It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Josh Pearce picks Color Out of Space as a top movie of the year: “The crowning achievement of the film is its finale visual effects, which comes after a well-paced escalation of weirdness. We’re never told why the invading color eventually leaves—nothing that the characters do have any effect on it, there is no action they can take to save themselves, which ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Jonathan Strahan chooses The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow. Gary K. Wolfe says, “Even though the more mundane question of women’s suffrage may be a bit overshadowed by time we reach the spectacular conclusion, The Once and Future Witches, with its adroit balance of narrative playfulness and imminent tragedy, is as fully original and impressive as its predecessor, ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Liz Bourke picks Seven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard, “a novella concerned with forgiveness, deserved or not, about cages, self-made or otherwise. It concerns itself with growth, with grace, with ruthlessness and its costs and consequences. It’s a tightly written jewel of a story, intense and full of feeling, and I recommend it highly.”
You can read Liz’s review online or ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Colleen Mondor chooses The Factory Witches of Lowell by C.S. Malerich. “Lowell’s complex story provided an opportunity to combine New England’s deep witchcraft mythology with the dark truth behind its mills. The result is the absolutely sublime novel, which is most definitely one of my favorite reads this year.”
You can read Colleen’s review in the November 2020 issue of Locus. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Tim Pratt picks The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky, an SF novel about the disappearance and return of a girl on Bodmin Moor and the investigator who discovers cracks between our world and parallel Earths. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Arley Sorg selects Lovecraft Country as a top science fiction horror show of the year. “Moments of this show are a wonderful celebration of Black culture, executed in ways too rarely seen in mainstream TV or film. An early scene shows a block party filled with joy and celebration, and an array of kinds of Black folks, sending a gentle message to ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Russell Letson picks Sea Change by Nancy Kress, which “sets its present action in the Pacific Northwest only a dozen years from now, in a troubled America shaken by the effects not only of climate change but of an unexpected Catastrophe that generated a public reaction against genetic experimentation and a government response more severe than the post-9/11 security crackdowns, with an ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Ian Mond chooses Earthlings by Sayaka Murata: her “second novel to be skillfully translated into English by Ginny Tapley Takemori, is the evil twin to her much loved and critically acclaimed first book, Convenience Store Woman…. But whereas Convenience Store Woman has an eccentric, heartfelt (though never schmaltzy) quality, Earthlings is a dark, surreal, and brutal novel.”
You can read his ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Bob Blough picks Agency by William Gibson as one of his top novels of the year. Russell Letson says, “From this writer one can expect extra dollops of ingenuity, plus imports from other SF motif families and a strong presence of familiar Gibsonian traits: smooth prose, sly pop-culture references, and acute observations of behavior and social interaction.”
You can read Russell Letson ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Katharine Coldiron chooses Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings: “It’s a dark story – or really an intertwined handful of dark stories, connected by family, landscape, and magic. Danger hums underneath the tale, whether from the creatures at the edge of town or the people within it, and fully emerges only at the emotional peak of each story Jennings weaves into the whole.”
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Adrienne Martini chooses The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal as “exactly the book I needed at the end of March 2020…. Late March was a great time to fall into an immersive story told by a writer who knows her stuff. The Relentless Moon checks both boxes. Kowal is a many-times-over Hugo and Nebula Award winner. She knows what she’s doing. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Josh Pearce selects Bloodshot as a standout movie of the year: “It initially follows all the standard sci-fi action fare as Vin Diesel pieces together what has happened to him, but then he learns that there’s more going on than he’s been told, the movie undergoes a paradigm shift, and it is awesome.”
You can read the full review online. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Liz Bourke picks Machine by Elizabeth Bear, “a fascinating space opera future set in a hospital environment, deeply engaged with questions of culture and ethics. It’s also full of action, and just plain fun.”
You can read Liz’s review online or in the October 2020 issue of Locus. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Gary K. Wolfe recommends Comet Weather by Liz Williams, “a family portrait nuanced and intriguing enough to sustain a pretty interesting novel even before the magical ordnance is fully deployed, and indeed the manner in which Williams methodically shifts her tone from domestic magical realism to high-stakes supernatural spectacle – complete with ghosts, time travel, shapeshifting, star-spirits, parallel realities, and even Sir ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Paula Guran chooses Londonia by Kate A. Hardy as a top novel of the year. “The plot flowing through this rich world and animating the characters living in it is an intelligent commentary on current society and where we may well be headed, but it is also a traditional, if updated, story – and, consequently, a real page-turner.”
You can read her ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Colleen Mondor chooses A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow, which “is thrilling and intense and utilizes truly gorgeous language.”
She says, “On one level, it is very much a story of sirens and mermaids (and gargoyles, elokos, and pixies) and a version of America that both recognizes and acknowledges the existence of such mythic creatures. More significantly, it is the ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Arley Sorg selects A Phoenix First Must Burn, edited by Patrice Caldwell, as a top anthology, calling the stories within “stunning works of Black girl magic, resistance, and hope.”
