The New Yorker 9/30/19 Hexarchate Stories, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris) June 2019. And Go Like This, John Crowley (Small Beer Press) November 2019. I’m catching up slightly late with one of the New Yorker‘s occasional fantastical stories, this one quite lightly fantastical, though, I am told, set in Cross River, a city in which the author (Rion Amilcar Scott) has written other stories, all with somewhat magical realist aspects. “Shape-Ups

The Salem Public Library has honored writer and editor Gardner Dozois (1947-2018) with a plaque installed on January 21, 2020 near its paperback science fiction collection. Dozois was born in Salem MA and lived there until 1966. The Salem Public Library trustees also unveiled plaques honoring Salem natives Nathaniel Hawthorne and Nathaniel Bowditch. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation.

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the final ballot for the 2019 Bram Stoker Awards: Superior Achievement in a Novel Coyote Rage, Owl Goingback (Independent Legions) Inspection, Josh Malerman (Del Rey) The Worst is Yet to Come, S.P. Miskowski (Trepidatio) Into the Ashes, Lee Murray (Severed) Wanderers, Chuck Wendig (Del Rey) Superior Achievement in a First Novel Dear Laura, Gemma Amor (self-published) Doorways to the Deadeye, Eric J. Guignard

The longlists for the Carnegie Medal for best children’s book and the Kate Greenaway Medal for best illustrations in a children’s book have been announced. Titles of genre interest follow. Carnegie Medal A Pocketful of Stars, Aisha Bushby (Egmont) Stepsister, Jennifer Donnelly (Hot Key) Nowhere on Earth, Nick Lake (Hachette) Inkling, Kenneth Oppel (Walker) Lampie, Annet Schaap (Pushkin) Voyages in the Underworld of Orpheus Black, Marcus Sedgwick & Julian Sedgwick

The most impressive nov­el of 2019 was Michelle Paver’s Wakenhyrst. It’s an utter triumph of a book, a pitch-perfect evocation of the stories of M.R. James and A.C. Benson filtered through a 21st-century sensibility; the result is reminiscent of Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger. Concise and intense, filled with references to the tradition of English ghost sto­ries, Paver’s novel succeeds on a number of levels. Starting with her 2010 novel,

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) have released the final ballot for the 2019 Nebula Awards. Novel Marque of Caine, Charles E. Gannon (Baen) The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK) A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor) Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey; Jo Fletcher) Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing) A Song for a New Day,

Capricious SF 7/19 Strange Horizons 9/30/19 Current Futures: A Sci-Fi Ocean Anthology, Ann VanderMeer, ed. (XPRIZE) June 2019. I wanted to make sure to catch up with Capri­cious as, according to editor A.C. Buchanan, the magazine will be taking a hiatus through at least the summer of 2020. I feel that Capricious has been putting out some wonderfully innovative short fiction recently, and I’m happy to say that issue 12

Fighters of Fear: Occult Detective Stories, edited by Mike Ashley (Talos 978-1945863523, $29.99, 624pp, hardcover) January 2020 It is a simple and undeniable fact that the past will in many ways always overpower and outweigh the present. It’s a matter involving sheer numbers and mass. The present is a tiny moving window of some quantum of time in which our consciousness lives. To be generous, let’s denominate “the present” to

The 2020 Spectrum Awards nominees for the best in contemporary fantastic art have been announced. Advertising “The Magic Flute Backstage”, Anna & Elena Balbusso “Lilith”, Brom “The Shining”, Bartos Kosowski “The Part You Throw Away”, Alessandra Pisano “Fighting in the Harpy Nest”, Bayard Wu Book “Arthur Jermyn”, Sam Araya “Ivywood”, Rovina Cai “Penric’s Progress”, Dan dos Santos “The Three Lords of Shambhala”, Sija Hong “The Wind Up Bird Chronicle”, Yuko Shimizu

Finalists for the inaugural Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction were announced as part of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes: Exhalation, Ted Chiang (Knopf) This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Saga) Song for the Unraveling of the World, Brian Evenson (Coffee House) Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James (Riverhead) The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell (Hogarth) The prize is

The Locus Bestsellers for February include top titles The Burning White by Brent Weeks (Orbit US); The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (DAW); The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski (Orbit US); and Forgotten Realms: Boundless by R.A. Salvatore (Harper Voyager US).

