The New York Times has published its list of Notable Books of 2024. Titles are selected by staff members of the New York Times Book Review.
The list includes titles of genre interest:
The 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize has announced its 33-title longlist. The award honors “mid-career authors in fiction,” and the winner receives a $50,000 prize and a residence at the University of California, Berkeley and/or Bay Area. The award is given by the New Literary Project. The 2025 longlist features several works of genre interest, including:
AudioFile magazine has published their picks for the best audiobooks of 2024 in categories including Science Fiction and Fantasy and Young Adult.
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Music and audiobook streaming service Spotify has released a list of the most popular audiobooks on their platform for 2024.
The most popular audiobook genres by Spotify listeners in 2024 were science fiction and fantasy, with romance close behind. Many of the most popular titles this year were romantasy. The top audiobooks were:
The Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour has announced its judging panel for 2025: Saara El-Arifi, Mahmud El-Sayed, Rogba Payne, Amandeep Singh, and Amita Suman.
The Future Worlds Prize annually honors works of fantasy and science fiction from new writers of color based in the UK and Ireland. The winner receives £4,500, the runner-up receives £2,500, and the remaining six shortlisted writers each receive £850.
NPR has published a list of “Books We Love” in 2024, compiled by NPR journalists and associated critics. The full list of 350 books includes an extensive Sci Fi, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction category, with numerous other works of interest on the list as a whole.
Sci Fi, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction
España Sheriff is the winner of the 2024 Rotsler Award for “long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the science fiction community.” The award was announced during Loscon 50, held November 29 – December 1, 2024 at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport Hotel in Los Angeles CA.
The award was established in 1998 by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, Inc. The winner receives a $300 honorarium. ...Read More
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The Clarion Workshop in San Diego CA has announced the instructors for its 2025 session: Elizabeth Bear, Premee Mohamed, Cadwell Turnbull, Annalee Newitz, Jedediah Berry, and GennaRose Nethercott. Jac Jemc is faculty director.
The workshop will be held June 29, 2025 – August 9, 2025 at UC San Diego. Applications for the workshop opened on December 1, 2024 and close February 15, 2025.
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Nominations are now open for the 2025 Dragon Awards, presented by Dragon Con. “There is no qualification for submitting nominations or voting – no convention fees or other memberships are needed.” Voting closes July 19, 2025.
For last year’s winners, see our prior post. For more information about nominations and to vote, see the official Dragon Awards page.
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Winners for the 2024 Kitschies, awarded for “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining fiction that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic,” have been announced.
The Red Tentacle (Novel)
The Golden Tentacle
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced the addition of Poetry and Comics categories to the Nebula Awards.
Award eligibility begins in January 2025, and the first awards for the new categories will be presented at the 2026 Nebula Awards Ceremony.
In other news, SFWA is hiring for a full time position of Office Assistant, and a contract position of Nebula Awards Project Manager. They’re also looking ...Read More
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The Washington Post included numerous genre works on their Best of the Year lists.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy list featured 11 titles chosen by their critic Charlie Jane Anders:
Winners for the National Book Awards (NBA) have been announced.
The winner in the fiction category is James by Percival Everett (Doubleday), who sometimes writes SF. (See his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.)
Winners were honored at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony on November 20, 2024.
For more information, including the complete lists of winners, see the National Book Foundation site.
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Edmonton (AKA ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ / Amiskwacîwâskahikan), Canada has announced a bid to host the 88th World Science Fiction Convention in 2030.
Northern Alberta Science Fiction Society chair Mike Johnson said, “Edmonton is one of Canada’s youngest and fastest-growing cities. It’s bubbling with ideas, creativity, diversity, and a can-do attitude. It has an energy that I think science fiction fans from around the globe will find themselves aligned with.”
The committee “has ...Read More
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Hachette Book Group has announced its purchase of Sterling Publishing from Barnes & Noble.
Sterling Publishing includes the imprints Union Square & Co., Union Square Kids, Boxer Books, Puzzlewright Press, plus stationery brands. Sterling’s output includes various genre books and gift editions of classic works.
B&N CEO James Daunt cited Union Square’s recent expansion and its need for more resources as a publisher. “Union Square has [outgrown] the infrastructure of ...Read More
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Auction house Christie’s has announced their “first sale dedicated to Science Fiction and Fantasy,” with bidding open from November 28, 2024 to December 12, 2024.
The auction “will explore the extraordinary history of the genres through the books, objects and artworks that continue to inspire new generations of readers and viewers.”
Highlights include The Dune Bible, “an extraordinary artefact from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic Dune project (estimate: £250,000-350,000);” an “exquisite ...Read More
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The winner, finalists, and honorable mentions for the 2024 Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction have been announced.