Colleen Mondor says, “Final verdict? A Phoenix First Must Burn is an enormously eclectic and entertaining collection. We need more Black girl magic – a lot more. And we need to be ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Carolyn Cushman selects A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, saying it “really stands out.” In her review, Adrienne Martini says, “A Deadly Education is not a Harry Potter-esque feel-good story about a school for witchcraft and wizardry. Mind, you will feel good afterwards, because it is so very good, and it does take place in a magical high school. But that ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Liz Bourke selects Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear. Russell Letson describes it as “a big book (with a promise of more bigness to come – the title page says it is ‘White Space Book 1’) crammed with a variety of SF motifs and tropes and furniture items: space operatics, interstellar civilization, Big (Variably Smart) Objects, alien encounters, deep galactic history, artificial intelligences, ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Arley Sorg picks New Suns, edited by Nisi Shawl, which Rich Horton calls “a strongly balanced anthology, and a powerful one – surely one of the best original anthologies of 2019.”
You can read Rich’s review online or in the May 2019 issue of Locus. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
One of top titles of the year is Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer. Ian Mond says, “Going as far as back his debut, Dradin, In Love and, more recently, his extraordinary (and hugely successful) Southern Reach Trilogy, VanderMeer has built a career on narratives that explore the limits of fiction, both in terms of language and form. His latest novel, Dead Astronauts ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Liza Trombi selects Ted Chiang’s latest collection, Exhalation. Gary K. Wolfe says, “At their best they have much the same kind of appeal of Borges’s most provocative tales – not without feeling and empathy, but, fundamentally, explorations of the sheer romance of thinking.”
You can read his review online or in the May 2019 issue of Locus. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Adrienne Martini chooses To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers, “a tight, frequently funny, character-driven novella that tells a cozy space exploration story, except what’s being explored is human brains rather than bug-eyed aliens and exotic worlds.”
You can read her review of it in the December 2019 issue of Locus. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
One of our top collections of 2019 is The Best of Greg Egan. Russell Letson says, “Egan is determined to make sense of everything – to understand the whole world as an intelligible, rational, material (and finally manipulable) realm – even if it means abandoning comfortable and comforting illusions. This is fundamental to the whole project of SF and it’s why ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
One of our top YA titles of 2019 is Lovely War by Julie Berry. Colleen Mondor says, “Lovely War is an excellent choice for readers looking for light fantasy who will appreciate a little something extra with their drama.”
You can read her review online or in the August 2019 issue of Locus. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Arley Sorg picks War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi as a top 2019 title. “War Girls is a thoughtful meditation on culture and conflict. It’s action-driven but complex, brutal but brilliant.”
In her review of Onyebuchi’s debut last year, Colleen Mondor said, “Beasts Made of Night is a thoughtful, thoroughly unique novel, and it heralds the arrival of a dazzling talent.” ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
For space opera fans out there, we selected The Outside by Ada Hoffman. Liz Bourke says, “Compellingly written, tense, and thrilling, with fascinating (and weird) worldbuilding and brilliant characters, The Outside is a fantastic debut. I can’t wait to see what Hoffmann does next.”
You can read her review online or in the July 2019 issue of Locus. ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Colleen Mondor chooses The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum, “A novel about space travel where the characters barely leave the earth. I am so impressed by how the author crafted such a compelling and determined protagonist in Ryann Bird. She will make you cheer every hard-won step of the way.”
You can read Colleen’s review of it online or in ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Liza Trombi picks Wanderers, which she calls “Chuck Wendig at his best.”
Tim Pratt says, “This isn’t just a post-apocalyptic story: it’s a pre-, peri-, and post-apocalyptic novel, viewed through the eyes of multiple viewpoint characters who have lots of room to strive and suffer across a generous and sprawling page count.” You can read his review of Wanderers online or ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Reviews editor Jonathan Strahan says, “The hippest, hottest book of the year was Tamsyn Muir’s debut, Gideon the Ninth. Blurbed as being about lesbian necromancers in space (it is!), it will grab you by the throat and won’t let you go ’til it spits you out on the last tear-stained page. Perfect for just about anyone who loves swords and space ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
For our non-fiction selection: “The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein by Farah Mendlesohn, is the kind of book that a writer of his stature deserves – an academic but readable overview from a modern perspective, covering his full career, and written by a scholar of wide interests and learning whose ideas have been shaped by something more than reading Heinlein ...Read More
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It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Short fiction reviewer Karen Burnham selects some top stories of the year:
“The Painter of Trees” by Suzanne Palmer in Clarkesworld and “Boiled Bones and Black Eggs” by Nghi Vo in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
She also gives special mention to:
