You started reviewing short fiction for Locus in the February 2002 issue, 20 years ago. What a career! What’s the origin story for you as a reviewer; what brought you into this?
I started reviewing for the short fiction reviewzine Tangent – back when it was a print fanzine. Dave Truesdale posted a notice somewhere saying he was looking for reviewers, and I thought, ‘‘I like short fiction’’ – even ...Read More
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The January 2022 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Simon Jimenez and Eugen Bacon and spotlights on artist/author Nilah Magruder and reviewer Rich Horton. News covers the 2021 Hugo Awards winners at DisCon III, the 2023 Worldcon in China bid win, the new Ad Astra Center and Gunn Center updates, the Penguin Random House response to the Department of Justice, the Nommo, Lodestar, Astounding, Sidewise, and Ditmar winners, a ...Read More
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Author BRADLEY P. BEAULIEU suffered a stroke on November 10, 2021, and was admitted for observation and testing. “Knock wood, it seems light so far…. It’s affecting my left hand (fingers, mostly) and the left side of my face a bit. Some slurred speech but not too bad.”
MERCEDES LACKEY is the 38th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial SFWA Grand Master Award. Her award will be presented ...Read More
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The December 2021 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and a spotlight on artist Gary Villarreal. The issue lists US and UK forthcoming books titles through September 2022. Stories include the World Fantasy Awards and convention report, a report on the 2021 Writers and Illustrators of the Future event, the Department of Justice challenge to the PRH and S&S merger, the creation of ...Read More
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The November 2021 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Chuck Wendig and publisher Betsy Wollheim and a spotlight on artist Tehani Farr. News includes the British Fantasy, Sturgeon, Clarke, and Aurora Awards winners and the National Book Awards finalists. The Data File covers the new Le Guin prize for fiction, the Mythopoeic Awards winners, 2021 MacArthur Fellowships, and much more. FIYAHCON and ICon are covered with full reports and ...Read More
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The October 2021 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Tade Thompson and R.B. Lemberg and a spotlight on Sana Takeda, artist. Main Stories are Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki’s Otherwise win, Karen Tei Yamashita’s National Book Foundation medal win, and the Ignyte, Dragon, and Asimov’s Readers’ Awards winners. People & Publishing includes notes on milestones, awards, books sold, and more, with news this issue about N.K. Jemisin, Nancy Pearl, Susanna Clarke, ...Read More
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The September 2021 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Lavie Tidhar and Zen Cho. The issue lists US and UK forthcoming books through June 2022. Awards news covers the Seiun, Shirley Jackson, and Arthur C. Clarke Foundation Awards winners and the Dragon Awards ballot, and Readercon 31 coverage includes a report and photos. Elizabeth Anne Hull (1937-2021) is remembered with an obituary and appreciations. News includes museums honoring Butler ...Read More
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The August 2021 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Stephen Graham Jones and TJ Klune. Main Stories include the World Fantasy Awards ballot, an obituary and appreciations for William F. Nolan, DisCon III upheavals, and the Analog AnLab, Prometheus, and Aurealis awards winners. A full report with photos covers the 2021 Locus Awards Online event. Other news includes the Kitschies and SFRA awards winners, shortlists ...Read More
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The Locus Awards Weekend took place on June 23-26, 2021, in its second virtual-only iteration. Connie Willis emceed the awards ceremony along with host Liza Trombi. There were over 150 registrations, and full members received a Locus t-shirt and awards program. There was also a sliding scale, attendance-only membership available.