The Bone Ships, RJ Barker (Orbit 978-0-316-48796-2, $15.99, 500pp, tp) September 2019. Cover by Edward Bettison. The Bone Ships is RJ Barker’s fourth novel, the first in a new series after his well-received Wounded Kingdom trilogy. I haven’t read the Wounded King­dom books (Age of Assassins, Blood of Assassins, and King of Assassins), which makes The Bone Ships my first encounter with Barker’s work. I didn’t expect to enjoy it

The New York Public Library is celebrating its 125th anniversary with a list of “125 Books We Love,” chosen by a team of librarians. The list includes many titles of genre interest. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (Del Rey) Life After Life, Kate Atkinson (Reagan Arthur) The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (Simon & Schuster) Parable of the Sower, Octavia E.

The sixth annual BooktubeSFF Awards Shortlists have been announced. The awards are judged by the YouTube SFF fandom community. Best Science Fiction Recursion, Blake Crouch (Crown) A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martin (Tor) Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing) Best Fantasy Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey) The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday) The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon (Bloomsbury) Best Young Adult The

Go off-world with Stanislaw Lem’s RETURN FROM THE STARS, the GRAVITY OF A DISTANT SUN by R.E. Stearns, and the LIGHT OF IMPOSSIBLE STARS by Gareth L. Powell. New titles this week are by Anne Charnock, Anna Kavan, Katherine Kerr, Sarah Kozloff, Stanislaw Lem, Scott Oden, Gareth L. Powell, Natasha Pulley, R.E. Stearns, and Marian Womack.

Every so often you come across a book that seems to act as a nexus, drawing other recently read books into an unexpected pattern, even though they otherwise seem completely unconnected. For me, this year, that nexus was The Dollmaker by Nina Allan (riverrun). One of the two central characters is a dwarf who becomes an expert and sought-after maker of dolls, which immediately called to mind Little by Edward

The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo (Flatiron Books 978-1-250-17545-8, $26.99, 384pp, hc) February 2019. Author Yangsze Choo takes readers on an immersive ride into the past with her entertaining mystery-fantasy ad­venture, The Night Tiger. Set in 1931 Malaya, the novel combines one young boy’s quest to fulfill the deathbed wish of a revered elder with a young woman’s attempt to return a souvenir dismembered finger to the lecherous creep she accidentally

Observe Mars in the night sky. Depending upon its distance from Earth, Mars varies in brightness and clarity— but it is always unique. No other celestial body reveals itself so red to the naked eye. Certainly, it is the color of roses and poppies and wine, but those comparisons are not what early stargazers had in mind when they referred to the Red Planet. To them, it was the color

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced their second annual Summer Scares Reading list. ADULT She Said Destroy, Nadia Bulkin (Word Horde) In the Valley of the Sun, Andy Davidson (Skyhorse) The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle (Tor.com Publishing) YOUNG ADULT Labyrinth Lost, Zoraida Córdova (Sourcebooks) Daughters unto Devils, Amy Lukavics (HarlequinTeen) The Agony House, Cherie Priest (Scholastic) MIDDLE GRADE Spirit Hunters, Ellen Oh (Haper) Case File 13: Zombie

Betsy Wollheim is the recipient of the 2020 Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (AKA the Skylark Award). The award was presented by the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) at Boskone 57, held at the Westin Boston Waterfront, February 14-16, 2020. The Skylark is given to “some person, who, in the opinion of the membership, has contributed significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field

Infamous DC Comics character Harley Quinn (née Harleen Frances Quinzel) changes out of her manic pixie dream girl role for Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. This latest film in the DC Universe begins immediately after the Joker dumps Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). The end of their relationship marks the end of her protected status in the criminal underworld. Her singular goal — to seek

The following sections are primarily sorted by Hugo Eligibility: Professional, Semiprozine, etc., and then loosely by pay rate, SFWA qualifying market, and the amount of fiction pub­lished. We covered 82 magazines, 17 audio sites, and eight critical magazines. We continue to see new venues launching under the crowdfunding format, older venues trying out print or subscription models, and of course funding by grants in non-US venues. A few magazines shut

Anyone, Charles Soule (Harper Perennial 978-0062890634, $21.99, 400pp, hc) December 2019. I’ve been avidly reading Charle Soule’s work since I ended my decades-long comics book hiatus in 2011. I began with Soule’s run on DC’s Swamp Thing and then, when I migrated to Mar­vel comics, enjoyed his take on Thunderbolts, the Inhumans, and Daredevil. I was particularly fond of his creator-owned series, the wildly inventive and gonzo Letter 44 (from

The trade paperback of Richard Powers’ The Overstory is still going strong, nearly a year after publication.