The winner is “A Shrine by the Sea” by Syed Zain Haroon. Finalists are “The Shopkeeper’s Remedy” by Manahil Bandukwala and “The 11th Wish” by Raazia Sajid. Honorable mentions are “On the Moonglow Road” by Ramsha Farooq Raja and “Hexes on Exes” by Zuha Siddiqui.
The Salam Award, “a short story award to ...Read More
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The American Library Association (ALA) has announced the shortlists for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence for “the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year” with three fiction and three non-fiction titles.
The fiction shortlist includes James by occasional SF writer Percival Everett (Knopf). The non-fiction list includes Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of ...Read More
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James by Percival Everett (Knopf) is the winner of the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year 2024, and fantasy novel Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Random House Children’s Books) is the winner for Children’s Book of the Year.
Shortlisted titles are nominated by Barnes and Noble booksellers. The winner was announced on November 15, 2024.
For more, see the Barnes and Noble website.
While you are here, please take ...Read More
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ROY GRAHAM, K ARSENAULT RIVERA, and SASCHA STRONACH are now represented by Arley Sorg of kt literary.
LAURA BLACKWELL is now represented by Jake Lovell of Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.
JOHN HORNOR JACOBS received the Heasley Prize for Fiction, presented October 22, 2024 at his alma mater, Lyon College in AR.
TIM LEBBON sold folk horror novel Secret Lives of the Dead to Cath Trechman ...Read More
Read moreAuthor, actor, critic, and filmmaker Tim Sullivan, 76, died November 10, 2024 in hospice care in Newport News VA.
Timothy Robert Sullivan was born June 9, 1948 in Bangor ME. He studied literature and got his degree at Florida Atlantic University, and spent time in Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Southern California.
He began publishing SF with “Tachyon Rage” in 1977 (as Timothy Robert Sullivan). “Zeke” (1981) was a Nebula Awards ...Read More
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Time magazine has released a list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2024. Works of genre interest include:
Author Bruce Boston, 81, died November 11, 2024. He was best known as a poet, but was also a prolific prose writer. He was the recipient of the first Grand Master award presented by the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) in 1999.
Bruce David Boston was born July 16, 1943 in Chicago IL and grew up in Southern California. He moved to the Bay Area in 1961 and attended UC ...Read More
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The winners of the second Fishing Fortress Science Fiction Awards, honoring the best in Chinese SF writing, were announced on November 9, 2024.
Sci-Fi Master Achievement
Sci-Fi Promoter Achievement
Sci-Fi Educator Achievement
Sci-Fi Publisher Achievement
Sci-Fi Translator Achievement
Sci-Fi Academy Award
Marco Polo Award
Best Novel
Best
BizarroCon has announced the winners for the 2024 Wonderland Book Awards for Excellence in Bizarro Fiction.
Best Novel
Best Collection
The 2024 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF), which “will send a European fan to the 2025 Worldcon in Seattle,” is open for nominations until December 20, 2024.
TAFF “was created in 1953 for the purpose of providing funds to bring well-known and popular [science fiction] fans familiar to those on both sides of the ocean across the Atlantic. Since that time TAFF has regularly brought North American fans to European conventions ...Read More
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Clarion West has announced that their next six-week workshop will be held virtually instead of in-person, and will run June 22-August 2, 2025. The new format is “designed to give students more time to write, additional lecture time with instructors, and more experimentation with workshopping models.” The instructors will be Maurice Broaddus, Malka Older, Diana Pho, and Martha Wells. Applications open on December 1, 2024 and close February 15, 2025. ...Read More
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Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape; Grove Atlantic US) is the winner of the 2024 Man Booker Prize. It depicts the lives of astronauts, and is “the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space.”
This year’s shortlist also included James by Percival Everett (Mantle;Doubleday US).
The £50,000 prize is “open to works by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.” This year’s judges
ActuSF has announced the winners for the 2024 Prix de l’Uchronie. The prize is awarded to works of alternate history, written or translated into French and published between September 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.
Prix Littéraire
Winners for the 2024 Premio Italia Awards have been announced, honoring accomplishments in the field of Italian fantasy and science fiction.
International Novel
Paul Ryan O’Connor is the winner of the Speculative Literature Foundation’s (SLF) 2024 Older Writers Grant, which gives $1,000 to writers “fifty years of age or older at the time of grant application, and is intended to assist such writers who are just starting to work at a professional level.”
O’Connor was awarded the grant for his unpublished novel Gumshoe Frankenstein.
Applications for the Older Writers Grant are considered ...Read More
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