This year’s online event added panels and doubled the number of readings. A pocket convention, the online events had seven ...Read More
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The July 2021 issue of Locus has interviews with Christopher Brown and Cassandra Khaw. Winners of the 2021 Locus Awards, 2020 Nebula Awards, and 2020 Bram Stoker Awards are announced. The SFWA Nebula Conference and StokerCon are covered with full reports and photos. Additional coverage includes Pulitzer and Carnegie Medal news, changes at Fireside and Strange Horizons, the Bloomsbury acquisition of Head of Zeus, SFSFC’s ...Read More
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The June 2021 issue of Locus has interviews with Charles Yu and A.C. Wise and a spotlight on artist Reiko Murakami. The issue lists US and UK forthcoming books titles through March 2022. News covers the SFWA election winners, developments in the HMH acquisition, the Federal Writers’ Project, SFWA’s #DisneyMustPay joint task force, Ignyte finalists, Seiun nominees, the Aurora Awards ballot, Guggenheim Fellowship winners, the new Analog ...Read More
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The May 2021 issue of Locus has interviews with Nnedi Okorafor and Nghi Vo and a spotlight on Spanish magazine Windumanoth. News includes the 2021 Hugo Awards Ballot, changes to the 2021 Worldcon dates and venue, Pillai’s promotion to head Tor, News Corp’s acquisition of HMH, Stine’s Philip K. Dick Award win, Jones’s Bradbury Prize win, BSFA winners, and more. Photo reports cover the 2021 International ...Read More
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The April 2021 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Ursula Vernon and Isabel Yap. News includes the 2020 Nebula Awards ballot, Nghi Vo’s Crawford win, the British Fantasy Awards winners, Weisskopf’s removal as DisCon III GoH, C.J. Cherryh’s Heinlein Award win, the 2020 British Book Summary, an SF in India report, and much more. The column by Kameron Hurley is entitled “Plotting the Way Forward”. Norton ...Read More
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Nghi Vo’s novel The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Tordotcom) is the winner of the 2021 Crawford Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) for a first book of fantasy fiction.
Other finalists were:
The March 2021 issue of Locus has interviews with Jonathan Carroll and Aliette de Bodard. The issue lists US and UK forthcoming books titles through December 2021. Kathleen Ann Goonan (1952-2021) and Rowena Morrill (1944-2021) are remembered with obituaries and appreciations. Main Stories include PS to Launch ParSec, World Fantasy Awards Judges, Baen’s Bar Controversy, SFWA Awards Recipients, and more. Cory Doctorow’s column is entitled ...Read More
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Welcome to the annual Locus Recommended Reading List!
Published in Locus magazine’s February 2021 issue, the list is a consensus by the Locus editors, columnists, outside reviewers, and other professionals and critics of genre fiction and non-fiction — editor-in-chief Liza Groen Trombi; reviews editor Jonathan Strahan; Locus reviewers Liz Bourke, Alex Brown, Karen Burnham, Katharine Coldiron, Paul Di Filippo, Amy Goldschlager, Paula Guran, Rich Horton, Maya James, John Langan, Russell ...Read More
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The February 2021 issue of Locus is the annual Year in Review overview with essays, the Locus 2020 Recommended Reading List, and book and magazine summaries tracking the progress of the industry. The issue also features an interview with Brandon Sanderson. James Gunn (1923-2020) is remembered with an obituary and appreciations. News includes the PKD, Endeavour, PEN America Literary, and Rosetta awards, the SFWA Givers ...Read More
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The January 2021 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Andrea Hairston and Alix E. Harrow and a spotlight on Apex Magazine. Ben Bova and Phyllis Eisenstein are remembered with obituaries and appreciations. News covers the three new Grand Masters (SFWA Grand Master Nalo Hopkinson, MWA Grand Master Charlaine Harris, and SFPA Grand Master Linda Addison), the Penguin Random House planned acquisition of Simon & Schuster, SFWA ...Read More
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Architects of Memory, Karen Osborne (Tor 978-1-250-21547-5, $17.99, 352pp, tp) September 2020. Cover by Mike Heath.
Of late, my desire and ability to read fiction has been at a low ebb. In every professional reviewer’s career, there comes a point – or perhaps more than one – where much that is purported to be fresh and new seems to be tired, quotidian, even overdone; or worse, can’t hold a ...Read More
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The December 2020 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Kim Stanley Robinson and Sheree Renée Thomas. The issue lists US and UK forthcoming books titles through September 2021. Stories include the World Fantasy Awards and convention report, the Ignyte Awards and FIYAHCON convention report, the Sirens Conference, and an SF in India report by Shweta Taneja. Headlines include “Thomas to Edit F&SF“, “Houghton Mifflin ...Read More
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Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, Tamsyn Muir (Subterranean Press 978-159606-992-3, $40.00, 200pp, hc) November 2020. Cover by Tristan Elwell.
Tamsyn Muir’s Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower did not leave me a happy reader. The author of Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth has, in this long novella from Subterranean Press, turned her attention from science fantasy and space necromancy to the fairy-tale-esque, in a story that ...Read More
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Machine, Elizabeth Bear (Saga 978-1-5344-0301-7, $25.99, 460pp, hc) October 2020.
