojibwe of Minnesota, and ...Read More

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A. Y. Chao Guest Post–“Sparking Joy”

In Shanghai Immortal I wanted to create a fantasy world that was fresh and cosy-nostalgic—the way Stars Hollows is for Gilmore Girls—but thoroughly irreverent and Asian. 1935 Shanghai as a setting was modern enough to be familiar, its glitz and glamour balanced by a dark underbelly of colonialism, racism, and mounting Japanese Imperial aggression, while being traditional enough to still have a firm grasp on the past. Much of ...Read More

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Ai Jiang: Where the Ghosts Live

AI JIANG was born June 18, 1997 in Fujian, China, and emigrated to Canada with her family at age four. She attended the University of Toronto, the Humber School for Writers, and the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh in 2022.

She began publishing work of genre interest with “Hello’’ (2021) in The Dark, and more than 35 stories have since ...Read More

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Andrea Stewart: After the Rebellion

Andrea G. Stewart was born August 3, 1982 in Vancouver, Canada, and grew up in various places in the US.

Stewart began publishing work of genre interest with “Dreameater” (2013), a quarterly winner in the Writers of the Future competi­tion. She has published more than a dozen other stories in anthologies and magazines.

Her first novel, urban fantasy Loose Changeling, ap­peared in 2014 under the name A.G. Stewart, and was ...Read More

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Spotlight on: The Sunday Morning Transport

Tell us about your project. When was it founded, and who’s involved in run­ning it?

The Sunday Morning Transport was founded in August 2021, and we published our first story in January 2023. Julian Yap is editor in chief, Fran Wilde is managing editor, and our copyediting, proofreading, and social media team is Kaitlin Severini (our copyeditor), Ryan T. Jenkins (copy­edits and proofing), Delia Davis (year one proof­reader) and Christine ...Read More

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Robert J. Sawyer: A Cryonic Murder

Robert James Sawyer was born April 29, 1960 in Ottawa, Canada. His fam­ily moved to Toronto when he was a baby, and he has lived there ever since. He earned a bachelor’s in radio and televi­sion arts (broadcasting) from Ryerson Poly­technic University, Toronto in 1982. After graduating, he briefly worked at SF spe­cialty store Bakka-Phoenix Books before spending most of the ‘80s as a freelance non-fiction writer, doing journalism for ...Read More

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Things Short Stories Did and Didn’t Teach Me About Writing and Selling Novels by José Pablo Iriarte

When I give presentations to aspiring writers – particularly presentations on writing and selling short stories – I’m always careful to emphasize that short stories are no longer the apprenticeship into the novel world that they once were. I know plenty of folks who have sold science fiction and fantasy novels without ever having bothered with shorts.

That said, short fiction did kind of func­tion as a proving and learning ...Read More

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Spotlight on: Omenana

Tell us about your magazine, Omenana. When was it founded, and who’s on the publishing team? What is your mission?

Omenana was cofounded in 2014 by Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu (AKA Mazi Nwonwu) and Chinelo Onwualu. Presently, Omenana’s publishing team comprises Mazi Nwonwu, managing editor; Iquo DianaAbasi, editor; Godson Okeiyi, graphic artist; Sunny Efemena, illustrator; and Chinaza, editorial assistant.

Omenana’s mission is to develop the writing and reading of speculative ...Read More

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Cory Doctorow: What Kind of Bubble is AI?

Of course AI is a bubble. It has all the hallmarks of a classic tech bubble. Pick up a rental car at SFO and drive in either direction on the 101 – north to San Francisco, south to Palo Alto – and every single billboard is advertising some kind of AI company. Every business plan has the word “AI” in it, even if the business itself has no AI in ...Read More

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Writing Short Stories in the Margins by A.T. Greenblatt

I have always loved short stories. I don’t remember a time when I ‘‘discovered’’ them. For me, there was nothing to find. They were always there; in school textbooks, homework assignments, in the anthologies I would randomly pick off the shelf at the library. There was never any question either of what I would start writ­ing when I decided to learn story craft. In those early days, reaching the end ...Read More

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Spotlight on: khōréō

Tell us about your magazine, khōréō. When was it founded, and who’s on the publishing team? What is your mission?

In 2020, khōréō was founded with a specific-yet-broad mission: publishing speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. Our team currently relies on volunteers, with the idea that many hands make light work; on the editorial side, we have Aleksandra Hill as the founder, outgoing editor-in-chief, and publisher; Zhui Ning Chang ...Read More

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A Ramble on How Short Stories Have Shaped my Chaotic Writing Career by Ai Jiang

I suppose, before diving in, to put it in short, short fiction has opened a tremendous num­ber of doors for me personally as a writer – craft-wise, career-wise, opportunity-wise. I don’t think the trajectory of my writing journey so far would have been as wildly fortunate and luck-filled – at least to me – without short stories.