I read a lot of books in familiar series this year, and only a few really stood out. Ilona Andrews’s Sapphire Flames is a fun start to a new trilogy in the Hidden Legacy series of urban fantasy romances, focusing on Catalina, the second daughter in the heavily armed Baylor family, taking over as Head of the family’s House with her rare but powerful talent as a Siren – and

Gingerbread, Helen Oyeyemi (Riverhead 978-1-59463-465-9, $27.00, 272pp, hc) March 2019. Make no mistake: Helen Oyeyemi’s sixth novel is literary fiction, with a profound central metaphor and wander­ing, unfixed storylines. Its language is heady and attention-getting: “Flowers wilt and shed mottled petals, mold blooms greenish-white on chocolate truffles, and Harriet’s gingerbread hunkers down in its tin, no more attractive than the day it ar­rived, but no more repellent either.” But it’s

The Initiate, James L. Cambias (Baen 978-1-98212-435-9, $25, 288pp, hardcover) February 2020 Producing four superior novels in six years, starting with A Darkling Sea in 2014 and extending to the current one in 2020, James Cambias seems to have hit his stride, but not his peak. We can only anticipate many more fine books to follow. Indicative of his desire always to be expanding his range, Cambias’s newest is his

All Worlds Are Real, Susan Palwick (Fairwood Press 978-1-933846-84-2, $17.99, 320pp, tp) November 2019. In her introduction to All Worlds are Real, Jo Walton correctly notes that Susan Palwick is “definitely not as well known as a writer this good ought to be at this point in her career.” While one reason for this is that she’s not been especially prolific – four novels and one prior collection in a

Audible and the publishers who sued them over their planned Captions program – which cre­ates scrolling, machine-generated text that dis­plays while their audiobooks are playing – have reached a settlement. Audible’s lawyer Em­ily Resbaum wrote to the court on January 13, 2020 that “We are pleased to inform the Court that the parties have resolved their disputes. The parties respectfully request until January 21 to allow the parties to obtain

Gollancz publisher Anne Clarke is leaving the Orion imprint after one year in the post. Marcus Gipps is receiving a promotion to publishing director. Gipps worked as a bookseller for ten years before joining Gollancz in 2011, and most recently held the title of editorial director of Gollancz and SF Gateway. Gipps will work with deputy publisher Gillian Redfearn and will report to Orion managing director Katie Espiner. Rachel Winterbottom

The Bookseller has announced 30 from 30, a “super list” of 30 books from the past 30 years of British Book Awards winners as finalists for a one-off award for the best book of the past three decades. Titles of genre interest include Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Myer (Little, Brown), Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (Bloomsbury), Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (Scholastic), and The Lovely Bones

Winners for the 2019 Children’s and Young Adults Bloggers’ Literary Awards (Cybils) have been announced. Books of genre interest include: Young Adult Speculative Fiction WINNER: Fireborne, Rosaria Munda (Putnam) Internment, Samira Ahmed (Little, Brown) The Wicked King, Holly Black (Little, Brown) Aurora Rising, Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (Knopf) Echo North, Joanna Ruth Meyer (Page Street Kids) War Girls, Tochi Onyebuchi (Razorbill) Sorcery of Thorns, Margaret Rogerson (McElderry) Elementary/Middle Grade

This was my first full year reviewing books for Locus. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it, even the yawning, anxiety-inducing depth of the white screen as I des­perately cobbled together something coherent to say about the books I was discussing. On that note (not the yawning depth of the white screen, but the books), I’ve read some terrific genre fiction this year. As has been the case for a decade

A Dream So Dark, L.L. McKinney (Imprint 978-1-250-15392-0, $18.99, 416pp, hc) Sep­tember 2019. L.L. McKinney picks up the action right where she left off with her new “all hands on deck” sequel to A Blade So Black, A Dream So Dark. After losing one of her closest friends and discovering a major se­cret about her mentor in the closing pages of A Blade So Black, McKinney’s protagonist, Alice, is faced

The Society of Authors announced the winners of its translation prizes on February 12, 2020 in a ceremony at the British Library in London, UK. Morgan Giles’s translation of Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri (Tilted Axis) won the £2,000 TA First Translation Prize, sponsored by Daniel Hahn and the British Council, and given “for a debut literary translation into English published in the UK.” The award is shared between