One thing about Elizabeth Bear’s Machine, the second novel set in her White Space universe after 2019’s Ancestral Night: it’s sure as hell not either shallow or amoral. It is, in fact, fundamentally engaged in wrestling with questions of ethics, culture, worldview, and how much restitution needs to be made when one does harm in order to ...Read More
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The Emperor’s Wolves, Michelle Sagara (Mira 978-0-778-30991-8, $16.99, 516pp, tp) October 2020.
Let me confess: I hadn’t intended to read Michelle Sagara’s The Emperor’s Wolves for this month’s Locus. I could read it closer to its publication date, I thought – but I’d already read the first page, and oh, it turned out that I could really use an Elantra novel right then.
The Emperor’s Wolves is a prequel ...Read More
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Girl, Serpent, Thorn, Melissa Bashardoust (Flatiron Books 978-1-250-19614-9, $18.99, 328pp, hc) July 2020. Cover by Sasha Vinogradova.
Girl, Serpent, Thorn is Melissa Bashardoust’s second novel, after 2017’s Girls Made of Snow and Glass. It’s a delightful and energetic book, one that effortlessly avoids any hint of a sophomore slump to present us with a vivid world, a compelling cast, and a narrative that managed to deftly surprise me ...Read More
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The November 2020 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Victor LaValle and Meg Elison and spotlights on We Need Diverse Books and Fantasy Magazine. Main story headlines include Jemisin Wins Genius Grant, Serpell Wins Clarke, Palmer Wins Sturgeon, HMH to Discontinue JJA Books, WFC Revises Program, B&N Breached, and a photo story: Meacham Retires. Data File continues with National Book Awards ...Read More
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Seven Devils, Elizabeth May & Laura Lam (DAW 978-0756415808, $26.00, 464pp, hc) August 2020.
I wanted to like Seven Devils a lot more than, it turns out, I actually did. The epic space-opera team-up from Laura Lam (author of Goldilocks and Shattered Minds ) and Elizabeth May (The Falconer, The Vanishing Throne, The Fallen Kingdom), Seven Devils is the opening novel in a longer series ...Read More
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The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson (Del Rey 978-0593135051, $28.00, 336pp, hc) August 2020.
Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds is another book I have mixed feelings about. Not about its success: The Space Between Worlds is ambitious and largely accomplishes what it sets out to do. My mixed feelings are entirely down to whether or not I like it, and how to analyse what it’s doing, regardless of ...Read More
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UK small press PS Publishing has launched a new imprint, Absinthe Books, with author/editor Marie O’Regan serving as managing editor. The imprint’s “remit is to publish a wide range of authors and material, predominantly but not exclusively new to PS Publishing.”
The first titles are novellas Mr. Sandman by S.J.I. Holliday, Broken Things: A Tale of Durstan by George Mann, and On the Shoulders of Otava by Laura Mauro, launching ...Read More
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The Adventure of the Naked Guide, Cynthia Ward (Aqueduct Press 978-1619761797, $9.99, 116pp, tp) February 2020.
Five years ago, I would never have believed that I’d coincidentally read for review, back-to-back, four books, in every one of which there’s a romance between two women. But the increased frequency with which I read such books means that I no longer so desperately look for them to be good: I no ...Read More
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The October 2020 issue of Locus magazine has interviews with Naomi Kritzer and Marshall Ryan Maresca and spotlights on Ho Che Anderson and Francesca Myman. Main Stories are “Sargent Leaves Macmillan”, “Diversity in Publishing Initiatives”, and the Dragon, Sunburst, Seiun, and Ditmar Awards winners. People & Publishing includes notes on milestones, awards, books sold, and more, with news this issue about Howard V. Hendrix, Walter ...Read More
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The September 2020 issue of Locus magazine has an interview with Maria Dahvana Headley. The issue lists US and UK forthcoming books titles through June 2021. Worldcon 78, CoNZealand online, is covered with an extensive report and photos, the complete Hugo and Retro-Hugo voting breakdowns, and a WSFS business meeting report. Awards news includes the Hugo Awards winners, the 1945 Retro-Hugo Awards, World Fantasy Awards ballot, and ...Read More
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Seven of Infinities, Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press 978-1-59606-976-3, $40.00, 176pp, hc) October 2020. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri.
Aliette de Bodard is an author whose works I both like (in several cases, the word adore may be more appropriate) and admire. Seven of Infinities is her latest novella, out from Subterranean Press. Set in the same acclaimed Xuya universe as the award-winning The Tea Master and the Detective, ...Read More
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