In the summer of 2019, I met a man in a coffee shop ...Read More

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Spotlight on: Tobi Ogundiran, Author

TOBI OGUNDIRAN is the author of Jackal, Jackal, a collection of dark and fantastic tales. Ogundiran has been nominated for BSFA, Shirley Jack­son, Ignyte, and Nommo awards. His work has appeared in The Book of Witches and Africa Risen, and in several Year’s Best anthologies. His debut novella, In the Shadow of the Fall, is out from Tordotcom in 2024. Born and raised in Nigeria, he spent seven years in ...Read More

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The Stormy Age of SFF Magazines by Neil Clarke

When people proclaim that we’re experi­encing a ‘‘Golden Age’’ for short fiction, I tend to look at them sideways. While we’ve seen an explosion of new markets over the last two decades, it’s never been a particularly healthy time for the overwhelming majority of them. For print editions, increasing postal and printing costs are eating away at profits. Those publishing online struggle face steeper challenges and often have unpaid or ...Read More

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DIMENSIONS OF WONDER: George Saunders in a Haunted Mansion with Chocolate Mint by Eugenia Triantafyllou

Welcome to our special short fiction issue! We’ve got an interview with Carmen Maria Machado, best known for her National Book Award-nominated collection Her Body and Other Parties. We hosted a roundtable discussion with short story powerhouses Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Usman T. Malik – among them they’ve won seven Nebula Award, five Hugo Awards, four World Fantasy Awards, and a couple of Stoker Awards, too.

We’ve invited some ...Read More

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Ness Brown Guest Post

For most of human history, on clear nights our species could marvel at an untarnished view of nearly 3,000 stars. This view, shared by civilizations around the globe, was a wellspring of awe and speculation out of which flowed diverse myths and philosophies. Countless cultures have long traditions that connect stargazing with storytelling.  

In the centuries-old Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, Princess Kaguya is a native of the Moon. ...Read More

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The Fire in the Dark: Roundtable with Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Usman T. Malik

 

Locus recently hosted a virtual roundable discussion with leading SF/F writers Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, and Usman T. Malik, who sat down for a wide-ranging and lively conversation about the art, craft, and business of short fiction, and the impact of the form on their creative work and lives. Excerpt from the roundtable follows.

TED CHIANG is the author of collections Sto­ries of Your Life and Others and Exhala­tion ...Read More

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Photo Story: SF in SF

The SF in SF reading series hosted John Scalzi and Kimberley Unger for a reading and con­versation to a packed audience on September 20, 2023 at the American Bookbinders Mu­seum in San Francisco CA.

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 ...Read More

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Carmen Maria Machado: Core of Darkness

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO was born July 3, 1986 in Allentown PA. She studied at American University in Washington DC, graduating with a degree in photography in 2008. She attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, graduating with her MFA in 2012, the same year she attended the Clarion Workshop. Machado has received fellowships and residencies from the Speculative Literature Foundation, Yaddo, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and other programs. She was ...Read More

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Commentary by Cory Doctorow: Don’t Be Evil

It’s tempting to think of the Great Enshittening – in which all the inter­net services we enjoyed and came to rely upon became suddenly and irreversibly terrible – as the result of moral decay. That is, it’s tempting to think that the people who gave us the old, good internet did so because they were good people, and the people who enshittified it did so because they are shitty people. ...Read More

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Spotlight on The Best of World SF

Lavie Tidhar was born and raised on a kib­butz in Israel. He has traveled extensively since he was a teenager, living in South Africa, the UK, Laos, and the small island nation of Vanuatu.

Tidhar advocates bringing international SF to a wider audience, and has edited The Apex Book of World SF (2009), The Apex Book of World SF 2 (2012), and The Apex Book of World SF 3 ...Read More

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Justina Ireland: Art Isn’t Safe

JUSTINA IRELAND was born in French Camp CA, and grew up in San Bernadino and outside Sacramento. After graduating high school, she joined the Army, got married, and later settled in Pennsylvania with her husband before eventually moving to Maryland.

Her first novel, Vengeance Bound, a YA fantasy about a girl with a psychic link to the Furies, appeared in 2013, followed by YA fantasy Promise of Shadows (2014). ...Read More

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John Scalzi: Real People, Ridiculous Situations

JOHN MICHAEL SCALZI II was born May 10, 1969, and grew up in Southern California, going to school in Claremont. He graduated from the Webb School in 1987 and attended the University of Chicago, where he became editor-in-chief of the Chicago Maroon and graduated with a philosophy degree in 1991. He moved back to California, where he became the film critic and later a columnist for the Fresno Bee. In ...Read More

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