The San Francisco Public Library presents “SF by the Bay,” an exhibit and series of events from February 1 – April 30, 2020, showcasing the library’s J. Francis McComas Fantasy and Science Fiction Collection and celebrating the San Francisco Bay Area’s contributions SF art, film, and literature. The exhibit is located on the 3rd floor of the Main Library in the General Collections and Humanities Center, with associated displays located

Resurgence, C.J. Cherryh (DAW 978-0-7564-1427-6, $26.00, 340pp, hc) January 2020. Cover by Todd Lockwood. A quarter-century and 20 volumes into a long-running series, it’s hard to figure the exact audience to address in a review of the newest, Resurgence. When C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner sequence began in 1994, it looked like it might have been the start of a mere trilogy. Over the last 25 years, it has become a string

The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) announced several grant recipients. María Isabel Álvarez won the 2019 Gulliver Travel Grant, which gives $1,000 annually to cover airfare, lodging, or other travel expenses. Honorable mentions were Michaux Dempster, Claire Holroyde, and Jenni Zellner. Del Sandeen won the 2019 Diverse Writers and Diverse Worlds Grants. The Diverse Writers Grant is “intended to support new and emerging writers from underrepresented and underprivileged groups, such as

Most years I read a fair bit of science fiction and fan­tasy, but the majority of my pleasure reading tends to be mystery and crime (I don’t write in those genres, so I can enjoy them without that otherwise inevitable layer of analysis). This year, though, I’m on an award jury cover­ing speculative fiction, and as a result, I’ve read more widely and deeply in my home field than I

Full Throttle: Stories, Joe Hill (Morrow 978-0-06220-067-9, $27.99, 484pp, hc) October 2019. Joe Hill’s first collection 20th Century Ghosts – which this reviewer read, reviewed, and then interviewed the author while having no idea he was the son of Stephen King – was full of fresh, genre-bending work. It was a thrill to discover an unknown author with such talent and promise. Of course, Hill went on from there and

The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, by Ken Liu (Saga 978-1982134037, $26, 432pp, hardcover) February 2020 Ken Liu is the kind of prodigious talent who makes mere mortals melt in despair at ever matching his accomplishments. He could have been content to remain a software engineer and lawyer, but instead he added to his CV the vocations of editor, translator, and fiction writer. If he had done any of those

Scottish author and editor Paul Barnett, 70, who wrote SF mostly as John Grant, died February 3, 2020. In addition to his extensive writing career, he worked in publishing, serving as a commissioning editor at art book publisher Paper Tiger from 1997-2004; for his work there, he won a Chesley Award for best art director in 2002, and received a World Fantasy Award nomination the following year. He edited The

Historical fantasies dominate this week’s new books in THE ILLNESS LESSON, THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, STORM FROM THE EAST, STORMSONG, SENSATIONAL, and A WITCH IN TIME. New titles this week are by Clare Beams, Eric Brown, Andy Davidson, Sergey & Marina Dyachenko, Joanna Hathaway, Andrew Krivak, A.K. Larkwood, C.L. Polk, Constance Sayers, and Jodie Lynn Zdrok.

Finalists for the 2019 Analog Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) and Asimov’s Readers’ Awards have been announced and are available to read online. Analog Science Fiction and Fact Analytical Laboratory Award Finalists Best Novella “The Gorilla in a Tutu Principle or, Pecan Pie at Minnie and Earl’s“, Adam-Troy Castro (9-10/19) “The Savannah Problem“, Adam-Troy Castro (1-2/19) “You Must Remember This“, Jay O’Connell (11-12/19) Best Novelette “A Mate Not a Meal“, Sarina Dorie

Editors, writers, scholars, and fans came together to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Analog Science Fiction and Fact and launch its milestone issue at the Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium in downtown Brooklyn NY on December 12, 2019. Organized by Jason Ellis, assistant professor of English at City Tech, and Emily Hockaday, managing editor of Analog, the event featured an editors’ roundtable, author readings, Analog-focused research paper presentations,

The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga 978-1-534-43986-3, $19.99, 176pp) November 2019. Rivers Solomon’s The Deep has a pretty colorful and convoluted history, but one that suggests how SF and Afrofuturist conceits are increasingly interacting with the broader culture. The idea of a utopian under­water society built by the water-breathing de­scendants of pregnant slaves thrown overboard from slave ships was first conceived by a

The shortlist for the 2019 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards has been announced. Best Novel The Green Man’s Foe, Juliet E. McKenna (Wizard’s Tower) Atlas Alone, Emma Newman (Gollancz) Fleet of Knives, Gareth L. Powell (Titan) Children of Ruin, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor) The Rosewater Insurrection, Tade Thompson (Orbit) Best Shorter Fiction To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton) This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal

The top five results of the Uncanny Magazine 2019 Favorite Fiction Reader Poll have been announced. “Away With the Wolves“, Sarah Gailey (tie): “The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power“, Karen Osborne and “A Mindreader’s Guide to Surviving Your First Year at the All-Girls Superhero Academy“, Jenn Reese “A Catalog of Storms“, Fran Wilde “How the Trick Is Done“, A.C. Wise “This Is Not My Adventure“, Karlo Yeager Rodríguez Sarah Gailey

Nominees have been announced for the Splatterpunk Awards, “honoring superior achievement for works published in 2019 in the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.” Best Novel Carnivorous Lunar Activities, Max Booth III (Cinestate/Fangoria) Killer Lake, W.D. Gagliani & David Benton (Deadite) Reception, Kenzie Jennings (Death’s Head) Lakehouse Infernal, Christine Morgan (Deadite) Merciless, Bryan Smith (Grindhouse) Toxic Love, Kristopher Triana (Blood Bound) They Kill, Tim Waggoner (Flame Tree) Best Novella White

“Imitation Game” by Rona Wang is the winner of the 2020 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. The award is “given annually to the best short-story written in the science fiction or fantasy genres by a full-time undergraduate college student,” and is accompanied by a $500 cash prize, publication in Asimov’s, and an invitation to ICFA (International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts),

The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) has announced the finalists for the 2020 Compton Crook Award: Here and Now and Then, Mike Chen (Harlequin/Mira) The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix Harrow (Redhook) The Outside, Ada Hoffman (Angry Robot) A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor) A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley) The award honors the best first SF/fantasy/horror novel of the year, and “includes a framed award

William Gibson’s Agency rises on the LA Times list but slips on the three other print lists compiled here.

I read a lot of great young adult SF/F books in 2019 and was most struck by the diversity of subjects that came across my desk. There continues (thank­fully) to be no dominant theme in YA fantasy, a welcome departure from the past. With the excep­tion of a cluster of titles set in Paris (which is fine; what’s not to like about Paris?), it’s really impossible to point in any

Amal El-Mohtar was born December 13, 1984 in Ottawa, Canada, and grew up there, apart from two years spent in Lebanon, where her family is from. She began publishing short fiction with “The Crow’s Caw” (2006) and has published scores of stories and poems, nota­bly Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Award winner “Seasons of Glass and Iron” (2016, also a World Fantasy, Sturgeon Memorial, and Aurora Award final­ist), Nebula Award finalists

The Quantum Garden, Derek Künsken (Solaris 978-1781085714, $11.99, 300pp, tp) October 2019. I reviewed Künsken’s debut novel The Quan­tum Magician for Locus and was, I can be honest, unsurprised Solaris elected not to use my summary judgment as a cover-blurb, viz.: “It’s not Proust but it passes the time.” Now here’s the follow-up volume: The Quantum Garden, Quantum Evolution #2. It is more of the same. If you liked the

Agency, William Gibson (Berkley 978-1-101-98693-6, $28.99, 416pp, hc) January 2020. In Agency, William Gibson has produced a sequel to The Peripheral – or as much of a sequel as can be expected of a story space built, not on one alternate history or timeline, but on branching sets of them. Of course, the “multiple alternate histories” enabling device has been around SF for decades, going back as far as Murray

Barnes & Noble has requested a jury trial in the age discrimination lawsuit filed by Barbara Tavres in the US Dis­trict Court in Northern California. Tavres was fired on September 6, 2019 after a career that be­gan in 2006, and claimed Barnes & Noble fired her because of her age, and also used policies, practices, and procedures which disproportion­ately affected employees age 40 and older. She seeks class action status.

New issues of Aphelion, Aurealis, Clarkesworld, The Dark, GigaNotoSaurus, Lightspeed, and Nightmare

Let’s try a different metaphor for this annual make-sense-of-the-field exercise: a ramble through my science-fictional reading neighborhood, which is a virtual space instantiated from the manifold of all-the-books-published and distinct from the neighborhoods described elsewhere in these pages by my colleagues. As I have pointed out nearly every year of the 30 I’ve been writing these wrap-ups, my reading is not statistically or demographically or subculturally representative – it’s the

Jakarta, Rodrigo Márquez Tizano (Coffee House Press 978-1566895637, $16.95, 160pp, tp) No­vember 2019. The fact that Rodrigo Márquez Tizano’s debut, Jakarta, (originally published in 2016 and trans­lated by the always brilliant Thomas Bunstead) does not take place in Indonesia is one of the least puzzling aspects of this hallucinogenic novel. The setting is the city of Atlantika, a crumbling dys­topia, struggling to recover from the Z-Bug, the latest iteration of

German conglomerate Bertelsmann is now the sole owner of Penguin Random House after Pearson sold them its 25% owner­ship stake for an estimated $675 million. The deal is expected to be complete in the spring. Pearson owned Penguin, and Ber­telsmann owned Random House, before the merger in 2012, at which point Bertels­mann had a 53% share and Pearson 47%. Pearson later sold 22% of its shares to the other company

» Slate: Isaac Butler talked with Kim Stanley Robinson about Three Californias, Infinite Futures » And at Wall Street Journal: Russell Gold talks with Kim Stanley Robinson: A Sci-Fi Author’s Boldest Vision of Climate Change: Surviving It » Guardian: Eric Brown reviews Anne Charnock, Marc-Uwe Kling, AJ Hackwith, Andrew Hunter Murray, Menna van Praag

Hachette Book Group (HBG) has acquired more than 1,000 Disney Book Group titles for the Little, Brown Books for Young Readers line, including numerous titles that have not yet been published, roughly doubling the imprint’s backlist. The deal encompasses YA and middle-grade titles, as well as board books, picture books, and graphic novels. Disney will continue to publish works that can be developed “across multiple platforms and media,” and will

We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (One World) and The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson (Grove) both appear on the 2020 Pen/Faulkner Longlist, this year with ten titles instead of five. The prize “honors the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year.” This year’s judges are Patricia Engel, Ru Freeman, and Porochista Khakpour. The list will be shortened to five finalists in March

On December 22, 2019 the Philadelphia Museum of Art cel­ebrated SF with an afternoon of read­ings hosted by Lawrence M. Schoen and featuring David Walton and Sally Wiener Grotta, held in conjunction with the Designs for Differ­ent Futures exhibit (details at <philamuseum.org/calendar/exhibition/designs-different-futures>). This story and more like it in the February 2020 issue of Locus. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or

Minor Prophets, Jimmy Cajoleas (Amulet 978-1-4197-3904-0, $18.99, 368pp, hc) September 2019. Minor Prophets by Jimmy Cajoleas is presented as a thriller with slight supernatural elements. In the opening pages, teen Lee recounts how he has long suffered from prophetic visions, many of which have come true. One of those visions strikes hard after his mother and stepfather have a loud fight and she roars off in her car, declaring, “This

This adaptation of the 1927 H.P. Lovecraft short story stars Nicolas Cage as Nathan Gardner, who lives in a secluded area of New England with his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson), daughter Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), and sons Benny and Jack (Brendan Meyer and Julian Hilliard). All Gardner wants to do is raise alpacas and enjoy some fine bourbon, but when a meteorite crashes onto his land one night, his plans go

Shortlisted titles for the 2020 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize have been announced in the Illustrated Books, Younger Fiction, and Older Fiction categories, including the following of genre interest: Older Fiction Internment, Samira Ahmed (Little, Brown) Younger Fiction The Middler, Kirsty Applebaum (Nosy Crow) Asha & the Spirit Bird, Jasbinder Bilan (Chicken House) Charlie Changes Into a Chicken, Sam Copeland (Puffin) Winners in each category, and one overall winner, will be

Owl Goingback and Thomas Ligotti will be given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association (HWA). The Lifetime Achievement Award is given annually to “individuals whose work has substantially influenced the horror and dark fantasy genres.” The HWA said, “When more than one award winner is determined, the rules require a unanimous vote from all committee members. Thus, the winners were recognized as highly deserving individuals for their

These end-of-the-year lists always flummox me, mostly because I never quite know what I’m supposed to write about. Should it be the big titles, the ones that made such a splash that you couldn’t help but notice them? Or should they be the smaller titles that only made a little ripple? That last group is full of the titles that make my reader’s heart sing because they show the writer’s

The House of Sundering Flames, Aliette de Bodard (Gollancz 978-1-47322-340-0, £16.99, 560pp, tp) July 2019. (JABberwocky Literary Agency 978-1-625674-61-6, $16.00, 386pp, tp) September 2019. I’m sure that someone, somewhere, has pointed out a possible relationship between fantasy trilo­gies and the structure of classical sonatas or symphonies, with the final movement recapitu­lating major themes while accelerating the pace and leading toward an aggressively dramatic climax, but Aliette de Bodard’s Dominion of

Unamerica, Cody Goodfellow (978-1732124059) Rule of Capture, Christopher Brown (978-0062859099) The Warehouse, Rob Hart (978-1-9848-2379-3) Future Tense Fiction, edited by Kirsten Berg, Torie Bosch, Joey Eschrich, Ed Finn, Andrés Martinez and Juliet Ulman (978-1944700959) The world is running a fever, and science fiction is the thermometer, if not also the febrifuge. That is, whenever the genre is not busy gallivanting across the galaxy, science fiction can, with dramatic and entertaining

Lightspeed 11/19 New Myths 9/19 Factor Four 7/19 Transcendent 4, Bogi Takács, ed. (Lethe Press) October 2019. Dominica Phetteplace returns to Robot Coun­try, an area near the US/Mexico border that robots have claimed and essentially shut off to outsiders and surveillance, in “Her Appetite, His Heart” in November’s Lightspeed. Javi is on a romantic quest to find his ex-girlfriend Isla, whom we met in the previous story “One Thousand Beetles

Tamsyn Muir’s novel Gideon the Ninth (Tor.com Publishing) is the winner of the 2020 Crawford Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) for a first book of fantasy fiction. The awards committee named The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook; Orbit UK) as “a close runner-up.” Other finalists were The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons (Tor) and Silver

Look out for assassins, secret sorcerers, and mysterious illnesses in this week’s new books! New titles this week are by David Boop, Libba Bray, James L. Cambias, Melissa de la Cruz, Sarah Gailey, Cate Glass, Adalyn Grace, Kevin Hearne, Gish Jen, Eyal Kless, Mercedes Lackey & Cody Martin, Ben Okri, Juliette Wade, and Drew Williams.

I would like nothing more than to be able to wrap the messy, tumultuous, vital, strange year in science fiction that was 2019 into a simple package that is easy to comprehend and digest for Locus readers. Instead, as rain falls on my patio roof here on the west coast of Australia while my fellow citizens are being emergency-evacuated from fire zones on the far side of the country in

Finalists for the 2020 Darrell Awards, “presented annually in support of Midsouth Literacy by recognizing the best published Science Fiction, Fantasy and/or Horror in Short Story, Novella, Novel, Young Adult & Other Media formats,” have been announced. This year they aren’t announcing which works are nominated in which categories until the award ceremony. Eric Barnes H. David Blalock Erin A. Craig John G. Hartness Robert J. Krog Carolyn McSparren Kaitlyn

Asimov’s 11-12/19 Analog 11-12/19 On Spec #110 Popshot Quarterly Summer ’19 Stray Bats, Margo Lanagan (Small Beer Press) November 2019. I found that I enjoyed several stories in the last issue of Asimov’s for 2019 by, well, men of roughly my age, let’s just say. “Escape from Sanctuary” is Allen M. Steele‘s latest tale of the human settlement on the planet Tawcety and its fraught relationship with the doglike rulers

The Audio Publishers Association has announced the 2020 Audie Awards finalists, recognizing excellence in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment. Audie finalists of genre interest follow. Science Fiction Hollow Kingdom, Kira Jane Buxton, read by Robert Petkoff (Hachette Audio) Emergency Skin, N.K. Jemisin, read by Jason Isaacs (Brilliance) Permafrost, Alastair Reynolds, read by Natasha Soudek (Macmillan Audio) The Lesson, Cadwell Turnbull, read by Ron Butler & Janina Edwards (Blackstone) The Last

Judges have been announced for the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award: Adjoa Andoh Dhonielle Clayton Abi Fellows Daphne Tonge Rachel Winterbottom The award was launched in 2019 by Gollancz and author Ben Aaronovitch, in partnership with NaNoWriMo and the Good Literary Agency “to champion underrepresented BAME [Black, Asian, and minority ethnic] voices in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror.” The shortlist will be announced April